That commandment, to believe, is indeed repeated often. So why is it that all of a sudden that incoherent Protestant Jesus decided to augment it by asking to eat some miraculous bread? Observe, John 6:29 comes before "Except you eat the flesh of the Son of man, and drink his blood, you shall not have life in you. He that eateth my flesh, and drinketh my blood, hath everlasting life: and I will raise him up in the last day." You cannot make an earlier more general admonition to be the entire sense of what follows, which has these curious specifics.
This eating, however, in the Lord's Supper, is not done for salvation, but specifically for remembrance
Well, one cannot remember without believing, so all these roads lead to salvation. Jesus indeed speaks of remembrance, but He also says says that this bread is "given up for you". That "for you" cannot refer to anything but salvation. And St. Paul writes that the Eucharist can condemn (1 Cor. 11:29-30), so presumably it can save also, and of course Jesus in John 6 is very emphatic that the Eucharist saves.
I've got to take a break from this. I'll check back tomorrow sometime. Thank you all for your company today.
Christ speaks often in this way, for example, in John 4, speaking literally of water that He would give:
Joh 4:13 Jesus answered and said unto her, Whosoever drinketh of this water shall thirst again: Joh 4:14 But whosoever drinketh of the water that I shall give him shall never thirst; but the water that I shall give him shall be in him a well of water springing up into everlasting life. Joh 4:15 The woman saith unto him, Sir, give me this water, that I thirst not, neither come hither to draw.
And the case that Christ here speaks literally is even stronger, since Christ does not correct her when she took Him literally, even though we, who have followed His teachings throughout the Gospel of John, would understand it as faith.
Thus Christ's language in John 6 is not obscure or weird, and its direct message is even clearer, insomuch that He bothered to explain Himself twice. First, in the command to believe in response to the "how" of eating, and, secondly, in the reminder that the flesh profits nothing, and it is the spirit which profits, thus pointing us again to a spiritual understanding of His words and a spiritual eating accomplished through faith, exactly as Augustine understood it.
Well, one cannot remember without believing, so all these roads lead to salvation.
But the object of faith is in Christ alone, not in the Eucharist, as otherwise you transform Christ's message here from a call to remember His sacrifice on the cross, to a call to be saved by partaking in a ritual, as if this was the central focus and goal of His death and resurrection. Thus the Thief on the cross is damned because, unlike the Apostles, He did not know that the Gospel was all about the Eucharist, and not the Eucharist for the Gospel.
And St. Paul writes that the Eucharist can condemn (1 Cor. 11:29-30), so presumably it can save also, and of course Jesus in John 6 is very emphatic that the Eucharist saves.
The Sacraments are for our spiritual edification, and those who receive them unworthily bring spiritual condemnation upon themselves and the wrath of God. But the source of the condemnation is not in the elements themselves, or in the water of baptism, but in the faithlessness and the sin of the individual who is unworthily receiving. Thus, what condemns is their lack of faith, their false confession, and so it follows then, that the faithlessness that condemns them, if turned to faithfulness, gives them eternal life, and then makes them worthy to receive all of God's sacraments, as they belong to a holy and pure church for our edification.
Sorry; but eating the
is reserved to REMEMBERING the SALVATION from PHYSICAL death in EGYPT. It was eaten; not in a specific place, delievered by a specific person; but in one's own homes.
The Catholic church CHANGED it into a ritual that is performed in a specific place by a specific person with a specific ritual.
AHHHhhh...
I think I see the problem.
But Jesus did not come in to the world to condemn it but to save it.
John 3:16-18 “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him. Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe is condemned already, because he has not believed in the name of the only Son of God.
We are not saved until we are condemned. We are condemned until we're saved.
It's not a matter of finding out when we die if we've been good enough, because God's standard is absolute perfection. One sin in the garden broke Adam and Eve's fellowship with God and caused them to be expelled from the garden, to have death, the penalty for sin, to enter the world.
The world stands already condemned by God until it is saved.
Jesus is emphatic that faith saves and the SPIRIT gives life.
John 1:10-13 He was in the world, and the world was made through him, yet the world did not know him. He came to his own, and his own people did not receive him. But to all who did receive him, who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God, who were born, not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of God.
John 3:14-18 And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes in him may have eternal life. “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him. Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe is condemned already, because he has not believed in the name of the only Son of God.
John 5:24 Truly, truly, I say to you, whoever hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life. He does not come into judgment, but has passed from death to life.
John 6:40 For this is the will of my Father, that everyone who looks on the Son and believes in him should have eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day.”
John 11:25-26 Jesus said to her, “I am the resurrection and the life. Whoever believes in me, though he die, yet shall he live, and everyone who lives and believes in me shall never die. Do you believe this?”
John 6:63 It is the Spirit who gives life; the flesh is no help at all. The words that I have spoken to you are spirit and life.
HE says RIGHT HERE, in the same chapter 6 that Catholics love to quote, that He's speaking in a metaphor.