In John 6, Jesus Christ teaches about the true bread from heaven, challenging the understanding of His listeners. He declares that if they desire eternal life, they must eat His flesh and drink His blood, a statement that shocks many of His disciples who were familiar with the laws forbidding the consumption of blood with flesh. Unable to grasp that He speaks metaphorically, many turn away, unprepared by God to partake in what He offers. Jesus does not express distress at their departure, simply asking the Twelve if they too wish to leave. The passage underscores the gravity of partaking in the bread and wine, symbolically representing the body and blood of our Savior Jesus Christ, as a significant act before God. Furthermore, the shedding of His blood nearly two thousand years ago, as the ultimate sacrifice, surpasses all other bloodshed in its power to atone for sin. John 6 also conveys that only those drawn by the Father can come to Christ, indicating that His blood is not offered for everyone's redemption at this time, but specifically for the elect called by God into a relationship with Him. What a privilege it is that He poured out His lifeblood for us!

Jesus Christ, in His ultimate sacrifice, shed His precious blood on the tree, mirroring the tola worm's crimson fluid that stains her body and the surrounding wood as she dies for her offspring. In John 6:53-55, He declares that unless one eats the flesh of the Son of Man and drinks His blood, there is no life in them, emphasizing that whoever partakes in this has eternal life, for His flesh is food indeed and His blood is drink indeed. This act of drinking His blood, as He describes, is essential for eternal life and underscores the depth of His sacrifice, paralleling the newborn tola worms that feed on their mother's still-living body under her protective crimson shell. Through His blood, shed for the forgiveness of sins, He covers us, presenting us holy and blameless before the Father, as reflected in the enduring stain of the tola worm that never fades.

The observance of Passover holds profound significance in the relationship between God and His people, serving as the foundation of the New Covenant. On the last Passover night before His crucifixion, Jesus Christ introduced new symbols for commemorating His sacrifice as the true Passover Lamb. He commanded His followers, who have repented of their sins and accepted His blood for forgiveness, to partake of these New Covenant symbols as a solemn memorial of His death. Each occasion of this memorial serves as a renewal of the believer's relationship with God through the sacrifice of Jesus Christ. The symbols of Passover, the bread representing His body and the wine representing His shed blood, are vital. Jesus Christ declared that unless one eats the flesh of the Son of Man and drinks His blood, there is no life in them. This proper keeping of Passover is a matter of life and death, just as it was in the Old Testament when God passed over the homes of the Israelites. The annual reaffirmation of the covenant through Passover lies at the heart of an ongoing relationship with Jesus Christ and God the Father. He emphasized that continuing to live in Him requires ongoing renewal through partaking of His bread and blood, as these give life. Repentance and accepting the blood of Jesus Christ initiate the process leading to salvation, and the continuance of this relationship through Passover reaffirmation completes that process.

In the context of the Feast of Unleavened Bread, which emphasizes remembering God's deliverance and eating unleavened bread, Jesus Christ speaks profoundly about the necessity of partaking in Him for spiritual life. He declares that unless one eats the flesh of the Son of Man and drinks His blood, there is no life in them. Whoever eats His flesh and drinks His blood has eternal life, and He will raise them up at the last day. His flesh is true food, and His blood is true drink. He who eats His flesh and drinks His blood abides in Him, and He in them. As the living Father sent Him, and He lives because of the Father, so he who feeds on Him will live because of Him. This bread, which came down from heaven, unlike the manna the fathers ate and died, grants eternal life to those who eat it. The ongoing action of eating and drinking, as shown by the active tense of the verbs, indicates that abiding in Christ depends on continuously partaking of this spiritual unleavened bread, the Bread of Life. Neglecting this continuous feeding risks losing the incredible privileges of eternal life, resurrection, and abiding in Him.

We are saved by grace through faith, and it is by God's mercy, through the blood of Jesus Christ, that our sins are paid for. We absolutely cannot pay this debt ourselves and still have hope of eternal life. If we could, God would owe us something, but He will never allow that to happen. We stand before God in penniless insolvency, with nothing to pay the debt incurred by our sins. If we choose to pay it ourselves, the payment is death without hope; if we choose the other path, it puts us under obligation to the One who pays our otherwise unpayable debt. Christ's death is the supreme example of unselfish and sacrificial service on behalf of the guilty who did not deserve it. It is the extreme example of love, as God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son. The Father and the Son freely gave of themselves out of beneficent goodwill for our well-being while we were yet sinners. This sacrifice becomes the foundation of all loving relationships possible for us with God, giving us reason to hope that our lives are not spent in vain. When we take the Passover, we are reminded to do this for remembering Him, to keep the sacrifice ever close to our minds. It is not merely the personality of Jesus we are admonished to remember, but the whole package of His connection to the Old Testament Passover, His violent bloody death for the remission of sins, the sacrificial connection to the New Covenant, and who He was as our sinless Creator. To eat or drink in an unworthy manner during Passover is to treat His sacrifice with disrespect, showing a lack of appreciation as evidenced by our lives. It indicates a person who has not seen their sins and taken them to God for forgiveness, thus not being truly free to love. Passover is a communion, a fellowship in which we are to be at one with the One who died for us. It is an act within the framework of a ritual where, in the right spirit of devotion, we are in the closest possible relationship with our Savior. He is not only the Host and the Giver of the feast, but He is the feast itself, the peace offering. As we approach this Passover season, let us strive for a better understanding of what we are and what Christ did for us, so we might be filled with an awesome sense of our indebtedness and obligation to Him.

In the journey toward eternal life, the significance of Jesus Christ's blood and the act of drinking it, as a metaphor for spiritual sustenance, is profound. We are called to live a period of sanctification, during which we must eat His flesh and drink His blood, symbolically incorporating His life into ours. This process is essential for growth, as we strive to live as He did, ensuring that we do not stop at mere justification and reconciliation. By continually partaking in Him, we share in His life, aiming to become complete and perfected through overcoming and learning to emulate Him. This ongoing participation in His life offers us the assurance of salvation, as we are sustained by the living Savior who enables the completion of our spiritual journey.