Eternal food for the soul
“I am the living bread that came down from heaven. Whoever eats this bread will live forever.” (John 6:51a)
It seems like everywhere you turn today there are reminders and encouragements to make sure that you have a healthy and balanced diet. There are even efforts within our organization to encourage proper eating, moving and sleeping as well as having a proper spiritual life.
But just because you eat properly and get sufficient exercise and sleep does not guarantee that you will have good health and a long life. There are stories of extremely healthy fitness gurus who drop over dead from a massive heart attack.
We can do nothing to ensure eternal life here on this earth. Our verse for this week points us to what will guarantee us eternal life for our soul.
At the beginning of John chapter 6, we are told how Jesus fed 5,000 families with a few loaves of bread and several fish. Due to that people expected Jesus would keep on feeding them like he just had.
Jesus, the master teacher, uses this situation with people seeking bread to teach them and us about eternal food for our souls.
The analogy Jesus uses where he refers to himself as “living bread” has caused much confusion and misunderstanding among Christians over the years. Yes, Jesus gives himself to us with the bread in the Lord’s Supper. But that is not what Jesus is referring to in this portion of the Bible.
Jesus gave himself, his body, to pay for our sins and win for us eternal life in heaven. It is God’s Word which tells us this wonderful truth and it is God’s Word which is the food for our souls which will guarantee us eternal life.
Think for a moment of other things which try to claim they are good food for our soul. We are led to think that the “good things” which we do can someway, somehow save us. All around us we are bombarded with ideas that if we are popular enough, smart enough, rich enough and so many other earthly attributes that those will somehow save our soul.
With one sentence Jesus debunks all those unhealthy foods for our soul, warns us to avoid them and invites us to feed our souls with the one food which will give us eternal life – him in his Word, the Bible.
All of this is why for nearly 120 years, TLHA has kept the care of the soul at the heart of our organization which provides fantastic care for the body. As we are all painfully aware, even the best physical care cannot avert physical death. But feeding souls, others as well as our own, with the life-saving message as Jesus as the Savior is eternal food for our soul.