Feeding on Christ
“Jesus said to them, ‘I am the bread of life; whoever comes to me shall not hunger, and whoever believes in me shall never thirst.’” ~John 6:35
Human beings are dependent creatures. We cannot generate life from within; our bodies need outside influences to keep them alive. Hunger and thirst are God’s daily reminders of our frailty. What is true of our bodies is also true of our souls. Our bodies need water and bread. Our souls need God. Without His life-giving presence, the human soul will wither and die.
In a fallen world, this presents a problem for sinners. We are born estranged from Him, cut off from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in us, due to the hardness of our hearts (Ephesians 4:18). Dead in transgressions (Ephesians 2:1ff), we cannot work our way back to life. God must do something. Indeed, for this reality to change, God must do everything.
God’s solution to our spiritual death is Jesus. He is the Son of the Great I AM, the Great Being One. He has life in Himself and has come down out of heaven to share that life with us, His people. Taking us into union with Himself, Jesus absorbed our sin into His own body and soul so that He might die our death and that we might live in the power of His endless life forever. “For the bread of God is he who comes down from heaven and gives life to the world” (John 6:33).
Although this new life comes into the soul at the moment of regeneration (John 3:3ff), it needs constant nourishment through fellowship with Jesus. We feed our souls by coming to Him by faith, leaning upon His cross work, listening to His word, obeying His voice, walking by His Spirit, trusting His providence, and eating His body and blood in the sacrament.
You will not find food for your soul behind the back of Jesus. Do you understand this? Are you still laboring for bread that perishes? Listen to Jesus warn His own generation, “Jesus answered them, ‘Truly, truly, I say to you, you are seeking me, not because you saw signs, but because you ate your fill of the loaves. Do not work for the food that perishes, but for the food that endures to eternal life, which the Son of Man will give to you. For on him God the Father has set his seal’” (John 6:26–27).
This is our perennial problem. We constantly want to use Jesus as a kind of 12-step program to a better life in the here and now. Follow Jesus, they say; it will help your marriage be more satisfying, your family life be more fulfilling, your children be more successful, your business be more profitable. Now, without denying the fact that following Jesus brings real-world benefits in the here and now, we need to see that Jesus’ real mission is to save us from this world of death, to rescue us from our spiritual death, and to reconcile our souls to God. Until Jesus is our life (Colossians 3:1ff), therefore, we need to ask ourselves: are we really alive at all?
What does that look like in the real world of Monday morning chaos or Wednesday afternoon drudgery? What does all this mean for those days when we are going at it with our spouse and can’t seem to get what we want in our marriage? Feeding on Christ means we find our bearings amidst the slop and muck of a fallen world by looking to Jesus, by remembering that He is the issue at work in, behind, around, and underneath every issue, by learning to look at life from His perspective, and by bringing every thought captive to the lordship of Christ.
Some of us can’t get after it in the morning without a cup of coffee. When you understand this thought for the day, you will realize: none of us can get after it without feeding on Christ. Let us, therefore, bring all the hungerings and thirstings of our souls to Jesus. These desires are God-given signposts pointing us away from ourselves, away from this world, and reminding us just how much we need Jesus, the bread of life.