Christ — The Meal We Eat By Faith

John 6:35 (NASB1995) says, “35 Jesus said to them, ‘I am the bread of life; he who comes to Me will not hunger, and he who believes in Me will never thirst.’”[1] When Jesus describes Himself as the bread of life in this passage, two things should come to mind: (1) the concept of desire, and (2) the concept of satisfaction.

As it pertains to desire, we have fleshly desires that we can relate to, such as thirst and hunger, and we seek out satisfaction for those desires by eating food and drinking beverages. For example, if you skipped lunch one day because you were very busy, by the time you make it to dinner, you are going to be very hungry. If your spouse has you a plate of steak and potatoes and a glass of sweet tea, you are going to greatly hunger for that food and thirst for that tea. You are going to greatly desire them. And once you eat that steak, dig into those potatoes, and drink that tea, your hunger and thirst will finally be satisfied. The very fact that you even have hunger and thirst reveals to you that there is something that can satisfy those desires; otherwise, why would those desires exist? What would you even be longing for?

Let’s suppose, for a moment, that you live in an alternate universe, where humans do not need to eat or drink anything to survive, they can simply absorb energy from the sun and nutrients from the air to feed themselves, and let’s suppose (for the sake of this analogy) that there isn’t any edible food or drinkable water on this alternate planet in which you live. Existing in this condition, as a human having the same basic design as those in our universe, you would still be programmed to have the feeling of hunger and thirst, even though there is no food or water available to eat or drink. It would be very strange to live in a world like this, where you have hunger and thirst, but in which there is nothing to eat or drink to satisfy those desires. If you lived in that universe, you would be longing for something that can’t be found, but you would know that the satisfaction for those longings must exist somewhere else in your universe, or perhaps in another universe, for why would there be such a strong desire for things that do not exist at all in any universe? You would at the very least think that at some point, perhaps in the ancient history of your people, there was something available on your planet that could satisfy those desires for hunger and thirst, and somehow, your species had adapted away from those tangible food and water sources. The desire that remained in you might be considered a vestigial desire; it was once needed but perhaps is no longer needed for survival, yet it still remains. So even though your species moved to a new source of energy for survival, the remnant desire for the old energy source remains in you, and this is evidence of something that either currently exists somewhere, or once existed.

C.S. Lewis said it this way, “If I find in myself desires which nothing in this world can satisfy, the only logical explanation is that I was made for another world.”[2]

So this hunger and thirst that we have for food and water is similar to a hunger and thirst that we can have for God, and just like we can eat food and drink water to satisfy our hunger and thirst, we can seek Christ, who can satisfy our hunger and thirst for righteousness. We actually find ourselves in the previously described situation: we are in an alternate universe. We have a strong longing for something spiritual, but there isn’t anything around us, materially speaking, that can satisfy our spiritual hunger and thirst.

But thankfully, there is another realm. There is Someone there who can satisfy our spiritual hunger and thirst. He is a personal being, and His name is Jesus, Messiah, Lord of the Universe, and He can be our friend and our God. He is the substance who fulfills our spiritual desire for righteousness and our desire to have a right relationship with God.
 
Now, does everyone desire God? Does everyone have a genuine spiritual hunger and thirst for God and for His righteousness?

Thus far, it seems that I (and Lewis) have implied that everyone in the world has this deep desire for God, but I think that’s an oversimplification of what has been stated, and really, it’s a conflation of void and desire.

Humans were designed to have a relationship with God in the beginning, it’s a part of our design as relational beings oriented to have a relationship with Him, but due to our fall, that relationship was severed, and a void is now present in all of us at birth. To the person who does not have God, when they are left to themselves -- without God’s grace, His Spirit, or His Holy Word -- they do not desire, hunger, or thirst for Him, because they do not have ears to hear Him or eyes to see Him when they are spiritually dead. However, these individuals do in fact desire to fill the void at the core of their design. So, the unregenerate person is left in a strange place: since they are spiritually dead, they cannot act in a way so as to properly fill this void, but they do want to fill the void, so, they pursue all sorts of foolish things that can never satisfy them.

