Drawn to the Son

September 27, 2026 | Drawn to the Son| John 6:4 and 1-59

Will Davis

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John 6:41-59

41 So the Jews grumbled about him, because he said, “I am the bread that came down from heaven.” 42 They said, “Is not this Jesus, the son of Joseph, whose father and mother we know? How does he now say, ‘I have come down from heaven’?” 43 Jesus answered them, “Do not grumble among yourselves. 44 No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him. And I will raise him up on the last day. 45 It is written in the Prophets, ‘And they will all be taught by God.’ Everyone who has heard and learned from the Father comes to me— 46 not that anyone has seen the Father except he who is from God; he has seen the Father. 47 Truly, truly, I say to you, whoever believes has eternal life. 48 I am the bread of life. 49 Your fathers ate the manna in the wilderness, and they died. 50 This is the bread that comes down from heaven, so that one may eat of it and not die. 51 I am the living bread that came down from heaven. If anyone eats of this bread, he will live forever. And the bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh.” 52 The Jews then disputed among themselves, saying, “How can this man give us his flesh to eat?” 53 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. 54 Whoever feeds on my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day. 55 For my flesh is true food, and my blood is true drink. 56 Whoever feeds on my flesh and drinks my blood abides in me, and I in him. 57 As the living Father sent me, and I live because of the Father, so whoever feeds on me, he also will live because of me. 58 This is the bread that came down from heaven, not like the bread the fathers ate, and died. Whoever feeds on this bread will live forever.” 59 Jesus said these things in the synagogue, as he taught at Capernaum.

There is something in us that naturally wants to believe that if a person is simply given enough information, enough evidence, and enough opportunity, eventually they will make the right decision. If they can just see clearly enough, understand enough, or have enough questions answered, then surely they will believe.

And there is certainly nothing wrong with evidence.

There is nothing wrong with answering questions or giving someone reasons for what we believe. In fact, John has been doing that throughout this entire Gospel. He has been placing evidence in front of us again and again, showing us who Jesus is so that we might believe.

But Scripture also teaches us that the problem with the human heart goes much deeper than a lack of information. Our problem is sin. Sin has not only affected what we do. It has affected what we love, what we desire, what we seek, and even how we respond to God Himself.

And that creates an important question when we think about salvation.

If sinful people do not naturally desire God, how does anyone come to Christ?

What causes a sinner who is naturally opposed to God to suddenly see Christ as their hope?

What causes someone who once wanted nothing to do with Him to desire Him?

Why does one person hear the gospel and reject Christ while another hears that same gospel and comes to Him in faith?

Those questions take us directly into the sovereign grace of God. Because salvation does not begin with fallen people somehow finding their way to God. Salvation begins with God graciously acting upon fallen people who could never save themselves.

And yet, when God saves, He does not draw sinners to a set of works, deeds, or list of religious tasks they must complete. God draws us to a Person. He draws us to His Son.

That is where we left off last week. Jesus said in verse 40, “For this is the will of my Father, that everyone who looks on the Son and believes in him should have eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day.”

Look to the Son and believe.

But that leaves us with a question that Jesus is going to answer in the verses before us this morning:

How does a person separated from God, ever come to see the Son as their savior?

I. THE SINNER REJECTS THE SON John 6:41–43

Look at verse 41. “So the Jews grumbled about him, because he said, ‘I am the bread that came down from heaven.’”

That word grumbled should remind us of another group of people in the wilderness. 

Remember the setting John has been building throughout this chapter. It is Passover. Jesus has fed a multitude in the wilderness. The crowd has brought up Moses and the manna. And now John tells us just like their fathers before them, they too begin to grumble.

Exodus 16 tells us that after God delivered Israel out of Egypt, the people became hungry and “the whole congregation of the people of Israel grumbled against Moses and Aaron in the wilderness.”

And remember when the people of Israel began to grumble, after they had seen all the mighty works of God. God has just brought one of the world's superpowers to its knees through the plagues. He has just passed over them and struck the first born of all of Egypt. He has led them by a pillar of cloud by day and a pillar of fire by night. He led them through the Red Sea on dry land. And despite all of that the moment they found themselves the slightest bit uncomfortable in the wilderness, they grumbled.

