Bread and Water


No one lives long without bread and water. These two represent physical nutrients and you will die sooner rather than later if you are bereft of physical nutrition. This is old news. Everyone knows it and functions accordingly.

Let me share with you some more old news that most people ought to know, and if they would function accordingly with this knowledge they would be good to go – through the rest of their life, to the cemetery, to the judgment, and to eternity beyond.

As you may have surmised, this news has to do with Jesus Christ. He is bread and He is water.

He refers to Himself as such in John 4 and John 6.

Actually what He says in John 4 is that He will give us living water (v 10). He is the source of living water. If we will drink in the teaching of Jesus, which we do by faith and obedience, then this water will make us alive spiritually.

In John 6, Jesus specifically says, “I am the bread of life” (v 35). Everything I need for spiritual life is found in Jesus. He is both bread and water. When I go to Him, I have distilled down life to these essentials, bread and water, and through submission to His will, live life at its purest.

Now, here’s the point I’m coming to. In physical life, when and how do bread and water benefit us? It is only when we eat and drink them. We receive the benefits when our bodies assimilate them. So, in spiritual life, Jesus benefits us only when we assimilate Him completely into our lives. So completely that we figuratively eat and drink Him.

True, pure, full, powerful Christianity is found only when we eat and drink Jesus. He must so abide our life that His person brilliantly shines through everything we do and say.

We fill ourselves with Jesus when we fill ourselves with His words. When I read my Bible and take the words off the page and put them into my behavior, I’m living Jesus, the bread and water are working.

A passing interest, Christianity when it’s convenient, faking religion because it may be good for business or help me impress a certain group of people – won’t cut it. I must consume Christ. He must be my world, my life, my very existence – my bread and water.

It is the Spirit who gives life; the flesh profits nothing. The words that I speak to you are spirit, and they are life (John 6:63 NKJV).