My teaching comes from the Bible which is more than 500 years old. The RCC has not cornered the market on the truth. John 6:47 - Most assuredly, I say to you, he who
believes in Me has everlasting life. Believes in the Savior God and not the wafer god. I don't put a lot of stock into early church writings. False teachings were creeping into the church while the scriptures were still being written. God promised to preserve His Word but not fallible writings from fallible men. Some church fathers believed in the physical presence of Christ in the Eucharist; others considered the elements as signs of the body and blood of Christ, and that His presence is spiritual, so save me the sales pitch.
Whether Jesus was speaking literally or metaphorically, as He often did, can be determined from the text itself. A comparison between the following two parallel verses points to the correct interpretation. Jesus explains how we eat His flesh and drink His blood.
"Everyone who sees the Son and believes in Him may have everlasting life; and I will raise him at the last day." (v40)
"Whoever eats my flesh and drinks My blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up at the last day." (v54)
Who are those who "have eternal life?" Who are those whom Christ will raise up at the last day? Only those who eat His flesh and drink his blood (John 6:54). But how can a person eat his flesh and drink his blood? The Lord explains that it is by seeing the Son and
believing in Him (6:40). Our souls are nourished by God’s grace when we believe in the Lord Jesus unto salvation. Praise God!
Yet the Jews would not believe in Him for salvation, even though they had seen the miracles. “I am the bread of life. He who
comes to Me shall never hunger, and he who
believes in Me shall never thirst (6:36). “But I said to you that you have seen Me and yet
do not believe” (6:35-36). Just as the Passover meal was a reminder of God's deliverance of His people (the Israelites) from the slavery in Egypt, even so the Lord's Supper shows the story of our redemption from the slavery of sin by the sacrifice of Christ. Bread and wine are appropriate
symbols to remind us of His crucified body and the blood shed on the cross at Calvary. False religion turns symbols of salvation into the substance and the source.
When Jesus said, “This is my body,” He was physically present with the disciples. They could see, hear and touch him and John was actually leaning on His bosom. So, when Jesus took bread and said, “This is my body,” it was only natural for the apostles to understand that the bread was the
symbol of His body, rather than His actual body. The tangible proof that the bread did not become Jesus’ body, is the bodily, physical, substantial and material presence of the man Jesus Christ standing with the apostles. Similarly, when Jesus said, "This is my blood," Jesus added, "which is shed for you. Since the wine was never shed, it must
represent the blood that was actually shed on the cross. It is impossible and ludicrous to interpret Jesus words as literal "cannibalism."
