Crisis in Galilee
327
meat indeed, and My blood is drink indeed. He that eateth My flesh,
and drinketh My blood, dwelleth in Me, and I in him.”
To eat the flesh and drink the blood of Christ is to receive Him as
a personal Saviour, believing that He forgives our sins, and that we are
complete in Him. It is by beholding His love, by dwelling upon it, by
drinking it in, that we are to become partakers of His nature. What
food is to the body, Christ must be to the soul. Food cannot benefit
us unless we eat it, unless it becomes a part of our being. So Christ
is of no value to us if we do not know Him as a personal Saviour. A
theoretical knowledge will do us no good. We must feed upon Him,
receive Him into the heart, so that His life becomes our life. His love,
His grace, must be assimilated.
But even these figures fail to present the privilege of the believer’s
relation to Christ. Jesus said, “As the living Father hath sent Me, and
I live by the Father: so he that eateth Me, even he shall live by Me.”
As the Son of God lived by faith in the Father, so are we to live by
faith in Christ. So fully was Jesus surrendered to the will of God that
the Father alone appeared in His life. Although tempted in all points
like as we are, He stood before the world untainted by the evil that
surrounded Him. Thus we also are to overcome as Christ overcame.
Are you a follower of Christ? Then all that is written concerning
the spiritual life is written for you, and may be attained through uniting
yourself to Jesus. Is your zeal languishing? has your first love grown
[390]
cold? Accept again of the proffered love of Christ. Eat of His flesh,
drink of His blood, and you will become one with the Father and with
the Son.
The unbelieving Jews refused to see any except the most literal
meaning in the Saviour’s words. By the ritual law they were forbidden
to taste blood, and they now construed Christ’s language into a sacri-
legious speech, and disputed over it among themselves. Many even of
the disciples said, “This is an hard saying; who can hear it?”
The Saviour answered them: “Doth this offend you? What and
if ye shall see the Son of man ascend up where He was before? It is
the spirit that quickeneth; the flesh profiteth nothing: the words that I
speak unto you, they are spirit, and they are life.”
The life of Christ that gives life to the world is in His word. It
was by His word that Jesus healed disease and cast out demons; by
His word He stilled the sea, and raised the dead; and the people bore