Due to COVID-19 and disruption to international mail service
we have temporally suspended our ‘Free Print Book service’.
we have temporally suspended our ‘Free Print Book service’.
In the light of this situation we are not able to mail you the books at this time.
Pray that this pandemic will end soon and the resumption of the postal service.
Pray that this pandemic will end soon and the resumption of the postal service.
Subject 16 : The Gospel According to JOHN
[Chapter 6-17] Eating the Flesh and the Blood of Jesus Who Is the True Bread from Heaven Is the True Faith (John 6:52-59)
(John 6:52-59)
“The Jews therefore quarreled among themselves, saying, “How can this Man give us His flesh to eat?” Then Jesus said to them, “Most assuredly, 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 eats My flesh and drinks My blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up at the last day. For My flesh is food indeed, and My blood is drink indeed. He who eats 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 he who feeds on Me will live because of Me. This is the bread which came down from heaven—not as your fathers ate the manna, and are dead. He who eats this bread will live forever.” These things He said in the synagogue as He taught in Capernaum.”
Jesus said that He was the true bread from Heaven and told us to eat His flesh and drink His blood. Then, the Jews disgustingly refuted against this, “How can this Man give us His flesh to eat?” Of course if someone came unexpectedly and told you to eat his flesh and drink his blood and said that it was the bread of life and gave you eternal life, you might think, “He is crazy. How can he say that he will give us his flesh? No matter how deprived I am of food, how can he tell me to eat and drink his flesh and blood?” Like this, the Jews misunderstood the true meaning of Jesus’ Words and thought, “How can a person give his flesh to another person for food and give his blood to drink? And how can he say it is the bread of life?”
We must make a distinction between the fleshly thinking and the spiritual thinking if we want to live the spiritual life properly. Carnal thought approaches things humanly. From the point of common sense, it is impossible for a person to give his flesh and blood for another person to eat and drink. It is not possible, at any rate, in the framework of fleshly thinking. But we should not have only fleshly thinking if we want to live out our faith in Jesus Christ. It is because the spiritual things do not fit in with the fleshly thinking and it is impossible to fit it into the fleshly thinking.
Jesus came in the flesh of man as the living sacrifice to blot out all our sins. Jesus took all our sins upon Him by receiving the baptism from John the Baptist and blotted them out by shedding all His blood on the Cross. Therefore, we were able to receive salvation from sin and judgment by eating His flesh and drinking His blood. There is no sin within us because He performed that work of blotting out all our sins for us. There is no judgment for us to receive because He took all our sins upon Him and received the judgment in our place by shedding His blood vicariously. And believing the righteous work Jesus has done for us is the faith of eating the flesh and the blood that Jesus spoke about.
Though it is not possible in terms of fleshly thinking, it is possible if we think from God’s standpoint of the work Jesus did to blot out all our sins by believing in the gospel of the water and the Spirit. It does not mean that Jesus will take 1kg or 2kg of His flesh and give it to us and cut His veins to give the blood for us to drink. Eating and drinking Jesus’ flesh and blood means for us to believe in what Jesus had done for us. That is what our Lord is talking about repeatedly in the Gospel of John.
We Must Understand God’s Word Only within the Gospel of the Water and the Spirit
And the Lord speaks again after a few moments. He spoke about it in previous passages, but He speaks about it again because people did not understand what He was talking about. We can eat the flesh and the blood of Jesus if we ponder once again on the work that the Lord has done and believe it in our hearts. Then we consequently attain salvation from sin, eternal life, and will partake in the first resurrection on the Last Day. Therefore, we must reach a conclusion that we cannot live out our faith with our fleshly thinking by examining whether it is true in reflection to the Word in the Scriptures. We can receive salvation by believing in the work God has done for you and me if Jesus came to this world in human flesh and took all our sins upon Him by receiving the baptism in order to blot them out. Believing in the work God has done for us is the true faith and is the basis of spiritual life that believes in Jesus. It means that we cannot think of spiritual matters with fleshly thinking.
