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A meal with a difference

John 6:  53Jesus said to them, “I tell you the truth, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you. 54Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up at the last day. 55For my flesh is real food and my blood is real drink. 56Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood remains in me, and I in him. 57Just as the living Father sent me and I live because of the Father, so the one who feeds on me will live because of me. 58This is the bread that came down from heaven. Your forefathers ate manna and died, but he who feeds on this bread will live forever.”

This passage of Scripture is one that I am very familiar and one that I have heard from a young age. My instinct was to pass over it and move on to something that is challenging for me to understand, when in my spirit God told me that I should write something on this and so I believe in doing so it is going to help someone out there understand.

One of the things that you realise very soon on when you study the words of Jesus, is that Jesus often speaks in parables and riddles and is not always to be taken literally. So when Jesus says that we must eat his flesh and drink his blood, he is not speaking literally. I can understand why the people who were listening to him would have taken him literally because he was right there in front of them. So when you hear someone saying something like this who is standing in front of you, it can be very confusing. However Jesus goes on to explain and as you become more familiar with other Scriptures so you will understand what Jesus is getting at here. Jesus is saying that if you want to be raised up and if you want to have eternal everlasting life you must eat his flesh and drink his blood. So how do we do that?

I am sure that everyone who is reading this is familiar with communion. Communion is a remembrance feast, nothing more and nothing less. Communion does not save us. In order to be saved the Bible tells us that we have to confess that Jesus Christ is Lord and we have to repent and turn away from our sins. God said from the early time in the old Testament that there is only one way to have forgiveness of sins, and that is that blood must be shed. Without the shedding of blood there can be no forgiveness of sins. This was the reason that Jesus had to die on the cross and shed his blood so that he could take the penalty of sins for us. If you saw the Mel Gibson movie the Passion of the Christ, you will have seen how Jesus was beaten and how his body was broken. When we break bread, the bread is a symbol of the body of Christ. When we drink the wine, it is a symbol of the blood that Jesus shed for the forgiveness of sins.

When we confess our sins and repent and ask Jesus will forgiveness, the Bible tells us that God will forgive us our sins and he will come and change us from the inside out, he will renew our spirit and he will restore our relationship with God the Father as we become part of God’s family. This is also referred to in John chapter 3 as being born again. So when Jesus says that we must eat his flesh and drink his blood what he is saying is that we have to take his sacrifice which was the shedding of his body and blood for us, as our own in order that we may have our sins forgiven and in order that we may eventually go to heaven one day. Jesus says that he will raise us up if we know him.

If you have never committed to your life to Jesus before, it is not too late and there is nothing that you have done in your life that could ever be too bad for God to forgive you. The Bible tells us that in your heart you can quietly confess your sins and ask Jesus to come and be your Lord and if you believe that he will do so he will come in to your life and he will change you. It is important for you to tell someone else what you have done and for you to join a local church so that you may be encouraged and so that you may grow in the knowledge of Jesus Christ. Jesus told his disciples at the end of the book of Matthew that they should go into all the world and make disciples. A disciple is someone who follows Jesus wholeheartedly and that is God’s plan for our life.

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