The Jews found it difficult to believe the words of Christ, that He would give them Himself to eat. They said, “How can this man give us His flesh to eat?” Jesus repeated the statement still more emphatically, and then said, “It is the Spirit that quickeneth; the flesh profiteth nothing; the words that I speak unto you, they are Spirit, and they are life.”
If each one of them could have eaten of the flesh of Christ as He stood there, and the flesh, which they ate, had been replaced, so that they could continue to eat of it, taking it into their stomachs, and assimilating it, they would have received no lasting benefit from it. No spiritual good would have come to them. That was what they had in reality already done, when they ate of the bread, which came from the life that was in His body; but they had not profited by it. So if the Romish claim were true, that the priests have power to transform the bread into the actual flesh of Christ, there would be no profit in it. People might eat of it, and be as wicked as ever. “The flesh profiteth nothing; the words that I speak unto you, they are Spirit, and they are life.” John 6.63
“By the word of the Lord were the heavens made; and all the host of them by the breath of His mouth.” Psalm 33.6. He spoke and said, “Let the earth bring forth grass, the herb yielding seed, and the fruit tree yielding fruit after his kind, whose seed is in itself, upon the earth; and it was so.” Genesis 1.11. All plant life is but the manifestation of the life of the word of the Lord. The life that was in His word caused the corn to grow in the beginning, and that same life has caused it to grow ever since. Therefore all the food that men have to eat is that which comes from the word of God. We cannot see the life in a grain of wheat, but when we eat the bread that is made from it, we experience it. But the physical strength, which we receive from the food, is but the working of the word of the Lord. Now if we do not recognize and acknowledge God in this, we get nothing but physical strength; but if in everything we see and acknowledge God, we receive of His life of righteousness. He says, “In all thy ways acknowledge Him, and He shall direct thy paths.” Proverbs 3.6
When God directs our paths, those ways will be right; for “as for God, His way is perfect.” Psalm 18.30. The people who ate of the loaves in the desert, did not believe the Lord, and did not recognize His life, and so they derived no spiritual life from it. So it was with the children of Israel in the desert. “They believed not in God, and trusted not in His salvation; though He had commanded the clouds from above, and opened the doors of heaven, and had rained down upon them manna to eat, and had given them of the corn of heaven.” Psalm 78.22-24. So although they were indeed feeding upon the life of Christ, they received no spiritual life, because of their blind unbelief. In the giving of the manna God was giving the same lesson that Christ gave the multitude in the desert, namely, that His word is life, and that “man doth not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God.”