God’s thinking is way beyond our thinking because His I.Q is infinite while ours is only 100 to 200 and He Himself is the Truth. How perfect is He? Jesus left the throne of Heaven and was born from the body of Virgin Maria to clothe Himself with human flesh in order to save humanity from all their sins. He took all our sins upon Him by receiving the baptism on His body from John the Baptist. Then He carried the sins of the world to the Cross, shed all His blood on the Cross, died, and then resurrected from the dead. That is how Jesus saved us. How deep, wide, and perfect salvation is this? It is so perfect that the length and the height of such love are difficult to measure. Our Lord was born to this world in human flesh and took the sins of the world upon Him all at once by receiving the baptism in order to blot out all the sins of humanity. Then, we have no other choice other than believing in this fact. How perfect is the method of salvation that the Lord has fulfilled for us!
God Is of the Just Truth
If we had to go to hell because of our sin, then there probably is someone who would refute and say all this is due to the sins of Adam and Eve and that he was not born with sin because he wanted to. God knew all about this as well and He Himself came to this world in the flesh of man to solve the problem of sin personally. He was nailed to the Cross and shed blood and died on the Cross bearing all our sins on Himself and was resurrected from the dead and became our true Savior.
How perfect is the work of salvation God has performed for us! Believing the work that God has done for us is the first step to have faith in God. Though it is difficult for you to understand this with your human thinking, if you get rid of your fleshly thinking and think about the work God has done for you with a believing heart, true faith will be rooted in your heart. The true faith is to know and believe in the work of Jesus through the gospel of the water and the Spirit; and it is to believe in God based on the Word. That is the true faith. We must become the people of faith who have faith in and give thanks for the work God has done for us.
There are many times when we are consumed with fleshly thinking during our spiritual walk even though we have received the remission of sin. I came out a little earlier this morning and took a walk. From the standpoint of my fleshly thinking, how wonderful would it be to go out and have fun on such a beautiful day? With fleshly thinking, I thought it might be good to go fishing with our coworkers for a few days. But when I think about it spiritually and ruminate what the Lord has done for us once again, I come to a conclusion that it is better to come together to worship God, do the work of God, pray for God’s work, and devote ourselves to the entrusted work first.
Even for a person who has received the remission of sin by believing in the gospel of the water and the Spirit, there are many times when he falls into the fleshly thinking. The spiritual things do not seem good when we think of them in fleshly terms. But when we think about the things God has done for us, our salvation is absolutely clear and it is right for you and me to do His work as we live out our faith. We also do carnal works because we have a physical body, but we’d rather desire to give our body to God and be used as the instruments of God’s righteousness instead of doing things that our body desires because the Holy Spirit in our hearts rejoices at those times. I am not saying this to admonish you to do more work.
The Jews heard what Jesus said, and asked with fleshly thought, “This person says that He will give His flesh. Then, does that mean we are cannibals?” They were thinking of Him saying “fleshly” now. However, when we think about it spiritually, we can recognize how much Jesus wanted all the Jews as well as all the people throughout the world to eat His flesh and drink His blood. The Lord wants to give us His flesh and have us eat it with faith and receive the cleansing of sin. That is because the flesh of Jesus took all the sins of humanity upon it through the baptism Jesus received from John the Baptist. Jesus wants us to drink His blood even now. That blood is His blood that was shed on the Cross. We enjoy the true remission of sins and eternal life by eating and drinking the flesh and the blood of Jesus by faith every day. For the people who have not received the remission of sins even until now, Jesus also wants to give His flesh and blood for them to eat and drink with faith. Jesus said today’s Scripture passage with such meaning. He desires so much for us to do so.
