Pictures of Jesus: The Bread of God (John 6:25–71)

Listen or read the following transcript as D. A. Carson speaks on the topic of the Person of Christ from John 6:25–71

We shall stop for prayer and consider Jesus, the bread of God. John 6, picking up from verse 25 to the end of the chapter. There has been the healing of the 5,000 followed by the crossing on the lake. “When they found him on the other side of the lake, they asked him, ‘Rabbi, when did you get here?’ Jesus answered, I tell you the truth, you are looking for me, not because you saw miraculous signs but because you ate the loaves and had your fill. Do not work for food that spoils, but for food that endures to eternal life, which the Son of Man will give you. For on him God the Father has placed his seal of approval.’

Then they asked him, ‘What must we do to do the works God requires?’ Jesus answered, ‘The work of God is this: to believe in the one he has sent.’ So they asked him, ‘What miraculous sign then will you give that we may see it and believe you? What will you do? Our forefathers ate the manna in the desert; as it is written: “He gave them bread from heaven to eat.” ’

Jesus said to them, ‘I tell you the truth, it is not Moses who has given you the bread from heaven, but it is my Father who 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.’ ‘Sir,’ they said, ‘from now on give us this bread.’

Then Jesus declared, ‘I am the bread of life. He who comes to me will never go hungry, and he who believes in me will never be thirsty. But as I told you, you have seen me and still you do not believe. All those the Father gives me will come to me, and whoever comes to me I will never drive away.

For I have come down from heaven not to do my will but to do the will of him who sent me. And this is the will of him who sent me, that I shall lose none of all those he has given me, but raise them up at the last day. For my Father’s will is that everyone who looks to the Son and believes in him shall have eternal life, and I will raise them up at the last day.’

At this the Jews there began to grumble about him because he said, ‘I am the bread that came down from heaven.’ They said, ‘Is this not Jesus, the son of Joseph, whose father and mother we know? How can he now say, “I came down from heaven”?’ ‘Stop grumbling among yourselves,’ Jesus answered. ‘No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him, and I will raise him up at the last day. It is written in the Prophets: “They will all be taught by God.”

Everyone who listens to the Father and learns from him comes to me. No one has seen the Father except the one who is from God; only he has seen the Father. I tell you the truth, he who believes has everlasting life. I am the bread of life. Your forefathers ate the manna in the desert, yet they died. But here is the bread that comes down from heaven, which a man may eat and not die. I am the living bread that came down from heaven. If anyone eats of this bread he will live forever. This bread is my flesh, which I will give for the life of the world.’

Then the Jews began to argue sharply among themselves, ‘How can this man give us his flesh to eat?’ Jesus said to them, ‘I tell you the truth, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you. Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up at the last day. For my flesh is real food and my blood is real drink. Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood remains in me, and I in him.

Just as the living Father sent me and I live because of the Father, so the one who feeds on me will live because of me. This is the bread that came down from heaven. Your forefathers ate manna and died, but he who feeds on this bread will live forever.’ He said this while teaching in the synagogue in Capernaum.

On hearing it, many of his disciples said, ‘This is a hard teaching. Who can accept it?’ Aware that his disciples were grumbling about this, Jesus said to them, ‘Does this offend you? Then what if you see the Son of Man ascend to where he was before! The Spirit gives life; the flesh counts for nothing. The words I have spoken to you—they are full of the Spirit and they are life. Yet there are some of you who do not believe.’ For Jesus had known from the beginning which of them did not believe and who would betray him.

He went on to say, ‘This is why I told you that no one can come to me unless the Father has enabled them.’ From this time many of his disciples turned back and no longer followed him. ‘You do not want to leave too, do you?’ Jesus asked the Twelve. Simon Peter answered him, ‘Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life. We believe and know that you are the Holy One of God.’

Then Jesus replied, ‘Have I not chosen you, the Twelve? Yet one of you is a devil!’ (He meant Judas, the son of Simon Iscariot, who, though one of the Twelve, was later to betray him.” Let us pray.