Moses tells them, “Your grumbling is not against us but against the LORD.” Now generations later, here they are again. The setting has changed. The people have changed. But the grumbling continues. And this time the true Bread from heaven is standing directly in front of them.

But notice what has offended them. They are not grumbling because Jesus called Himself bread. Verse 41 tells us they grumbled “because he said, ‘I am the bread that came down from heaven.’”

Their problem is His claim about where He came from. Look at verse 42. “They said, ‘Is not this Jesus, the son of Joseph, whose father and mother we know? How does he now say, “I have come down from heaven”?’”

Do you hear their confidence in that question? Do you hear their pride? We know who You are. We know Your father. We know Your mother. We know where You came from. And because they believe they already have Jesus figured out, they reject and grumble about what Jesus revealed about Himself.

But that is the irony. They are appealing to what they know while demonstrating how little they actually know. They know Jesus grew up among them, with no earthly power or claim to the throne. There is no way this simple son of a carpenter came down from heaven. 

They know His earthly family, but they do not recognize His heavenly Father. They know where He lived, but they do not understand where He came from. 

They are so confident in their own understanding of Him, that when Jesus reveals the truth about Himself and it does not fit within their narrative, they grumble in unbelief. Why? Their pride won’t allow them to think that this man, who just yesterday they wanted to make King, is who He says He is. So, instead of evaluating the evidence against what they know, they question Jesus.

And their grumbling should really cause us to pause and examine our own hearts, our own pride. Because the sinful heart still wants a Jesus who fits comfortably inside what we have already decided He should be.

Understand, their grumbling is more than confusion. It’s unbelief. The natural heart does not merely struggle to understand Jesus. It does not want Jesus as He truly is. Because the Jesus revealed in Scripture confronts our sin. The true Christ calls sinners to repent. He does not come to simply affirm what we already love and give us what we already want. He calls us to turn from ourselves, turn from our sin, and follow Him.

And that is why the natural heart wants to put Jesus into a box of its own making. We are comfortable with a Jesus who forgives as long as He does not call us to repent. We are comfortable with a Jesus who loves, as long as we get to define what love means. We are comfortable with a Jesus who saves as long as He does not rule. But the moment Christ confronts the sin we love, the natural heart begins to resist and grumble against Him.

And that is what we are seeing in this crowd. Their grumbling is the sound of unbelief pushing back against Jesus as He reveals Himself to be.

Our natural hearts are comfortable with Jesus as long as He agrees with us. The world is comfortable with a Jesus who loves, as long as it gets to define what love means. It is comfortable with a Jesus who forgives, as long as He does not call anyone to repent. It is comfortable with a Jesus who welcomes sinners, as long as He does not confront the sin they want to keep.

And sadly, there are churches that have created that kind of Jesus. A Jesus who affirms what the natural heart already desires. A Jesus who never confronts sin, never speaks of judgment, and never calls sinners to repent and follow Him. But that is not the Jesus revealed in Scripture.

The Jesus revealed in Scripture loves sinners enough to confront us with our sin. He does not conform Himself to what our natural heart desires. He calls us to repent, deny ourselves, and follow Him. And that is where the natural heart begins to grumble. We are comfortable with Jesus until Jesus confronts something we do not want to surrender.

But what happens when Jesus says something that does not fit our nice neat little boxes? What happens when Jesus confronts something we do not want to surrender? Do we submit to His Word, or do we reshape Jesus into someone who will affirm what we already want? Church, Jesus does not need to conform Himself to our understanding. Our understanding must be conformed to Him, through what He has revealed to us in Scripture.

This is the very thing that this crowd is doing. They are standing before the Son of God, but they are judging His words by what they think they already know. Their understanding becomes the standard. Their feelings become the standard. Their pride becomes the standard. 

Jesus responds in verse 43, “Do not grumble among yourselves.” He doesn't back away from His claim. He doesn't soften it to make Himself easier for them to accept. And their response raises a much deeper question. Why can't they see what is standing directly in front of them?

