⁵³ “I’m telling you the solemn truth,” Jesus replied. “If you don’t eat the flesh of the son of man, and drink his blood, you have no life in yourselves. ⁵⁴ Anyone who feasts upon my flesh and drinks my blood has the life of God’s coming age, and I will raise them up on the last day. ⁵⁵ My flesh is true food, you see, and my blood is true drink. ⁵⁶ Anyone who eats my flesh and drinks my blood remains in me, and I remain in them. ⁵⁷ Just as the living father sent me, and I live because of the father, so the one who eats me will live because of me. ⁵⁸ This is the bread which came down from heaven; it isn’t like the bread which the ancestors ate, and died. The one who eats this bread will share the life of God’s new age.”

⁵⁹ He said this in the synagogue, while he was teaching in Capernaum.

Division among Jesus’ followers

⁶⁰ When they heard this, many of Jesus’ disciples said, “This is difficult stuff! Who can bear to listen to it?”

⁶¹ Jesus knew in himself that his disciples were grumbling about what he’d said.

“Does this put you off?” he said. ⁶² “What if you were to see the son of man ascending to where he was before? ⁶³ It’s the spirit that gives life; the flesh is no help. The words that I have spoken to you—they are spirit, they are life. ⁶⁴ But there are some of you who don’t believe.”

Jesus knew from the beginning, you see, those who didn’t believe, and the one who was going to betray him.

⁶⁵ “That’s why I said,” he went on, “that no one can come to me unless it is given to them by the father.”

⁶⁶ From that time on, several of his disciples drew back, and no longer went about with him.

⁶⁷ Jesus turned to the Twelve.

“You don’t want to go away too, do you?” he asked.