And we see in the Scriptures that a natural man does not even accept the things of the Spirit of God (1st Corinthians 2:14); I find it odd to say that all people have a deep desire for God when they (without God’s grace) will not even accept the things of Him. If I had a deep desire for coffee, and someone offered me delicious hot coffee, of course I would accept it, I would receive it with gladness! But if I did not have a desire for that beverage, I would not accept it — this is what we see with the natural man when he is without divine intervention, when left in his totally spiritually dead status, He does not even want the things of God, so he does not accept the things of God. And since we do not naturally have a properly oriented desire for God, we seek substitutes to fill the void that is within us, a void left from the remnant of where He once resided in the design of the first Adam.

Christ confirms that it is only if we believe on Him that we will “never thirst”. As long as we continue to trust in substitutes for Him, as long as we continue to believe and trust in other things, we will continue to be unsatisfied, and we will continue to deeply long to fill the void within us.

Paul says in 1st Timothy 6:17, “Instruct those who are rich in this present world not to be conceited or to set their hope on the uncertainty of riches, but on God, who richly supplies us with all things to enjoy.” And in Proverbs 11:28 we read, “One who trusts in his riches will fall, But the righteous will flourish like the green leaf.”

It is only in trusting God through Christ’s righteousness that we can experience goodness and satisfaction, everything else, all the riches of the world, come infinitely short of measuring up to the righteousness of God Himself, especially in comparison to His grace, when it is richly bestowed on us in and through His Son. When we experience a renewed fellowship with God through His Son, we finally see how foolish every other pursuit of our life has been. To God be the glory that any lost sinner is ever awakened from the drunkenness of worldly riches!

Now, the phrase “never thirst” seems to imply that this thirst is present in everyone Christ is speaking to, as we read in John 6:35, “Jesus said to them, ‘I am the bread of life; he who comes to Me will not hunger, and he who believes in Me will never thirst.” However, we see a specification prior to the phrase never thirst when Christ says “he who comes to Me” and “he who believes in Me” -- in other words, He is saying it is these who come to Him whose hunger and thirst will be satisfied, and we see that all of these people in this discussion throughout this passage, who are effectively drawn by the Father (John 6:44), do in fact come to Him, as verse 37 says, “All that the Father gives Me will come to Me, and the one who comes to Me I will certainly not cast out.” It is those drawn by the Father (John 6:44) and gifted to the Son (John 6:39) who come to the Son (John 6:37), they will be saved by His grace, raised up by Him (John 6:39-40), and deeply and forever satisfied in Him (John 6:35).

These individuals who do not come to Christ for satisfaction either (1) do not have a desire for God, or (2) do not have a properly oriented desire for God (i.e., they may seek spiritual things but not the things of the true Spirit of God). Since Christ throughout this passage seems to be referring to the application of God’s various graces to the elect, I find it hard to see how the non-elect would have this great and properly oriented desire. And even for the elect, the initiation of that properly-oriented desire will occur at a certain time and place, and that of God’s choosing, by the efficacious work of His Word, Spirit, and call, and these graces of God precede the individual’s proper trusting and pursuit of God.

But clearly, all people are searching for something deeper to fill this void within them. Some of us set our hope on money, we trust the power of a number for our security and our peace, while others set their hope on material possessions, or maybe even other human beings. All of these substitutes for Christ inevitably lead to disappointments. As demonstrated, while we are in our natural condition, while we are seeking substitutes, we are not seeking God, for Paul tells us what the natural man’s condition is in Romans 3:11, “There is none who understands, There is none who seeks for God.” No one seeks Him without Him. That is the beauty and power of God’s drawing. That is why we can’t even boast when we finally, by His grace, seek Him. We only sought Him because He first sought us. We only love Him because He first loved us. God is the cause of all that is good.