Our Lord said to the unbelievers in John 6:53, “Most assuredly, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink His blood, you have no life in you.” We can understand through this passage how much Jesus wants us to eat His flesh and blood. Here, “the Son of Man” signifies God Himself who was born to this world in human flesh. He said that we do not have eternal life if we do not eat His flesh and drink His blood. Therefore, this is something we must definitely eat with faith, not something we have a choice of eating or not eating. We must think spiritually about the work God has done for us through God’s Word again. Thinking about the work the Lord has done for us is the spiritual thinking and the spiritual faith. We must eat and drink the flesh and the blood of Jesus with faith. Otherwise, there is no remission of sins and eternal life within us. Those who do not eat the flesh and the blood of Jesus with faith are the same as being spiritually dead. We receive the remission of sins and new life when we eat the flesh and the blood Jesus gives.
The Lord continuously speaks of the Truth: “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 food indeed, and My blood is drink indeed” (John 6:54-55). We must eat with faith the work Jesus has done for us: He came to this world to take our sins upon Him by receiving the baptism on His body, received the judgment on the Cross in our place, and became our Savior by being resurrected from death. Only the people who eat and drink His flesh and blood with faith receive the remission of sins and attain eternal life. He is saying that He will bring us back to life on the day that the world comes to an end just as it said in the Word. People are buried underneath the earth when they die. But the Lord will come again and bring back to life those who have eaten the flesh and the blood of Jesus. Then, they will live together with the Lord forever in His Kingdom. Do you believe this fact?
It would be frightening if people said they receive eternal life by eating flesh and drinking blood of human beings. But if we understand the true meaning of the Word of Jesus in the passage that we attain eternal life by eating and drinking His flesh and blood, it is rather a joyful and grateful Word instead of a frightening Word. Jesus who is the Son of God and our Savior wanted to give His flesh and blood to us to blot out all our sins. The way to eat them is to believe in the righteous work Jesus did while He was in this world. We can eat them by believing in the work God has done for us, by believing that Jesus took the judgment for all our sins on our stead by receiving the baptism from John the Baptist and shedding blood on the Cross. We must eat and drink the flesh and the blood of Jesus by faith. Therefore, a person who does not eat and drink the flesh and the blood of Jesus has no life in him. Those who do not believe that Jesus came to this world and blotted out all our sins do not have the sins removed, and the people who do not believe the work of Jesus that received the judgment for the sin by being nailed to the Cross and shedding all His blood will receive judgment from God. Therefore, those Christians who do not acknowledge the fact that Jesus took the sins of the world upon Himself by receiving the baptism from John the Baptist on behalf of all humanity cannot have eternal life. They will receive eternal judgment for the sins that still remain in their hearts.
Catholics claim the transubstantiation because they misinterpret Jesus’ saying, “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 food indeed, and My blood is drink indeed.” Therefore, they hand the bread to the believers during the communion and the believers eat it believing that it actually has turned into the flesh of Jesus. They think that they eat and drink the flesh and the blood of Jesus when they eat and drink bread and wine of the communion. Why? That’s because they believe that all the bread in the bowl are transformed into the body of Jesus the moment the priest blesses the bread. Therefore, they believe they eat and drink the flesh and the blood of Jesus by performing communion, and that is why they do so whenever they get together.
Eating it in that manner is not eating and drinking the flesh and the blood of Jesus. It is nothing more than a religious ritual. Jesus said, “Eat My flesh and drink My blood.” Eating the flesh and the blood of Jesus means to have faith in Jesus who came to this world, took the sins of humanity upon Him by receiving the baptism from John the Baptist, received the judgment by being nailed to the Cross to death, and was resurrected from death to truly blot out all the sins of the humanity. Eating the bread during Masses does not mean you are eating the flesh and the blood of Jesus.
