We Eat Christ as the Living Bread in His Word, Digest Him and Live because of Him

The Lord Jesus Christ is the bread of life, coming down out of heaven for us to eat; we need to eat Christ as the bread of life and live because of Him today, for whoever eats His flesh and drinks His blood can live because of Christ Himself, the One whom he has eaten. Amen!

In John 6 we see a different aspect of what Christ is to us.

On one hand, He is our Savior, our King, and our Lord, and He is also our life and our salvation.

But the Christ revealed in John 6 is, on the other hand, our bread of life.

A very long chapter, John 6 tells us again and again that Christ came to be our food so that we may eat Him as the bread of life, the living bread, the bread of God, the bread that came down out of heaven, and the true bread.

There are many kinds of breads out there, and there is much food in this world, but the real bread, the true bread, is Christ.

Actually, the physical bread is a type of the real bread, which is Christ.

When we eat physical bread, when we eat anything that nourishes us and sustains us in our life, we need to realize that Christ is the reality of our food.

How can Christ be our food? He had to go through a process.

First, Christ was incarnated. He became a man through incarnation, and then through death and resurrection He became a life-giving Spirit.

Now He is the bread of life as the Spirit that gives life.

He Himself has said that the flesh profits nothing, for it is the Spirit who gives life.

We can exercise our human spirit today to contact the Lord as the Spirit and to enjoy Him as the life-giving Spirit in His word.

The words that He speaks to us are spirit and life.

May we eat the Lord’s flesh and drink His blood so that we may have life within ourselves.

May we partake of Him every day.

As believers in Christ, we are hungry; all men are hungry, but most men eat things that are not good for them.

Satan presents a wide variety of foods before man, and all the food he gives to man is damaging to his spiritual life.

Even as believers in Christ, we are those who have tasted that the Lord is good, and now we are learning to daily reject the food offered by Satan in the world and simply partake of Christ as the bread of life.

If we eat Christ and take Him in as the living bread, we will become living.

If we eat Him as the bread of life, we have the divine life.

As we partake of Him as the true bread, we become true and real, genuine Christians who express God. Hallelujah!

As we eat the Lord as the heavenly bread, we are enabled to live a heavenly life on earth. The key is our eating.

We need to Eat Christ as the Living Bread so that we may Live Because of Him Daily

One of the strongest and strangest sentences in the Bible was uttered by the Lord Jesus in John 6:57.

He said that, as the living Father sent Him and He lives because of the Father, so he who eats Him (Jesus as the bread of life), he also shall live because of Him.

This shows us two great matters: first, Christ did not just live by Himself and of Himself but He lived because of the Father by eating the Father and depending on the Father.

Second, this shows us that we can eat Christ as the living bread and we can live because of Him.

If such a sentence would not have been spoken by the Lord, none of us could have said such a thing.

How can the almighty God and the Creator of the universe tell us that we need to eat Him? Wow!

We may have the concept that we need to worship God, serve God, and revere God, and we need to do all these things.

We may think that Christ is our Savior, our King, our Lord, and our God, and all these are true.

But here we see that Christ tells us that, just as He lived because of the Father in His daily living, so we need to live because of Him daily by eating Him as the bread of life.

This is the actual and genuine Christian life; our Christian life is a matter of eating Christ so that we may live because of Christ.

We live by what we eat. What we eat becomes part of our being, constitutes us, and is expressed through us.

If we eat junk food, if we eat unhealthy food, we will not be healthy, and our health will suffer. But if we eat healthy food, our bodies will grow and develop properly.

In Matt. 4 we see that Satan tempted the Lord in many ways, including concerning His food, asking Him to tell the stones to become bread, because He was very hungry.

But the Lord said, Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds out through the mouth of God (Matt. 4:4).

Physically, we live because of the bread we eat; the daily bread sustains us to live a proper human life.

Spiritually, we live because of the Christ we eat, for He is the bread of life that sustains our spiritual life.

To eat is to take food into us so that we may digest it and assimilate it into our body in an organic way, and this food becomes part of our being; we are constituted by the food we eat.

Spiritually speaking it is the same; we take Christ as the bread of life into us so that we may digest Him and assimilate Him, and we will live because of Him in our daily life.

To eat the Lord Jesus is to receive Him into us so that He may be assimilated by the regenerated new man in the way of life (John 6:55-56). Amen!

