Eat my flesh and drink my blood
—John 6:25–71
Andrew Fountain – July 13, 2025 Click on this slide and then press the spacebar to advance slides: ➜ (or swipe on a touch screen)
Eat my flesh and drink my blood
A careful reading of John 6
What Jesus means by this strange teaching
How can we eat Jesus’ flesh and drink his blood?
1. A careful reading of John 6
John 6:25–71 – Eat my flesh and drink my blood
This sounds like breaking bread!
In fact, we are going to celebrate today’s message by symbolically eating his flesh and drinking his blood.
In fact, John 6 is the core teaching of breaking bread
But Jesus added two very important things to this core at the last supper He made it the New Covenant meal – a repeating physical celebration event
He connected it with remembering his death in a physical way But at it’s core, this is the image —consuming Jesus
One of the cornerstones of the Catholic church is the Mass
They believe the bread and wine become the body and blood of Jesus, sacrificed afresh
Eating this is the only way to get sins forgiven.
We believe that the sacrifice of Jesus is complete, in the past
Jesus said “do this in remembrance of me”, not “sacrifice me again”
They are powerful pictures of his death for us
The image is of food and drink being our source of life
The issue in Catholic teaching is this:
Is the bread and wine a symbolic demonstration of feeding on Jesus? Or is it literally his flesh and blood?
In John, it cannot be literal because
Jesus kept telling them to eat his body and drink his blood, but refused to provide any physical food.
This got them very upset—are we to be cannibals?
It could not be more clear that Jesus was using food as a symbol.
The core of the blessing does not depend on literal food
Eat my flesh and drink my blood
A careful reading of John 6
What Jesus means by this strange teaching
How can we eat Jesus’ flesh and drink his blood?
2. What Jesus means by this strange teaching
Jesus relationship with the Father a pattern for us
John 6
Jesus said that people had to eat his flesh and drink his blood! -This is a difficult passage
-But it’s not just difficult—it’s important
What on earth is he talking about? —to some extent, but wine is not mentioned v.57: “Just as the living Father sent me, and I live because of the Father, so the one who consumes me will live because of me.”
Key: John 4:32–34
But he said to them, “I have food to eat that you know nothing about.”
So the disciples began to say to one another, “No one brought him anything to eat, did they?”
Jesus said to them, “My food is to do the will of the one who sent me and to complete his work .”
John 6: Jesus relationship with the Father a pattern for us
Just as the living Father sent me , and I live because of the Father ,the person who eats me will live because of me .
To summarize:
these things all go together: coming to him, feeding on him, trusting him, following and obeying him.
We have to rest on him in obedience.
When we walk this life, it sometimes feels as if obeying Christ is the way to pain, not to happiness.
We walk it only because we believe Christ’s words.
Everything else in our nature is telling us it is the wrong way.
We live that way only because we are following Christ and trusting in him.
Jesus placed himself into a relationship with the Father which is a pattern for our relationship with him.
Running a course on how to eat for $10/day
We saw the same imagery when Jesus talked to the woman at the well:
There a pattern in these verses.
Jesus describes our relationship with him in the same terms as his relationship with the Father.
In chapter 4, Jesus had been so busy serving his Father that he had not eaten.
Doing the Father’s will, was his food, because his obedience was so complete that it amounted to a moment by moment dependence.
Summary: How Jesus relates to his Father
Jesus lived every moment and breathed every breath to obey the will of the Father.
To do the Father’s will was his drink, his meat. It was everything to him.
He did not do anything in his own strength but did everything by the power that flowed from the Father.
He is calling us to relate to him in the same way
This might seem like death , but actually it is the way to life
Perhaps the most powerful image that these words have is simply that of the food and drink that sustains our lives.
Food is something we all need moment by moment to sustain us.
We cannot go long without a drink because liquid is vital for our bodies.
Jesus is teaching us that
We need to depend on him utterly,
There is another place in John’s Gospel where Jesus uses an image to demonstrate how the believer is sustained moment by moment from himself.
