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To: CynicalBear
Fine. We'll take them one at a time. I don't have time to do more than that.

John 6:63 "It is the spirit that quickeneth: the flesh profiteth nothing. The words that I have spoken to you, are spirit and life."

Here quickeneth means 'to give life to.' Your translation matches fairly well. Good.

The phrase "flesh profiteth nothing" is the key to understanding these verses. Its meaning is twofold:
1. If the people misunderstood Jesus and were to actually cut up His corpse and eat it after He had died, He's telling them they would gain nothing
2. Flesh also means our carnal desires. If the flesh refuses to be subject to the spirit and words of Christ, it gains nothing.

The Protestant error is that here Jesus is discrediting the Eucharist as His body. This is not true because if Christ's flesh had profited us nothing, He would never have taken flesh for us nor died in the flesh for us.
402 posted on 02/12/2015 12:53:34 AM PST by hockeyCEO
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To: hockeyCEO
>>The phrase "flesh profiteth nothing" is the key to understanding these verses. Its meaning is twofold:<<

Your interpretation has some problems. First of all Jesus used the phrase "my words are spirit" and "the flesh profiteth nothing" in the same conversation that they were talking about "eating His flesh". The focus at that point was His statement "eat my flesh". Why would you inject your statement "Flesh also means our carnal desires" into that conversation? The inference is not in that passage. Nor is it pertinent to that conversation.

>>The Protestant error is that here Jesus is discrediting the Eucharist as His body. This is not true because if Christ's flesh had profited us nothing, He would never have taken flesh for us nor died in the flesh for us.<<

Once again you inject an inference not found in the conversation. Jesus wasn't discrediting the "remembrance of Him". Throughout scripture we see that "eating the word" refers to learning and internalizing His word. Ezekiel, Jeremiah, and John were all told to "eat the scroll". They didn't physically eat the paper. Nor was Jesus talking about eating His physical flesh.

404 posted on 02/12/2015 6:15:41 AM PST by CynicalBear (For I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus)
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