The Sustenance of Life
William John Hocking
Table of Contents
The Sustenance of Life: Part 1
Notes of an Address on John 6:47-63
In the previous chapter of John's Gospel we have the subject of the source of life; in the one before us the subject is the sustenance of that life. In point of its origin eternal life is the gift of God through our Lord Jesus Christ; but after its reception by the believer, comes the question of its maintenance and development. Life eternal in its heavenly range is in contrast with our first life which has its sphere here, its purposes and functions being earthly.
Now we learn in this portion of Scripture that the Son who gives eternal life is also its preserver. There is, therefore, in this fact a strong contrast with the conditions of Eden. Adam was distinct in his life and image from the animals around him, having received his life by the direct inspiration of the Almighty. He was constituted the supreme ruler of terrestrial things, and had free access to the tree of life. The means of preserving his life was, so to speak, in his own hands. But by disobedience he forfeited that life for himself and for his posterity. In contrast with this precarious tenure of life at the beginning the Giver of eternal life is also its Preserver. He bestows eternal life upon His sheep, and He guarantees they shall never perish nor be plucked from His hands.
The believer receives a spark of heavenly life. By the operation of the Spirit of God through the word a new nature is begotten in him—a life not previously possessed. Through this life a link is forged between the man here and the Father in heaven. By its means he is enabled in the power of the Holy Spirit to have conscious dealings with the Father and the Son. The Father's love and interest and guidance and help become to him perpetual realities. These things are known in spite of the weary days, keen sorrows, stern difficulties, searching temptations which oppose the new life and tend to overwhelm it, “things present” threatening to swamp things spiritual.
POWER NEEDED TO SUSTAIN LIFE
How then are we to make progress when we are in possession of eternal life? How is it to be kept secure and active? A great enemy presents counter-attractions and influences from without. There are evil passions smoldering within. There is opposition from every quarter. But we are instructed in this connection that divine love has provided efficient means for the maintenance of this life.
Indeed the same gracious loving Person who imparts eternal life supports and sustains it. It is by Him that the new life grows and develops. By Him it becomes vigorous and displays new traits of a heavenly character. Through energy supplied by Him the believer rises triumphant over his old self. Like Paul he can say, “Nevertheless I live, yet not I, but Christ liveth in me.” For the believer is placed in possession of this divine life that it may manifest itself in thoughts, motives, words and deed, which resemble Christ's.
A person having life eternal walks through this world reflecting the life of Christ. How is this effected? Some say by a course of rigid self-discipline whereby a man may rid himself of his evil dispositions; having ground down the old nature, the new shines out. But it is not so stated here. It is by feeding upon Christ that the eternal life is developed into strength and activity.
THE PASCHAL LAMB ROAST WITH FIRE
In connection with the subject of the appropriation of the Person of Christ as a means of sustenance for the spiritual life of the believer, the Lord refers to the miraculous manner in which the children of Israel were fed in the wilderness by the manna which came down from heaven. But food was provided for them at the commencement of their journey as well as during its progress. There was the paschal lamb for the chosen people before the manna came down from heaven.
The ceremony at the Passover included more than the blood on the door-posts. This was essential for the security of the people, since “without the shedding of blood there is no remission of sins.” By the blood, therefore, Israel was protected from the judgment which fell upon Egypt. Though in the vicinity death was ravaging every household the blood of the lamb secured divine preservation wherever it was sprinkled. And during the night watches the saved people were invited to make a meal upon the carcass of the lamb roast with fire. By this means they were to acquire strength for setting out upon their new journey to the promised land. When they subsequently reached the desert and still required food God gave them manna. And both the lamb and the manna are types of Christ.
The lamb roast with fire typifies our Lord in His atoning death. Fire is a frequent emblem of judgment. And the Israelite was thereby reminded that the judgment of Jehovah which brought death to the Egyptians fell upon the sacrifice of which they were invited to partake. It was particularly specified that the paschal lamb was not to be eaten raw nor boiled; it was to be roasted. The reason for this stipulation is clearly because in this manner only could it set forth the sacrifice of the Lord Jesus Christ as the Victim who endured God's avenging judgment against sin.
The initial food prescribed for the Israelites as pilgrims was, therefore, the roast paschal lamb. The Christian should begin there also. Many persons affect a regard for the Lord Jesus Christ altogether apart from His atoning death. He is to them a great teacher, a martyr, a political sufferer, but not a Vicarious Victim. And those who degrade the Lord's death in this manner can never derive any soul-strength from it. They lack the faith which appropriates the lamb roast with fire.