Lord God, for many of us these words are very well known, almost notoriously simple, yet, Father, we sometimes sense as we read through them that we have not begun to plumb their depths. What does it mean, indeed, to feed on the flesh and blood of Jesus Christ? What can he mean by saying, “I am the bread of God,” “I am the true manna,” or “I am the bread that has come down from heaven”?

Grant, Lord God, that by reflecting on your Word this evening in the power of the Spirit of God himself, we may come better to understand and adore him and truly to find our souls fed on him who alone is the bread of God. We ask in Jesus’ name, amen.

It’s a remarkable fact that our relatively prosperous, industrialized, Western world entertains ideas about food that no other culture has ever had before. For instance, ask any 5-year-old in this congregation, “Where does food come from?” and he or she will reply, “Jewel,” or “Eagle,” not “Plants and animals.”

Suppose a Chinese gentleman straight from Beijing were to ask the question, “What is the staple diet of America?” what would you say? At a certain age I know what my children would say (McDonald’s), but it’s not a mature response. There’s no decisive answer, is there? We’re so diverse. We have so many, many different kinds of food.

But in many parts of the world, the answer would be univocal and it would be one or two words: rice or rice and fish or yams. That would be it. There could be other things thrown in, but the staple? It would be unambiguous. In the first century Palestine where this takes place, the answer would have been bread or bread and fish, and I don’t think we can understand this story without recognizing that. We’ll come to see why in a moment.

Thirdly, what happens to our food if there is catastrophic drought or ravaging flood? In the ancient world, of course, catastrophic drought or ravaging flood is significant only if it happens near you because the transportation system isn’t all that hot, but for us, the first thing we want to ask is, “Where does this catastrophic drought or ravaging flood take place?” Let’s say it takes place in Florida. Well, it drives up the prices of our citrus fruit, so we fly them in from Spain or China. But in many parts of the world, the answer would be, “We starve.”

The fourth question … Why do we work? The answer is, of course, to earn money so we can buy things, but in many parts of the world, such a high percentage of your income goes into buying the day’s food that the answer would be much sharper. “We work in order to eat.” Now, when you hear a question like, “What must we do to work the works of God? This is the work God requires,” it has a whole different overtone than it does for us today.

Last question … What’s your favorite snack food? Don’t answer. This isn’t a private confessional. Snack food? For billions of people, the notion is totally unfamiliar, and if we tried to explain it to them, they would probably think it’s vaguely grotesque. I’m not trying to say our ideas about food are morally wrong. I’m not saying that.

By and large, they are appropriate to us in the Western industrialized world, but we must see, when we read the Bible, it was written in a non-industrialized agrarian society, a relatively poor one at that. In consequence, all the associations connected with food or bread or work were very different, and once you start dealing in the realm of metaphor, it’s important to have the right overtones, the right connotations firmly embedded in our minds or we will skim over the lesson that is there right on the surface of the chapter.

For us, bread is something that comes in cellophane packages in about 48 varieties in the store. If my wife tells me to go and get some bread at the store on the way home, the chances are still only 50/50 that I bring in the right sort, and we’ve been married 18 years, but in the first century, bread is that which sustains life. Without it, you die. We just never think of bread that way.

In addition, these links have been reinforced in John 6 by the miracle recorded at the beginning of the chapter. Jesus has performed a miracle so that everyone has eaten and had their tummies filled with real food, so they know Jesus can provide food that sustains life. It’s wonderful. They’d like him to do it again. In fact, in verses 14 and 15, they’re quite willing to make him king, if only he will keep their bellies full.

We have this background of the miracle. We have the cultural background, a whole list of assumptions about what food is, what bread is. There’s one more background to our chapter, namely the account of manna in the Old Testament by which God miraculously provides manna, a kind of bread-like substance for 40 years while the people traverse the wilderness.

All of those themes come together and help us understand how it is Jesus mediates God’s life to us under this rubric, Jesus the bread of God.

