John 6:53-54

There is literally life, full and eternal, when we share the Eucharist in remembrance of Him until He comes again in glory. 

We will never fully understand the significance of sharing His body and His blood in the unity of the Holy Spirit until we sit down at the supper of the Lamb. There is power in the blood of the lamb!

The first time, Jesus was the Passover Lamb of God (John 1:29), offered up so that His blood would protect those who applied it to their lives. The Jews were very familiar with eating the Passover lamb. By shocking them with this graphic language and applying it to Himself, those who were true seekers for eternal life would be jarred into realizing that their main need was not for a Messiah to give them literal bread, but for one to give them the bread of eternal life. They needed Jesus as their Passover Lamb.

As Jesus says (John 12:24), “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit.” To make bread, the grain of wheat had to die. Then, the fruit of the grain had to be plucked, crushed, and made into flour before it was baked into bread. Even so, Jesus had to die in order to be the bread that gives eternal life to those who eat it in faith. Pink suggests that “eating” looks back to Adam and Eve. Their eating the forbidden fruit plunged the human race into sin and judgment. Now, eating Christ, the “tree of life,” liberates us from the curse that came on us with Adam’s fall.

(Heb. 9:22), “Without shedding of blood there is no forgiveness." To be the complete and final sacrifice for our sin, Jesus’ blood had to be shed. If Jesus is just your moral example, but not your sacrificial Lamb, then He is not your Savior from sin. Excerpts from Bible.org

J. C. Ryle(ibid., 3:404),

It is as though our Lord said: “Just as the Father sent Me into the world to be born of a woman and take the manhood into God—and even though I am among you as man, I live in the closest union and communion with God—even so the man that by faith feeds his soul on my sacrifice for sin shall live in the closest union and communion with Me.” In a word, the union between Christ and the true Christian is as real and true and close and inseparable as the union between God the Father and God the Son.

John 6:53–54 (NKJV)

⁵³ Then Jesus said to them, “Most assuredly, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink His blood, you have no life in you. ⁵⁴ Whoever eats My flesh and drinks My blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up at the last day.

Matthew 26:26 (NKJV)

²⁶ And as they were eating, Jesus took bread, blessed and broke it, and gave it to the disciples and said, “Take, eat; this is My body.”

Matthew 26:27 (NKJV)

²⁷ Then He took the cup, and gave thanks, and gave it to them, saying, “Drink from it, all of you.

Matthew 26:28 (NKJV)

²⁸ For this is My blood of the new covenant, which is shed for many for the remission of sins.

Mark 14:23 (NKJV)

²³ Then He took the cup, and when He had given thanks He gave it to them, and they all drank from it.