The Final Christ

In John 4:7-14 and 6:27-40, Jesus uses the universal symbols of bread and water to draw people to himself, awakening in them a sense of their deeper hunger and thirst. He is the greater Jacob and the greater Moses, offering people the living water and bread of life – eternal life – that will satisfy them forever with himself. Those who eat and drink of Christ will never hunger or thirst again. Applied to our theological work, Christ reverses the wisdom of the world that elevates the pursuit of truth over truth itself and is more enamored with the brilliancy of its presentation than with He who is Wisdom in person. We are tempted by things that can only satisfy for a time, but Christ is the final food and final drink, the one in whom all the fullness of deity is present and in whom we are filled perfectly and entirely so that there is no more hunger and painful thirst.

Biography

Henri A. G. Blocher is Professor of Systematic Theology, Faculte Libre de Theologie Evangelique, Vaux-sur-Seine, France. Blocher earned a B.D. degree from Gordon Divinity School (1959), a Diplôme d’Etudes Supérieures de Théologie (old doctoral regime), from Faculté Libre de Théologie Protestante of Paris (1974), and D.D. degree from Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary (1989). He has taught in Africa, Australia, Canada, Europe and the United States. Blocher was involved with the Lausanne Committee on World Evangelisation from 1975 to 1980 and is connected to a number of Evangelical groups and colleges around the world.