Jesus Said “Whoever”
Regardless of who it is, anyone who believes and eats with faith the things Jesus did for us to save us from our sins by giving His flesh and blood receives the remission of sin and attains eternal life. The people who do not believe in the gospel of the water and the Spirit that the Lord has given us receive the judgment of God and the penalty of hell because sin is still in their hearts. The Lord continues to speak in the Gospel of John chapter 6. He says, “For My flesh is food indeed, and My blood is drink indeed.” And He continues to say, “Do not labor for the food which perishes, but for the food which endures to everlasting life” (John 6:27). Jesus repeats what He said in previous verses. Those who believe in Jesus absolutely must know this.
Most of the educated young Koreans went to war and died during the Korean War (1950~1953). When they were organizing towns and villages after the war ended, there were not many men in the neighborhood to become community leaders and village representatives because most of the decent men joined the war. There were not many men who were literate and they came up with a new expression, “I would be a village representative if I could read.” Therefore, those who sided with the Japanese during the Japanese occupation lived well and took all kinds of positions because they were literate since they went to Japanese schools. We also must know how to eat the flesh and the blood of Jesus with faith because we can then receive and enjoy the remission of sins as well as eternal life.
If we want to believe that Jesus has saved you and me from sin and judgment and gave us true life, shouldn’t we learn the truly upright way and believe it? Then, what should we know about that? Jesus said, “Whoever eats My flesh and drinks My blood has eternal life.” Jesus is God, but He temporarily became a human being. He came to this world and received the baptism and received the judgment for sin by dying on the Cross to save us from the sins of the world and the judgment of sin. We eat and drink the flesh and the blood of Jesus by believing the work the Lord has done for us. Have you eaten and drank the flesh and the blood of Jesus?
The Lord said that He would bring us back to life on the last day. This is not a joke. He says this continuously. Those who believe in the gospel of the water and the Spirit in the Lord when the Antichrist appears and rules over the world will go to the Lord after being martyred at the hands of the Antichrist. Then, they will enjoy the eternal life without death in Heaven.
John 6:55-56 says, “For My flesh is food indeed, and My blood is drink indeed. He who eats My flesh and drinks My blood abides in Me, and I in him.” We cannot just pass over any of these important verses. It says that the flesh of Jesus is food indeed. We take the bread when we have Holy Communion in the Church, and that is commemorating what Jesus has done with faith: He took all our sins upon Him by coming to this world and receiving the baptism.
No One Can Receive the Remission of Sins and Go to Heaven If He Does Not Understand the Gospel Truth of the Water and the Spirit
The true faith is to understand and accept the work that the Lord has done for you. The Lord says, “For My flesh is food indeed, and My blood is drink indeed.” Jesus illustrated this in a figurative expression. Our stomach becomes full when we eat bread and our throat and chest becomes refreshed when we drink something cool. We do not become hungry if we acknowledge and accept the work of Jesus coming to this world and taking the sins upon Him by receiving the baptism because God’s Word is the eternal bread of life.
Let’s say a person met a traveler who was wandering in the desert and gave him bread and water. He comes alive if he eats it and the traveler can gain strength and continue on his journey again. As such, Jesus gave His flesh and blood to us who have been dying because of sin. Jesus came to this world and took the sins of the world upon Him through the baptism He received from John the Baptist. He gave up His life on the Cross and shed blood to receive the judgment for our sins. That is why the blood of Jesus is drink indeed. As our thirst is quenched when we drink a glass of water when we are thirsty, how refreshing it is when we reconfirm the fact that Jesus received the judgment by being nailed on the Cross for all the sins you and I commit while living in this world? It is refreshing. It is so wonderful. That is why we must believe the baptism of Jesus and the blood on the Cross when we believe in Jesus as our Savior. Each one of us must think of the baptism Jesus received and His blood on the Cross as the fulfillment of our salvation. It is terribly wrong to just hold onto the Cross of Jesus and believe only in it. That is equivalent to just drinking the blood of Jesus without eating the bread.