1. Jesus is the one who mediates God’s life to us because he himself is God’s manna.

Follow the flow from verse 25. When the people ask him, “Rabbi, when did you get here?” it’s because, of course, they don’t understand how he crossed the lake. They were looking for him on the eastern shores where the miracle of the feeding of the 5,000 took place. They couldn’t find him, so eventually, they came around the north end of the lake crossing at the fords, the entry from the Jordan River into the lake, and they find him already there.

We know and the immediate disciples (the Twelve) know he crossed the lake at night in the storm, but the crowds don’t know that, and they’re looking for him, but Jesus doesn’t give them a lesson in miraculous geography or the like. What he does is question their motives. Verse 26: “I tell you the truth, you are looking for me, not because you saw miraculous signs but because you ate the loaves and had your fill.”

Of course, at one level they’re looking for him precisely because they did see miraculous signs, but they saw them as miracles, works of power. They want their tummies full, as he says. “You ate the loaves and had your fill,” but they did not see the miracle was significant. They didn’t see the sign was significant. They didn’t see the significance of the sign. They just saw it as a work of power, and they knew he could fill their tummies, and they’d like for him to do it every day.

In that culture, with 70 to 90 percent of your day’s income going into your day’s food, to have your tummy filled was basically to have all your needs met. You could supply the rest with fairly little effort, so what you really are getting is the ultimate in the welfare state. Here, this would be superb. Moreover, if he’s the sort who can also heal the sick and raise the dead and no enemy can possibly withstand him, why not make him king? Why not accept him as the messianic prophet?

That’s what they had tried to do in verses 14 and 15. People saw the miraculous sign and began to say, “Surely, this is the prophet who is to come into the world.” Jesus, knowing they intended to come and make him king by force, withdrew again to a mountain by himself. In other words, to make him king by force meant they weren’t really listening to his dictate. They weren’t trying to find out what his way and word and will was; they just saw he could supply their physical needs, and they said, “Let’s sign on now and force him if he’s a bit reluctant.”

Jesus, therefore, is calling their bluff pretty strongly. He is, in fact, rebuking their purely materialistic notions of the kingdom, their crass materialism. He says in verse 27, “Do not work for food that spoils, but for food that endures to eternal life.” In other words, “Don’t think merely at the level of physical life.”

His use of work in that connection simply means, “Don’t strive along these lines. Don’t pour all of your energy into food that only lasts for your three-score years and ten but means nothing in terms of eternal life. Rather, work for food that endures to eternal life, which the Son of Man will give you. For on him God the Father has placed his seal of approval.”

In other words, Jesus is trying to direct their attention not only to eternal life and not just life for now, but also to himself. At the end of the day, “You have to come to grips with who I am.” The Son of Man is the one on whom the Father has placed his seal of approval, but they hear his word work and they shift the whole discussion on the basis of that one word. “Don’t work for food that spoils,” and all he means by that is, “Don’t pour your energy into stuff that is just transient. It’s not worth much. Pour your energy into something of eternal significance.”

They just hear the word work, and they say, “What must we do to do the works God requires?” In other words, “If you’re saying this isn’t the right work, tell us what the right works are and we’ll do them.” He still uses that word work, and he comes back in verse 29, “The work of God is this: to believe in the one he has sent.”

In other words, they think if they can just get their actions lined up properly, if they can get their works lined up properly, then God is bound to pour them out a great blessing. They have not understood, in his first word of work, he is saying, “Don’t pursue the transient.” They say, “Tell us what works we should do.” It’s immense presumption.

It assumes, of course, you can get any blessing you can from God provided you get the right works churned out properly. It’s an immense presumption, and Jesus says, “This is the work God requires if you want to talk about works at all. It’s not works. It’s faith, to believe in the one that he has sent.”

In other words, they have to come to terms with him. They have to bow the knee to him. They have to rely on him. They have to trust him. They have to listen to what he is saying, which is precisely the very thing they’re not doing. At one level, they want all his blessings so far as they can discern them, but there’s no hint anywhere along this line they’re ready to bow the knee. Not really. Even the making him king is making him king by force.

