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NASB | John 6:53 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 yourselves. |
AMPLIFIED 2015 | John 6:53 And Jesus said to them, "I assure you and most solemnly say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink His blood [unless you believe in Me as Savior and believe in the saving power of My blood which will be shed for you], you do not have life in yourselves. |
Bible Question:
John 6:53-54 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 yourselves. Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up at the last day. If the only way to eat Jesus' body and drink his blood is on the Passover night(at it's appointed time once a year Exodus 12:14) then should we not take part in the celebration of the Passover? And if Jesus tells us he has not come to abolish the law (Old testament) but to fulfill them (Matt 5:17), then should we not do as Jesus did and celebrate the Passover? For it is written: This is a day you are to commemorate for the generations to come you shall celebrate it as a festival to the Lord- a lasting ordinance (Exodus 12:14) |
Bible Answer: In context in John 6.35 Jesus described what He meant by eating and drinking. 'He who comes to Me will never hunger, and he who believes on me will never thirst. So we eat of Jesus' body and drink of His blood by coming to Him as the One Whose body was broken for us and by believing on Him as the One Whose blood was shed for us. We do celebrate the Passover but the Passover lamb is now Christ our Passover who was sacrificed for us (1 Corinthians 5.7), the Lamb of God Who takes away the sins of the world (John 1.29). Jesus was partly using Old Testament pictures which depicted killing people in term of eating bread (or flesh) and drinking blood. In order to fully appreciate this we need an awareness of vivid Jewish imagery. In the Old Testament the Psalmist spoke of those who ‘eat up my people like they eat bread’ (Psalm 14.4; 53.4), and Micah describes the unjust rulers of Israel as ‘those who hate the good and love the evil --- who eat the flesh of my people’ (Micah 3.3). Thus ‘eating flesh’ or ‘eating people’ signified killing them or doing them great harm. In Zechariah 9.15 the LXX speaks of the fact that the victorious people of God ‘will drink their blood like wine’ signifying a triumphant victory and the slaughter of their enemies, and David used a similar picture when three of his followers had risked their lives to fetch him water. He poured it out on the ground as an offering to God and said, ‘shall I drink the blood of the men who went at the risk of their lives?’. Isaiah brought both metaphors together when he said of the enemies of Israel that God would ‘make your oppressors eat their own flesh, and they shall be drunk with their own blood as with wine’ (Isaiah 49.26), signifying that they would destroy themselves. Thus in Hebrew thought drinking a person’s blood meant killing someone or benefiting by their death. This can be paralleled elsewhere in the New Testament for in Matthew’s Gospel the people said of their 'fathers' that they were 'partakers in the blood of the prophets’ (Matthew 23.30), because they contributed to their deaths. Thus when Jesus spoke of ‘eating my flesh and drinking my blood’ He was using easily recognised metaphors which signified the fact that He must be violently killed and that the benefit of His death must be received by believing on Him.. |
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kama17 | ||
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acollins | ||
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step4fred | ||
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garcias7 | ||
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jonp | ||
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Searcher56 | ||
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jonp | ||
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tachminite | ||
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Jennyh61 |