"Truly, truly I say unto you, he who believes has eternal life. I am the bread of life. Your fathers ate the manna in the wilderness, and they died. This is the bread which comes down out of heaven, so that one may eat of it and not die. I am the living bread which comes down out of heaven, so that one may eat of it and not die. I am the living bread that came down out of heaven; if anyone eats of this bread, he will live forever; and the bread also which I will give for the life of the world is My flesh." Then the Jews began to argue with one another, saying, "How can this man give us His flesh to eat?" 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. He who eats My flesh and drinks My blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day. For My flesh is true food, and My blood is true drink. He who eats My flesh and drinks My blood abides in Me, and I in him. 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. 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." (John 6:47-58 NASB)
While rejecting the Catholic dogmas of the Mass being a propitiatory sacrifice and Transubstantiation, Latter-day Saints agree with Catholics and many others that the Lord’s Supper is in view in John 6:47-58. For example, Elder D. Todd Christofferson of the Quorum of the Twelve offered a Eucharistic interpretation of John 6 in his October 2017 General Conference talk:
Robert Letham, a Reformed Presbyterian theologian, offered the following defence of the Eucharistic interpretation of John 6:47-58:
Some argue that this passage is not sacramental [as] Jesus spoke these words before he gave instructions about the eucharist. His speech [according to critics of the Eucharistic interpretation] here would have made no sense if he intended it to refer to the Supper . . . let us consider [this] claim that it would have been anachronistic of Jesus to have referred to a sacrament he had not yet introduced.
First, while the institution of the Lord’ Supper did not occur until after the events described here, nevertheless from John’s perspective (as the compiler of the Fourth Gospel), looking back on the life, ministry, death, and resurrection of Jesus as a whole, he saw Jesus’ speech as directly connected to the later introduction of the sacrament. From his later authorial standpoint the two were in effect part of the same reality.
Second, there are other instances in the Gospels where Jesus mentions events before they actually occur. Frequently he refers to his coming death and resurrection, although his disciples had not the faintest idea what he was talking about. Moreover, he discusses the persecution the church was to face, the impending destruction of Jerusalem, the discipline the church was to exercise over its members, and the very existence of the church itself long before those things came to be (Matt. 16:21-28; John 16:1-4; Matt. 24:1-36 [cf. Mark 13:1-31; Luke 21:1-33]; Matt. 18:15-20; Matt. 16:13-20). In view of this, there is no reason why he could not have done the same in connection with the Supper.
Third, the preceding narrative of the feeding of the five thousand is couched in similar language in the Synoptic Gospels’ description of the institution of the eucharist. At the Last Supper Jesus took bread, gave thanks, broke, it, and distributed it (Luke 22:19; Matt 26:26-27; Mark 14:22-23). Here, with the assembled crowds sitting on the ground, he takes the loaves, gives thanks, and distributes them (John 6:11). The parallel is close but not exact. There is sufficient correspondence, however, to suggest a possible allusion to the Lord’s Supper. We recall also that a common theme in Christin art was the association of the eucharist with the theme of multiplication and that frequently that this theme was directly associated with this feeding miracle (Raymond E. Brown, The Gospel According to John (i-xiii) [London: Chapman, 1966], 246ff.; C.F.D. Moule, “A Note on Didache ix.4,” Journal of Theological Studies 6 [1955]:240-43).
Fourth, the following section portrays apostasy by many erstwhile disciples in the light of the “hard sayings” of the bread of life discourse (vv. 60-71). At the conclusion Jesus refers to Judas as the only one of the Twelve who will defect. This recalls the events at the Last Supper itself, when Judas, having received the bread, stalked out of the room to betray Jesus.
Fifth, as we shall see in what follows, the only way to make sense of the hard saying on eating Jesus’ flesh and drinking his blood is to see it in the light of the eucharist. Indeed, the early church was accused, among other things, of cannibalism and incest since they often spoke of eating Christ’s flesh and drinking his blood in the context of love-feasts at which they were all brothers and sisters (J. Stevenson, ed., and WH.C. Frend, rev., A New Eusebius: Documents illustrating the History of the Church to AD 337 [London: SPCK, 1987], 36, 66, citing Eusebius, Ecclesiastical History, and Athengoras, Legatio pro Christianis). In the first few centuries of the church this passage was generally understood to refer to the eucharist. (Robert Letham, The Lord’s Supper: Eternal Word in Broken Bread [Phillipsburg, N.J.: Presbyterian and Reformed, 2001], 8-10, comments in square brackets added for clarification)
Elsewhere, commenting on the shift of verb “to eat” in v. 54, Letham notes:
From John 6:54 there is a remarkable change of verb. Hitherto, John had used phagō, which means simply to eat. Now, however, he switches to trōgō, a crude and vulgar word meaning to chew, gnaw, or bite audibly (cf. Raymond E. Brown, John (i-xii), 282-83, 291-92). He uses this verb exclusively throughout the rest of the passage. By choosing it, he draws attention to the physical process of chewing and swallowing and to the audible accompaniments that go with it. This is so in verses 54, 56, and 57, where the verb is used. He underlines further what he has said. Far from appeasing his opponents, he challenges them head on. So much is clear by their ultimate reaction. These words are recognized as “a hard saying” and an unbearable one (vv. 60-66). Many turn away and abandon discipleship. Even the Twelve seem to waver.
What does it mean? It is obvious that Jesus is not advocating real-life cannibalism. But neither can his language be emptied of its raw force. If he had wanted to offset the Jewish hostility, he had every opportunity to do so. But neither he nor they were governed by the philosophy of Plato, which would have enabled them to see these claims in a purely spiritualized dimension. If we view the narrative as connected theologically with the eucharist (and frankly I know of no other way that adequately explains both Jesus’ meaning and the audience’s response), we can immediately find a solution.
By talking of our eating his flesh and drinking his blood in the Lord’s Supper, Jesus shows exactly how he is the bread of life, feeding and nourishing us to everlasting life. Christ is to us the bread of life as we feed on him in the eucharist, as we eat his flesh and drink his blood. This means two things so inseparable that they are like two sides of the same coin. Believing on the one hand, eating and drinking on the other—both go together and both are necessary and indispensable.
First, we feed on Christ the bread of life through faith. The eucharist is not some magical rite that automatically conveys the grace of God. As the wilderness generation fell short, and Jesus’ opponents also did not believe, so without faith we cannot eat the true bread and so receive eternal life. We cannot eat the Lord’s Supper aright apart from faith.
Second, Christ is the bread of life in the Lord’s Supper. Jesus does not teach magic but neither does he purvey some idealized, spiritual salvation divorced from the flesh. Eating and drinking go together with faith. They are two sides of the same coin. The eucharist is central to the gospel. While the eucharist without faith profits us nothing, so faith without the eucharist is barren and empty. In the Lord’s Supper through faith (the gift of the Holy Spirit) we eat Christ’s flesh and drink his blood and so are nourished to everlasting salvation. (Ibid., 12-13, italics in original)
For more articles on the Eucharist, including issues relating to John 6, see:
