Quote:
Originally Posted by OBW
aron:
I don't think the important thing is some equivalency of Jesus eating the Father like we eat Jesus. The only reference to the Father in the John 6 passage is that Jesus lives because of the Father, and that we will live because of Him. Yes, there is the reference to eating. But it does not actually say that we will live because of the flesh and blood we consume, except metaphorically. The importance is a spiritual supply, not the overlay of eating. And the eating is not automatically presumed to apply to the relationship between the Father and Son just because it says it with respect to us and the Son. I think that the parallel is that Jesus lives because of the Father and we live because of the Son. The reference to eating is important to us because our physical living is accomplished because of eating. Not sure there is an equivalency in that.
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Jesus explicitly taught that "food" was to "do", not merely to hear. Luke 8:21 (NIV) He replied, "My mother and brothers are those who hear God's word and put it into practice." God's word is manna from heaven, not because we pray over it but because if we obey it, we will live. "My food is to do the will of the Father" - even as this was his food, it becomes ours (John 4:34).
This seems to fly in the face of the "none can obey, all are sinners" and "it is grace, not works" gospel, which we all grew up on, which is Christian to its core. But Jesus is the Obedient Lamb; he's the paragon, the incarnation of obedience itself. Now, we in turn believe into him, and his obedience, and confess our former disobedience, and obey his command by loving one another, going on together, bearing one another in love, and always looking for the good in each other. He/her who has a sandwich shares half with him/her who has none. That's then obedience, that's our food which endures to eternal life. This is what I see Jesus teaching in John 6.
There's a lot in the NT about physical food as well, stories of thousands following this Prophet into the desert lands, and by the lakeshore, and becoming hungry. There were noted only a few small loaves and fishes. "But what are these few among so many?" So a lot of the talk was, in fact, about physical eating. We must always bear in mind that there was no Kroger or Walmart down the street.
But even that comes right to the spiritual application - the one who by faith shares some amount of his scarce resources with that one who has even less, puts themselves at peril, because what will they now eat on the morrow, who have just given all their food away? That's where obedience, based on faith, comes in. "Will not God also care for you, you who are of little faith?"
Such faithful obedience to the "royal law" of James 2:8 is our spiritual eating. This is the hidden manna, the tree of life. Nothing about self-focused repetitive noisemaking.
And just like my comments elsewhere recently on "God's economy", these ideas about "eating" are just that - ideas. Not truths. "Each one of you have revelations, tongues, interpretations" per 1 Cor 14. I put out my alternatives to WL's not so much to displace them, but to displace the idea that WL's must stand alone, uncritiqued.
Another theme that has loomed large in my mind is that of the meeting in Acts 15:7, that there was "much discussion". Not all of it was perfectly synched at all times, yet the participants remained. Powerful testimony of the life of God.