John 6:55 - Exposition

A new justification is given for this great statement: For my flesh is true £ food, and my blood is true £ drink . (The two active verbals are adopted, "eating," "drinking;" but βρῶσις and πόσις are used very frequently by the Attic writers for "food" and "drink , " as well as for the processes of eating and drinking.) That is, Christ's flesh and blood stand in the same relation to the true life of man that food and drink do to the physical life of earth; and so, unless we duly and fully assimilate Divine humanity, we have no life in us. If we cannot assimilate food, we die. It must become part of our life blood and permeate our system; so "the coming and believing" must mean such an acceptance of the Christ that the love of God penetrates our whole being, "even the joints and marrow of soul and spirit;" unless it does so, we have no life in us. Lange, even here, presses the idea of the flesh and blood of Christ as being true food, seeing that by believing historic contemplation we participate in the "historic form of his manifestation," and by spiritual contemplation and fervent faith we drink in the blood which is the life. The difference between ἀληθής and ἀληθῶς is nearly that between ἀληθής and ἀληθίνος . The former is the antithesis of the merely apparent food; the latter would have meant genuine food answering to the ideal of food. "The true food" is the food for the inner man—food in all reality . The Lord was speaking to them of a unique relation which he sustained to the human race, and which cannot be explained away into some mere euphemism for the blessedness and stimulating character of the gospel message. This is made still more evident by his next words—