In other words, they want a domesticated deity. They want a domesticated Messiah. If he says, then, “You have to believe on the one he has sent,” and they understand he is referring to himself, they get back into the conversation, still trying to turn the agenda their way by saying, “All right, then. What miraculous sign will you give that we may see it and believe you? You want us to believe you? Deal out your cards. Show us why we should. What earthly reason do we have for committing ourselves to you in this sort of way?”

They say, “We’ll give you a hint. What will you do? Our forefathers ate the manna in the desert; as it is written: ‘He gave them bread from heaven to eat.’ Hint, hint, hint.” Thus, they got back to their original agenda right away. That’s really quite remarkable. Later rabbis argued the latter Redeemer, the Messiah, would call down manna from heaven as did the former redeemer, namely Moses, and it may be those sorts of traditions were already present in Jesus’ day (it’s hard to be sure), but in any case, the crowd had seen what Jesus had done the day before.

They knew their Old Testaments. They knew what Moses had done under God’s mighty hand bringing down manna from heaven. Then they had seen what Jesus had done the day before. It was an easy plot to make that connection, wasn’t it? “Our first redeemer did this. Didn’t Moses himself say, ‘Eventually, another prophet will come along like me, and you’ll listen to him,’ in Deuteronomy, chapter 18? All right. The first redeemer provided the manna; so will the second. Let’s go for it. Prove your credentials, then, by bringing down manna again.”

That’s very remarkable as well. It brings to the fore all of Jesus’ concerns in this area of the miraculous. How often does Jesus refuse to perform the miracles whenever they’re demanded of him? He does perform wonderful miracles, but when they’re demanded this way, he starts refusing.

For example, in Matthew, chapter 12 or chapter 13, he says things like, “A wicked and adulterous generation seeks a sign, and no sign shall be given it.” Why not? He has just given them a sign. He does all kinds of miracles. Why shouldn’t he give them another one? The reason, of course, is obvious, because when they start asking for these signs, they want a sign that would, in effect, domesticate him. He becomes a trickster. He becomes a trained monkey. He becomes the genie in Aladdin’s lamp, all the power still with the person who rubs the lamp.

He will not have any of that. We’ve seen this kind of theme already in the book of John. It crops up again and again and again. He will not be domesticated. He will not fit into anyone’s pocket. Jesus, then, says (verses 32 and 33), “I tell you the truth, it is not Moses who has given you the bread from heaven.”

“In the first place, you’re putting too much attention on Moses,” he says. “It is my Father who 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.” In John’s gospel, in some passages Jesus is the new Moses, the true Moses. Here, he’s the true bread.

“Yes, Moses did, in a manner of speaking, give you bread, although it was really God who did it,” Jesus says, “but that bread wasn’t the ultimate bread. The ultimate bread, the true bread, is the bread that comes from God himself, and it is he who comes into the world.” That’s very strong language, and it’s part of a whole pattern we have already seen from the Old Testament.

We have seen, for example, Jesus is the ultimate serpent who is lifted up on a pole in John, chapter 3. He’s the ultimate Passover. We saw in chapter 2, he’s the ultimate temple. So many of these institutions and miracles and laws given in the Old Testament set up a certain standard of expectation. Then, one by one, they’re announced later in the Old Testament as something that is still to come in greater fulfillment.

Now Jesus is saying, “Ultimately, what that Old Testament period showed was that God provides you with bread to live. You cannot live in the wilderness without the bread God provides, and you cannot have eternal life, you cannot live in his presence without the bread God provides. That bread God provides is none other than the one God has sent from heaven. It’s me. For you to focus, in other words, on the bread I provided you with yesterday is to focus on the wrong thing. You are failing to see the significance of the sign.”

In other words, Jesus insists, in the first instance, he is the one who mediates God’s life to us because he himself is God’s manna. He himself is the one who is the nourishing source of eternal life for his people.

