Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit · Sermon No. 653
Delivered on Sunday Morning, October 8, 1865, by C. H. Spurgeon
“It is the spirit that quickens. The flesh profits nothing: the words that I speak unto you, they are spirit and they are life.” John 6:63.
OUR Lord had plainly told His hearers that He was the Bread of Life. And that except they ate His flesh and drank His blood there was no life in them. His hearers understood this in a sensual manner and they very naturally put the question, “How can this Man give us His flesh to eat?” Now the Savior had never intended to be understood in a carnal manner. It was far enough from His design to inculcate the carnal eating of His body and therefore He at once told them that His words were not understood.
And He delivered Himself of a great general principle, as truly applicable to our day as to His own. In effect He taught them just this—“It is not the eating My flesh in a carnal way, even if you could do it, which would be of any service to you. For that would be only feeding the flesh, which profits nothing. A spiritual feeding can alone quicken and bless you. It is this which you cannot understand. And therefore you hear My words as if they were as dead and fleshly as yourselves, whereas My teaching bears no gross and sensuous meaning, for the words which I speak unto you, they are spirit, and they are life.”
If I am not mistaken, this verse contains a great principle which needs, in these days, to be proclaimed on the housetops. It is the medicine which would cure the diseases of this present time if men were divinely led to receive it. The text is very deep—like all the teaching of our Savior recorded by John, the words are extremely simple—but the mystery is most profound. May the Holy Spirit lead us all not only to comprehend its teaching, but to feel its power.
What is meant by “the flesh” here? The word “flesh” in Scripture has eleven or twelve different modifications of its one abiding meaning. In this passage it means that which is outward and sensuous and appeals to the eye, or the ear, or to other powers of man’s bodily nature. There was much of this in the Jewish faith—but whenever the worshippers rested in it and did not reach to its spiritual teaching—it profited them nothing. Paul uses the same term when, speaking to the Judaizing Galatians, he asks them, “Having begun in the Spirit, are you now made perfect by the flesh?”
Which we understand to mean, having begun by God’s Holy Spirit with a spiritual love to God, a spiritual faith in Jesus and a spiritual life within, do you mean, now, to be made perfect by external ordinances, resting and abiding in them as though they had a power to bless? External ceremonial religion is well and aptly set forth here as “flesh.” What is the meaning of the term “spirit” here? If the Holy Spirit had been intended, in the judgment of our translators, they would have placed a capital S. It cannot, however, refer to the Holy Spirit because the explanatory key sentence is this— “The words which I speak unto you, they are spirit.”
Now, as we all know, words cannot be the Holy Spirit. The word “spirit” stands here in contrast with the term “flesh.” Flesh is external religion, the carnal part of it—that which the eye sees and the ear hears. Spirit is the inward part of religion—that which the soul understands, receives, believes and feeds upon. It is this—this spiritual element in religion which quickens it and makes it a living thing—while the mere external, the flesh, except as the Spirit quickens it, profits nothing.
This spiritual religion is consistent with the spiritual nature which God the Holy Spirit gives to us. And as Christ’s teachings are themselves living and spiritual, they are the proper food of spiritual men. The Jews commonly thought that religion lay in ceremonial observances—in eating certain meats or abstinence from them—in washings of the hands before eating. In various baptisms, in going up to the temple to pray, and such like outward performances. Jesus tells them to their faces that this flesh religion profits nothing—it is dead, unquickened and unquickening!
What, then, is the life of godliness? What is the vitality and essence of acceptable worship? His answer, virtually, is, “It is not your outward observances, but your inward emotions, desires, beliefs and adoration which are living worship.” Then He adds, in effect, “My words are not concerning outward observances, but are of a spiritual character. I come not to you with ‘touch not, taste not, handle not,’ or with ‘wash, vow, stand, sit, kneel’—My words deal with inner life and spirit and are addressed to your spiritual natures. The words which I speak unto you are spirit and life.”
I. Our first point will be THE UNPROFITABLE FLESH—the external observances of religion are, in themselves, utterly unprofitable. To begin with the greatest monstrosity of this kind in the present day—the real and corporeal Presence of the Lord Jesus Christ in what is superstitiously called the Blessed Sacrament! I would scarcely mention this if it were a doctrine merely of the Church of Rome. But when I read the newspapers and other productions of the High Church party, I find that transubstantiation with all its fullness of absurdity is extensively preached and believed in the Church of England!