God’s Hope for Your Heart from John 6
JESUS HAS A DEEPER TRUTH FOR YOU
The Jews then disputed among themselves, saying, “How can this man give us his flesh to eat?” 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. Whoever feeds on 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.” (John 6:52-55)
You can’t blame the people for being confused.
After all, what kind of teacher invites people to eat his flesh and drink his blood, and then goes on to say it’s “TRUE food and TRUE drink?” It would be one thing to just assume Jesus is speaking poetically, but He goes out of His way to emphasize that He’s saying something more. Yet, we know from the rest of the Gospel accounts that people did not literally eat His physical flesh and drink His actual blood, so He has to mean something different.
So what’s the deal?
Notice the nuance in Jesus’ words. He doesn’t say “real food” and “real drink,” He says they are “true.” Part of what He’s talking about is that we are not bodies with spirits, but spirits with bodies.
The spiritual is deeper than the physical.
Things which appear so certain and “real” in the physical world may not always line up with what is “true” in the spiritual world, and in a conflict between the two, the spiritual must take priority, because that is the deeper layer of the two.
Many people may walk the earth alive in body but dead in spirit. Many may be perfectly fit and healthy on the outside, but weak and lifeless on the inside. For Jesus to say His body and blood are “true food and true drink” is a reminder that He alone is the source of nourishment and life to our spiritual selves, and that only by maintaining our connection with Him will we be truly alive in the ways that really matter.
Not only that, but for those who follow Christ, it’s a reminder that just because something is “real” doesn’t make it true. Just because something looks certain to natural eyes doesn’t mean there isn’t a better reality just waiting to be revealed.
It means the door may look closed to you now, but if Jesus says it’s open, it is.
It means the relationship may look over now, but if Jesus says it will live again, it will.
It means the body may look sick now, but if Jesus says you’re healed, you are.
In reality, nobody ever took a table setting and feasted on the body in which Jesus walked, but the truth is that billions have been fed by His life-giving Spirit for millennia, and when they left behind this life of shadows, they discovered that even though they didn’t see it here like they expected, God’s final Word was waiting for them all along.
Whatever your struggle today, and whatever your reality looks like, may you take heart and find hope in this truth: Jesus has a deeper truth for you.
-Pastor Phillip
AUDIO VERSION (Click here to subscribe to the daily podcast on iTunes.)
