THOUGHT FOR THE DAY

12^th Sunday after Pentecost

Gospel: John 6:56-69

Sunday, August 23, 2009

In verse 56, Jesus says, “He who eats my flesh and eats my blood abides in me, and I in him.” Further on he says, “It is the spirit that gives life, the flesh is of no avail; the words I have spoken to you are spirit and life” (6:63).

At first glance one might think that Jesus is contradicting himself. The flesh avails in eating his flesh and then the flesh doesn’t avail. But Jesus is not speaking of the same flesh. In the first statement he is referring to himself, his flesh and blood. In the second comment he is referring to our flesh. This brings to mind his comment to Nicodemus back in the third chapter of John’s Gospel. In speaking of the new life which is ours in Christ he says one must be born again of water and the spirit (a reference to water baptism where one is united with Christ in his death so we die, and where we are given Christ to be the new life in us.) In that dialogue Jesus says “that which is born of the flesh is flesh and that which is born of the spirit is spirit” (3:6).

Christ abides in us. Communion is a sign and seal of his life in us. Our flesh is of no avail. That is, our effort, our struggle, to do the good and avoid evil accomplishes nothing but to make matters worse. As our brother Paul wrote, “the good that I would I do not. The evil that I would not that I do” (Romans 7). Further he declares that the law came to increase sin (Romans 5). The end result of the Law is to put us to death, so that CHRIST IS THE LIFE IN US. “…the words I have spoken to you are SPIRIT AND LIFE” (6:63).

That we can do nothing toward God is amplified by Christ in his comment that even abiding in Christ is NOT OUR DOING. In verse 65, he says, “…I told you that NO ONE can COME to me unless it is granted him by the Father.”

The question can be asked, if we cannot do the good then how is the Christian life to come about? Jesus addresses that himself in his “abiding” comment addressed to his disciples in the upper room on the eve of his death on the cross. “I am the vine, you are the branches; he who abides in me and I in him, he it is that BEARS MUCH FRUIT for apart from me YOU CAN DO NOTHING” (15:5)! Our brother Paul put it this way, “God has done what the LAW weakened by the FLESH could not do; sending his Son in the likeness of Sin and for sin condemned sin the flesh IN ORDER that the just requirements of the LAW might be fulfilled in us who walk NOT according to the FLESH but according to the SPIRIT” (Romans 8:4)!

The Christian life is NOT about you and me; it is about CHRIST alone! As Brother Martin Luther wrote, one thing is enjoined upon the Christian: that each day he remind himself of his baptism, that therein he died with Christ and now Christ is the life in him (from “The Babylonian Captivity of the Church). EVERYTHING STEMS from our baptism. In Him is life abundant and fruit abundant.

©Dick Smith