Bite-Sized: Does This Scandalize You?

The early Christians faced a lot of accusations from Roman accusers. Their secret meetings of worship were probably orgies, the Romans thought. Their refusal to sacrifice to and worship the emperor was atheism, the Romans thought. But we're looking at a different accusation today, ladies and gentlemen: the accusation of cannibalism.


Jesus said to them, “Very truly I tell you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you. Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise them up at the last day. (John 6:53-54, NIV)


"Does this [saying] scandalize you?"That's the question Jesus asks in John 6:61. Mind you, he's just made it explicitly clear that you've got to eat His flesh and drink His blood "in order to have life in himself". So yes, I think it's safe to assume that it scandalized some people. But I want you to understand just how scandalizing what He said really is...and why in verse 66, many of his disciples respond with, "Haha...oh, Jesus, you're just messing with us, right? About the whole flesh-eating, blood-drinking thing? Not...literally. Oh. You're serious. We can't do this anymore," and then they leave him and "walk with him no longer".

The English translation doesn't do this the visceral justice of the Greek. The first "eat" that you see in the verses quoted above is just that: eat. But the second "eat" is a different Greek word. The ESV renders it, "feed". I prefer to render it, "chew". It's like Jesus is making the image more (seemingly) disgusting so that the people understand what he's saying. You can't enter into the kingdom of God / be raised in the last day to the resurrection of life / have eternal life without chewing the flesh of Christ and slurping His blood.

The way I see it, He uses this visceral language to drive home the idea of being in Christ and him being in you. His flesh is real food and his blood is real drink. Whoever eats and drinks that real food and drink remains in him and him in them. I mean, if you literally eat His flesh, he's pretty much `in you. Is that the way that we treat the Word? Do we want it in us as though we were eating the flesh of Christ? Is that the way that we treat our relationship with the triune God we worship?

Does this saying scandalize you?

*Yeah, this is one of the roots of Eucharistic interpretation. I'm not getting into, here, views of the relationship between the bread and wine of the Lord's supper and the body and blood of Christ. But in a real sense, when He says these things, He speaks spiritual truth and life.