2. Jesus is the one who mediates God’s life to us because he does his Father’s will.

Verses 34 to 40. “ ‘Sir,’ they said, ‘from now on, give us this bread.’ ” It’s very doubtful they’ve understood him at this point at all. They haven’t caught it at all. So now Jesus declares clearly, first-person singular, in a statement of exquisite simplicity they have to understand, “I am the bread of life.” None of this, “The bread of God is the one who comes down from heaven,” or something like this. It’s just very clear, very straight. “I am the bread of life.”

“From now on, give us this bread.”

“God has already given you the bread. I am the bread of life,” he says. “He who comes to me will never go hungry, and he who believes in me will never be thirsty.” This is removing another misunderstanding. They had said in verse 34, “From now on give us this bread,” as if his job was to give them the bread today and then again tomorrow and the next day when they’re hungry again. What they really wanted was the repetition of the miracle. “He did it yesterday; now do it again and tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow.”

They have his agenda all mapped out. “From now on give us this. You’ve done it once; just keep on doing it and we’ll be satisfied. You can be king.” But Jesus says, “No. That’s not the way it works. I am the bread of life. In addition, he who comes to me will never be hungry again.” In other words, there’s a sense in which once you have eaten of this bread of life your hunger is quenched and your thirst is quenched forever. You don’t keep coming back.

He’s saying, “You just don’t even understand the categories.” It’s important to think that one through very carefully, for clearly there is a sense in which, even after we become Christians, we still need a certain kind of nourishment again and again and again, but Jesus isn’t dealing with that here. He’s not dealing with that either. That’s true, but it’s not what he’s dealing with.

He’s dealing with something much deeper you find in a lot of Christian testimonies. Hear these testimonies sometimes of the seeker types who wander from religion to religion trying to find satisfaction here, trying to find release from loneliness and frustration there, trying to find significance somewhere else, trying to find release from guilt here.

They move around religion to religion, and finally, they really do close with Christ. They understand they were made in the image of God by him and for him. They understand they’re fallen. They understand they’re broken and guilty. They understand they can be reconciled to this God only by the death of Christ.

Finally, they close with him. They receive him by grace through faith. Regeneration takes place in their minds and hearts so they really truly believe. They are prepared for heaven. Then there testimony is, in the words of the hymn writer,

I tried the broken cisterns, Lord,

But, ah, the waters failed;

Even as I stooped to drink they fled,

And mocked me as I wailed.

Now none but Christ can satisfy,

None other name for me!

In that sense, once you have truly tried him, truly trusted him, truly come to know him, your hunger has been satisfied. You don’t keep pressing on to some other food or want another dose. You don’t go back and receive Jesus again. The deed is done. It doesn’t mean there’s no more growth left. It does not mean we will not experience a certain kind of restlessness as we become homesick for heaven. It does not mean we still don’t have to deal with things in our lives.

It does mean there is such a change that John has already referred to in the terms of the new birth in John, chapter 3, that the basic, deep-seated hunger and thirst goes. In other words, it’s a way of saying their categories are still crassly materialistic, crassly temporary. They have not understood at all.

The closest parallel to this passage, I think, in John’s gospel is probably John, chapter 13, verses 9 and 10 in the matter of the foot washing. Do you remember what Jesus says? Jesus starts washing all their feet, and Peter says, “Not me, Lord. You’re not going to wash my feet.” So Jesus says, “If I don’t wash …” He’s speaking in quasi-metaphorical terms again. “If I don’t wash you, Peter, you can’t have any part with me.”

Typical Peter, he says, “In that case, give me a whole bath.” Jesus says, “No, no, no. The one who is clean doesn’t need a whole bath. He just needs his feet cleaned.” It’s another way of getting at the same sort of thing. The person who has truly closed with Christ doesn’t have to go back and be regenerated all over again and have another bath, as it were.

No, no, but as John says later on in another of his writings, he says, “Still, if we Christians sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous one, and he is the propitiation for our sins. If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.” We still need our feet washed, but we’ve had the bath.

So also here, Jesus’ point is that any notion of coming to him again and again and again and again for more bread and more bread and more bread still is dealing with categories that are too crassly materialistic and temporary and transient. We sometimes sing some hymns that get that one wrong, too, and in a certain framework they make sense, but they don’t make sense here.

