What does Jesus mean by “unless you eat my flesh and drink my blood” in John 6:53?

 Jesus repeats the truth of v. 51c, but now puts it in a conditional form: unless you can eat the flesh of the Son of Man … you have no life in you. Verse 54 puts the same truth positively, Whoever eats my flesh … has eternal life; and again, Jesus promises to raise such a person up at the last day. In addition to the repetition of a basic theme, several fresh points are added.

(1) The one whose flesh is eaten bears the title the Son of Man (cf. notes on 1:51; in this discourse, vv. 27, 62). In one sense, he is simply a man, i.e. someone with flesh and blood; but he is also the one on whom God has set his seal of approval (v. 27), the bread from heaven, the one who descends and then ascends ‘to where he was before’ (v. 62). ‘Son of Man’ is thus a title that speaks of Jesus as the man where God is supremely revealed, and the flesh of this ‘Son of Man’, unlike the flesh of any other, must be eaten if one is to gain eternal life.

(2) The words and drink his (my) blood are added in v. 53, and repeated in v. 54. The Jews had found Jesus’ statement in v. 51c impenetrable at best, blatantly offensive at worst, but in this expansion Jesus in their view is even more offensive. The law of Moses forbade the drinking of blood, and even the eating of meat with the blood still in it. To drink the blood of the Son of Man was therefore, for them, an intuitively abhorrent notion. The net effect is to make Jesus’ claim all the more scandalous, thereby preparing the way for vv. 61–62 (cf. notes, below). The primary symbolic reference of ‘blood’ in the Bible is not to life but to violent death, i.e. to life violently and often sacrificially ended.²⁰ It would be hard for any reader in the decades immediately after the cross not to think of Jesus’ supreme sacrifice. At the same time, readers living toward the end of the first century, with any awareness of the church’s ritual, might well be disposed to ponder the connection between this utterance and the Lord’s table.

(3) In v. 54 and again in vv. 56, 57, 58, the verb for ‘to eat’ becomes trōgō (as opposed to esthiō, or more precisely its aorist stem phag-, the customary verb found elsewhere in this passage). In earlier Greek, trōgō was used for the munching of (especially herbivorous) animals; from the classical period on, the verb was also used of human beings. Some have taken its presence here as a sign of the literalness of ‘eating’ that occurs in the eucharist. It is far more likely that John injects no new meaning by selecting this verb, but prefers this verb when he opts for the Greek present tense (similarly in 13:18).

If any part of the bread of life discourse has been understood sacramentally, it is these two verses. Before leaping too hastily to this conclusion, however, certain points must be noted (in addition to those discussed in vv. 22ff. and v. 51).

(1) Verses 54 and 40 are closely parallel: ‘Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up at the last day’ (v. 54); ‘… everyone who looks to the Son and believes in him shall have eternal life, and I will raise him up at the last day’ (v. 40). The only substantial difference is that one speaks of eating Jesus’ flesh and drinking Jesus’ blood, while the other, in precisely the same conceptual location, speaks of looking to the Son and believing in him. The conclusion is obvious: the former is the metaphorical way of referring to the latter. Indeed, we have seen that this link is supported by the structure of the entire discourse. Small wonder that Augustine of Hippo wrote, Crede, et manducasti (‘Believe, and you have eaten’).

(2) Moreover, the language of vv. 53–54 is so completely unqualified that if its primary reference is to the eucharist we must conclude that the one thing necessary to eternal life is participation at the Lord’s table. This interpretation of course actually contradicts the earlier parts of the discourse, not least v. 40. The only reasonable alternative is to understand these verses as a repetition of the earlier truth, but now in metaphorical form.

(3) The passage goes on to insist that ‘the flesh counts for nothing’ (v. 63). The verse is not self-evident, but its meaning becomes clear when it is carefully read in its context (cf. notes on vv. 61–63, below). Then what is really scandalous is not the ostensibly ‘cannibalistic’ metaphor, but the cross to which it points.

(4) That John must still add and I will raise him up at the last day (v. 54) proves he does not think that eating the flesh and drinking the blood themselves immediately confer resurrection/immortality. ‘The eater still has to be raised up at the last day; the Eucharist, indeed the spiritual communion also to which it points, is not a recipe for immortality’ (Barrett, Essays, p. 43). This establishes that the view of Ignatius, that the eucharist is the medicine of immortality (if his language is taken at face value: cf. notes on v. 22ff.), is ruled out of court.

None of this means there is no allusion in these verses to the Lord’s table. But such allusions as exist prompt the thoughtful reader to look behind the eucharist, to that to which the eucharist itself points. In other words, eucharistic allusions are set in the broader framework of Jesus’ saving work, in particular his cross-work. 