Think about that. The Son of God is standing in front of them. They can see Him with their own eyes. They can hear His voice with their own ears. And yet they are grumbling against the very One they should be worshiping. 

Sometimes I think we can read passages like this and imagine that believing would have been so much easier if we had been there. Maybe you have thought that before.

If I could have walked with Jesus. If I could have heard Him teach. If I could have watched Him perform a miracle. If I could have seen the risen Christ with my own eyes.

Then surely my faith would be stronger. Surely I wouldn't struggle with doubt. Surely believing would be easier. But church, this crowd should caution us against thinking that way.

They had something we do not have. They saw Jesus with their physical eyes. And yet seeing Him with their eyes did not stop them from grumbling in unbelief.

This is where what Jesus later says to Thomas becomes so important. After the resurrection, Thomas refused to believe the testimony of the other disciples. He said that unless he saw the marks of the nails in Jesus' hands and placed his hand into His side, he would never believe.

And Jesus was gracious to Thomas. Jesus came to him. He showed Thomas His wounds. And when Thomas saw the risen Christ standing in front of him, he confessed, “My Lord and my God!”

But listen to what Jesus says to Thomas, “Have you believed because you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed.” Church, Jesus is talking about people like us. We will never get to see the risen Christ with our physical eyes in this life. We will never get to place our fingers into the wounds in His hands. We will never stand beside the Sea of Galilee and see Him multiply the bread. We will never be able to see Lazarus walking out of the tomb. We did not stand outside the empty tomb on resurrection morning.

And yet we believe. Don't miss how encouraging that should be. Your faith is not somehow second-class because you were not there. You are not at a disadvantage because you have never physically seen Jesus. Jesus Himself says, “Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed.”

So believer, don't look at this crowd and think, If only I had what they had. Look at this crowd and recognize the grace God has shown you. They saw, and they grumbled. You have not seen, and yet God has brought you to believe.

That should humble us. If you truly know Christ this morning, you cannot stand over this crowd and say, “I figured out what they couldn't.” You cannot say, “I was more reasonable than they were.” You cannot say, “I was smarter. I understood Scripture better. I made the better decision.”

No. If left to ourselves, we would be right there grumbling with them. The difference is not that we were naturally better at seeing Christ. The difference is grace. 

And maybe there is someone here this morning who feels the weakness of your faith. You believe, but there are days when you struggle. There are questions you cannot answer. There are things God has allowed into your life that you do not understand. There are truths in Scripture that stretch you beyond what you can completely comprehend.

Do not confuse having questions with the grumbling we see in this crowd. The issue is not that they do not understand everything Jesus says. None of us understands everything. The issue is what they do when the words of Jesus confront what they think they already know.

They put their understanding above His Word. Faith does the opposite. Faith says, “Lord, there are things I do not understand, but I know who You are. So when my understanding and Your Word come into conflict, Your Word has the final authority in my life.”

Church, there will be things about God that are too big for us to understand. There will be doctrines that stretch our minds. There will be providences and trails that we cannot explain. There will be prayers God answers differently than we wanted. There will be seasons when we cannot see what God is doing.

But our hope has never rested in our ability to understand everything God is doing. Our hope rests in Christ. And the words of Christ are not somehow less true because the crowd cannot understand how He came down from heaven. Their grumbling does not change who He is.

And neither do our questions. Christ is still the Son. Christ is still the Bread of Life. Christ is still sufficient. Christ is still worthy of our trust.

But that brings us back to the question underneath this entire passage. If physical sight is not enough, and if the natural heart can have the truth standing directly in front of it and still reject the Son, then how did any of us ever come to believe?

How does a sinner go from grumbling against Christ to trusting Christ? How does someone who cannot see the Son suddenly see Him as their only hope? Jesus answers that question in verse 44. “No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him.” And church, that means the answer to our unbelief is not found in us. It is found in the grace of God.

II. THE FATHER DRAWS SINNERS TO THE SON  John 6:44–51

Look again at verse 44. Jesus says, “No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him.” Church, don't move past those first four words too quickly. “No one can come.”