We need to eat the Lord daily. We need to daily come to the Lord in His word in the way of life so that we may enjoy Him, partake of Him, and eat Him, and we will receive Him into us in the way of life.

Then, we will live by Him whom we have received. It is by this that He, Christ as the resurrected One, lives in us (John 14:19-20).

Today Christ is not in the tomb neither is He just in the heavens; He is the life-giving Spirit dwelling in our spirit and living in us.

We today live because He lives; He lives in us and we live in Him and because of Him.

We need to see the importance of our eating the Lord so that we may live because of Him.

So many times we realize that we do not live Christ, we do not have much life, and we think it is so hard to live the Christian life.

The main reason is that we don’t have the supply. We need to eat the Lord. We live by what we eat.

If we eat things in the world, we will not live spiritually, but if we eat the Lord, we will live because of Him, and we will live Him!

May we daily eat the Lord so that we can live by the Lord!

Lord Jesus, we want to eat You as the living bread so that we can live because of You in our daily life. Hallelujah, even as Christ lived because of the Father in His daily living, so we today can live because of Christ by eating Him and partaking of His riches! Amen, Lord, show us the importance of our eating of You as the bread of life. We want to daily exercise our spirit as we come to Your word and throughout the day to take You as our food. Lord, You are our bread of life. We come to You in Your word to eat You and take You in. May You enter into our inner being as our food through our masticating of God’s word and may You be digested and assimilated into our inner being. Amen, Lord Jesus, we want to eat You and live because of You! May You live in us today so that, even as You live, so we also live. We give ourselves to eat the Lord day by day so that we may live because of what we eat! Oh Lord Jesus, we take You as our food today! You are the living bread, the bread of life, and the true bread!

Eat Christ by Contacting the Spirit in the Word and Allow Christ to be Digested and Assimilated into us

How can we eat Christ as the bread of life so that we may live because of Him (John 6:57)?

We need to contact the Lord in His word in the way of life, having the realization that Christ as the Spirit is embodied in His word.

We shouldn’t be satisfied merely with reading some chapters of the Bible every day or taking a portion of the morning revival in our morning time with the Lord.

Whenever we come to the Word of God, we need to exercise our entire being to eat the Lord.

We need to exercise our eyes to read, our mind to understand, and especially we need to exercise our spirit to contact the Lord as the life-giving Spirit to receive Him into us.

May our Bible reading be revolutionised so that we may eat the Lord in His word and live because of Him.

When we come to the Lord as we read His word, we enjoy Him as the bread of life, the bread of God, the heavenly bread (John 6:41, 50, 51, 58), the bread of God (John 6:33), the living bread (v. 51), the bread of life (vv. 35, 58) and the true bread (v. 32).

He is our life and life supply. As the incarnated, crucified, resurrected, and ascended Christ, He is now the life-giving Spirit to be our bread for us to eat. Amen!

Just as we humanly need to eat at least three meals a day in order for us to exist and have a proper human living, so we spiritually need to eat Christ regularly during the day so that we may live because of Him.

Just as we humanly live because of the food we eat, and the food we eat becomes part of our being and affects our health and our living, so we spiritually live because of the Christ we eat, and this Christ needs to be digested and assimilated into our inner being to become our very constitution. Amen!

On the one hand, we need to eat the Lord and live because of Him. On the other hand, we need to make sure that we digest the Christ that we eat.

There has to be eating and digestion. We cannot just eat and eat and eat, yet not digest; the Christ we eat needs to be digested and assimilated into our inner being.

By digestion, food is assimilated into our being to become us. As we eat the physical food and digest it, it is incorporated into our being to become part of what we are at the cell level.

Similarly, in the spiritual life, when we eat Christ as the bread of life, we need to digest Him so that He may be assimilated into our inner being at the cell level.

We need to eat, digest, and assimilate Christ. As we digest and assimilate Christ, we absorb the rich nutrients of Christ into our inner being.

Eating without a good digestion, however, will cause trouble when we eat Christ, for unless we digest the Christ we eat, we even lose our appetite for Him.

Many times saints eat Christ but at one point they stop, for they do not digest Him, not giving Him the thoroughfare in their inner being.

May we be saved from having spiritual indigestion.

We may call on the name of the Lord and read and pray over His word, but do we allow Him to touch our inner being and spread from our spirit into our mind, emotion, and will?

We may know that the Lord wants to spread into our mind to affect the way we think, or He may want to spread into our emotions and affect our feelings, but we may not allow Him to do this, keeping Him as a “guest” in our spirit. Oh, Lord!