What good is it to just know that there is no judgment because of the precious blood of the Lord and not know that one’s sin has been cleansed through the baptism? We who believe in Jesus’ baptism profess, “There is no judgment for me who believe in the Lord because the Lord received the baptism for me and received the judgment of sin on the Cross.” Those who do not eat Jesus’ flesh with faith have sin in their hearts. You do not experience the rebirth of your soul because you only know that Jesus received the judgment in your place if you believe only in Jesus’ blood of the Cross, but have not actually eaten the flesh of Jesus. Therefore, we must know that you and I have truly received the cleansing of the sins by believing in the baptism of Jesus and the blood on the Cross and we must believe in it at least now.
We understand that Jesus saved us from all of our sins by being nailed on the Cross and receiving the judgment for all those sins because Jesus took all the sins of the whole humanity upon Him by receiving baptism from John the Baptist. Many Christians do not know this fact. All they have to do is just believe in this, but they obstinately believe only in the blood of the Cross because they do not know perfectly the work God has done.
The Lord said, “For My flesh is food indeed, and My blood is drink indeed.” This is true. We must understand that human thinking is not right. With humanistic thinking, some may wonder, “Do you think we are cannibals?” We must think spiritually of the baptism of Jesus and the precious blood He shed on the Cross.
God created this world and we were born as the descendants of the sinners because sin entered into the world as our common ancestors Adam and Eve committed sin. God the Father sent His Son Jesus Christ to this world as the Savior to transfer all the sins of humanity over to Him by receiving the baptism from John the Baptist. Jesus then died by being nailed to the Cross and shed blood on it. Then He became the Lord of the resurrection after resurrecting from death. This is God’s mercy that saved you and me from the sins of the world. This is the Truth. People must know and believe the flesh and the blood of Jesus spiritually. Even us who believe in the gospel of the water and the Spirit must continue to ruminate this Truth in our hearts.
The gospel of the water and the Spirit that we, the born-again Christians have and the gospel of the Cross that the ordinary Christians believe may seem similar but they are actually very different. When people take a test, isn’t there a difference between those who studied diligently and those who did not study at all? You can know the correct answer only if you perfectly understand the spiritual meanings of the flesh and the blood of Jesus. If you believe in Jesus as your Savior, you must know and believe the flesh and blood that Jesus shed for you and me. Believing in the work God has done for us is the true faith, but believing in Him with the fleshly thinking of humans is not the true faith.
Today’s Christians throughout the world must eat the flesh and the blood of Jesus Christ with faith. Our soul will die if we do not eat the flesh of Jesus with faith and just drink the blood of Jesus. Therefore, you must know how to eat the flesh and the blood of Jesus. You must know that Jesus came to this world and took all your sins upon Him through His baptism and also believe that Jesus shed blood for you and me. Therefore, you should not just hold onto God. You should know and depend on the fact that God came to this world and blotted out all your sins. This is the true faith.
Faith is admiring the work God has done and believing it with the heart, while religion is trying to attain salvation through one’s own effort. All the religions of the world are merely belief systems that have been created by humans; and they believe those religions themselves. That is why there are so many religions in the world. However, Jesus Christ came to this world from sin, received the baptism, and shed His blood on the Cross to death to save you and me. That is how He saved you and me from sin. We must not believe in Jesus with our fleshly thinking, but instead, we must spiritually believe in the work of salvation that God performed for you and me. We must understand that is the true faith.
John 6:56 says, “He who eats My flesh and drinks My blood abides in Me, and I in him.” It says that the Lord dwells in the person who eats the flesh and the blood of Jesus with faith, that is, who accepts in his heart the fact that Jesus took the sins of the world upon Him and died on the Cross. The Lord says that he also dwells in Jesus. Therefore, there is no sin in the heart of the person who has eaten the flesh and the blood of Jesus, and the Holy Spirit dwells in such a person. Hence, he is a child of God, a person of God, and a righteous person without sin. Also, we must understand that persecuting the righteous is standing against the righteousness of God.