Break Thou the bread of life, dear Lord, to me,

As Thou didst break the loaves beside the sea;

Beyond the sacred page I seek Thee, Lord;

The idea is the bread of the Word of God is being fed to us such that we are being nourished again, and there is a sense in which the Word nourishes us daily and in which Jesus comes to us and refreshes us. There is a sense in which that is correct, but it’s not the sense here. Clearly, this kind of bread comes, and the one who eats this bread is never hungry again and never thirsty again.

In other words, it’s the crucial transitional point that is at stake which takes it out of the realm of merely material and physical where our stomachs go empty and we have to eat again. “He who comes to me will never go hungry, and he who believes in me will never be thirsty. But as I told you, you have seen me and still you do not believe.”

At this point, it’s important before we press on to see Jesus here links together the metaphorical world and the non-metaphorical world. Look carefully at 35 again. “I am the bread of life.” That’s still the metaphorical world. “He who comes to me will never go hungry.” You’re getting out of the metaphorical world. You don’t normally come to bread in order to escape your hunger. You have to eat it. He’s coming out of the metaphorical world.

He says, “He who believes in me will never be thirsty.” It’s very important to see Jesus is saying, by being the Bread of Life, he is received by people coming to him and believing him, not by people chewing on him. It’s very important to see that as we press on a little further into the passage. In other words, he himself gives some sort of hint at what this metaphor is talking about. That will become very important as we press on a little later.

But if so many people don’t come (verse 36), does that mean he’s a bit of a failure? Some Jews thought when the Messiah came all Jews would come to him, but he says, “But as I told you, you have seen me and still you do not believe.” Does that mean he’s a bit of a failure? No. Now the point becomes clear. Jesus is the one who mediates God’s life to us because he does his Father’s will.

Watch the flow of the language carefully from verses 37 to 40. Verse 37 is often understood as a (believe it or not) “Calminian” verse. That’s a bastardized word. What is meant by that is the first part is supposed to be Calvinistic and the second part is supposed to be Arminian, so they call it Calminian. The first part says, “All those the Father gives me will come to me.” Some sort of presupposition of election. “The Father has a group of people who will come to me. All those the Father gives me will come to me.”

Meanwhile, the second part of the verse (37b), the Arminian part, “And whoever comes to me I will in no wise cast out.” That is, “I’ll welcome them in.” Thus, we are told John was a Calminian. Whatever you think of Calvin and Arminianism, it just won’t work here at all in any case. It’s not what the language says.

The argument, rather, is (verse 37a), “All those the Father gives me will come to me.” In other words, there’s not going to be any failure. “All those the Father gives to me will inevitably, infallibly come. They will come. Now that they’ve come because the Father has given them to me, I’m not going to throw them out. I’m not going to get rid of them. I’m going to keep them in.” That’s what the argument is.

In other words, 37b is a figure of speech called a litotes. A litotes is a figure of speech in which you affirm one thing by denying the opposite. “Were there a lot of the people at the concert last night?”

“Oh, not a few,” by which you mean, “Quite a lot.” Thus, you’ve denied the few in order to affirm the lot. What will Jesus not do? “I will not drive them away,” which is another way of saying, “What I will do is keep them in.” It doesn’t simply mean, “I will welcome them in.” The verb here normally means, “They really are in already, and I’m not going to drive them out. I’ll keep them in.”

The proof that is what he means is in the flow of the argument. Listen again from 37. “All those the Father gives me will come to me, and whoever comes to me I will never drive away. I’m going to keep them in, for …” Verse 38, the flow of the argument. “For I have come down from heaven not to do my will but to do the will of him who sent me. And this is the will of him who sent me, that I shall lose none of all those he has given me. Far from losing them, I’m going to keep them.”

In other words, “All those the Father has given to me will come to me, and I tell you, I’m going to keep every last one of them because that’s my Father’s will, and I came down from heaven to do my Father’s will,” he says. “Not only will I keep them, but I will keep them so inevitably and so infallibly that I will raise them up at the last day.” You can’t be better kept than that!