Jesus does not say that no one will come. He says no one can come. There is an inability here. And that helps us understand what we have just seen in this crowd. 

Their problem is deeper than a lack of evidence. It is deeper than misunderstanding where Jesus came from. Their grumbling is revealing something about the natural condition of the human heart.

Left to ourselves, we cannot come to Christ. Now that does not mean that sinners are somehow trying desperately to come to Jesus and God is standing in their way.

The problem is that the sinful heart does not want Christ as He truly is. We want God on our terms. We want His gifts without His rule. We want forgiveness and reconciliation without repentance. We want a Jesus who affirms what we already love rather than a Savior who calls us to leave everything and follow Him.

And that is exactly why Jesus does not stop with, “No one can come to me.” If He stopped there, there would be no hope for any of us. Instead, He says, “No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him.”

There is our inability, but there is also God's grace. The sinner cannot and will not come on his own, so the Father acts. The answer to the sinner's inability is not that God gives him a little more information and waits to see what he will do with it. The answer is that the Father draws him to the Son.

The human will is not some safe place untouched by the fall. As Jonathan Edwards argued, our will follows the desires of our heart, and apart from God's grace, our sinful hearts do not desire Christ. “Left to ourselves, we don't run toward God. We run after what our fallen hearts already love.

So Jesus is not describing unwilling sinners being dragged against their will to a Christ they still hate. The grace of God reaches deeper than that. The Father works in the sinner so that the Christ we once resisted becomes the Christ we now desire. And that alone should destroy every reason we could ever have for boasting in our salvation.

If you are in Christ this morning, you are not there because you were smarter than the person who rejected Him. You are not in Christ because you were born with a softer heart. You are not in Christ because you naturally desire Him. You are not in Christ because you put all the overwhelming evidence together yourself.

You are in Christ because God has been merciful to you. And church, that should not make us proud or give a reason to boast. God’s grace and mercy shown toward us should drive us to our knees in unceasing worship. Because the more we understand what God has done in saving us, the less we are left looking at ourselves and the more we are left marveling at His grace and mercy. 

So instead of looking at an unbelieving world and asking, “How can they not see it?” we look to Christ and ask, “Lord, why did You show such grace to me?” And the answer is not found in us. God is gracious.

But where does that grace lead us? Jesus does not merely say that the Father draws. He says, “No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him.”

The Father draws sinners to the Son. That is important because God's saving work does not terminate on an experience. It does not terminate on a feeling. It does not even terminate on a doctrine of salvation we will never fully understand.

The Father draws sinners to Christ. And church, the evidence that someone is being drawn by the Father is not simply that they had an emotional experience during a worship service. It is not that they walked the aisle after an altar call. It is not that they repeated certain words we like to call the sinner's prayer. 

A person can do every one of those things and still never come to Christ. There is nothing wrong with emotion when we are confronted with the weight of our sin and the beauty of the gospel. There is certainly nothing wrong with crying out to God in prayer. But we need to be careful that we do not give someone assurance based upon an emotional moment or something they did.

Just saying the sinner's prayer does not save. Walking an aisle does not save. Raising a hand when every head is bowed and every eye is closed does not save. Baptism does not save. If our confidence is, I know I am saved because I did this thing, then our confidence has been placed in something we did rather than in what Christ has done.

What does Jesus say? “No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him.” The evidence of the Father's drawing is that the sinner comes to Christ. Something changes in what that person desires. The Christ they once ignored, resisted, or had no desire for becomes the Christ they now know they desperately need. They begin to see their sin for what it is. They stop looking to themselves as if they can make themselves right with God. They desire the Son. They hope in the Son. They cry out to the Son. And that desire for Christ is not something the natural heart produces on its own. That is grace. The natural heart does not wake up one morning and decide to make itself spiritually alive. God acts. God draws. And when the Father draws a sinner, He draws them directly to Jesus. He draws them to His Son.

And Jesus continues in verse 45: “It is written in the Prophets, ‘And they will all be taught by God.’ Everyone who has heard and learned from the Father comes to me.”