John 6:57 states, “As the living Father sent Me, and I live because of the Father, so he who feeds on Me will live because of Me.” As Jesus lived because of God the Father, we also live in Jesus Christ. It also says, “This is the bread which came down from heaven—not as your fathers ate the manna, and are dead. He who eats this bread will live forever” (John 6:58). Jesus is the living bread that came down from Heaven. He is the real bread of salvation. Jesus is the One who came to take all our sins upon Him. Do you understand this? This is the amazing Truth and the gospel Truth of the water and the Spirit.
Who received the judgment for our sins by taking the sins of this world upon Him through His baptism and shedding blood by being nailed on the Cross? Is there any such person born from this world? Who among the founders of worldly religions did such a thing? Have the so-called sages of human history done such a thing for us? No one else did such a thing for us. The only begotten Son of God Jesus, the One from Heaven, took our sins upon Him by receiving the baptism. Jesus Christ received the judgment for our sins by being nailed to the Cross and shedding blood. By giving His flesh and blood, Jesus Christ has given new life to you and me who believe in Him. This Truth is the gospel of the water and the Spirit in concise form and this is the salvation. Jesus is the living bread from Heaven. Jesus is the Savior. Do you believe this?
Christians of these days must eat it with the knowledge that Jesus is the bread of life from Heaven and not just look at that bread. When you eat the flesh of Jesus knowing and believing that it is the bread of salvation, you can also drink the blood of Jesus simultaneously. You and I do not have sin because the entire sins of the humanity have transferred over to Jesus the moment we understood and believed the baptism of Jesus that took over all our sins. Therefore, our judgment ended the moment Jesus Christ was nailed to the Cross. You and I became the people who have truly received the salvation from sin, the people who have received eternal life, and the people who have become the children of God by believing in this fact. This is the salvation and the true remission of sins. People who have not eaten the flesh and the blood of Jesus have not received salvation from sin. Those who do not preach this Truth are people who do not preach the true gospel.
I do not preach the gospel of the water and the Spirit only to you. I send my sermons about the gospel of the water and the Spirit throughout the world. In addition, if anyone wants to refute it, then go ahead and refute it; and if there is anything wrong in what I believe, then teach me what is right; but if you find that you have believed wrongly, then now turn from it and believe correctly from now on. Even now, many missionaries, pastors, and laymen come to know the gospel of the water and the Spirit and believe it in their hearts.
The Lord is the bread from Heaven. We must eat that bread of life with faith because the Lord came to this world to feed us that bread. We receive eternal life if we just eat this bread, but there is only eternal curse if we do not eat it. There is curse in this world as well as in the future world. Do you understand this? Some people say, “The Pope of the Roman Catholic Church probably went to Heaven because He did many righteous works.” Then, do people go to Heaven if they live an upright life? You can receive eternal life if you eat the bread from Heaven. However, eating the bread of this world will only bring death to you even if you eat as much as you can. You and I eat the bread from Heaven.
We often fall into our fleshly thinking, but we must at least think and believe in the things God has done for us at this time. We believe in Jesus professing, “Jesus Christ the Son of God took all our sins upon Him by receiving the baptism and dying on the Cross and being resurrected from death. We do not have sin because it is definitely clear that Jesus Christ took all our sins upon His body by receiving the baptism. We clearly do not have judgment because the Lord has received the judgment for all our sins in our place. We are truly God’s people who have received eternal life because God saved us from the judgment of sin, and gave us eternal life.” We become as such through faith because God did this for us. We truly became sinless like this. I am truly thankful and thankful again for this.
Have you ever truly eaten the bread of Heaven? Are you eating this bread in present tense? The core of this Word is the Truth of the gospel of the water and the Spirit. I give thanks to the Lord with faith for His coming from Heaven and becoming the bread of life for us.
This sermon is also available in ebook format. Click on the book cover below.
Copyright © 2021 by The New Life Mission