Lest the point has been lost, it’s repeated in verse 40. “For my Father’s will is that everyone who looks to the Son …” Now looking at these same people from a phenomenological perspective, not now is the Father’s gift of these people to the Son, but in terms of what we do. We look to the Son. “… and believes in him shall have eternal life, and I will raise them up at the last day.”

In other words, some Jews may think every single solitary last Jew is going to worship the Messiah in Jesus’ day and going to see him for who he is and crowd on his bandwagon, but Jesus says, “No. It doesn’t work like that. All those the Father gives to me will come to me, and be very sure of this. There’s no failure possible. They will come to me, and I will certainly keep them and raise them up at the last day. For I came down from heaven to do my Father’s will, and this is his will, that of all those he has given me I shall not lose one.”

In other words, in the flow of the argument here, no one truly given by the Father to the Son can finally be lost unless you suppose Jesus can fail. That’s what it would take. If either Jesus does not or cannot perform his Father’s will, then he may lose some of those the Father gives him, but that’s what it would take.

That’s quite a remarkable passage. It’s very strong. I know that. I know all the other passage you can start quoting on the other side. I’ll try to leave some space for questions at the end if you like, but that’s what the passage says, I think, on the very plain reading of it, isn’t it? I don’t myself see how you can read it any other way when you simply follow the flow of the argument.

The point in the context is Jesus is the one who mediates God’s life to us because he does his Father’s will, and his Father’s will is that he keeps and preserves to eternal life and raises up on the last day all those the Father has given him. As the Bread of Life, then, he supplies them not only with eternal life now but with resurrection life on the last day, for this is the Father’s will, and he has come down to do it.

3. Jesus is the one who mediates God’s life to us because he reveals God to us.

At this point, in verses 41 and 42, some of the Jews are beginning to grumble. They’re grumbling because they hear an authority claim in what he is saying they do not like. They would prefer to have a domesticated king rather than a king who has absolute authority over them.

As far as they’re concerned, they know who Jesus is, where he came from, and his patrimony, who his mom and dad are. How can he now, therefore, make these pretentious claims? They’re offended by his personal claim, not by his offer to give bread but by his claim of authority to come down from heaven.

Jesus, then, responds in verses 43 and 44. “ ‘Stop grumbling among yourselves,’ Jesus answered.” Then he says (verse 44), “No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him, and I will raise him up at the last day.” That’s a very remarkable answer. On the one hand, it is saying the grumbling was not only insulting, granted that Jesus did come from heaven, but dangerous. It was dangerous. It was putting them outside the camp. It presupposed divine revelation could be sorted out by talking the matter over. Thus, it diverted attention from the grace of God.

How do you come, finally, to see who Jesus is? “No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him, and I will raise him up at the last day.” What that should have done at this point is said, “O, Lord God, open then our eyes that we may see. O, Lord God, draw then even us.” Instead, they want to remain in the driver’s seat so they were doing all the evaluating. They’re controlling the whole pace. They are confident of their own ability, not only to come but even to discern and decide.

Again, the language, of course, really emphasizes the side of divine sovereignty on this whole matter, but what kind of drawing does the Father exercise here? This is not the savage constraint of a rapist, as if God drags people kicking and screaming into the kingdom saying, “I don’t want to come! I don’t want to come! I don’t want to believe! I don’t want to believe!” but they have to anyway because they have no choice. God has declared it by fiat.

That’s not quite what is at stake. It’s not the savage constraint of a rapist but the wonderful wooing of a directed lover, or otherwise put, in biblical terms, this drawing is by an insight, a teaching, an illumination implanted within the individual in fulfillment of Old Testament promise. Hence, verse 45. Read the flow again from 44 to 45.

“No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him, and I will raise him up at the last day. It is written in the Prophets: ‘They will all be taught by God.’ ” This is a paraphrase of Isaiah 54:13. Isaiah 53 you know. Isaiah 53 is the fourth-grade servant song:

He was wounded for our transgressions;

He was bruised for our iniquities.

