Charles Spurgeon Commentary John 6:53

"Jesus therefore said unto them, Verily, verily, I say unto you, Except ye eat the flesh of the Son of man and drink his blood, ye have not life in yourselves." — John 6:53 (ASV)

Then Jesus said to them,

What? Do you think he explained it? No, he did not explain to these Jews. They were given up to judicial blindness. They had refused to see for so long that now they were not to see, because the curse had come upon them that seeing they should not see, and hearing they should not perceive.

Oh! How terrible this is when it falls on a man, and I think I know some on whom it must have fallen. They have indulged the philosophical vein, always spiritualizing and cutting out the soul of truth. As a result, they are given up to spiritualizing, as many of the great German philosophers evidently have been.

Such individuals can no longer receive a plain statement, however simple the words may be, because, from their natural habit of continually twisting and tearing things to pieces, they do so with everything. Indeed, a man may be an unbeliever for so long that it will never be given to him to be a believer again.

May God grant that we never make scales for our own eyes, and so plug up the soul's mental vision with the miry clay of sin, that from then on, even though the eternal Christ may flash the divine truth into our eyes, we will only be dazzled by it into a greater darkness. So it was with these men. Jesus did not explain to them. He just repeated the truth more emphatically and made it more offensive to them than before.

May a preacher sometimes be offensive in his preaching? He must be. He must sometimes feel that such a truth will only move men's wrath if he preaches it. Nevertheless, we are not to put truth to the verdict of a jury, nor is truth to be submitted to what is called the "inner consciousness" of a set of sinners whose consciousness is all defiled. One might as well make a company of highwaymen a jury regarding theft, as make unconverted men a jury regarding what is truth. It cannot be. Christ does not condescend to that. He tells them the truth more fully and more offensively than before.

Verily, verily, I say unto you, Except ye eat the flesh of the Son of man, and drink his blood,

This He had not said before, and was even more startling.