Jesus is quoting from Isaiah 54 here. And notice where that promise comes in Isaiah. Isaiah 54 follows directly after Isaiah 53, where the Servant of the LORD suffers for the sins of His people. Then Isaiah 54 describes the blessings that flow from the Servant's saving work. And among those blessings is this promise: “All your children shall be taught by the LORD.”

Jesus takes that promise and says that it is being fulfilled in what the Father is doing through Him. “Everyone who has heard and learned from the Father comes to me.”

Notice again where the Father's work leads. To Jesus. The Father draws to the Son. The Father teaches, and those who truly hear and learn from the Father come to the Son. That means we cannot separate knowing God from knowing Christ.

And we cannot claim that God is leading us somewhere that takes us away from Christ. If what we claim to have learned from God leads us away from Christ, it was not taught to us by God. 

If what we believe God has shown us causes us to reject what Christ has revealed in His Word, that did not come from God. Jesus says, “Everyone who has heard and learned from the Father comes to me.” The Father's teaching does not lead us beyond the Son as though Christ were merely the starting point, and we now need some deeper revelation. 

It does not lead us to chase after apostles, prophets, visions, dreams, or some new word from God as though what He has given us in His Son and His Word were insufficient. God does not reveal His Son and then tell us that what we really need is something more. The Father draws sinners to the Son.

And that is especially important when we talk about salvation. The Father does not draw sinners to Christ and then leave them to complete what Christ began. He does not draw us to Christ plus our merit, Christ plus our works, Christ plus a sacrament, Christ plus a priest, Christ plus a church, or Christ plus anything else we can contribute. 

We are drawn to the Son because the Son is sufficient to save. Our baptism cannot add to His righteousness. Our obedience cannot add to His righteousness. No sacrament can add to His righteousness. No church can add to His righteousness. 

Nothing we do can improve upon the finished work of Jesus Christ. The sinner comes empty-handed to the Son and rests completely in what Christ has accomplished on his behalf.

That does not mean obedience does not matter. It does not mean baptism does not matter. It does not mean the church does not matter. Christ commands His people to obey Him, to be baptized, and to gather with His church. But those things are the fruit of salvation, not the foundation of it. 

We do not obey so that Christ will finally save us. We obey because Christ has saved us. We are not baptized in order to add something missing from the cross. We are baptized because we belong to the One who died and rose for us. The moment we add anything of ours to Christ as the basis of our acceptance before God, we have taken our faith away from the sufficiency of Jesus.

Because Jesus says that those who hear and learn from the Father come to Him. And we have already seen this earlier in John's Gospel.

Back in chapter 5 Jesus told the religious leaders, “You search the Scriptures because you think that in them you have eternal life; and it is they that bear witness about me, yet you refuse to come to me that you may have life.”

Think about that. They knew the Scriptures. They studied the Scriptures. They could argue about the Scriptures. But they missed the One to whom the Scriptures were pointing. Church, true knowledge of God does not lead us away from Jesus.

It only leads us to Christ. The more rightly we understand Scripture, the more clearly we should see Christ.

The more we understand the grace of God, the more precious Christ should become. The more we understand our sin, the more desperately we hope in Christ alone.

The more we understand the holiness of God, the more amazed we should be that sinners like us can come to Him through Christ. And then Jesus makes an important clarification in verse 46: “not that anyone has seen the Father except he who is from God; he has seen the Father.”

Jesus is not saying that the Father teaches sinners by giving them some private vision of God. The Son uniquely knows the Father. The Son has seen the Father. And if we would know the Father, we must come through the Son.

So when someone claims, “God told me,” that claim can never stand above, add to, or contradict what God has already revealed in His Word. And if that supposed private revelation simply agrees with Scripture, then we do not need it, because God has already publicly given us His revelation in His Son and His Word. 

Now look at verse 47. “Truly, truly, I say to you, whoever believes has eternal life.” Don't miss how beautifully these truths fit together. Verse 44 says no one can come unless the Father draws. Verse 45 says everyone who has heard and learned from the Father comes to Christ. And verse 47 says, “whoever believes has eternal life.”

