THE GOSPEL OF JOHN
ETERNAL LIFE
DR. JIM DIXON
DECEMBER 13, 1987
JOHN 6:48-59
It was Friday, shortly after midnight, in the garden of Gethsemane. Our Lord Jesus Christ was praying, and as He prayed sweat rolled down His face like great drops of blood. He was in agony. He asked His disciples to pray with Him, but they fell asleep. They did not know what He knew. They did not know that that very day Jesus Christ would die, taking the sin of the world upon Himself. Now, it was at that time and in that place, shortly after midnight in the garden of Gethsemane, when they came for Him—the soldiers and the officers of the chief priests and scribes. They came with Judas Iscariot, the disciple and the betrayer, and they seized our Lord Jesus Christ. They arrested Him, they bound Him, and they took Him for ecclesiastical trial. In the middle of the night, they took Him to Annas the ex-high priest, and then they took Him to Caiaphas, the current high priest, and they brought Him before the Sanhedrin, the highest ecclesiastical council of the Jews.
They condemned Him, but they did not have the power to execute Him. So they brought Him to the legal authorities, the Roman authorities. They brought our Lord before Pontius Pilate the procurator, the provincial governor. And then they brought Him before Herod Antipas, the tetrarch of Galilee and Judea. Then again, they brought Him back to Pilate, and ultimately Jesus Christ was condemned.
All through the night they abused Him. They flogged Him, they whipped Him, they scourged Him, and they spat upon Him. Ultimately they clothed Him with a purple robe, mocking His royalty. And they crowned Him with a crown of thorns—mocking His kingship—and blood poured down His face. They condemned Him to death. They sentenced Him to death by crucifixion, and they sent Him into the street to carry His cross to Calvary, aided by Simon of Cyrene. It was about nine o’clock that Friday morning when Jesus Christ was nailed to the cross. His hands and feet were nailed to the cross.
He was suspended between two thieves, though He Himself knew no sin. For six hours He would hang on that cross, life slowly draining from His body. He would die at about three o’clock in the afternoon. For the last three hours, the sun would not give its light. And in the end He would say, “It is finished. Father, into Thy hands, I commit My spirit.” And they took Him down from the cross and thrust a spear into His side and blood and water poured out. And then they gave His body to Joseph of Arimathea, a rich man who buried Him in a garden tomb. And so it was that they took the life of the Son of God—King of Kings, Lord of Lords, the Lord of glory.
But they did not really take His life. They didn’t take His life. The Bible tells us that He gave His own life up. He gave His life freely. They didn’t have the power to take His life. He could have summoned 12 legions of angels, or, by the power that was in Him He could have turned His accusers to stone. You see, for this He was born: that He might die. For this He had come into the world: that He might give His life. And He gave His life willingly. Many people in the world today ask why. Why did Jesus Christ give His life? Why did He give it willingly? And the answer to that question as expressed in our passage of scripture for today is this: He gave His life that we might now eat of His flesh and drink of His blood. That is a difficult phrase. What does it mean to eat the flesh and drink the blood of Jesus Christ? Biblically and theologically, it means two things, and these comprise our two teachings this morning.
First of all, it means to accept His sacrifice for your sin. To eat His flesh and to drink His blood is to embrace His sacrifice for our sins. In communion when we eat the bread and we drink the cup (and the bread symbolizes His flesh, His body broken for us, and the cup symbolizes His blood shed for us) we are acknowledging, accepting, and embracing His sacrifice for our sins. But of course, in order to be a Christian you must acknowledge (and I must acknowledge) that we are sinful. We must acknowledge that we needed that sacrifice. We must acknowledge that we needed that body broken and we needed that blood shed.
There are many people in the world today who question whether sin even exists. They feel like perhaps they are simply victims, products of environmental conditioning or chemical or genetic predispositions. And even though our behavior is indeed influenced by chemicals and genetics and environmental factors, the Bible tells us that, in the midst of all of this, we are free. There is moral autonomy. We are free moral agents, and one day we will be held accountable for what we have done. The Bible says that in our freedom we have all sinned. We have all gone astray. Nevertheless, some people think they do not sin.
About two months ago I was jogging on the High Line Canal. I really hate to jog. I hate it most of all because it involves running and that kind of hurts. I also hate jogging because I don’t like dogs. I shouldn’t say I don’t like dogs. I do like some dogs. We have a dog—it’s a little dog and I’ve grown to kind of like it. But I don’t like dogs that are loose on the High Line, particularly big dogs. This particular day I was jogging down the High Line and it had just rained, and the High Line was kind of muddy and there was a narrow band where the dirt was drier. I was running down this narrow strip and up ahead I saw a couple coming towards me—a man and a woman—and they had a German Shepherd. The man was holding a leash in his hand, but it wasn’t connected to the dog. The dog was just kind of loose to run around.