If a person had a deep desire for God without God's intervention, then it seems they would all be seeking Him, they would all be seeking satisfaction for that desire, but they do not seek Him, they seek everything but Him. Scripturally, this makes perfect sense, because the spiritually dead person (Ephesians 2:5) cannot exercise their will to do anything spiritually positive (Romans 8:7-8), and since their minds are set on the flesh in this condition (Romans 8:5-9), they do not know how to properly fill the void that is within them. And we see this play out in people who seem to like everything except God’s truth, especially when we observe the unity of anti-Christian movements that have nothing in common other than their hatred for Christ.

It is Christ who says that He is the way and the truth and the life (John 14:6). This man, our Messiah (who is also God), is telling us who He is for us, and yet, we naturally seek every falsehood to place our trust in except Him — the only One who can actually satisfy us. Interestingly, after Christ says in John 18:37 that “Everyone who is of the truth hears My voice,” Pilate responds with what is to be expected in those whose mind is set on the flesh, “What is truth?”

They do not recognize it because they do not want it, and they don’t even know what it is that they need to fill the void within them.

So what do we do with these truths? Do we give up?

Not at all, we fervently pray that God will intervene in the fleshly minds and stony hearts of the lost people we minister to. By name we pray for them, with outpouring hearts we pray for them, for with Christ and only with Him are all things possible, and with Him only can they be awakened to their foolishness. And when He does intervene, when He draws, oh what a glorious sight it will be to behold, since it will be efficacious!

When we shift our thinking from the idea that we must convince people of God so that we can somehow save them, to understanding that God is the one who does the work in them, it changes who we are trusting in for their conversion. When we realize that God has the power, authority, and free will to save; then we can plead with Him to save those whom we are ministering to. While He commands us to share the Gospel with others, to love them, to pray for them, and to baptize them, we should never think that we are the power, we are only a vessel by which His Spirit works.

So at the beginning, all lost sinners must first be awakened by God.

And when the lost person is awakened by the Lord, that is when the proper orientation to fill the void is acquired; that is when the proper desire is established. Once a person is oriented in the right direction -- through the hearing of the Gospel and the work of the Holy Spirit -- then, the proper solution will be desired, and all the things the unregenerate sinner once sought to fill that void in their lives will finally and forever be revealed for the foolishness that they were. This is a type of grace, this is a gift from God, that a proper desire for Him would ever be established in a fallen, rebellious son of Adam. What a gift that any lost sinner would ever be awakened from their unceasing fixation on the pursuits of the flesh!

So Jesus, when He uses this analogy of eating and drinking, He is revealing to us not only that there can be a right-oriented spiritual desire, but also that He is the One who will satisfy that desire -- He is the solution, and we were designed to have Him. We were created to be in perfect unity with Him, and for our forms to be without sin. God was to be our friend, our Lord, and our Master. As a part of that mysterious relationship, we were also to have intimacy with God; this is why we see the Bible compare our relationship with Him to a marriage. Marriages are special relationships of trust, commitment, and intimacy, and God desires these qualities with His people. Of course, these will be experienced in different ways with God than in earthly marriages, but nonetheless, our earthly marriages are reflections of the deep, exhilarating tenderness of what we will one day have with God in Heaven.

In the garden, Adam and Eve lost that closeness with God because of their sin, but since they were still designed to have a relationship with Him, they and all their descendants have been left with this void. We are now born as incomplete creatures. The Greek word that is often translated as “save” in the New Testament is σῴζω (sōzō), and it can have a number of meanings depending on context. It is often used as an all-encompassing expression of salvation, but it can also mean for someone to be “made whole”. And it is true that without Him we are lacking, we are incomplete, and in the elect of God, there will one day be a desire, an awakening of their spirit to the proper solution, an awakening to Jesus -- the King of the Universe, the image of the invisible God, and the exact representation of His nature (Colossians 1:15; Hebrews 1:3) -- and He will satisfy them completely. He will make them whole again.

I think Christ best summarizes what I have tried to say in many words with only a few. Matthew 5:6 says, “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be satisfied.” Those who truly desire God, who hunger and thirst for Him, they will be satisfied by Him, because they will come to Him seeking that satisfaction, He will not turn them away, and He will resurrect them on the last day (John 6:35-44). If everyone hungers and thirsts for righteousness, then why would Christ even mention this as the prerequisite for those who will be satisfied? Clearly, this is a special blessing to truly have a properly oriented desire for God.