Jesus does not see any contradiction between the tension of the sovereign grace of God and the call for sinners to believe. The Father draws. The sinner comes. The sinner believes. And the one who believes has eternal life.

So when we preach the sovereignty of God in salvation, we never use it as an excuse not to call sinners to Christ. We don't know whom the Father is drawing.

We don't know whom God intends to save. That is not ours to know. Our responsibility is to proclaim Christ and call every sinner to repent and believe. So if you are here this morning and you do not know Christ, do not sit there wondering whether you are one of the elect.

Look to Christ. Come to Christ. Believe in Christ. Jesus does not tell sinners to figure out the hidden counsel of God before they come to Him. He says, “whoever believes has eternal life.”

And remember what He told us just a few verses earlier: “whoever comes to me I will never cast out.” So come. And believer, there is encouragement here for us as well. Maybe there is someone you have been praying for for years. 

A son. A daughter. A husband or wife. A parent. A friend. And sometimes you wonder whether that person will ever come to Christ. Maybe you have explained the gospel again and again. Maybe you have answered all their questions. Maybe you have watched them reject the truth. And you have begun to think, What else can I possibly say?

Remember who draws sinners to the Son. Your job is not to change a heart. You can't. But God can. So keep praying. Keep proclaiming Christ. Keep loving them. Keep putting the gospel before them. And trust the Father who is able to draw sinners to His Son.

Then Jesus brings us back to the bread in verse 48. “I am the bread of life.” Verse 49: “Your fathers ate the manna in the wilderness, and they died.” There is the wilderness again. Their fathers received miraculous bread from heaven, but that bread could only sustain physical life for a time.

They ate. And eventually they died. But Jesus says in verse 50, “This is the bread that comes down from heaven, so that one may eat of it and not die.” The manna was a gift from God. But the manna was pointing beyond itself. It could satisfy hunger for a day. Jesus gives eternal life. It could sustain the body. Jesus gives life to the dead.

And then in verse 51 Jesus says, “I am the living bread that came down from heaven. If anyone eats of this bread, he will live forever.” But then Jesus adds something He has not yet said. “And the bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh.”

Now Jesus begins turning our eyes toward the cross. The Bread of Life is going to give Himself. The eternal life Jesus promises will not come cheaply. It will come through His own flesh given for sinners.

The Father draws sinners to the Son. But the Son to whom He draws them is the Son who will give His life as a ransom. And that raises the question the crowd asks in verse 52. What does Jesus mean when He says that we must eat His flesh?

That takes us into our final point. 

III. THE SINNER RECEIVES THE SON  John 6:52–59

Look at how the Jews respond in verse 52. “The Jews then disputed among themselves, saying, ‘How can this man give us his flesh to eat?’” Once again, they hear Jesus speak about a spiritual reality, and their minds immediately go to the physical.

And John has shown us this before. In John 3, Jesus tells Nicodemus that he must be born again, and Nicodemus immediately begins thinking about physical birth. “How can a man be born when he is old?”

In John 4, Jesus tells the woman at the well that He can give her living water, and she immediately begins thinking about physical water. She wants to know where Jesus is going to get this water when He doesn't even have a bucket.

And now in John 6, Jesus says that the bread He will give for the life of the world is His flesh, and they immediately ask, “How can this man give us his flesh to eat?” They are still thinking physically.

But rather than backing away from what He has said, Jesus makes the language even stronger. Verse 53: “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.”

Now those are strong words. Those are difficult words for us to read and understand. And if we rip those words out of their context, we can make Jesus sound like He is teaching something very different from everything He has already said.

And church, this is why we let Scripture interpret Scripture. When we isolate difficult words like “eat my flesh” and “drink my blood” from everything Jesus has already said about coming and believing, we can create false doctrines instead of allowing the clear teaching of Scripture to explain difficult text. 

But church, we do not have to guess what Jesus means here. Jesus has already given us the language necessary to understand Him. Go back to verse 35. “I am the bread of life; whoever comes to me shall not hunger, and whoever believes in me shall never thirst.” Now verse 40: “everyone who looks on the Son and believes in him should have eternal life.” Then verse 47: “Truly, truly, I say to you, whoever believes has eternal life.” And now compare that with verse 54: “Whoever feeds on my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life.” So we have Jesus saying just a few verses earlier Come and Believe and now eat and drink.

Do you see what Jesus is doing? He is not suddenly introducing a new means of receiving eternal life. He has already told us how the sinner receives Him. The sinner is drawn by the Father. The sinner comes. The sinner believes.

And now Jesus describes that same receiving of the Son with the imagery of eating and drinking. To eat His flesh and drink His blood is to receive Christ by faith, to trust and hope completely in Him and in the life He gives through His sacrificial death.

Augustine put it simply like this, “Believe, and you have eaten.” And think about the picture Jesus is giving us. You can know everything there is to know about a piece of bread and still starve to death.

You can know what ingredients went into it. You can know who made it. You can smell it. You can hold it. You can tell someone else how good it is. You can even spend your entire life studying bread. But if you never eat it, knowing about the bread will not satisfy your hunger.

And church, there is a world of difference between knowing things about Jesus and receiving Jesus by faith. You can know the gospel. You can explain the gospel. You can know that Jesus is God the Son. You can know that He lived a sinless life. You can know that He died on the cross and rose from the grave. You can know your Bible. You can sit in church every Sunday. You can defend sound doctrine. And still never rest your soul upon Christ.

Saving faith is more than knowing true things about Jesus. Saving faith rests all of our hope upon Christ and His finished work. It is the empty hand that receives the Son and the eternal life found only in Him. 

And church, this is where we need to examine our own hearts. It is possible to know the gospel, affirm the right doctrine, and have years of church involvement while placing our confidence somewhere other than Christ. Jesus is not calling us merely to know the right things about the Bread of Life. He is calling us to feed upon Him by faith.

So ask yourself, where is my hope actually resting? When you think about standing before a holy God, what gives you confidence that you will be received? Is it a prayer you prayed years ago? Is it your baptism? Is it your church membership? Is it that you have lived a fairly moral life? Or is your answer simply, Jesus Christ gave Himself for me, and He is my only hope.

And that brings us back to this sacramental interpretation of the passage. Roman Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy have historically connected this language to the Eucharist and to receiving the body and blood of Christ sacramentally. But if we make participation in the Eucharist what Jesus means by eating His flesh and drinking His blood here, then we have a serious problem with the context.

Because Jesus has already repeatedly told us how eternal life is received. “Whoever believes has eternal life.” If verse 54 means that eternal life requires physically or sacramentally receiving Christ's body and blood, then within the same conversation Jesus has changed the means by which eternal life is received.

But He hasn't. Verse 35 says come and believe. Verse 40 says believe. Verse 47 says believe. And then Jesus uses the imagery of eating and drinking to describe the sinner personally receiving the One in whom he believes.

That does not diminish the Lord's Supper. Church, the Lord's Supper is precious. Christ commanded His church to observe it. When we eat the bread and drink the cup, we remember His body given for us and His blood shed for us. We proclaim the Lord's death until He comes.

But the bread does not save us. The cup does not save us. Taking the Lord's Supper cannot give eternal life to someone who does not believe in Christ. We don't come to the Table in order to add something to the finished work of Jesus.

We come to the Table because we have already received Christ by faith, and the bread and the cup point us again to the Christ in whom our salvation rests.

And notice where Jesus Himself points us in verse 51: “the bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh.” I will give. Jesus is pointing us toward the cross.

The Bread of Life is going to give Himself. The life Jesus promises comes through His sacrificial death. Remember how John introduced Jesus at the beginning of this Gospel: “Behold, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world!”

The Bread from heaven will give His flesh. The Lamb of God will be slain. The Son will lay down His life. Jesus is not telling this crowd that they need to physically consume Him. He is telling them that there is no life apart from receiving by faith the Son who will give Himself for sinners.