The dog saw me and just immediately headed towards me and chose that little narrow strip of dry ground and ran right at me. And when it came right to me, I just jumped out of the way into the mud. I was kind of frustrated, and I got back on that narrow strip of dirt and started to run again. And the dog turned around and came up at my heels and began to kind of snip at my heels and make a noise like he was about to eat lunch. And I was really mad. And when I came up to the couple I slowed down, and even though I was winded I was angry and I had enough energy to say, “Your dog is supposed to be on a leash.” And the man looked at me and he said, “Come on, that dog’s not hurting you.” And something in me just snapped and I called the man a fool.
I said, “You fool, don’t you know there’s a leash law on the High Line Canal?” Well, I felt really bad about that because the Bible says you’re not supposed to call anybody a fool. I should have called him a jerk or something like that. I really shouldn’t have called him anything. But I really did feel bad about it. And that’s, of course, sin. And as I was jogging down the High Line Canal, from there I got to thinking to myself, “What really is a fool? Who really is a fool, biblically, in the sight of God?” Of course, the Bible says “A fool says in his heart, ‘there is no God.’” The Bible says more than that about fools. The Bible tells us that the way of a fool is right in his own eyes.
You see, a fool believes that his actions or her actions are right. A fool believes that he or she has no sin. The Bible says in the book of Proverbs, the 14th chapter, the ninth verse, that fools mock at sin. You see, in the sight of God this is a fool: a person who scoffs at sin and a person who believes that he or she has no sin. 15 years ago when I was ordained to the gospel ministry, I was told, “Jim, you should never, ever tell your congregation that they’re sinners. You’re going to offend people. You’re going to hurt their feelings.” Well, I don’t want to offend anybody and I don’t want to hurt anybody’s feelings, but you see, the Bible says we’re all sinners and it wouldn’t matter if I said it because I’m nothing. The point is that God says it. It says in God’s word, “All have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. There is none righteous, no, not one.” The Bible says, “If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us. If we say we have not sinned, we make Him a liar and His word is not in us.” All we like sheep have gone astray and we desperately need to eat the flesh and drink the blood of Jesus Christ.
In 1860, on August 13th in Patterson Township, Ohio, a woman was born in a log cabin. Her name was Phoebe. When she was nine years old she picked up a rifle and she began to shoot it. She was exceptional. She was incredibly accurate with a rifle and with a pistol. She began to support her family through shooting small game. By the time she was 15 years old in 1875, she was so good with the rifle that she went to Cincinnati, Ohio, and she participated in a rifle shooting contest. And there she competed against some of the greatest marksmen of the United States. She competed against the best marksman in the United States, Frank E. Butler, and she beat him. She beat everybody that day, and everybody was impressed with Phoebe. Frank Butler was so impressed with Phoebe that he asked her to marry him, and she did.
As time went by, nobody heard of Frank Butler anymore, but everybody heard of Phoebe. You could throw a playing card up in the air and she could shoot six bullets through it before it would hit the ground. She could hit a playing card from 90 feet away with its edge turned towards her. In Europe, she shot a cigarette out of the mouth of the German Crown Prince, who became Kaiser Wilhelm II. She became famous in the United States of America and famous in Europe. And in 1885, at the age of 25, she joined the Buffalo Bill Wild West Show and she became as famous as Buffalo Bill himself. She performed for that show for 17 years till the year 1902. She died in 1926 at the age of 66, and her full name was Phoebe Annie Oakley Mosey, better known as Annie Oakley.
She was incredibly accurate. The World Book Encyclopedia says that she was as accurate with a rifle as anyone who ever lived. But she wasn’t perfect. They once threw 5,000 glass balls up into the air in rapid secession, one after the other, and she shot 4,772 of them. But she missed 228. You see, nobody’s perfect. Now, you might wonder, what does this have to do with sin? It has a lot to do with sin because the Greek word for sin is the word hamartia, and that word literally means “to miss the mark.” You see, in the sight of God, we’ve all missed the mark. It doesn’t matter what kind of an ethical sharpshooter you think you are and it doesn’t matter how moral and ethical you believe you are. In the sight of God, you’ve missed the mark and I’ve missed the mark, because God’s mark is contained in the Bible, the holy word of God. Everything that is required of perfection is contained here. From the 10 Commandments in the Pentateuch to the Sermon on the Mount in the Gospels, the embodiment of God’s standard of perfection is Jesus Christ and His sinless life. And we’ve all missed that mark. We’ve all fallen short. We are all sinners and we desperately need to eat the flesh and drink the blood of Jesus Christ because the Bible says that only perfect people are going to go to heaven. That’s what the Bible says.
