ANYONE WHO RECEIVES JESUS CHRIST GAINS ETERNAL LIFE
A Sunday Message
FOOD IS ESSENTIAL FOR LIFE
No one survives for long without food. We work hard to have it. We spend time, energy, and resources to buy, cook, and consume them. The need to live is the fundamental reason. To sustain physical life, we must eat. It is never optional. Nobody takes it for granted nor reject its necessity. It is absolutely essential for life.
This is why the crowd followed the Lord after the miracle of the loaves. For them, survival is important, and Jesus is the key. The Lord knows that. God understands the helplessness of His creatures without provisions. The truth is, He knows every need of our lives including those that are far beyond understanding. Trying to survive without depending on God reveals not just unbelief but utter foolishness. This is the result of pride.
GOD HAS PROVIDED FOR OUR NEED
Amazingly, He designed hunger and thirst into our being not for agony but to highlight the grace of His glory. Dependence on God makes us recipients of His grace while elevating His benevolence.
This is why God the Father sent His Son as Bread from Heaven. There’s a dreadful hunger within every human soul due to sin. Sin obliterates spiritual life in our being, destroying true joy, blinding our minds, creating deep unsatisfaction and producing rebellion.
God knows that we cannot remedy this condition and is perfectly aware of our absolute helplessness. God knows our need and graciously offered a heavenly provision. He sent Jesus Christ as Bread from Heaven. This is God’s provision of Life. His life. Death defeating and eternal.
John 6:53-54
So Jesus said to them, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you. Whoever feeds on my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day.
YOU MUST RECEIVE FOOD TO BE FED
Similar to earthly food, nourishment does not happen by simply believing the benefits and studying its ingredients. You need to consume it. Unless digested, good food is useless. It sustains life only as it becomes part of the body.
You must be hungry to need it. You must believe that it remedies your need to take it. You must eat it to be imparted with your body. Only then, life is nourished.
Whoever recognizes the terrible sinful condition that is producing a miserable hunger within the soul and sincerely believes that Jesus Christ is God’s provision for this need, will be starving to receive Him. He comes to Christ to obtain His life. This is the experience of repentance and faith. He feels a deep desire to escape the sinful state of his misery and desperately comes to Christ for salvation.
When he does, God’s life in Christ unites with his. Christ abides in him forever and ever. Eternal life is imparted. The soul, fed with the Bread from Heaven lives forever.
John 6:55-57
For my flesh is true food, and my blood is true drink. Whoever feeds on my flesh and drinks my blood abides in me, and I in him. As the living Father sent me, and I live because of the Father, so whoever feeds on me, he also will live because of me.
HIS LIVING AND DYING IS OUR SALVATION
In order, to redeem us Christ had to shed His blood on the cross to atone for every sin of our lives. But He also must live in the flesh to obey every law of God on our behalf. His “flesh” and His “blood” both saving us. To believe that His death and righteous life is your heavenly provision for salvation makes you a recipient of His life within you. You are “feeding” on Him.
Unfortunately, many people will not believe in Him. Not because they don’t sense the need. They do. Not because they don’t think God can provide for such a need. They do.
They will reject Christ because of pride. Pride will always reject unmerited and undeserved divine grace. Pride will always choose a redemption based on human merit, not God’s. Pride will not admit a need and surrender to anyone.
ADMISSION AND SUBMISSION
Like eating, food is received with an act of admission and submission. An admission of need and submission to its ability to sustain life. To receive Christ as the Living Bread requires not just a recognition of your sinfulness and spiritual hunger but an act of surrender in faith. You are receiving not just a Savior but also a Lord and Master, the Sovereign Ruler of the universe who deserve your allegiance and obedience. In submission and surrender, you receive the Life of Jesus Christ within you. This is what it means to “feed” on Him and live forever.
May we remain humbly dependent on our God in sincere submission to His glorious authority as we continue in the life that abundantly sustains with all heavenly blessings.
Pastor Jay-R Remorosa