Evidently, for the blood to be apart from the flesh, so as to speak of eating the one and drinking the other, the blood must have been shed in death. So that we have here, in the fullest way, the death of Christ, the shedding of His blood, set forth; and, at the same time, the most solemn testimony of its absolute necessity for each individual, and of the equally absolute necessity for its individual reception. “Except ye eat the flesh of the Son of Man, and drink His blood, ye have no life in you. Whoso eateth My flesh, and drinketh My blood, hath eternal life; and I will raise him up at the last day.” Who besides could have provided for our perishing souls? What other life would have had in it the atoning value, the saving efficacy, at once to meet the highest claim of God’s moral glory, the glory of all His perfections, and reach down to the lowest depths of our need as guilty, ruined, hopelessly undone sinners? And yet it is as Son of Man that He here speaks of Himself. How could He have suffered death, had He not become the Son of Man? How this links together the mysteries of Bethlehem and Calvary; the incarnation and the cross. The one was in order to the other. He came to die. “Once in the end of the world hath He appeared to put away sin by the sacrifice of Himself.” It was “for the suffering of death” that He was “made a little lower than the angels.” And it is by His death we live. Though He had life in Himself, and though, anticipatively of His atoning work, He gave life at any time to any poor sinner, it was only on the ground of that work that life could flow from His person to any who heard His voice and believed His words while here; and the actual shedding of His blood as that of the great and all-atoning victim for our sins was the only way in which the floodgates of mercy could be thrown open to guilty, justly-condemned sinners. How widely they are flung open now! How completely has Christ’s precious sacrifice removed all the obstacles to our salvation presented by the character of God, His holy nature, the majesty of His throne, and the faithfulness of His word. “The righteous Lord loveth righteousness;” and while this perfection might surely have been displayed in the endless punishment of the whole guilty race, how then would the love of God have been exercised or shown? Where is that love so manifested as at the cross? And where besides is God seen as so inexorably just? The flames of hell are not so glorious a vindication of His righteous claims, as the agonies of His spotless, immaculate Son. God’s holy hatred of sin could not go further than the averting His countenance from the Son of His love, while drinking the cup for us. Who will not tremble before this holy Lord God, who, sooner than tarnish His throne, or break the word which had gone out of His mouth, that sin should have death for its righteous punishment, gave up to death—the death of the cross—the One who had been in His bosom from all eternity? And then to think of that One voluntarily yielding up His life! In obedience to His Father, and in love to us, He drinks the cup of wrath, that in Him, the slain One, we perishing sinners may find all we need. Life flows to us through His death; and the soul that finds its hunger appeased and its thirst quenched by what Scripture tells of Christ on the cross, has not only life in Him, eternal life, issuing in the resurrection of life at the last day, but a present fullness of nutriment and refreshing, of which the Savior witnesses in these words, “For My flesh is meat indeed, and My blood is drink indeed.” Continuing to feed on Him as the slain as well as the incarnate Christ, we abide in Him, and He in us. “He that eateth My flesh, and drinketh My blood, dwelleth in Me, and I in Him.” This language assumes, though it does not mention, the fact that He who used it would rise again. And with Christ as risen, they who feed on Him as slain, are so identified, that He here, for the first time in Scripture, speaks of our dwelling in Him, and He in us. Dwelling in Him, we participate in all that is His; and by His dwelling in us, we become vessels for the manifestation of what He is. Nor is this the whole. Christ’s own life as the Son of Man was a life of entire dependence on the Father; and ours is one of dependence on Christ Himself. But the one is presented as the model for the other. “As the living Father hath sent Me, and I live by the Father, so he that eateth Me, even he shall live by Me.” Blessed Jesus! teach us thus to live in hourly dependence on Thyself! It is at this point that the Savior sums up the whole subject of which He had been treating, “This is that bread which came down from heaven; not as your fathers did eat manna, and are dead; he that eateth of this bread shall live forever.”
The native sphere and home of this undying life is not earth, but heaven. To all intents it is an exotic here. Perfectly was it manifested in the three-and-thirty years’ sojourn on earth of the Son of Man; and, as we have seen, this display of divine life in man in the person of Christ is one great leading subject of this gospel. But the One in whom this display took place was a stranger here. The book witnesses this fact throughout. We have not far to read before we find the words— “And the light shineth in darkness; and the darkness comprehended it not.” And then more plainly still— “He was in the world, and the world was made by Him, and the world knew Him not.” Even His own people, the Israel of Jehovah’s choice, had, as we have also so largely seen in this very chapter, no heart for Jesus: “He came unto His own, and His own received Him not.” Thus rejected by those among whom He came, He makes no secret of whence He had come. To Nicodemus He says— “If I have told you earthly things, and ye believe not, how shall ye believe, if I tell you of heavenly things?” Who so competent to tell as He to whom these things were familiar, and the mystery of whose person still made heaven His home, though as man He had come to sojourn below? “And no man hath ascended up to heaven, but He that came down from heaven, even the Son of Man which is in heaven.” Such were His own words to the Jewish rabbi; while in the same chapter the Holy Ghost, by the evangelist’s pen, delightedly bears witness to Him as the heavenly Stranger here: “He that cometh from above is above all: he that is of the earth is earthly, and speaketh of the earth: He that cometh from heaven is above all. And what He hath seen and heard, that He testifieth.” Alas, that He has to add: “And no man receiveth His testimony!” Our own chapter bears abundant witness to His having come down from heaven. This was what so provoked the opposition of the Jews—an opposition which became so open and so fully declared