It is the image of the vine and the branches.
A branch, cut away from the vine, is cut away from the sap—that source of nourishment and fluid flowing up—and would die straight away.
We must be joined to Christ and constantly feeding from him and drawing sustenance from him in order to be sustained.
That is the idea behind this passage, but we must ask
What does this actually mean in practice?
Four Parallels that result in everlasting life
“Eating and drinking Christ”
Is there anything else that does?
Trusting/Believing Christ So whatever he means by eating and drinking, it is the same kind of thing as believing because both of them lead to everlasting life.
Coming to Christ Here, believing and coming are used in a parallel fashion. Their meanings are not identical, but the comparison sheds light on how we should understand each individual image.
obeying Christ’s words and abiding in them.
Texts that show these four things that result in everlasting life
Looking at these references allows us to build up an image of what Jesus is talking about.
Here, quite clearly, eating his flesh and drinking his blood is equivalent to abiding in him
which we learned from chapter 15 is obeying his words.
Why does Jesus not just say it plainly?
We need to be “shocked” into radically changing our thinking
Eat my flesh and drink my blood
A careful reading of John 6
What Jesus means by this strange teaching
How can we eat Jesus’ flesh and drink his blood?
3. How can we eat Jesus’ flesh and drink his blood?
What does this mean in practice
a combination of trust and dependence
example of being in a strange city—trust/follow/depend on someone
If you are not a Christ follower, this is exactly for you as well!
life of God in us by the Spirit Rosalind Goforth Story
New Year’s Day, 1887, was bitterly cold. Jonathan Goforth and I started for a walk through the Rosedale ravine just north of my home. On reaching Parliament Street, instead of turning northward to the ravine, I stopped short and said, “Jonathan, I feel strangely impressed that we should go south down to the slum district.”
He looked at me amazed, and for several moments we stood debating, for he strongly objected, saying very truly that Parliament Street was the last place for a lovers’ walk! At last I said, “Did you ever feel so clearly led to do something that you just had to do it?” To this he replied, “If that is how you feel, let us go south.” (But it was a very silent walk!) For almost a mile and half we walked down Parliament. Then I led the way a block east. By this time I was getting pretty nervous.
Hesitating for a moment, I led on down Sackville Street for over a block, then stopped in front of a small cottage and said, “O Jonathan don’t look at me as if I had gone crazy! Let us knock at this door.”
Jonathan, evidently getting anxious, exclaimed, “But why?”
“I don’t know,” I replied.
The husband opened the door, and on seeing me cried out, with tears running down his face, “Oh, Miss Bell-Smith, God has sent you!”
We found the place like an ice house—no fuel, no fire, no food. The poor wife was lying on a miserable bed with but little over her and seemingly coughing her life away. In the corner of the room lay a dead baby, born a few hours before. Their sad story was quickly told. The man had gone to the city hall for help, but it was closed, it being New Year’s Day. Returning to his wife with his last hope of help gone, he sank down by her bedside and joined her in crying to the Lord to send someone to them. At that very time the strange impelling had come to me.’
Forty years later the woman was still alive and gave a testimony of praise to God!
quoted from Climbing by Rosalind Goforth (Moody Press, 1955)
Simplest application
Simply be attentive to where you are right now, and how you can show love.
Why does John not include an account of the Last Supper?
All of life should be in this frame of mind
The Power of Christ living in me
Gal 2:20 “it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me; and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God.”
Phil 4:13 I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.
2 Corinthians 12
But he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” Therefore I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may rest upon me.
For the sake of Christ, then, I am content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and calamities. For when I am weak, then I am strong.
Do any of you have anything at all stressful coming up in the next couple of weeks?
Focus on this teaching in the coming week! Turn the challenge into an opportunity!
John 6 Feeding on Jesus
Jesus said to them, “I tell you the solemn truth,
The one who eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day.For my flesh is true food, and my blood is true drink.
The one who eats my flesh and drinks my blood resides in me, and I in him.