Now, when Jesus describes this situation to us in John, He strangely says that He, as the bread of life, satisfies thirst. But how can bread satisfy thirst?

In John 6:35, it doesn't seem to fit with what He is discussing. He first uses bread to describe Himself, but then he immediately shifts gears and mentions that He will satisfy thirst. Why would someone use bread as an example of something that satisfies thirst?

John Calvin provides a thoughtful explanation in his commentary:

"Shall never thirst. This appears to be added without any good reason; for the office of bread is not to quench thirst, but to allay hunger. Christ therefore attributes to bread more than its nature allows. I have already said, that he employs the word bread alone because it was required by the comparison between the manna and the heavenly power of Christ, by which our souls are sustained in life. At the same time, by the word bread, he means in general all that nourishes us, and that according to the ordinary custom of his nation. For the Hebrews, by the figure of speech called synecdoche, use the word bread for dinner or supper; and when we ask from God our daily bread, (Matthew 6:11,) we include drink and all the other parts of life. The meaning therefore is, 'Whoever shall betake himself to Christ, to have life from him, will want nothing, but will have in abundance all that contributes to sustain life.'"

So once we take of Christ, once we eat of that bread, we no longer hunger or thirst, because we experience the ultimate satisfaction for our souls in every manner. That is what Christ is revealing to us.

As pertains to our flesh, we have a bad habit of constantly pursuing the next greatest thing. Bigger phones, shinier cars, and bigger investments with larger returns. We eat more and more food, indulge in sweeter and sweeter treats, and the cycle never ends. There will always be something we perceive as better, and we will never be satisfied in this endless pursuit of worldliness. Thankfully, this isn’t the same situation with God. He is supremely righteous and Holy, perfectly loving and perfectly just, and through His Son we find everything we could ever want or need, because there is nothing greater than God.

Notice Calvin’s use of the word Synecdoche; this is a figure of speech in which a part is made to represent the whole or vice versa; here, Christ clearly exemplifies this in a way relatable to the Hebrews, who often would use the word bread to mean the whole meal. Everything we love and savor from supper would simply be called bread by the Hebrews -- the butter, the meat, the wine, the honey, the water, and the bread. Hence, we see why the phrase was used by Christ when He taught us how to pray, give us this day our daily bread -- this is a prayer for God to meet all our daily needs, not just to provide us with food. In Christ, we have all the spiritual good that we could ever want or need, all that sustains life, and all of it in abundance.

As a side note, from a scientific perspective, what we eat becomes a part of our bodies. When we eat bread, it is broken down in our bodies, the nutrients are then absorbed into our blood, and those nutrients are transported to our tissues. In our cells, those same nutrients are used to actually repair them and build new cells when needed. So from a material perspective, you literally are what you eat. From a spiritual perspective, in Christ Jesus, when we take of Him as our spiritual bread, He becomes a part of us. He dwells in us, repairs us, saves us, makes us whole again, and even produces new qualities in us. So we see from multiple perspectives, experiencing Christ is like experiencing a satisfying meal.
 
Do we physically eat the bread of life?
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We do not physically eat Jesus. Christ describing Himself as the bread of life (John 6:35) and saying later on that people must eat His flesh and drink His blood, is a way to use a physical symbol to teach us a spiritual truth. We see this by what is produced in us when we eat of His flesh and drink of His blood. John 6:53-58 says:
 
53 So Jesus said to them, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink His blood, you have no life in yourselves. 54 He who eats My flesh and drinks My blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day. 55 For My flesh is true food, and My blood is true drink. 56 He who eats My flesh and drinks My blood abides in Me, and I in him. 57 As the living Father sent Me, and I live because of the Father, so he who eats Me, he also will live because of Me. 58 This is the bread which came down out of heaven; not as the fathers ate and died; he who eats this bread will live forever.”
 
