What Does John 6:55 Mean?
For my flesh is true food, and my blood is true drink.
Key words are shown with the Hebrew or Greek and what each word meant.
Selah Decoded Version The Selah Decoded Version renders what the Hebrew and Greek words meant to the people who first heard them.
King James wording
King James Version
For my flesh is meat indeed, and my blood is drink indeed.THE KEY
The doubled “indeed” seals one claim: Jesus’ embodied life is named as true food and drink.
THE MEANING
The verse addresses your whole person: his flesh is food and his blood is drink, each called truly nourishing. Life here comes through receiving what is offered, not observing it from a distance.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
This undoes the belief that life with God can remain purely abstract, untouched by the body or by receiving.
THE ROOT
βρῶσις
brōsis
GROWS FROM
βρω
brō
The Greek stem of eating and food, joining the act of eating with what nourishes.
Here “meat” is βρῶσις, a word that can hold both food and the act of eating. Its word family links what is received with the receiving itself, presenting the flesh as nourishment rather than a detached object.
ALSO GROWS
brōma: Food; a thing eaten.
βρῶμα
This related noun names the substance received as food, showing how the word family moves between eating and what nourishes.
bibrōskō: To eat or consume.
βιβρώσκω
This verb shares the eating stem, linking the food named here to the act of taking it in.
πόσις
posis
GROWS FROM
πιν
pin
The Greek root associated with drinking.
The noun can name drinking itself as well as a drink. Paired with the word for food, it makes the verse speak of nourishment through both eating and drinking.
ALSO GROWS
pinō: To drink.
πίνω
This verb makes explicit the act held within the noun for drink.
potērion: A cup; a drinking vessel.
ποτήριον
The related drinking vessel shows how this word family connects the act of drinking with what holds the drink.
ἀληθῶς
alēthōs
GROWS FROM
ἀληθ
alēth
True, real.
“true food” in this verse is alēthōs. The adverb appears twice, once with food and again with drink, giving both halves the same force of truth. Neither kind of nourishment is left uncertain or incidental.
ALSO GROWS
alētheia: Truth.
ἀλήθεια
This noun carries the same root into the quality of what is true.
alēthinos: True; genuine.
ἀληθινός
This adjective applies the root to what is genuine, echoing the repeated emphasis on real nourishment.
THE PATTERN
Life is sustained through provision that is received and shared as nourishment.
And wine that gladdens the heart of a frail one, and oil to make his face shine, and bread that holds up the heart of a frail one.Jesus said to them, I am the bread of life. The one who comes to me shall never hunger, and the one who leans their full weight into me shall never thirst.Is not the cup of blessing that we bless a sharing in common of the blood of the Anointed One? Is not the bread that we break a sharing in common of the body of the Anointed One?THE THREAD
But he said to them, I have food to eat that you do not know about.The same Greek noun, βρῶσις (brōsis, food or eating), appears in both verses. Here it names Jesus’ flesh as food; there he speaks of food his listeners do not yet know, opening a connection between bodily nourishment and a nourishment that is not immediately seen.
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