Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit · Sermon No. 1288
“Then Jesus said unto them, Verily, verily, I say unto you, Except you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink His blood, you have no life in you. Whoever eats My flesh and drinks My blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up at the last day. For My flesh is meat, indeed, and My blood is drink indeed. He that eats My flesh, and drinks My blood, dwells in Me, and I in him.” John 6:53-56.
OUR Lord Jesus did not, in this passage, allude to the Lord’s Supper, as some, desiring to maintain their sacramental superstitions, have dared to affirm! I will not dwell upon the argument that there was no Lord’s Supper at the time to allude to, though there is certainly some force in it, but I will rather remind you that with such an interpretation this passage would not be true. It must be confessed, even by the most ardent advocate of the sacramental meaning, that the expressions used by our Lord are not universally and, without exception, true if used in that sense, for it is not true that those who have never eaten the Lord’s Supper have no life in them, since it is confessed on all hands that hundreds and thousands of children dying in childhood are, undoubtedly saved, and yet they have never eaten the flesh of Christ nor drank His blood, if the Lord’s Supper is here meant.
There have also been many others in bygone times who, by their conduct, proved that the life of God was in their souls, and yet they were not able to eat bread at the sacramental table, because of sickness, banishment, imprisonment and other causes. Surely there are some others, though I would not excuse them, who have neglected to come to that blessed commemorative ordinance, and yet, nevertheless, for all that, they are truly children of God. Would the highest of high churchmen send every Quaker, however holy and devout, down to the bottomless pit? If this should refer to the Lord’s Supper, then it is certain that the dying thief could not have entered Heaven, for he never sat down at the communion table, but was converted on the Cross—and without either Baptism or the Lord’s Supper—went straight away with his Master into Paradise!
It can never be proved, indeed, is utterly false that no one has eternal life if he has not received the bread and wine of the communion table. But on the other hand, it is certainly equally untrue that whoever eats Christ’s flesh has eternal life, if by that is meant everyone who partakes of the Eucharist, for there are unworthy receivers, not here and there, but to be found by the hundreds. Alas, there are apostates who leave the Lord’s Table for the table of devils and who profane the holy name they once professed to love! There are also many who have received the sacramental bread and wine and yet live in sin—who increase their sin by daring to come to the table and who, alas, we fear, will die in their sins as many others have done.
Unregenerate persons are very apt to make much of the sacrament and nothing of Christ. They think a great deal of the bread and wine of the (so-called) “altar,” but they have never known what it is to eat the flesh and drink the blood of Christ. These eat and drink unworthily—carnally eating bread, but not spiritually eating the Redeemer’s flesh—to them the ordinance is a curse rather than a blessing. Our Lord did not refer to the feast of His supper, for the language will not bear such an interpretation. It is evident that the Jews misunderstood the Savior and thought that He referred to the literal eating of His flesh. It is no wonder that they strove among themselves over such a saying, for, understood literally, it is horrible and revolting to the last degree!
But far greater is the wonder that there are millions of people who accept so monstrous an error as actual truth and believe in literally feeding upon the body of the Lord Jesus! This is probably the highest point of profane absurdity to which superstition has yet reached—to believe that such an act of cannibalism as could be implied in the literal eating of
the flesh of Christ could convey Grace to the person guilty of such a horror! While we wonder that the Jews so misunderstood the Savior, we wonder a thousand times more that there should remain upon the face of the earth men in their senses not yet committed to a lunatic asylum who endeavor to defend such a dreadful error from Holy Scripture and, instead of being staggered, as the Jews were, by so fearful a statement, actually consider it to be a vital doctrine of their faith—that they are literally to eat the flesh of Christ and to drink His blood!
Brothers and Sisters, if it were possible that our Lord required us to believe such a dogma, it would certainly need the most stupendous effort of credulity on the part of a reasonable man—and the laying aside of all the decencies of nature. In fact, it would appear to be necessary, before you could be a Christian, that you should altogether divest yourself of your reason and your humanity! It were a Gospel certainly more fitted for savages and madmen than for persons in the possession of their senses and in the least degree removed from absolute barbarism! I greatly question whether the creed of the king of Dahomey contains a more unnatural doctrine.