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"It is the spirit that quickeneth; the flesh profiteth nothing: the words that I speak unto you, they are spirit, and they are life" (John 6:63)Do these words, spoken by Jesus after the "Bread of Life" discourse in John 6, prove that He was not promising to give us His actual Flesh in Communion?
This question is deftly answered in The Eucharist, a tract on the Catholic Answers website. The tract aptly shows that Jesus would then be contradicting Himself:
"Are we to understand that Christ, who had just commanded his disciples to eat his flesh, then said their doing so would be pointless? Is that what "the flesh is of no avail" means? "Eat my flesh, but you'll find it's a waste of time"--is that what he was saying? Hardly."1It goes on to argue that Jesus could not possibly have meant "My Flesh profits nothing", since His Flesh profits a great deal! If His sacred Body were useless (which is what "profits nothing" means), then why did He become incarnate? Why bother to assume a human body if it is really worthless after all?
What does the Bible say about Jesus' Body? Let's look and see:
"We are sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all" (Hebrews 10:10).In light of those verses, how can any Bible-believing Christian think that Jesus' Flesh "profits nothing"?"Having therefore, brethren, boldness to enter into the holiest by the blood of Jesus, By a new and living way, which he hath consecrated for us, through the veil, that is to say, his flesh" (Hebrews 10:19-20).
"For we are members of his body" (Ephesians 5:30)
"The Saviour, the Lord Jesus Christ...shall change our vile body, that it may be fashioned like unto his glorious body, according to the working whereby he is able even to subdue all things unto himself" (Philippians 3:20-21).
So Our Lord could not possibly have meant that. The tract goes on to explain what He really meant:
In John 6:63 "flesh profits nothing" refers to mankind's inclination to think on a natural level, using only what their natural human reason would tell them rather than what God would tell them. Thus in John 8:15-16 Jesus tells his opponents: "You judge according to the flesh, I judge no one. Yet even if I do judge, my judgment is true, for it is not I alone that judge, but I and he who sent me." So natural human judgment, unaided by God's grace, is unreliable; but God's judgment is always true.2So John 6:63 does not prove that the Eucharist is not Jesus' true Body and Blood.
Works Cited:
1 The Eucharist, © 1996 Catholic Answers, Inc.
2Ibid.
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