Hence the only accession of strength for the new life is gained by first feeding upon the slain lamb. In Him sin as an evil principle was judged by the fire of God: “He who knew no sin was made sin for us” (2 Cor. 5:21). And sin is the cause of the believer's weakness, so far as experience goes. From indwelling sin spring evil desires. But the Holy One was “made sin.” And in His death all that a believer was as a descendant of Adam was atoned for and judged. This is the secret of deliverance from its power.
We are not commanded to eradicate the inward sinful will. It has received its utter condemnation. This truth is foreshadowed in the type of the paschal lamb, and the apprehension of this aspect of the death of Christ is a source of spiritual strength.
THE MANNA
We may speak of the paschal lamb as the believer's food in a negative sense, since it shows us that the old nature is not a source of power for Christian walk, it being judged and set aside as irreparably evil. In a similar way, it may be said in typical language that the manna is a source of strength in a positive sense. For from the living Christ Himself we obtain direct supplies of energy for the pilgrim journey.
The manna represents the Lord who came into this world from above. He is the bread of God which came down from heaven. And while here He spoke of Himself as the “Son of man who is in heaven.” It is important to remember that in the life of the Lord we have what is different from the lives of all mankind besides. He only of all men came down from heaven. This fact gave a character to His humble and dependent conduct such as was never seen before. The governing principle of the most elevated human conduct is an aim to do what is becoming to man. The familiar expression, “Be a man,” embodies this idea. To be noble and dignified and truthful, to copy the salient characteristics of the world's successful men is the general ambition of the more thoughtful and earnest of mankind. But such aims, however laudable and proper they may be in themselves, are not essentially Christian conduct. Living the eternal life is the consequence of feeding upon the humbled Man in whom the life of heaven was displayed below.
The contemplation of Christ is the true inspiration for the walk of the faithful believer. In Him we have the Son of God incarnate in an evil world. Once and again the glory of the Godhead emerged momentarily through the veil of flesh. Upon the mount His countenance was transfigured before His disciples, and a Voice from the overshadowing cloud proclaimed, “This is my beloved Son in Whom I am well pleased; hear him.”
We see that glory exhibited again in the sudden stilling of the tempest with a word. Further, there was a display of His essential glory at the grave of Lazarus, according to His own word to Martha, “Said I not unto thee, that, if thou wouldest believe, thou shouldest see the glory of God?” (John 11:40).
From these incidents we learn that a divine Person was present, capable of exerting infinite power in His own right, yet withal meek, lowly, humble, gentle, to an incomparable degree. The voice that silenced the howling storm checked the widow's tears and blessed the helpless babe. This is the Christ upon whom we are to feed as the origin and the renewal of our spiritual strength. There is no need to seek the ideals of poetry and philosophy. We have the noblest of examples, a divine Exemplar. God Himself as Man shows us the ideal life. With Him before us our emulation will be rightly directed.
(To be continued)
The Sustenance of Life: Part 2
(Concluded from page 266)
CHRIST IN DEATH
Without food we lose strength. Our food is Christ Himself. But we go on to observe that spiritual nutrition is obtained in more than one manner. We read of feeding upon Christ as the manna, that is, upon Christ as the Incarnate Son of God. But we are also called to partake of His flesh and His blood: “Except ye eat the flesh of the Son of man, and drink his blood, ye have no life in you” (ver. 53). This to the natural mind is a mysterious statement, as some said upon hearing it, “How can this man give us his flesh to eat?” And to drink His blood was even more startling; for they knew this was an express prohibition under the law of Moses. Yet the Lord spoke definitely of eating His flesh and drinking His blood, and moreover, was emphatic in stating its necessity. Apart from it, He said, “Ye have no life in you.”
Now it is evident that while manna, the bread from heaven, has special reference to the life of Christ, the flesh and the blood must refer to His death. Blood circulating in the body is essential to life, while apart from the body it offers evidence of death. Hence when the soldier pierced the side of the crucified Lord, the issuing blood and water proved that death was there. Upon this witness Roman justice concluded that the legal sentence had been satisfactorily executed, and the same evidence appealed, but differently, to the sorrowing apostles and those with them.
Sacrificially, it is the blood that makes atonement for the soul. The sin of man constituted an impassable barrier between the perfect life of Jesus and the life of the best of men. But the sacrifice of Christ was the judicial end of the natural man, and therefore forms the means whereby the believer can enter into and appropriate the life of Christ which He displayed here below.
