Quote:
Originally Posted by Ohio
We should take these verses both literally and spiritually.
The explanation for how to "take" these verses is in John 6.63.
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Then you are in your own trap because you think that the Lord speaks of His own flesh, asking His disciples to eat it, but at the same time He finds that His flesh counts for nothing. Do you find it logical?
"The flesh" that Christ speaks of in John 6:63, is flesh in the sense of our lustful, sinful human nature. The spirit therefore is the life-giving Grace; which is consistently juxtaposed against "the flesh" throughout the Biblical text.
Some people become confused by what Lord Jesus Christ said after the disciples complained. He said, “It is the Spirit who gives life; the flesh profits nothing. The words that I speak to you are spirit, and they are life” (Jn 6:63). They mistakenly think that this is proof that Lord Jesus Christ is saying that He only means that the disciples will eat His Flesh and drink His Blood spiritually and not literally. But
it is illogical that the Lord would say that His Flesh “profits nothing” (useless) after saying that it gives life (v 53). Rather, Lord Jesus Christ is not talking about His Flesh, but about their flesh. He is telling the unbelieving disciples that they cannot grasp or come to His blessed teaching on the Eucharist by their senses or their flesh which “profits nothing” for this purpose, but only through faith or Spirit.
Source:
http://www.suscopts.org/messages/lec...acrament12.pdf
Christ adds, "It is the Spirit that quickeneth; the flesh profiteth nothing. The words I speak unto you, they are Spirit and they are life" (John 6:63). By this remark Christ does not ask that His words about the Bread of Life be understood in any "metaphorical" meaning. "There are some of you that believe not, He added immediately" (John 6:64). By these words the Saviour Himself indicates that His words are difficult for faith: How is it that believers will eat His Body and drink His Blood? But He confirms that He speaks of His actual Body. His words concerning His Body and Blood are "spirit and life."
They testify that a) he who partakes of them will have eternal life, and will be resurrected for the Kingdom of glory in the last day; and b) that he who partakes of them will enter into the most intimate communion with Christ. His words speak not of life in the flesh, but of life in the Spirit.
http://www.stjohntherussian.com/orth...eucharist.html
They had an interesting podcast on the Ancient Faith Radio about John 6:63:
John 6:63 And The Eucharist
http://www.ancientfaith.com/podcasts..._the_eucharist
John 6:63 And The Eucharist - Part 2
http://www.ancientfaith.com/podcasts...arist_-_part_2
...Many non—sacramental Christian believers use is to debunk the ancient apostolic teaching that the bread and wine of the Eucharist are the literal body and blood of Christ. Again, they take Jesus to say here that there is no real importance to his flesh. It is his words alone, his teachings, that are spiritual and therefore life—giving. There are many problems with this interpretation however.
First of all, having gone now through the chapter and examined the verse’s context, I think it is imminently clear how we should understand it. When Jesus says that the flesh profits nothing, he is speaking clearly to that total preoccupation with temporal, earthly needs that the Jews who followed him to Capernaum demonstrated. These people were looking for breakfast. They saw Jesus as an everlasting meal ticket. One who could satisfy their physical needs. And everything he said to them about who he is and what he comes to offer, they heard in the context of those fleshly desires. The Lord had attempted to elevate their hearts by speaking of heavenly, spiritual things. Which is the second flaw in the interpretation of those who take this verse as debunking the Real Presence.
Verse sixty-three’s “spiritual, life—giving words that I speak” include all these words that Jesus just spoke about eating his body and drinking his blood. And in those spiritual words, Jesus certainly isn’t saying that his flesh profits nothing. He says it profits eternal life. Could we expect Jesus to ever say that his flesh is unprofitable? The most glorious truth in the universe is that “the Word became flesh and dwelt among us.” (John 1:14)
I’m coming to think that the real resistance to the doctrine of the Real Presence is grounded in the rather impoverished view of the Incarnation widely embraced by western Christian churches. For the West, Christ comes in the flesh just to provide a body for the receiving of God’s wrath upon sinners. But the ancient Church in the Christian East knows that the purpose of Christ’s Incarnation is to join humanness to divinity. He comes to restore us to union with God on every level of our human existence: the physical as well as the spiritual.
Jesus Christ is not a rational philosophy. The living faith he brings to us is much more than spiritual principles we are to hear and apply to our lives. It is rather, the joining of our beings with his. This is the truth that fundamentally divides Christians who believe in the Real Presence of Christ’s body and blood in the Eucharist, and those who don’t. It is only their rational, platonic mindset which makes John 6:63 anti—Eucharistic verse in the minds of Western believers.
http://www.ancientfaith.com/podcasts...arist_-_part_2