Christ compares Himself, being the bread of life, to the bread that came down out of heaven to the Israelites. Clearly, He is using that physical bread that sustained their physical bodies to represent Him as a source of spiritual bread that will sustain them spiritually. For when He mentions what happens as a result of eating Him, we see that we will “live forever”; He certainly does not mean that we will physically live forever on this Earth as a result of carving into Jesus’ physical body and physical blood, but rather that spiritually, in the presence of God, we will live forever when we place our faith in Him.

When I look at the Lord’s Supper, I am inclined to see it in a similar way. We see this meal depicted in Luke 22:19-20:

19 And when He had taken some bread and given thanks, He broke it and gave it to them, saying, “This is My body which is given for you; do this in remembrance of Me.” 20 And in the same way He took the cup after they had eaten, saying, “This cup which is poured out for you is the new covenant in My blood.”
 
I think it is perfectly reasonable to see the establishment of this sacrament as a way to symbolize the spiritual work that was accomplished through the destruction of Christ’s body, through the spilling of His blood, and through the bearing of such a tremendous heap of sin on His shoulders. I do not mean to dismiss the additional view of Catholics -- or the view of many great saints in history -- who have believed that Christ is somehow physically present when we take of the Lord’s Supper, but I must see it for what it conservatively represents: the bread is the sacrifice of Christ’s body, and the wine is the blood that was spilt to establish the “new covenant”. This is what He did for us, and we do this to remember Him (Luke 22:19).

The focus on the physical presence of Christ in the bread and wine, that they somehow undergo transubstantiation, may cause us to miss the actual point of all of Christ’s discussions pertaining to the eating and drinking of Him. The holy ceremony itself, while deserving of deep reverence and routine observance, is not (at least primarily) meant to be a physical eating and drinking of Jesus’ literal flesh and blood, but to remind us that through Christ and through what He did in His crucifixion, we can be made righteous in God’s eyes when we place our faith in Him. When we place our faith in Christ, we drink His blood and eat His flesh, He dwells in us, makes us whole again, and saves us from the wrath of God. I think when we become hyper focused on whether Christ is physically present in the bread and wine, we can miss the main reason Christ established this sacrament.

The Catechism of the Catholic Church tells us in reference to the presence of Christ in the Eucharist, “It is the conversion of the bread and wine into Christ’s body and blood that Christ becomes present in this sacrament.”[4]

While we could debate whether Scripture warrants the Catholic position, or whether it depicts Christ spiritually present rather than physically present, I will have to save that for another article, for I could not briefly address that question here. But I would like to share a quote from a Charle's Spurgeon sermon that summarizes the meaning of the Lord's Supper, and one that I think most Christians could agree with:

"Just in passing, notice that it is bread that they eat, and it is wine that they drink; nothing is said about transubstantiation here; but “as often as ye eat this bread,” — and it is bread, and nothing but bread, — “and drink this cup,” which still remains but a cup, and its contents just what they were before, — “ye do shew the Lord’s death till he come.”

"This will suffice upon the words of the text; and, now, the doctrine that I want to draw from it is that, at all times when, we come to the communion table, we show the death of Christ. That is the great end and object of the Lord’s supper — to set forth — to tell out anew — to proclaim afresh the death of our Lord Jesus Christ."[5]

The point I seek to make here is that the Lord's supper proclaims what Christ did to establish the New Covenant with us. It proclaims His sacrifice for our sins. And the way by which we enter into that New Covenant relationship with Him is by faith -- this is the means by which we are declared righteous in His eyes.

So this is how we partake of His flesh and blood unto justification, we have faith in Him through what He did. It is not that we must eat Jesus' literal flesh and blood to inherit justification in God's eyes, for that's definitely not what He means in John 6. For Christ says it is by drinking His blood and eating His flesh that our desire for righteousness in God's eyes can finally be satisfied. He specifies in John exactly how we will never thirst in that particular manner again. He clearly says that our thirst is satisfied by believing in Him.