As a matter of history we find that not until the death of Christ was the characteristic life of Jesus in any sense reproduced in His followers. The incompatibility of the life of the disciples in its springs of action with that of their Master is frequently to be observed in the Gospels. In this chapter, for instance, we find that many were unable to walk with Him any longer. They were those who accompanied the Lord, heard His words, and witnessed His marvelous deeds, yet there was a strange lack of imbibing the Spirit of Christ. See, again, the case of James and John when the Lord sent messengers to a Samaritan village that the inhabitants might receive Him. Upon their refusal these two foremost apostles said, “Lord, wilt thou that we command fire to come down from heaven, and consume them?” (Luke 9:54). The Lord rebuked them, saying, “Ye know not what manner of spirit ye are of. The Son of man is not come to destroy men's lives, but to save them.” But their speech revealed the disparity between their thoughts and motives and those of the Master.
Even at the close of the Lord's ministry this partition wall between their souls and Him had not disappeared. At the last Supper, with all its solemn associations and intimations, it was made clear that the apostles had not taken their Master's yoke upon them. They were not, like Him, meek and lowly in heart; for they quarreled there among themselves who should be the greatest in the coming kingdom. They were seeking for the pre-eminence, and thus showed that they had not fed upon Him who “emptied himself and became a bond-servant.” They had not made His life their own.
The truth is that only through the death of Christ could His life be manifested in His disciples. He came to give His flesh for the life of the world. When His blood was shed, the way was thereby opened for their union and communion with Him. After His resurrection, He breathed upon them that they might receive the Holy Ghost, and be endued, in power, with that new life in the character peculiar to Himself.
It is thus taught that something more than mere acquaintance with the Lord Jesus Christ was necessary to become a faithful witness of Him. There was no union with Him in incarnation, but the link was in His death, and in the life which was beyond death,
THE DISPLAY OF LIFE
This important principle of conduct is not generally recognized. Perhaps the most common form of teaching is that Christian life consists in the study of the glorious example revealed in the Gospels and in meditation upon His words and deeds. But while this is true it is not the whole of the truth, and it is not the truth before us here. For we learn that it is by way of His death that we become associated with His life. And the display of that life is inseparable from eating His flesh and drinking His blood.
The contemplation of the perfections of Christ coupled with the knowledge that they were utterly beyond our attainment in any degree would but plunge us into the mire of dark despair. His perfect example would be but a mockery to us. And apart from His death we could but miserably fail to walk as He walked. But in the knowledge of His death for us and of our death with Him there follows in measure the practical incorporation of His life in ours, Christ dwelling in our hearts by faith.
In the Epistle to the Philippians there is a practical exposition of this manner of life. Paul, the “prisoner of Jesus Christ,” pours forth the Christian experience of his heart. He sets before himself and others the embodiment of the mind of Christ as it was exhibited in this world (chap. 2). This is genuine Christian experience—not as some would have it, the realization of one's inward depravity, and of an ineradicable susceptibility to evil. The latter is the gloomy experience of self, true but not inspiring; it is in no sense the experience of Christ.
This life shining through the apostle's communications to the saints at Philippi takes the character of joy and peace and liberty and delight. This character is the more striking when we remember how all the energy of the writer in self-denying gospel service was frustrated by his protracted imprisonment, while his very chains alienated his fellow-believers from him. But in spite of this suffering and this spiritual privation his personal Christian joy beams forth with exceptional brilliance.
Why was this? It is evidently the result of his own communion with Christ at that time. He was then treading a pathway of suffering in close imitation of his Master who loved and served, and was hated for it.
During the ministry of Christ there was a heart here and there which recognized Him, but this was exceptional. The majority came to hear Him because there was something new, or they came to Him for healing, but there was no heart-exercise, no conscience-work. How did this astonishing apathy appear to the Lord Jesus Christ in whose heart there were supernatural energies of love and life? In His unparalleled service He was cramped and straitened by the obduracy of man, but there was no murmuring, no diminution in the intensity of His love and service for man. He was unchangeably the same. His was a voice, one would think, that would have commanded the fealty of all mankind; but this was not the result of His service. However, in spite of the repulse of His love, He went forward and administered the water of life to a single poor woman at the well. For the Son of God learned obedience in this way, “by the things which he suffered.” But the light of this divine testimony, so perfect in Him, was not extinguished at Calvary: after His resurrection, it shone afresh in the lives of His believing followers, as we may see from the Acts and the Epistles.