So unless we get some help, we’re all in a whole lot of trouble. The Apostle John towards the end of his life was on the island of Patmos, and he had a revelation wherein he saw heaven. He saw the gates of heaven and he saw all who entered into heaven, as described in Revelation chapter 21, verse 27. He said, “I saw nothing unclean enter therein, nor he who practices abomination or falsehood, but only those whose names are written in the Lamb’s Book of Life.” Nothing unclean gets into heaven. The problem is, we’re all unclean. How can we become clean? How can we be forgiven of sin? For this Jesus Christ came into the world and for this He walked that road to Calvary’s cross: that He might pay the penalty for our sin and He might take your sin and my sin upon Himself. And the Bible says that in the moment that you come in repentance and belief to Jesus Christ and you accept His sacrifice for your sin, you come under the umbrella of the cross and in the sight of God your sin is forgiven.
“Though your sin,” the Bible says, “be as scarlet, it shall be washed white as snow.” Though our sin be as red as crimson, the Bible says, it will be washed white as wool. “As far as the East is from the West, so far does He remove our sins from us.” Forgiveness, that’s what it means to eat the flesh and drink the blood of Jesus Christ. “If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just,” the Bible says, “to forgive us our sin and cleanse us from all unrighteousness.” Jesus said, “This is the New Covenant in my blood, shed for the remission of your sins.” And so when we come in repentance and we commit ourselves to a lifetime of struggle against sin and we trust His provision for sin (His sacrifice on Calvary’s cross), spiritually speaking we eat His flesh and drink His blood.
There’s a second meaning to this phrase, a final meaning that we’ll discuss this morning. This meaning is less obvious and perhaps to most of you even more important. And the meaning is this: to eat the flesh and drink the blood of Jesus Christ means to receive His life within you. You see, Jesus Christ is talking about zoe—spiritual life. He said, “Unless you eat My flesh and unless you drink My blood, you have no life in you. He who eats My flesh and drinks My blood has eternal life.”
Some of you may have heard of a man who lived long ago. His name was Vlad Tepes, who was better known as Vlad the Fifth. He was best known as Vlad the Impaler. He ruled a little kingdom called Wallachia. It was a small kingdom that occupied a land which today is part of Romania. Vlad the Impaler ruled that kingdom from 1456 to 1462, only six years. But during those six years, this man (who was incomprehensibly cruel) executed 40,000 people. He impaled them—thus the name Vlad the Impaler. He literally drove stakes through the hearts of all 40,000 of those people. Everybody, historians tell us, feared Vlad the Impaler. From invading Turks to priests and holy men, they all feared him.
In the Romanian language, they had a name for him: Dracula, which means “son of Satan.” Now of course, in the year 1897, a man whose name was Bram Stoker wrote a book in England called Dracula, a book based in part on the life of Vlad the Fifth. And Bram Stoker in that book made vampires famous. Now, of course, Vlad the Fifth was not a vampire. I’m not sure that anybody has ever been a vampire, but that book called Dracula made vampires famous. As portrayed in the book by Stoker, vampires are creatures that live by drinking the blood of other people. They live off the bodies of other people. And according to these vampire myths that Stoker read (which came out of the Balkan states and out of Greece, Algeria, Romania, Yugoslavia, and parts of Hungary) a vampire could live forever if it would just drink the blood of other people.
Well, I don’t think anything is grosser than the vampire myth. I don’t like to go to vampire movies. I don’t even like to watch the movie Dracula. It’s gross because it’s just gross to think of a person drawing their life from another person’s body. Well, when Jesus Christ said, “Unless you eat My flesh and drink My blood, you have no life in you,” and when He said, “He who eats My flesh and drinks My blood has eternal life,” a lot of people were grossed out. And it doesn’t sound too good today, but we need to understand the context in which He was speaking. We need to understand what He meant and we need to understand what people of His day understood.