I think Christians can get too focused on the literality and physicality of the sacraments. We ask ourselves, does Christ actually become the bread and wine? Does baptism have to be submersion or can it be pouring? Must infants be baptized? While these are very important questions that should be debated, we do need to understand the purpose of them and what they represent first and foremost. I think sometimes we miss the symbol for the practice. I think often times we agree on the symbolism and the spiritual nature of the ceremony, although we might disagree on how they are to be practiced and the physical understanding of them.

With the Jews, they were so focused on Christ’s literal words and what they physically represented that they missed what He was trying to tell them spiritually and symbolically. We see this in John 6:52, “52 Then the Jews began to argue with one another, saying, ‘How can this man give us His flesh to eat?’” While Jesus does in fact answer their arguing by reiterating that they should in fact eat His flesh and drink His blood; we must remember, these words are to be understood in the proper context in which they were framed by Jesus to begin with. Christ starts this whole message about bread in John 6:35, and specifies that it is those who believe in Him who are satisfied by the bread. That signifies that the means by which we consume Him is through faith. The Jews actually needed to recognize the void in their souls, they needed to repent and pray for a hunger and thirst for righteousness, and they needed to seek the satisfaction for properly-oriented desires in Christ alone.
 
To eat the bread of life, we trust in Jesus.

Romans 10:9 (NASB1995) tells us, “9 that if you confess with your mouth Jesus as Lord, and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved; 10 for with the heart a person believes, resulting in righteousness, and with the mouth he confesses, resulting in salvation.”

Here we see more detail of what partaking of Jesus spiritually looks like. We confess that He is our Lord, our ultimate Master, and we believe that God raised Him from the dead, and this results in our inheritance of grace, God’s gift of salvation. Of course, this experience is like eating a satisfying meal, but it is not literally eating a satisfying meal. When we experience Jesus, it will feel like we have had all the wonderful parts of a good meal, and the deep satisfaction in our soul will feel like cool water running down to our core.

Thus, you could say that faith is the plate that allows us to hold and indulge in the all-satisfying meal of Jesus Christ.
 
How can we know for sure if we have taken and eaten of the bread of life?

Directly, Jesus says we will never thirst if we have believed in Him (if we have taken of the bread). And in John 6:40, Christ says that all who believe in Him will have eternal life and will one day be raised up. So if we have taken of this bread, our thirst for justification (being declared righteous in the eyes of God) has been quenched. So you must ask yourself, has my thirst for justification been quenched?

One issue in answering this question honestly for a genuine believer is that in one sense, we feel as though our thirst has been quenched, yet, in another sense there remains a great spiritual desire for God. This is normal and to be expected. In one sense, we are immediately satisfied because we are justified in the eyes of God; however, in another sense, we have a continual lifetime desire for relationship with God. Not only does that desire for a relationship never disappear, but it often grows stronger throughout our sanctification. And in a tertiary and unfortunate manner, we often struggle with doubts, and these create a perception in our mind and heart that can be misaligned with reality. Our hearts can be deceitfully wicked.

With regards to our moment of satisfaction in our justification, we can see why this is so satisfying to our souls. Before we placed our faith in Christ, we had to first recognize our need for Christ. We knew that we had truly sinned against a Holy God, and as a result of that sin, as a result of violating His Covenant of Works, we deserved a just penalty -- namely, death. But in Christ’s crucifixion, the just punishment for our crimes were paid in full, being fulfilled through His blood. Thus, His sacrifice fulfilled and completely satisfied the Law’s requirement that every sin be punished; so our desire to experience that justification is something that we deeply longed for, and when we placed our faith in Christ, we got to experience the full satisfaction of it. Now, this is not the only thirst satisfied at the moment of faith, in conjunction with Jesus’ sacrifice, there is also the requirement of the Law for perfect moral obedience, that must also be satisfied, and that was also accomplished by Jesus’ perfect obedience to the Law of God and is thus supplied to us in our moment of faith through Him. Therefore, the twofold requirements of the Law -- (1) perfect moral obedience, and (2) a perfect sacrifice for sin -- are both supplied to us in Christ Jesus. We could never have been a perfect sacrifice for our sins because we were already blemished with sin, and we could never have been perfectly obedient as a condition for life because we are naturally disobedient slaves to sin. Since these two requirements that we could never accomplish on our own were accomplished in Christ alone, we rejoice with great satisfaction, for Christ did all of this for us, so that we can gracefully and actually be justified in Him. So, in this sense, if we have taken of the meal of Christ by faith, we don’t have to hunger and thirst anymore for justification in the eyes of God.

