Water and Bread of Life

[Cassia]

Revelation 7:17
For the Lamb which is in the midst of the throne shall feed them, and shall lead them unto living fountains of waters: and God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes.?
God here is Trinity. Spirit is the nature. To worship God Who is Spirit we must worship with our human spirit, which has been awakened to the same nature as He. Jesus' urging the Samaratan woman to contact God the Spirit with her spirit to drink the living water (which is Christ Himself) so as in drinking she could render real worship to God.

Ephesians 2:22
In whom ye also are builded together for an habitation of God through the Spirit.
1 Peter 2:5
Ye also, as lively stones, are built up a spiritual house, an holy priesthood, to offer up spiritual sacrifices, acceptable to God by Jesus Christ.?
Christ is truth and the fountain of the life water, the life giving Spirit
John 4:26
Jesus saith unto her, I that speak unto thee am he.​

This word Jesus gave her to believe that she would have eternal life. Believing she told others.
The Samaritans had little learning but the harvest was ripe for those who had done no sowing.
I think that's God's food is satisfying the sinner with the living water.

The eucharist itself is from John 6 and isn't believed as an actual eating of the flesh of the risen Lord by other denominations

John 6:35
Then Jesus declared, “I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never go hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty.
His flesh is life. As the lamb of God He feeds and redeems, before the fall as the tree of life he was just for feeding on. Then in dying for us He gave His flesh so that we could have life. Blood is also necessary for redemption. Separating the flesh and blood in John 6:54 clearly means His death.
John 6:47
Very truly I tell you, the one who believes has eternal life.
John 1:12
Yet to all who did receive him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God—?
John 6:56 is the resurrected life of those who believe in Him.​

By eating we are taking Him in as nourishment for the new creation for the new way of life.

John 14:19-20
Before long, the world will not see me anymore, but you will see me. Because I live, you also will live. 20 On that day you will realize that I am in my Father, and you are in me, and I am in you.?
John 6:62 involves His ascention which followed redemption as proof His work had been completed.
Hebrews 1:3b
... After he had provided purification for sins, he sat down at the right hand of the Majesty in heaven.​

Wherefore He has now become the Spirit in John 6:63 who gives life and speaks in spirit and life.

1 Corinthians 15:45
So it is written: “The first man Adam became a living being”; the last Adam, a life-giving spirit.​

As the Spirit He is the life supply. Recieving (believing) Him as the crucified and resurrected savior, the lifegiving Spirit comes into us to impart eternal life. We recieve (believe) the Lord Jesus but we get the Holy Spirit who gives us life.

 

[Lamb]

I believe the Lord's body and blood are in, with and under the bread and wine.

 

[Ackbach]

I believe the Lord's body and blood are in, with and under the bread and wine.

And I, being a Calvinist, believe that Jesus Christ is really and truly present in the Lord's Supper, but spiritually only. He still has a regular human body and soul, albeit glorified, but that nature of Christ is in heaven and not on earth in any way (until the Second Coming). Just gotta provide the friendly foil to my Lutheran brethren! ;-)] (That's a smiley with a beard, of course.)

 

[MoreCoffee]

The Lord Jesus Christ said "this is my body" when speaking of the bread he had blessed then he said of the cup and the contents of it "this is the cup of the new covenant in my blood given for many for the forgiveness of sins". Seems to me that what the Lord said is true. It is his body and his blood.

 

[psalms 91]

Or was it meant as a symbol? Dont think you can prove or disprove either view

 

[Ackbach]

The Lord Jesus Christ said "this is my body" when speaking of the bread he had blessed then he said of the cup and the contents of it "this is the cup of the new covenant in my blood given for many for the forgiveness of sins". Seems to me that what the Lord said is true. It is his body and his blood.

And Jesus said "This is my body", referring to... bread. The gospels all say it was bread. None of them say that the bread became his body, or that the wine became his blood.

This is why it's so important, in biblical exegesis, to understand precisely what it is to which every single pronoun refers. When you're studying, ask yourself, "What's the antecedent for this pronoun?"

 

[Lamb]

And Jesus said "This is my body", referring to... bread. The gospels all say it was bread. None of them say that the bread became his body, or that the wine became his blood.

This is why it's so important, in biblical exegesis, to understand precisely what it is to which every single pronoun refers. When you're studying, ask yourself, "What's the antecedent for this pronoun?"

And yet Jesus said, "This is my body".

 

[visionary]

Yeshua always worked in context with the prophets of OT. He always clarified what He was talking about.

John 6:32 In the midst of the crowded synagogue in Capernaum, Yeshua compared Himself to the manna, the bread from heaven. He told the people, “Amen, Amen, I say to you, it is not Moses who has given you the bread out of heaven, but it is My Father who gives you the true bread out of heaven” .