And that means you cannot have Jesus merely as a teacher. You cannot have Jesus merely as a moral example. You cannot have Jesus merely as someone who makes your life better. And you cannot have a Jesus without the cross.

You need the crucified Christ. You need His blood shed for the forgiveness of sins. You need a righteousness you cannot produce for yourself. You need Christ, and Christ is received by faith. 

Now look at verse 55: “For my flesh is true food, and my blood is true drink.” Jesus is not offering Himself as one source of spiritual nourishment among many. He alone gives life. Our accomplishments cannot give life. Our morality cannot give life. Religion cannot give life. Our works cannot give life. Only Christ can.  

None of those things can give life to a dead sinner. Only Christ can. Then Jesus says in verse 56, “Whoever feeds on my flesh and drinks my blood abides in me, and I in him.”

Now Jesus takes us even deeper. Salvation is not merely receiving something from Jesus. The believer receives Jesus. There is union with Christ here. “Abides in me, and I in him.” 

Jesus is describing something deeper than simply receiving benefits from Him. The believer is united to Christ. His life becomes our life, and everything necessary for our salvation is found in Him. We are not merely given something by Christ and then sent away from Him. Our life remains bound up with the One who saved us. 

Believer, think about what that means. Salvation is not merely God wiping away your record of sin and then sending you on your way. You belong to Christ. Your life is bound up with Christ. Your hope is in Christ. Your righteousness is in Christ. Your eternal life is in Christ. You will never graduate beyond your need for Jesus.

The same Christ you needed when you first believed is the Christ you need every single day of your life. Jesus continues in verse 57: “As the living Father sent me, and I live because of the Father, so whoever feeds on me, he also will live because of me.”

We live because of Him. Not because we were good enough. Not because we performed the right religious acts. Not because we prayed the right prayer. Not because we were baptized. Not because we took communion. Not because we managed to hold ourselves together. We live because of Christ.

And church, that changes the way we understand the life of a believer. Jesus is not just our magic ticket to eternal life. He is our life. We do not receive Christ by faith and then just simply move on to the next thing. We live every day dependent upon the same Christ we first received by faith.

That means the goal of our lives is not independence from Christ, but a deeper dependence upon Him. As we grow in maturity, we should not find ourselves needing Jesus less. We should become increasingly aware of just how completely dependent upon Him we really are.

That changes the way we think about obedience. We are not trying to earn something from Christ. We belong to Christ, and we desire to live as those who belong to Him. It changes the way we fight sin. Sin is no longer just making a mistake; we know now that it is living contrary to the One with whom our life is now bound up. 

It changes the way we think about the church. We are not simply a collection of religious people who happen to gather in the same building. We are a people whose life and identity is found and united in the same Christ. And it changes the way we think about eternal life. Eternal life is not merely something Jesus hands us. Eternal life is inseparable from the Son Himself. We live because we are found in Him.

Then Jesus closes the comparison in verse 58: “This is the bread that came down from heaven, not like the bread the fathers ate, and died. Whoever feeds on this bread will live forever.”

There is the wilderness one final time. Their fathers ate the manna. And they died. The manna was a gracious gift from God, but it could only sustain physical life for a time.

Church, the manna sustained life for a time, but Jesus gives a life that even death cannot take away. The Bread that came down from heaven will not merely sustain His people through this life. He will raise them up on the last day.

So after everything Jesus has said, the question becomes deeply personal. Do you have the Son? Are you resting your soul upon Christ? Because whoever feeds upon this Bread will live forever.

Church, there are truths in this passage that should bring us to our knees. Not because we understand every mystery of salvation, but because when we look at ourselves honestly, we know that we have nothing to boast about before God.

And yet here we are. We know the Son. We love the Son. We desire the Son. And maybe this morning you feel the weight of how undeserving you are of that grace. Good. Don't run from that feeling, but don't stay there either. Let it turn your eyes toward the One who has been so gracious to you. Believer, marvel again that Christ is yours. 

And if you hear all of this and realize that you do not know Him, don't leave here merely thinking you need to become a better person. You need Jesus. And He is worthy of your whole life.

Draw near to the Son.