But as pertains to the other subject, to our ongoing hunger and thirst, there is a new life we live once we have faith in Christ, and in this new life, we see that Jesus continually satisfies our continual longing for a personal relationship with God. So we must continually seek Him for that satisfaction if we wish to maintain such resultant joy and peace. So even after our justification, there remains a thirst to consume Him daily; that is the desire that is not completely quenched, but can be, moment by moment, when we seek His face and His presence. Likewise, it is lacking moment by moment when we turn away from His presence and go our own way.

So how can we, throughout our lifetime, somehow find continuous satisfaction for such a constant desire?

By faith we pray, we read the Word, and we do good works. These actions -- and they are real conscious actions! -- help satisfy that desire deep within the reborn of God for a relationship with Him, but as soon as we wander, as soon as we break from pursuing Him, we will feel emptied, and we need once again to rest in the arms of the Savior. Often times, it is when we are in a state of neglecting Christ as our source of relationship and daily spiritual bread that we begin to doubt our justification. But it is often a misapprehension of another desire, that of continual relationship with God, not of being declared righteous in the sight of God. For the Scriptures are clear that once we are justified, once we are saved, we are His forevermore and can never be removed from His hand (John 10:27-30).

So how can we know if we have truly taken and eaten of Christ? How can we know if the breaking of His body and the spilling of His blood has been applied to us through faith? Well, ask yourself this: has my hunger and thirst for righteousness been quenched?
If it has not been quenched, then trust in Him today, and let it be quenched!

Through His righteousness and through His obedience we find life, and that life we gain in Him demonstrates the infinite contrast between Christ and us, for in us there is only spiritual death, and in Him there is only life. So do not attempt to be justified on the basis of your own righteousness and your own obedience, you can have none of that apart from Him.

If you are still hungry for justification in the eyes of God, come take of the meal of Christ by faith, and never thirst again. Our hearts yearn for God through His call on us, His call for us to confess our sins, to change our minds, to shift our focus from trusting in ourselves (and our filthy dead works) to His Son and His works. Oh, Lord, give us the strength to trust in your Son as the only source of perfection, the only source of atonement, the only source of obedience, and the only source of true righteousness. Only You can restore to our spirit what has been incomplete from birth. Jesus, King of the Universe, feed us with you, the all-satisfying bread of life.
 
Cite: Faucett, D. (2025). Christ -- the Meal We Eat by Faith. Science Faith and Reasoning. Retrieved from: https://www.scifr.com/articles/christ-the-meal-we-eat-by-faith 
 
References:
1.For the Reformed breakdown of this passage as it pertains to the bread of life, see Episode 4: The Bread of Life from the Coffee with John Calvin Podcast: https://creators.spotify.com/pod/show/daniel-faucett1/episodes/John-635-The-Bread-of-Life--ep--004-e2m6lsq
2.Lewis, C.S. (1952) Mere Christianity. Retrieved from: https://www.goodreads.com/work/quotes/801500-mere-christianity
3.Calvin, J. (1553). John 6 - Calvin’s Commentaries on the Bible. Study Light. https://www.studylight.org/commentaries/eng/cal/john-6.html
4.Catechism of the Catholic Church 1375. (n.d.). https://www.usccb.org/sites/default/files/flipbooks/catechism/348/ 
5. Spurgeon, C.H. (September 2, 1877). The Object of the Lord’s Supper. The Spurgeon Center. https://www.spurgeon.org/resource-library/sermons/the-object-of-the-lords-supper/#flipbook/