Yeshua offered the people in the Capernaum synagogue "true bread from heaven". If they ate of it, they would never again hunger or thirst. The true bread from heaven gives life to the world. He made a similar offer to the Samaritan woman at the well. He offered her living water, saying,

John 4:13 Whoever drinks of the water that I will give him shall never thirst; but the water that I will give him will become in him a well of water springing up to eternal life.

The Samaritan woman misunderstood. She thought Yeshua offered her a literal, magical water.

John 4:15 She said, “Master, give me this water, so I will not be thirsty nor come all the way here to draw”.

The people in the Capernaum synagogue also took the Yeshua’s offer of heavenly bread literally.

John 6:34 They said to Him, “Master, always give us this bread”.

The Samaritan woman and the people in the Capernaum synagogue did not look beyond the material-physical world. They missed what He was saying. Same goes for those who look at the "This is my body" and think He is talking about physical. Like God changes wafers to flesh of God.

He offered them imperishable food and water—eternal life. Like the host of a banquet, He invited the people to come, drink, and eat. The “living water” of John 4 and “bread of life” of John 6 allude to an important messianic passage from Isaiah.

Is 55:1 Every one who thirsts, come to the waters; and you who have no money come, buy and eat. Come, buy wine and milk without money and without cost. Why do you spend money for what is not bread, and your wages for what does not satisfy? Listen carefully to Me, and eat what is good, and delight yourself in abundance. Incline your ear and come to Me. Listen, that you may live ….

This inclining the ear and coming to Him, listening to God alone, so that you may live... is where you receive this wine and bread of life, where you can "buy" without money and without cost.

Revelation 3:18 I counsel thee to buy of me gold tried in the fire, that thou mayest be rich; and white raiment, that thou mayest be clothed, and that the shame of thy nakedness do not appear; and anoint thine eyes with eyesalve, that thou mayest see.

Matthew 13:44 Again, the kingdom of heaven is like unto treasure hid in a field; the which when a man hath found, he hideth, and for joy thereof goeth and selleth all that he hath, and buyeth that field.

The wise know....

Matthew 25:9 But the wise answered, saying, Not so; lest there be not enough for us and you: but go ye rather to them that sell, and buy for yourselves.

 

[MoreCoffee]

Or was it meant as a symbol? Dont think you can prove or disprove either view

Had the Lord Jesus intended to say "this means my body" then he'd have said so. John 6:25-71 tells the meaning of the Lord's words. One who is a disciple and who will stay with him and draw life from him will eat his flesh and drink his blood as their food and drink for eternal life. If your theology refuses this then I am not surprised that some other meaning, a different spin, must be applied to "this is my body" and "this is the cup of the new covenant in my blood given for many for the forgiveness of sins" even though you no doubt wish to keep a more literal spin on the part about the forgiveness of one's sins.

 

[Ackbach]

And yet Jesus said, "This is my body".

Yes, He did. I do not deny it. It's right there in the infallible, inspired, inerrant Holy Scriptures - the Word of God. Jesus Christ actually said that, in history. He made the sound waves, and His disciples actually heard it. But that sentence cannot be allowed to run roughshod over its immediate context. A text without a context is a pretext. God is not a God of confusion, but a God of order. He never, ever contradicts Himself. So, by the analogy of faith, to interpret a text, we always, always, always look at its context. Technically, the context of any verse is the entire Scriptures. Every verse, interpreted correctly (which I fully realize is challenging to do), harmonizes with all other verses, interpreted correctly. Therefore, if one verse, interpreted one way, conflicts with the plain meaning of another verse, then that one way of interpreting the first verse MUST be wrong. You must look for a different interpretation.

In the mathematics of cryptography, it can be shown that as the number of symbols in your ciphertext gets smaller and smaller, the number of possible meanings gets bigger and bigger. If you get down to one symbol, the number of possible meanings is infinite. It's just like that when you're interpreting text. If you zero in on one sentence, and ignore the surrounding context, you can easily get entirely the wrong meaning.

Here's an example: consider the sentence, "He did it." What are your immediate questions? Who is "He", and what is "it", right? That sentence could have loads of different meanings depending on the context. The sentence "This is my body." absolutely has to be interpreted in context. What is the "this" referring to?

