Feeding on
John 6:41-59
41 At this the Jews there began to grumble about him because he said, “I am the bread that came down from heaven.” 42 They said, “Is this not Jesus, the son of Joseph, whose father and mother we know? How can he now say, ‘I came down from heaven’?”43 “Stop grumbling among yourselves,” Jesus answered. 44 “No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws them, and I will raise them up at the last day. 45 It is written in the Prophets: ‘They will all be taught by God.’ Everyone who has heard the Father and learned from him comes to me. 46 No one has seen the Father except the one who is from God; only he has seen the Father. 47 Very truly I tell you, the one who believes has eternal( or everlasting) life. 48 I am the bread of life. 49 Your ancestors ate the manna in the wilderness, yet they died.
50 But here is the bread that comes down from heaven, which anyone may eat and not die. 51 I am the living bread that came down from heaven. Whoever eats this bread will live forever. This bread is my flesh, which I will give for the life of the world.” 52 Then the Jews began to argue sharply among themselves, “How can this man give us his flesh to eat?”
53 Jesus said to them, “Very truly I tell you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you. 54 Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise them up at the last day. 55 For my flesh is real food and my blood is real drink. 56 Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood remains in me, and I in them. 57 Just as the living Father sent me and I live because of the Father, so the one who feeds on me will live because of me. 58 This is the bread that came down from heaven. Your ancestors ate manna and died, but whoever feeds on this bread will live forever.” 59 He said this while teaching in the synagogue in Capernaum.
Jesus keeps saying that He himself is Manna that came from heaven. Moreover, whoever eats His flesh and drink His blood remains in Him and has eternal life, being raised at the last day. What a strange speaking He is saying! But one sentence caught my eyes: “No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws them, and I will raise them up at the last day, Which is called the grace of God or chosen people, and it is given to ones as a blessing or a curse to ones who were not called.
What an unfair act and unmerciful God! Luckily, I am in, I mean, I am a believer, so did the Israelites at that time. However, most of them did not believe Jesus, as the Messiah whom God had sent to save them from both hunger and the colony, which they were only thinking about.
They were grumbling about Him and couldn't believe Him as a Savior as they thought they had known Him well as a son of Joseph, just a son of a human being. They continued to doubt and doubt again and again.
I heard that this sentence (verse 44) had been long in an argument among theologists, and this afternoon, I am trying to find out the answer about this quest. If faith is not the thing that we are able to pursuit and get, what on earth should we try to speak out to others. and dying or living forever sounds like our destiny. In a word, we are supposed to live forever or not, depending on the Father drawing us or not. Right?
No! It doesn't make sense with Jesus' dying on the cross, which means that anyone could get the salvation from believing Him as He became a ransom for the sins of all human beings. I think that it is up to our attitude and mind to seek and get closer to Him: getting away all the doubts and believing what He said with a pure heart, then we can see Him and understand what He was talking about. 'Knock, and it will be open!' But one thing we need to have in mind is humbling ourselves.
