Eat Up

12.19.11

John 6.56 56 Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood remains in me, and I in them. NIV

There is a difference between ingestion and digestion. Ingestion is taking it in; digestion is the process of it becoming a part of you. Interestingly, ingestion is something you control; digestion is something you cannot control. To eat or not to eat is a choice. Once it is eaten, digestion just does its normal thing.

Jesus said, “Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood remains in me, and I in them.” So there is the volition of eating: the choice to ingest or not. That is up to the person. The one who makes the choice to eat the flesh of Christ and drink His blood is the one who makes the choice to believe Jesus not only for salvation, but for everyday life. The one who chooses to feed his body does so because he believes in the process of taking in food in order for it to nourish his body. The one who chooses to take Christ in on a daily basis does so because he believes that ‘taking Christ in’ provides nourishment for his spiritual life. Jesus is simply making the comparison that the one who seeks Him and spends time and energy getting to know Him better and seek His ways is like one who knows the benefit of eating food that is made for his enjoyment and health.

In my lifetime diet has been something that has been a large part of my culture and in the lives of those around me. I cannot remember a time in my life when someone wasn’t concerned about the amount of food they ate and the result it caused in their body. One thing we have in the western world is an abundance of food. As I have grown older the issue of food hasn’t diminished; it’s only grown bigger. There are all kinds of diets that have come and gone. We spend billions of dollars on magazines about food, cookbooks, tv programs – all about food. And yet our lives remain largely unsatisfied and our hunger remains.

Jesus doesn’t want us to feast on food that will pass through the body and because of our over-consumption, make us fat. The Lord bids us to feast on Him – to gorge on Him – to make us more like Him. The Lord seeks for us to become fat on our relationship with Him. But we make the daily choice as to whether we nibble and snack: or if we feast. Nowadays, if you ask people about how they feel about their weight, most will probably respond that they are overweight and could stand to lose some pounds (the greater the vanity, the higher the poundage…).

In ancient days a sign of affluence was a chubby body – that meant one could afford to eat more that the average skinny Joe. How chubby are we in our relationship with Jesus? In ancient times the term for chubby was sleek (Cf. Genesis 41:2; Deuteronomy 32:14-16; Jeremiah 5:27-29; Ezekiel 34:16). Are we sleek because we feast and gorge regularly on Jesus – or are we sleek because we feast upon food? Jesus is seeking sleek followers who ingest and digest Him on a daily basis. Eat up!