It's also important to know, a la President Clinton, what the word "is" means. The word "is" is rather slippery, actually. Consider the statement, "Jesus is God". This is an absolutely true, orthodox statement. But if you reverse the terms and say "God is Jesus", you have a reductionistic falsity. Evidently, the word "is" there does not mean "equals" in the mathematical sense, although "is" can certainly mean that in some contexts (odd how context keeps coming up, isn't it?). Thus, it behooves us not to come up on the word "is" and automatically apply it in a wooden fashion, as though it always means "the thing to the left of 'is' and the thing to the right of 'is' are mathematically equivalent".

Finally, you must understand the kind of sentence that "This is my body." is. In the Bible, there are histories, poetry, letters, parables (fiction), apocalyptic literature, proverbs, and others. The so-called "literal interpretation", when applied to the wrong kind of literature, produces the wrong interpretation. You must interpret each kind of literature in the Bible according to the rules of that kind of interpretation - what Graeme Goldsworthy calls "literary interpretation". For example, one Proverb says that you should answer a fool according to his folly, lest he be wise in his own eyes. The very next Proverb (or is it the previous?) one says not to answer a fool according to his folly, lest you be like him. Well, which is it? You see, a wooden, literal interpretation of a proverb would seem to indicate that we have a contradiction. But we don't. Interpreting these verses like the proverbs they are enables us to understand that proverbs are in the wisdom literature, and that therefore we can say there are times to do one, versus times to do the other. The Law of Noncontradiction says that A cannot be A and not-A at the same time and in the same respect. Because we're not talking about the same time, we get no contradiction. It is part of wisdom to know when to do one versus the other, and you, the reader, are meant to struggle with that and find it out.

When a big hunk on the beach looks at his girl, and says, "This is my baby.", are you going to infer that the girl is a baby? Of course not. That would be a wooden, literal interpretation of a sentence that is obviously meant to be metaphorical. You should infer that this particular girl is "his girlfriend". Or at least that he thinks she is his girlfriend. ;-)]

So, can we not at least acknowledge that the literal interpretation of "This is my body", which would say that the bread mathematically equals Jesus' body, is by no means the only interpretation, and that simply repeating the statement, "Jesus said, 'This is my body.' " does not prove your case? Repeating that statement is what's known in logic as a petitio principii, or "begging the question". This is the question at hand! What does that sentence mean?

A sound argument is one, following that eminently sane Catholic theologian Peter Kreeft, that has clear terms, true premises, and a valid argument. If my argument is unsound, I'd absolutely love to know what's unclear, what's false, and/or what's invalid about it.

 

[Lamb]

Actually IS in this case does mean IS.

 

[Ackbach]

Actually IS in this case does mean IS.

Not necessarily. I've already shown why we can't assume that, and put forth a rather extensive argument as to why I think a metaphorical interpretation fits better. What is your argument? What are your reasons for saying otherwise?

 

[psalms 91]

Obviously I agree with metaforical

 

[Lamb]

Not necessarily. I've already shown why we can't assume that, and put forth a rather extensive argument as to why I think a metaphorical interpretation fits better. What is your argument? What are your reasons for saying otherwise?

My argument is IS means IS. The Greek verb is estin. It means IS. In fact, the way that it is written is that it is a linking verb meaning so it has a strong emphasis. So it's not just IS but absolutely is.

In other words, I don't have to assume. I can say with assurance that the Lords body and blood are there with the bread and wine.

 

[MoreCoffee]

Obviously I agree with metaforical

"Is" is a metaphor only because taken at face value it usurps your theology. In truth you've allowed the traditions of men to usurp the holy scriptures.

 

[Cassia]

"Is" is a metaphor only because taken at face value it usurps your theology. In truth you've allowed the traditions of men to usurp the holy scriptures.

What traditions are those?

 

[MoreCoffee]

What traditions are those?

That is obvious from what I wrote. It is the tradition of men to make Jesus' words "this is my body" into a metaphor. It is a sin to do so. The same sin that the scribes and Pharisees committed to make the written words of Jehovah void.

 

[psalms 91]

"Is" is a metaphor only because taken at face value it usurps your theology. In truth you've allowed the traditions of men to usurp the holy scriptures.

And I think you are blinded by the institution but we both could be wrong

 

[visionary]

Breaking bread was common with every gathering around the table in fellowship. Do this in remembrance of what Yeshua has done for us, is giving more significance when we retell the story of His death for our sins when we do break bread. When we partake of the bread in this manner, we accept what He has done for us and spread the good news of His salvation offer. The significance is not in the breaking or eating of the bread. The significance is in Him who died for us. Yeshua just gave us a way of telling His gospel truth about the way of salvation.

 

[Lamb]

Yes, the significance is is body and blood that died for us on the cross so our sins are forgiven. In Communion HE is there.

In Jewish history "remembrance" wasn't JUST thinking about it. It was partaking in something in order to remember.