(See newer post Feb 15, 2024 “Eat My Flesh” as we dive in a bit deeper into this passage.)

Therefore everyone who hears from the Father and has learned, comes to me… 47 Most certainly, I tell you, he who believes in me has eternal life. 48 I am the bread of life (Jn 6:45b, 47-48, WEB) [1].

I am the living bread which came down out of heaven. If anyone eats of this bread, he will live forever. Yes, the bread which I will give for the life of the world is my flesh. 52 The Jews therefore contended with one another, saying, “How can this man give us his flesh to eat?” 53 Jesus therefore said to them, “Most certainly I tell you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you don’t have life in yourselves. 54 He who eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up at the last day. 55 For my flesh is food indeed, and my blood is drink indeed. 56 He who eats my flesh and drinks my blood lives in me, and I in him. 57 As the living Father sent me, and I live because of the Father, so he who feeds on me will also live because of me. 58 This is the bread which came down out of heaven—not as our fathers ate the manna and died. He who eats this bread will live forever 63 … The words that I speak to you are spirit, and are life. (Jn 6:51-58, 63c, WEB) [1].

“The Word became flesh and lived among us.” (Jn 1:14a, WEB) [1].

My current perspective on these passages is that Jesus, being God prior to becoming born as a human, is the Word of God that has been, we’ll say, “fleshified” in the sense that something intangible became tangible. But it isn’t just that Jesus himself as God became flesh - it is also that the actions, behaviors, ideas, and essence of God entered the observable realm directly in Jesus. That means that when Jesus speaks, we have the very words of the Almighty God becoming tangibly present in ways we could not previously discern. I take this to mean that while Jesus himself is the Word made Flesh, it is also that Jesus’s words are the Word made Flesh as well in the sense that we can “see” into the “mind” of the Almighty through Jesus actions and words. When we see Jesus indicating the only way to the Father is by feeding on the flesh of Jesus, to me this is indicative of us consuming the words of God into our selves.

Jesus is the Word made Flesh, and Jesus expresses the message of salvation - creating the Bread of Life. The meaning within those words contains eternal life which I believe Jesus to be equating with His Blood. His flesh (God’s thoughts put into tangible form) contain and convey His Blood (the message of eternal life) that we feed upon when we dwell on his message. And that is why “he who believes in me has eternal life.” When we believe in Jesus and what He says, we receive the life-giving, saving message of the Almighty God. Jesus conveys God’s spiritual truths to us, which are words of life. We could not know these words without them “becoming flesh,” or tangible, for us.

It stands to reason then, that when we feed on the words and message of Christ through faith, we embrace the sustaining, life-giving message of God’s salvation - which is the Good News we have in Christ.

[1] The World English Bible (WEB) and the World English Bible British Edition (WEBBE) are modern translations without copyright constraint. https://ebible.org/web/webfaq.htm