May we allow the Lord in our private chambers, in the inner parts of our being, so that we may not only eat Him but also digest Him into our inner being.

May we allow Him to have a free course in us so that Christ as the living bread would be digested and assimilated into the very cells of our inner man, our spiritual being.

When He has a way in us, when He has a way to spread in our inner being, He will grow in us, and we become the same as He is organically.

This is how we can live Christ by living because of Him – we live by the food we eat.

Eating the Lord as the bread of life ultimately requires a more thorough opening of our inner being to the Lord.

We don’t just eat the Lord and that’s it; we need to also digest Him and assimilate Him so that He may be constituted into our inner being and become part of us (Eph. 3:17).

The Lord needs to work Himself into our inner constitution by our eating Him as the living bread so that we may become the same as He is for His expression.

May we daily choose to eat the Lord and open our inner being so that He may have a thoroughfare within our being for Him to constitute us with Himself and live in us.

Lord Jesus, we want to eat You as the bread of life and digest You so that You may be assimilated into our inner being. Amen, Lord Jesus, be merciful to us and cause every part of our being to be open to You. Have the thoroughfare in our whole being. We don’t want to just eat You but even more, we want to allow You to have a way to be digested into us and constitute us with all that You are. Oh Lord, we exercise our spirit to partake of You as food and we say Amen to Your inner speaking, Your dealings, and Your desire to spread in us. Spread in our mind, emotion, and will. We don’t want to keep You merely as a guest in our living room but even more, allow You to make Your home in every room of our heart. May the riches of Christ be digested and assimilated into our inner being so that Christ may grow in us and become part of us. Amen, Lord Jesus, may we properly digest and assimilate You in our inner being so that we may become the same as Christ and live because of the Christ we have eaten, digested, and assimilated!

References and Hymns on this Topic

• Inspiration for this article/sharing comes from the Word of God, the enjoyment in the ministry, a sharing by brother Ray Mulligan in the message for this week, and portions from, Collected Works of Witness Lee, 1982, vol. 2, “The Fulfillment of the Tabernacle and the Offerings in the Writings of John,” ch. 18, as quoted in the Holy Word for Morning Revival on, Experiencing, Enjoying, and Expressing Christ (2024 July Semiannual Training), week 7, The Bread of Life.
• Similar articles on this topic:
  – Growing in life by eating Jesus, a portion from, The Flesh and the Spirit, Chapter 5, by Witness Lee.
  – God gave His Son to man to be, a wonderful hymn via, Hymnal.net.
  – Eating Christ and living Christ, a portion from, Living Christ, Chapter 1, by Witness Lee.
  – The Joy of the Triune God is becoming our Joy – by eating the Lord! More via, 21st Century Nazarites.
  – What is the testimony of the Scriptures concerning God as our Food? More via, Hearing of Faith.
  – Jesus said, “I am the Bread of Life”, via, New Jerusalem blog.
  – Simply Eating and Drinking Christ, via, Eating and Drinking Christ in the Local Churches.
  – One Major Function of the Word of God: To Testify Concerning the Lord Jesus Christ, via, Bibles for America blog.
  – Our Testimony–A Glorious Enjoyment of Christ, via, Contending for the Faith.
  – Is Your Spiritual Eating Advancing? More via, Holding to Truth in Love.
• Hymns on this topic:
  – We eat this feast and take God in, / And as we eat we live by Him, / For all the elements within / This feast are God Himself. / Yes, Jesus is our feast! / Yes, Jesus is our feast! / We eat this feast and live by Him, / For Jesus is our feast! / Christ Jesus is the food we eat; / He is our bread, He is our meat; / He is our life-supply complete; / We daily eat of Him. / We daily eat of Him, / We daily eat of Him. / He is our life-supply complete; / We daily eat of Him. (Hymns #1146 stanzas 2-3)
  – We have found the way to live by Christ— / Pray His Word and call His name! / This—the eating, drinking—has sufficed / And its worth we now proclaim. (Hymns #1153 stanza 3)
  – We are feeding on the living bread, / Eating of the feast our Lord has spread, / And whoso eateth, Jesus said, / Shall hunger nevermore. / What, hunger nevermore? Yes, hunger nevermore! / What, hunger nevermore? Yes, hunger nevermore! / And whoso eateth, Jesus said, / Shall hunger nevermore. (Hymns #1150 stanza 2)