FEBRUARY 3RD, 1894

FEBRUARY 3RD, 1894

I am glad to reply to your letter, and to share with you any little light I have on the word. John 6:53-57 is a very interesting passage. I should not say that verse 53 is a sinner eating for salvation. It seems to me that the Lord is showing (while still living on earth) that His death would come as a test, and if not eaten would prove that they had no life in them. I fancy that the first true evidence of life in the Spirit is the appropriation of Christ’s death. It is felt by the soul that it can no longer be in communion with the world in which sin reigns, and in which the flesh finds its life, and it appropriates Christ’s death as that which is morally suitable to itself. It is its suited food — and this appropriation becomes habitual. Then comes the eating Him as the living bread by which I am supported in life outside the course and order of this scene. The flesh and blood seem to me to be more akin to the passover than to the brazen serpent. (See verse 4). I think the prominent idea in it is grace rather than condemnation. It is undoubtedly the privilege, and, as to life, the necessity of every believer, but I fear that many christians know but little of it. Anyway, there can be no eating but in the power of the Spirit of life. The Israelites in Egypt ate the flesh on the night of the passover, but they could not drink the blood. The blood was for God. Now we eat the flesh, and drink the blood, for every claim of God has been met, and the Spirit given.