I Am Because You Are September 6, 2025 Devotional

JOHN 6:48-51, 54, 56 | ⁴⁸ I am the bread of life. ⁴⁹ Your ancestors ate the manna in the wilderness, and they died. ⁵⁰ This is the bread that comes down from heaven, so that one may eat of it and not die. ⁵¹ I am the living bread that came down from heaven. Whoever eats of this bread will live forever, and the bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh.”

⁵⁴ Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood have eternal life, and I will raise them up on the last day.

⁵⁶ Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood abide in me and I in them.

John 6 is a favorite passage for Catholics, who see in Jesus’ talk of “eating His body” and “drinking His blood” a reference to the practice of communion. There is a mystical oneness, an abiding in Christ, expressed in various theories of the Lord’s Supper, and in the intimate language of union which we find in the idea of Jesus’ intimacy with His bride.

Protestants have seen in this chapter a theology of the cross, a divine self-offering that makes a pathway for the broken to know connection with God and new life. For both Catholics and Protestants, belief in Jesus and His sacrificial death and resurrection is the route to deeper oneness and communion with God.

What is your experience of the sacrament of communion like?

Gracious God,

Grow my belief and trust in You so that I may deepen my connection to Your risen life. Thank You for removing every barrier that separates me from Your goodness and holiness.

Amen.