You see, in the ancient world, in the Greek and Roman religions and in the ancient Canaanite religions of Christ’s day, people longed to have the life of God within them. They longed to have eternal life within them—divine life—but they didn’t know how to get it. And so in their ancient pagan sacrificial systems, they would go into their pagan temples and shrines dedicated to their gods and they would take an animal, perhaps a lamb, and they would offer it in sacrifice upon a pagan altar. And when the lamb was sacrificed, one-third of the animal would be burned on the altar in dedication to the god. Another third of the animal would be given to the temple priest for his livelihood. But the final third of the animal was taken by the worshiper and the worshiper’s family and eaten, and they believed that when they ate this sacrificed animal (since it was sacrificed to the god) somehow as they ate that flesh and drank that blood the life of the god came within them.
That’s what many people believed in the day of Christ. Many theologians believe that Jesus Christ is taking that pagan practice and giving it a profound application. Jesus Christ in this passage of scripture is saying, “Listen, if you really want divine life within you, if you really want eternal life within you, if you really want the life of God to come within you, you must partake of Me. You must eat My flesh and you must drink My blood.” But He didn’t mean it literally. He didn’t mean it crudely. He meant it spiritually. “You must partake of Me. You must take My life within you. You must take My Spirit within you. You must drink of My Spirit.”
When Jesus said, “You must eat My flesh and drink My blood,” the disciples in the very next verse say, “Lord, this is a hard teaching. Who can listen to it?” And Jesus Christ said, “The words that I speak to you are spirit and life. It is the Spirit which gives life; the flesh availeth nothing.” You see, Jesus wants us to understand that if we would have life within us we need to take His Spirit within. We need to drink of His Spirit. We need to partake of Him. We need to invite Him to come within.
Nicodemus was a ruler of the Jews, a member of the Sanhedrin. As you all know, he came to Jesus by night as recorded in the third chapter of the Gospel of John. He said, “Rabbi, we know that You are a teacher sent from God. No man could do the signs which You do unless God be with Him.” Well, it was a smoke screen, because Nicodemus really didn’t want to compliment Christ on His teaching. He wanted to know how he could have divine life within himself. Nicodemus wanted to know how he could get the life of God to come within himself and how he could find eternal life. So Jesus Christ, looking into his heart, said, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless a man is born anew, he cannot enter the kingdom of heaven.”
Nicodemus didn’t understand. He said, “Can a man enter a second time into his mother’s womb and be born anew?” Jesus said, “Do you marvel that I say to you, ‘you must be born anew’? That which is born of the flesh is flesh, that which is born of the Spirit is spirit.” You see, Jesus Christ wants us to understand that we must be born of the Spirit. We must receive His Spirit within us. We must partake of Him. He explains in the Bible how we can do this. He told Nicodemus how he could do this. In the same chapter of scripture, Jesus said, “God loved the world so much that He gave His only begotten Son that whosoever believeth in Him would not perish but have everlasting life.” And this is the truth of God’s word. This is the truth of the Bible: that in that moment when we believe in Jesus Christ, when we receive Christ, when we embrace Christ as Lord and Savior, He sends His Person within us and we partake of Him. We eat and drink of Him. In that moment that we truly believe in Him as Lord and Savior He sends His Spirit within our spirit, and the life of God comes within us. It is eternal life. We belong to Him and He belongs to us and He will never let us go. And we are His people. This is the promise of God.
So Jesus Christ says, “Behold, I stand at the door and knock. If anyone opens the door, I will come in and sup with Him and He with me.” “Unless you eat My flesh and drink My blood, you have no life in you.” To eat the flesh and drink the blood of Christ simply means to accept His sacrifice for sin—for your sin, for my sin—and to receive His life and Spirit within. Let’s close with a word of prayer.
Lord Jesus, we confess to You that we have all sinned. Our righteousness is like filthy rags before You. Lord, the things that You’ve asked us to do many times we have not done. And the things You’ve asked us not to do, we have done. Lord, thank You that if we confess our sin and believe in You, You will indeed forgive us our sin and cleanse us. Lord, we embrace You again this day as Savior. We would eat Your flesh and drink Your blood. Thank you, Lord, that You loved us so much that You gave Your body on Calvary’s cross. Lord, if there is someone here today who has never ever acknowledged You as Savior and Lord, never received You within, never partaken of Your Holy Spirit and invited You to come and live within them as Lord and Savior, Lord, this morning I would ask that they might say this prayer with me in the silence of their own heart: “Lord Jesus, come into my heart. Be my Lord and be my Savior. Forgive me of my sin. Cleanse me within. I want to live for You.” Lord, You are indeed the hope of the world: the way, the truth and the life. We love You. We pray these things in Your great and matchless name. Amen.