Moreover, by the repeated stress in this discourse on Jesus’ initiative, no room is left for a magical understanding of the Lord’s table that would place God under constraint: submit to the rite, and win eternal life! Both the feeding miracle and the Lord’s table, rightly understood, parabolically set out what it means to receive Jesus Christ by faith. Both Augustine and Cranmer have it right. The former sees in this passage ‘a figure, enjoining that we should have a share in the sufferings of our Lord, and that we should retain a sweet and profitable memory of the fact that His flesh was wounded and crucified for us’. 

The latter maintains that ‘figuratively he [Christ] is in the bread and wine, and spiritually he is in them that worthily eat and drink the bread and wine; but really, carnally, and corporally he is only in heaven, from whence he shall come to judge the quick and the dead’.

If we assume that the first intended readers of this Gospel were Jews and Jewish proselytes in touch with Christians (cf. Introduction, § VI), this interpretation makes particularly good sense. If such readers know little of this Christian ordinance, John 6 makes sense as it stands. Within the matrix of thought of the Fourth Gospel, which boasts no overt reference to the Lord’s table, the obvious references in this vivid language are to Jesus himself, including his cross-work. If such readers are in rather more intimate contact with Christians, and therefore know more of their rites, then they might well think of the eucharist, but find dispelled in this book any suggestion of mere magic, let alone gory cannibalism, since, whether one begins with the feeding miracle, the words of Jesus or the eucharistic rite, the text drives us back to Jesus and the saving significance of his life and death and life. Indeed, thoughtful Christian readers who might be tempted by untamed magical, mystical or sacramental notions could scarcely fail to learn the same lesson. In short, John 6 does not directly speak of the eucharist; it does expose the true meaning of the Lord’s supper as clearly as any passage in Scripture.

6:55–56. Other foods, including the Old Testament manna, had certain value, but Jesus’ flesh and blood really are food and drink—they are really what food and drink should be in an ideal, archetypical sense (cf. Additional Note). They provide eternal life. Whoever eats and drinks them (in the sense unpacked in the preceding verses), Jesus insists, remains in me, and I in him. That is why his flesh and blood really are food and drink. 

The verb ‘remains’ or ‘abides’ (menō) is important to John, defining not only relationships amongst Father, Son and Holy Spirit (1:32–33; 14:10; 15:10), but between believers and Christ (e.g. 5:38; 8:31; 15:4, 7, 9–10). The mutual indwelling pictured here (theologians call it ‘co-inherence’) is obviously not precisely reciprocal. That the believer remains in Jesus means he or she continues to be identified with Jesus, continues as a Christian (to use a later term), continues in saving faith and consequent transformation of life. That Jesus remains in the believer means that Jesus identifies himself with the believer, but not in reciprocal trust and transformation (that would be absurd) but in help, blessing, life, and personal presence by the Spirit (cf. 14:23–27).cf. Additional Note.

6:57. The Father sent Jesus (cf. notes on 3:17; 20:21), and he is the living Father, the God who has life-in-himself (as in 5:26). This living God, in sending the Son, established that he would also have life-in-himself: the argument is a compressed form of 5:21, 24–27. 

In an analogous way, Jesus says, the one who feeds (trōgō; cf. notes on vv. 53–54) on me (the use of the pronoun me, replacing ‘my flesh’ and ‘my blood’ in v. 56, confirms that the whole person of Christ is in view, not merely eucharistic elements) will live because of me. Jesus lives because of the Father, i.e. because of the Father’s determination that Jesus should have life-in-himself (5:26); those who feed on Jesus live (Jesus says) because of me: there is both parallelism and breach of parallelism. Clearly, they live because of the Son’s determination, but unlike him they never have life-in-themselves, but only in him. For the Christian, eternal life is always mediated through Jesus. However mystical the language of the Fourth Gospel, John cannot imagine any genuine spiritual life that is independent of Jesus.

²⁰ Cf. A. M. Stibbs, The Meaning of the Word ‘Blood’ in Scripture (Tyndale Press, 1947).

²¹ Augustine, In Johan. Tract. xxvi. 1.

Barrett,  Essays C. K. Barrett, Essays on John (SPCK, 1982).

Essays Essays C. K. Barrett, Essays on John (SPCK, 1982).

²² Augustine, On Christian Doctrine iii. 16.

²³ Archbishop Cranmer, A Defence of the True and Catholick Doctrine of the Sacrament (1550, repr. Christian Ministries Trust, 1987), p. 163.

 Carson, D. A. (1991). The Gospel according to John (pp. 296–299). Inter-Varsity Press; W.B. Eerdmans.