Digging Deeper: The Words of Eternal Life

Jesus declares that everyone who doesn’t eat his flesh and drink his blood is dead. 

So many of Jesus’ disciples were offended by this that they stopped following him and left. 

Jesus then turns to the twelve disciples and asks them if they want to leave too. 

Simon Peter answered him, “Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life. We have come to believe and to know that you are the Holy One of God.” 

When many of Jesus’ disciples desert him and go their separate ways, Peter declares that there is no other option for him other than to continue following Jesus. He says to Jesus, “Who else would we follow? You’re the only one whose words bring life.” In that moment, he recognizes Jesus for who he really is.

Then Jesus replied, “Have I not chosen you, the Twelve? Yet one of you is a devil!” (He meant Judas, the son of Simon Iscariot, who, though one of the Twelve, was later to betray him.) 

Hold up.

Drink your blood? Really, Jesus? That’s a tad morbid, don’t you think? This is the Bible, Jesus, not a Twilight novel. You might offend somebody talking like that.

But wait… oh yeah, that’s right… the Bible talks about blood all the time.

Surely Jesus’ Jewish audience was familiar with that. Surely they were familiar with all the sacrificial laws found in Leviticus, and the Hebrew understanding of the sacredness of blood.

Leviticus 17:14 says, “For the life of every creature is its blood: its blood is its life.”

Jesus didn’t need to quote these passages as a reminder because everybody was already familiar with them.

And so Jesus says that his own blood is what truly gives life to people. And what does Jesus say true life is? The Spirit of God is life and gives life. And where is the spirit seen? In Jesus’ own words! Which means that the words of Jesus are life-giving because they are the very words of the Spirit – the Spirit of God. In both the Greek and the Hebrew languages the words for “spirit” are interchangeable with “breath” which always represents “life” in the Scriptures.

Now all of this can be a bit confusing. All of this breath, life, spirit, blood talk. What are we to make of it? What exactly is the context?

Well, if you look at the beginning of John 6, John tells us that the Jewish festival of Passover was just around the corner. And it is during this preparation for the Passover that Jesus feeds the 5000 people with bread, and then later has the discussion with them about how he is “the bread of life.” It is in this discussion that Jesus says that anyone who doesn’t eat his flesh and drink his blood is dead.

All of this makes much more since in the context of the Passover celebration that was taking place. The people were familiar with the passage in Torah which told them not to eat the blood of any animal… because it was said that the life of the creature is in its blood. And all life is sacred. Instead of drinking the blood of the animal, the Israelites would pour out the blood on the altar before God as a “drink offering,” showing that all life comes from God and all life belongs to and will be returned to its Creator. In animal sacrifice, the life-blood of the animal is a substitute for the life-blood of the person offering the animal as a way of atoning for sin, but it is not the animal that gives the person life, it is God.

In God’s covenant with Abraham, we begin to see the idea of the sacrificial system starting to play out. The animal sacrifices are a reminder to God of the promise he made to Abraham to not condemn his descendants to death because they have not lived up to perfection and that God has promised to carry the sentence of death as a result of sin in their place. 

The idea of sacrifice and blood substitution as a way to avoid death caused by sin is carried further in Abraham’s sacrifice of Isaac. In this story God first asks Abraham to sacrifice his favored son, but then provides a ram as a substitution at the last second. In this way, the blood of the ram is used in the place of the blood of Isaac and he avoids death. The blood sacrifice is also seen throughout the Exodus story, especially in Passover. Also, death swallows up the Egyptians in the Sea, but the Israelites emerge alive. God continues to provide means of avoiding death to his people. 

The Passover meal was not about gaining eternal life. It was about remembering God’s redemption of his people from Egypt and his atonement of their sins. In the meal, the Lamb is eaten and the wine is drunk in a symbolic fellowship-meal with God. But when Jesus comes on the scene, he pushed the meaning of Passover forward to point to his life-giving sacrifice. What does the death of the lamb symbolize? The death of Jesus! And so when you drink the wine of the Passover you do so in remembrance of Jesus’ sacrifice of his own blood… and you are thankful.

Sometimes we get confused in our Western culture, and we think that we are born as these eternal souls who are in danger of losing our immortality because of sin. But that kind of idea comes more so from Plato and other Western philosophers. What the Bible actually shows us is that we are all born mortal, sinful and "destined to die," and that only through the blood of Christ, his death and resurrection, can we be brought into his kingdom where life for both the body and the soul is eternal.

Life is a gift. All life is a gift.

“…to those who by patience in well-doing seek for glory and honor and immortality, he will give eternal life.”

-- Romans 2:7

“…and which now has been manifested through the appearing of our Savior Christ Jesus, who abolished death and brought life and immortality to light through the gospel…”

-- 2 Timothy 1:10

“For this perishable body must put on the imperishable, and this mortal body must put on immortality.”

-- 1 Corinthians 15:53