THE HABIT OF COMMUNION
But while the Christian pathway commences with the appropriation of Christ in His death, it is necessary for this appropriation to be continued to the end: “Whoso eateth my flesh and drinketh my blood hath eternal life; and I will raise him up at the last day” (ver. 54). This statement looks on to the end of the journey when the ideals of the believer's new life will be realized fully. But this involves the formation of the habit of eating and drinking continuously. There must be the bearing about in the body the dying of the Lord Jesus that the life also of Jesus may be made manifest in our mortal bodies (2 Cor. 4:10). So the Lord said here, “He that eateth my flesh and drinketh my blood dwelleth in me, and I in him” (ver. 56). This implies the practice of this habit.
Here we have two things: (1) our dwelling in Christ, and (2) Christ in us. First, there is dwelling in Christ, which involves unbroken communion with Him, and this it is the privilege of every believer to enjoy. The habit of it is implied by the phraseology—dwelling, abiding; it is not to be intermittent and spasmodic.
Christ Himself walked thus in connection with the Father who sent Him. All circumstances found Him in the fullest heavenly intercourse. It was His meat to do the will of Him who sent Him.
In a similar manner we are called to abide in Christ. Eating in scripture is a figure frequently employed for communion. The peace offering was the particular sacrifice which set forth the communion of Jehovah and of the priestly family and of the people of Israel. The sacrifice itself was dedicated to God, and the fat and the blood were Jehovah's exclusively, while the character of what constituted the portion of the priests and the people was based upon its being a sacrifice, agreeing thus in type with what we have here, viz., that Christian communion is founded upon the death of Christ.
In the New Testament, fellowship is enjoined as an essential feature of Christianity. And there exists a formal expression of this fellowship as well as the inner personal side, the latter being the subject of this chapter. The outward sign is the communion table which the Lord established as the central institution for His own. In meeting together for the purpose of eating bread and drinking wine in commemoration of His death, a visible expression of this fellowship is made by the church.
Again, in Luke 15, the father and the restored son are depicted at the same table, feasting together upon the fatted calf. They have found a common interest, a common joy, and the central feature of this communion is the slain calf, representing, of course, the Lord Jesus in His death, which is the meeting-place of God and the rescued sinner for the holy joy and rest of communion. “We joy in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom we have now received the reconciliation” (Rom. 5:11). Through Him we have constant access into the Father's presence, and have, therefore, fellowship with the Father and the Son.
CHRIST IN US
The necessary corollary to our dwelling in Christ is His abiding in us. If we are in Him for personal peace and joy, He is in us for testimony in the world. Here also we must look to Christ Himself to learn the meaning of the phrase. Let us refer to that occasion when the Lord told His disciples that they knew the Father and had seen Him. Philip expressed incredulous surprise at such a statement, saying, “Lord, show us the Father, and it sufficeth us.” The Lord explained to the apostle His meaning: “He that hath seen me hath seen the Father.... The Father that dwelleth in me, he doeth the works. Believe me that I am in the Father and the Father in me” (John 14:8-11).
In the life of Jesus Christ therefore the Father in His love was communicated to men. Looking at and through Him, so to speak, the realities of heaven were seen. This then was the wonder of that life, though but feebly recognized even by men of faith. For it was the glory of God that the Father should be thus amply displayed. In like manner the believer is called to live the new life, so that Christ, not self, is seen abiding in him.
The power to effect this testimony is obtained by feeding upon Christ. There is no reference in this chapter to the Lord's Supper, which had not been instituted, when the Lord said, “Except ye eat the flesh of the Son of man and drink his blood, ye have no life in you.” This cannot refer to partaking of bread and wine, since the possession of eternal life constitutes the antecedent claim to the commemoration of the Lord's death in the appointed way.
We have here not an occasional, but a continuous and habitual act. It is the quiet appropriation of the beauties and graces of the Lord Jesus Christ. The very contemplation of the Lord of glory is formative, and brings our lives into correspondence with Himself.
This effect is not the result of conscious effort. When food is eaten the necessary assimilation of it by the body is not an act of will. It is a natural process operating automatically. So it is spiritually; we look upon Christ by faith as revealed in the word, and we become like Him. In ordinary life the force of the living example is fully acknowledged. And in the spiritual world it has its powerful influence in molding the Christian character.
In conclusion: the Son who is the only source of life is also its support and maintenance. Our part is to realize by faith the continual presence of the Lord Jesus Christ, who died for our sins, and in proportion to the activity of this faith we shall be changed into the same image.
W. J. H.
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