Food Allergies

John 6:32-35

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In the United States today, there are 32 million people who have food allergies. That’s one of every ten adults. Now, these culprits of the allergies are about eight or nine primary ones and can range anywhere from milk to eggs to shellfish to wheat to nuts. Sometimes the reaction to eating these foods, if you’re allergic, can be relatively minor. Sometimes it can be a life threatening situation.

In the U.S. today, one of every five adults think that they have an allergy to a food. But the experts say that half of those people truly don’t have allergies in the strict sense of the word. Maybe they have a little bit of a food sensitivity. Maybe they’re just trying to avoid eating certain foods that they don’t like. It’s kind of like how I used to say I was allergic to brussel sprouts.

There’s one food, however, to which we can never say anyone is truly allergic in the sense that it would actually do them harm. In John Chapter six, Jesus talks about this food. He’s having a conversation with some of the 5000 plus people that he had fed miraculously with the five loaves and the two fish. And they were asking him about the manna that had been sent to their ancestors in the wilderness. And Jesus goes on to explain the true source of that manna. He says in John six, starting at verse 32,

Jesus then said to them, “Truly, truly, I say to you, it was not Moses who gave you the bread from heaven, but my Father gives you the true bread from heaven. For the bread of God is he who comes down from heaven and gives life to the world.” They said to him, “Sir, give us this bread always.” (John 6:32-35)

35 Jesus said to them, “I am the bread of life; whoever comes to me shall not hunger, and whoever believes in me shall never thirst.

Jesus is the bread of life. Now, maybe you’ve been eating this bread and you’ve been believing in Jesus for longer than you can remember. But is it always pleasant to hear what Jesus says about us in his word? We know He comes to us in his word. Is it always nice to hear that on our own, by ourselves, the way we’re born, that we are completely sinful, that we’re repulsive to God? Do we like to hear that every single day we fall short of God’s standard of perfection? Sometimes we might start to feel that we’re kind of allergic to that sort of talk.

But that’s the difficult part of hearing what God says about us in his word. When we keep eating of Jesus in his word, we hear that He truly is the bread of life. He came to this world not to condemn us, but to save us. When we come to him in faith, when we believe in him, he gives us forgiveness of our sins. He gives us eternal life. He is the only true spiritual nourishment that we need, and we can never truly be allergic to him. Amen.