as to force from the Savior’s lips the most solemn statements as to the contrast between their origin and the sphere whence He had come: “And He said unto them, Ye are from beneath; I am from above: ye are of this world; I am not of this world.” (Chapter 8) No; He was from heaven. A true, real man; veritably partaker with the children, blessed be God! of flesh and blood-partaker, as He has been telling us, of a life which He would give in the shedding of His blood, that there might be the link between Him and all who receive Him of an undying life. But all this could not constitute Him a native of this world, a denizen of the earth; He was a stranger here. And when many of His disciples began to say inwardly to themselves, “This is a hard saying, who can hear it?” He, knowing their thoughts, replied, “Doth this offend you? What, and if ye shall see the Son of Man ascend up where He was before?” Thus does He give, somewhat obscurely indeed, as suggesting much more than was spoken, the first intimation of the third great fact of which our chapter is the witness. Christ incarnate, and thus come down from heaven; Christ slain, His blood shed for sinful men, becoming the suited food of a life, the first movement of which in us is in the sense of our need as sinners which can only thus be appeased; and now Christ ascended, involving of necessity His resurrection, but including much more than this. The eternal life which was with the Father before all worlds—the eternal, untreated, all-creating Word, which “in the beginning” was “with God” and “was God,” had come down and become, in that act of deep humiliation, “the Son of Man.” He was now returning to that sphere of unmingled blessedness, of highest glory, whence He had come forth to Bethlehem’s manger and Calvary’s cross; but He was returning thither as Son of Man. Thenceforth He should be seated as man on the throne of His Father. Heaven, not earth, becomes thus from the moment of His session there the home of all who by eating His flesh and drinking His blood become partakers of His life. Earth becomes a wilderness, a place of exile, to all such, just as it was to Him while here. He is our life; and this associates us necessarily with heaven and all that is native to that abode of purity and joy. As another once remarked: “If sin has opened to man the place of woe never designed for him, but for the devil and his angels, grace has opened to him that heaven which is peculiarly and distinctively the dwelling-place of God.” “The heaven, even the heavens, are the Lord’s; but the earth hath He given to the children of men.” So the psalmist wrote; and such indeed was the only inheritance which could have descended to us, even from unfallen Adam. The earth was given to him (Gen. 1); but when his sin had opened hell to the finally impenitent and unbelieving, grace opened heaven to all who become willing to enter there in the value of Christ’s blessed person and atoning work. What He but obscurely hints to His disciples in our chapter has since become accomplished fact, and one of the great foundation-facts of Christianity. Christ has gone up on high. The Son of Man has ascended up where He was before. His request to His Father (John 17) has been fulfilled: “And now, O Father, glorify Thou Me with Thine own self with the glory which I had with thee before the world was.” Nor would He be there alone: “Father, I will (or desire) that they also, whom Thou hast given Me, be with Me where I am; that they may behold My glory, which Thou hast given Me; for Thou lovedst Me before the foundation of the world.” Heaven is now the revealed home and sphere of that eternal life which, if absolutely and perfectly displayed on earth in the One of whom we read, “In Him was life,” is also derivatively enjoyed by all who believe. “What, and if ye shall see the Son of Man ascend up where He was before?”
It was for other lips and another pen than the beloved disciple’s to unfold this subject in detail. The place in heaven, in and with Christ, bestowed on believers by the grace which reigns through righteousness by our Lord Jesus Christ, is the Apostle Paul’s distinctive theme. The manifestation of divine life on earth, perfectly in Christ, and really though derivatively in us, is the theme of John’s gospel and epistle. It is, of all themes, the most vital, essential, fundamental. But deeply interesting it is to find such links as our Lord’s words last quoted, and those from John 17:2424Father, I will that they also, whom thou hast given me, be with me where I am; that they may behold my glory, which thou hast given me: for thou lovedst me before the foundation of the world. (John 17:24), evincing that whether Paul, or Peter, or John, be the instrument of communication, it is one vast circle of truth which is revealed, of which the center and fullness are found in the person and sacrifice and exaltation of the Son of God and Son of Man—Christ incarnate, Christ slain, Christ ascended, a full Christ for empty sinners.
Many who had for a season followed Christ drew back from the time when this discourse was delivered. This did not surprise Him; but it afforded Him the occasion of challenging the hearts of those who still surrounded Him. To them Jesus said, “Will ye also go away?” No one wonders that Peter was spokesman for them all; and he might not yet have measured himself, as afterward, through grace, he did, when he went out and wept bitterly. Nevertheless there is a warmth, an energy, a decision, about his words, that we may well covet, and as to which we may challenge our hearts, dear Christian reader, whether we could reply thus. Go away! “Lord, to whom shall we go? Thou hast the words of eternal life.” May our hearts repel thus, and disown every thought of any other than this blessed Christ of God. “To whom shall we go?” To whom indeed? Oh to abide in Him! May we have grace to cleave to Him with purpose of heart, and may He be glorified in each of us for His Name’s sake.
FATHER! we, Thy children, bless Thee,
For Thy love on us bestowed;
As our Father we address Thee,
Called to be the sons of God.
Wondrous was Thy love in giving
Jesus for our sins to die!
Wondrous was His grace in leaving,
For our sakes, the heavens on high!
Now the sprinkled blood has freed us,
On we go toward our rest,
Through the desert Thou dost lead us,
With Thy constant favor blest:
By Thy truth and Spirit guiding,
Earnest He of what’s to come,
And with daily food providing,
Thou dost lead Thy children home.
Though our pilgrimage be dreary,
This is not our resting-place;
Shall we of the way be weary,
When we see our Master’s face?
No; e’en now anticipating,
In this hope our souls rejoice,
And His promised advent waiting,
Soon shall hear His welcome voice.
(Continued from page 160)