God Himself Will Teach You: The Forgotten New Covenant Promise

John 6:48 "I am the Bread of Life."

“Jesus answered them, ‘Do not grumble among yourselves.  No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him. And I will raise him up on the last day.  It is written in the Prophets, ‘And they will all be taught by God.’ Everyone who has heard and learned from the Father comes to me–not that anyone has seen the Father except he who is from God; he has seen the Father. Truly, truly, I say to you, whoever believes has eternal life. I am the bread of life. Your fathers ate the manna in the wilderness, and they died.  This is the bread that comes down from heaven, so that one may eat of it and not die. I am the living bread that came down from heaven. If anyone eats of this bread, he will live forever.  And the bread that I give for the life of the world is my flesh.”

John 6:43-51

These verses struck me. God himself teaches his people because he reveals himself in Christ. They whom he has called will not suffer from spiritual starvation. They have Christ. This is one of the most often forgotten promises of the New Covenant. [Jeremiah 31:33-34]

“But this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, declares the Lord: I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts. And I will be their God, and they shall be my people. And no longer shall each one teach his neighbor and each his brother, saying, ‘Know the Lord,’ for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest, declares the Lord. For I will forgive their iniquity, and I will remember their sin no more.’”

Any disciple of Christ knows God. He needs no mere man to disciple him, for God himself will do it.  Many years ago the visible church engaged in a movement in which they decided that the biggest problem with the church was a lack of discipleship.   No.  The problem with the visible church is a lack of true conversion.

Beware the man who says that God’s church is divided and failing!  God’s church is intact, flourishing in faith and growing in godliness.  The man who says that God’s church is failing has called God a liar.  For God himself has said that the gates of hell will not prevail against it.  The Body of Christ is being washed in the word by her bridegroom to be presented before him without spot or blemish or any such thing.

Any man who knows God is a member of that body.  That man will be taught by God.   God will provide the means of grace whereby he will learn of him.  Can you not find those means? Ask him for it!  Are those means your idols, substitutes for the Savior himself? A religious and theological education is a shameful substitute for the fellowship of the Great Shepherd.

The true convert is driven to the bread of life, himself.  Are you driven to that bread?  Before he longs for the counsel of wiser men or women in Christ, he desires the counsel found at the feet of his Lord.  Indeed, he cannot help but go to him for his sustenance! Are you starving for godly counsel?  Why!  Go to the Lord and ask of him who gives to all liberally and reproaches us not.

Any man who calls himself a Christian and yet can live his life without feeding on God has profaned God’s name and that man’s conversion is false.

God’s man eats of Christ’s flesh thoroughly and joyfully, and he grows thereby. He smacks his lips with the fulfillment of his soul for God himself has taught him of Christ.  The heavenly manna from God has fallen at his feet.  He eats it and goes forth in God-wrought obedience to the word of life.  Where a man eats of Christ’s flesh, he will grow into the fullness of Christ’s stature. To keep people from going out the back door of our churches, teach them of Christ and even more, teach them how to go to him themselves.  Christ’s blood bought your personal fellowship with him, and no man can do it for you. Christ deserves no less than that for which he paid. Indeed, we are foolish when he look to the sweet results of another man’s fellowship with God rather than the results of our own.  Ask yourself:  Are there any results at all? or Are you the mouthpiece for other men’s walks with God?

Repent and go to him who has bought you so he can teach you himself.  Drink deeply of the milk of the word, that YOU may grow thereby.  Christ, at the end of these verses, makes this issue a gospel issue.  Indeed, that is the root of all starvation.  We starve when the gospel is not enough for us.  “If anyone eats of this bread, he will live forever.  And the bread that I give for the life of the world is my flesh.”

His flesh was broken for you, just as the bread. Eat of that flesh which was given for you, and believe on him as your only hope of sustenence and salvation.  There is no other way to live.

Working with you to eat Christ’s flesh and to walk in the abundance of life,

Vince R.