“I tell you the tuth” = “Verily, verily” (KJV) = indicates the importance of what follows.

Jesus not only does not detract from the bold statements He has just made, but He adds to them. Before He spoke of eating of the bread which is His flesh; now He speaks of eating His flesh but also adds drinking of his blood. This would be particular abhorrent to the Jews since God had forbid them to drink of the blood of animals.

Ge 9:4  “But you must not eat meat that has its lifeblood still in it.

Although blood and life are closely associated at a few places in the Bible (Gen 9:4, Lev 17:11, 14, Deut 12:23), we find at these locations that the blood is the life of the flesh. So long as blood flows through the flesh of an animal or man, there is life flowing there, but when the blood is separated from the flesh, there is no longer life in the flesh. So the separation of blood from flesh indicates death. More specifically, the presence of blood separated from flesh indicates violent death. When a body is found in a pool of blood, the findings will rarely be death from natural causes. Blood which could be drunk has been separated from the flesh by violent means.

Le 17:11  For the life of a creature is in the blood, and I have given it to you to make atonement for yourselves on the altar; it is the blood that makes atonement for one’s life.

Although most of the listeners take the words of Jesus literally, He is speaking spiritually (Joh 6:63). He is speaking of His death. We must appropriate His flesh and blood by faith to receive life. Whosoever trusts in the death of Christ by faith and is “baptized into his death” (Rom 6:3), spiritually partakes of the body and blood of Christ.

Joh 6:63  The Spirit gives life; the flesh counts for nothing. The words I have spoken to you are spirit and they are life.

Rom 6:3  Or don’t you know that all of us who were baptised into Christ Jesus were baptised into his death?

Westcott states, “To ‘eat’ and to ‘drink’ is to take to oneself by a voluntary act that which is external to oneself, and then to assimilate it and make it part of oneself. It is, as it were, faith regarded in its converse action. Faith throws the believer upon and into its object; this spiritual eating and drinking brings the object of faith into the believer.” (qt’d in Morris 379)

“eat” and “drink” are both in the aorist tense which indicates a once-and-for-all action. Jesus is not speaking here of the continuous feeding upon His presence, but of the one time action of taking Christ into our innermost being forever.

“you have no life in you” = life is only found in Christ. If He is not in us, we have only death.

The preface of “verily, verily” indicates the importance of what follows. Jesus alludes to His coming death and gives a challenge to enter into an intimate, life-giving relationship with Him.