From Show Me's "divinely inspired" website:
Quote:
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So Jesus said to them, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you; he who eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up at the last day. For my flesh is food indeed, and my blood is drink indeed. He who eats my flesh and drinks my blood abides in me, and I in him.
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Catholics use this passage to try prove that Jesus was
literally telling his listeners that they must
literally eat His
physical body. But what the Romanists conveniently overlook is that if this is the case, then Jesus was inviting the crowd to roast him alive over the fire and eat his physical body right on the spot. The rationale for this interpretation I explained previously in my post 1490.
One of the big problems are the
verb tenses. Jesus did not invite the crowd to some future feast of his body and blood. The call was in the
present tense. So, in order for a Romanist to be consistent, he would have to say that Jesus was literally inviting the crowd to kill him, roast him over the open fire and eat his physical body right on the spot! Right then and there! After all, the Last Supper was still a long ways down the road. Again, the verb tenses are in the present tense. It's no wonder the crowd balked at his teaching. After all, Jesus' words were spiritual in nature (Jn 6:63) and the unregenerate have no taste (bad pun intended) for truth -- for God's Word.
And Jesus let those with their spurious faith grumble and leave him -- he left them in the same condition in which he found them because the Father had not given most of them to Him. And this narrative proves what I have long said -- that God leaves most people in this world in the the condition of their sinfulness. And everyone is content to remain there.
Another problem was that Jesus was drawing the parallel between the literal, physical bread from heaven in the wilderness to spiritual bread which is Jesus himself, being the Bread of Life. Jesus makes this very clear in Jn 6:63 wherein he very clearly says that the flesh (including his own physical body) profits NOTHING.
So, Jesus with this parallel in John 6 was not comparing physical bread in the wilderness to his physical body -- but contrasting the physical in the wilderness to the spiritual reality in the hearers' presence. Jesus was saying that he was spiritual food not physical. He wasn't inviting the crowd to cannibalize him, as Romanists would have us believe.
To "consume" Jesus in the spiritual sense is to believe, hang on to and live by his every word. Man does not live by [physical] bread alone, but by
every WORD that proceeds from God's mouth. This is how believers are supposed to "consume" Christ.
And the proof of this maxim is this:Those who ate the physical manna in the wilderness died! Most of them never made it to the Land of Canaan. By contrast Jesus taught that those who "eat his body" shall never die -- spiritually.
Again, even here...if the Romanist is going to be a consistent literalist then he would have to interpret Jesus' words about never dying literally -- that is to say, people will never physically die if they literally eat Jesus physical body.
