Quote:
Originally Posted by Sons to Glory!
Didn't Jesus say "He who eats Me" right after presenting Himself as the bread of life in John 6?
|
I said that you would ignore my reference, in search for another, and you did. Jesus' interpretive grid of John 4:34 puts 'eating' as 'doing' -"My food is to do the [expressed] will of the Father" - i.e. to obey God's commands. This puts "Thy words were found and I did eat them" in Jesus' context of doing. This puts "Man doesn't live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds out of the mouth of God" in Jesus' operational understanding of doing the Father's will. "I always see my Father, because I always do his will". (John 5:19; cf John 8:29)
As Jesus ate the Father's words by obedience, and lived, so should the disciples eat Jesus' words by obedience, and live by him. See also John 15:10. Quite explicitly put - as Jesus lived by the Father's word, so we live by his. Again, continued, unbroken obedience is the theme. Yet all of this text must be ignored when one oversimplifies. When people would argue like this in front of Jesus, he'd say, "Have you no knowledge of scripture" or "Have you not read scripture". One must use all of the available text, not a few 'crucial' verses to support doctrine.
So yes, Jesus did say that; if you were on a desert island, and one sheet of the Bible washed up with John 6 on it, you might be forgiven that reading. But with the whole scripture available, to retreat to that one section, there to resolutely remain, I don't think reading is very strong. It should cross through and connect with the whole text, not jump haphazardly from one unrelated verse to another.
This is especially my critique as stated in post #403. In order to maintain his view, WL had to create a two-tiered scripture, one which supported his thesis, and one which didn't. I don't think such readings are healthy at all. You have your 'crucial' sections, often quite small, then the 'middling' sections, of some use, and then the surprisingly large 'fallen' and 'low' sections, to be forgotten and ignored.