The chastisement of our peace was upon him.

With his stripes we are healed.

Chapter 54 has these words (this is a slight paraphrase of them): “They will all be taught by God.” The text actually reads, “All your sons will be taught by the Lord and great will be your children’s peace.” In chapter 55 of Isaiah, you have that great passage, “Come to the waters. Come buy wine without money and without price. Come and eat and drink.” This is language which is, again, being picked up in this chapter.

Isaiah 53, 54, and 55 all eluded to or cited explicitly in John’s gospel. Of all the books of the Old Testament most quoted by John, Isaiah comes first. Moses is actually mentioned the most. Isaiah is actually mentioned three times, but in actual numbers of references to the Old Testament, Isaiah comes first. John is a man who lives and breathes and drinks Isaiah.

This, too, we have seen elsewhere in John’s gospel. Didn’t we see, when we studied John 3 together, the John 3 new birth language ultimately depends on Ezekiel 36 and Jeremiah 31, the new covenant passages that look forward to a time when God will write his laws on their hearts and he will pour out his Spirit upon men and women? “They will all know me from the least to the greatest. They will be cleaned up. I will sprinkle them with clean water.”

The language is all drawn from that promised new covenant set of texts from the Old Testament, and there are many of them. This is another one. Out of the work of the Messiah, the atoning sufferer, in chapter 53, comes this promise of an internal wooing by God himself. “They will, all those under this new covenant, be taught by God.” That’s what the text says. In the epistles of John, this is analogous to what he calls the anointing of the Holy One.

My whole job is to teach people. If they’re Christians, I’m teaching people who already know the Lord, and if I’m evangelizing in a university mission or something, I’m teaching people who don’t know the Lord, but over the years, you come to see, no matter how hard you try in your teaching, no matter how carefully you try to lay out line upon line, you cannot bring people to cross over from darkness to light, you cannot regenerate people by the cogency of your argument or the quality of your teaching or the power of your oratory or anything like that.

They must be taught by God. There is an internal work that is necessary, a change. They are transferred from the kingdom of darkness into the kingdom of God’s dear Son, to use the language of Paul in Colossians 1. It’s not, therefore, that we shouldn’t teach and preach and evangelize.

Of course, God is normally the God who uses means, but at the end of the day, you can preach exactly one sermon in one university crowd and the same sermon in a virtually identical university crowd, and in one bunch you see a number of people really close with Christ and in another crowd you see almost nothing take place. In times of revival, weak sermons do fantastic good. In times of deadness, brilliant sermons do very little.

The result of all of that is not to make people lethargic about sermons. That’s not the point. The point is we have to come back to the fact it is God who finally makes the change. God will not be domesticated. If people simply were converted in proportion to the excellence of the sermon, then you could rate everybody in the kingdom by how many people got converted under their ministry.

Billy Graham must be up there somewhere. Samuel Zwemer is a bit of a flop.” Ever heard of Samuel Zwemer? He was a Christian Reformed missionary who worked for 40 years among the Arabs and saw only eight converts. Three of them were killed by their relatives. The other five never really amounted to much, but he translated the Bible into Arabic and laid all foundations for contemporary Muslim missions. When the saints go marching in, I don’t think Samuel Zwemer is going to be a lot farther behind Billy Graham.

God is still sovereign. Men and women are responsible. They must believe. That’s true. God is still the God who uses means. We must still witness and declare and preach. But at the end of the day, “All those who the Father has given to me will come to me, and they will all be taught by God, and I will raise them up at the last day.”

There is wonderful confidence there. No frustration because there’s a confidence in what God was doing even while there’s a passion to deliver the truth. “Everyone who listens to the Father and learns from him …” If you really have been taught by God. “… comes to me.” That’s what Jesus says.

If anybody else said that, it would be the most amazing arrogance. “If you really understand God, folks, you listened to me.” But that’s exactly what Jesus says. “If you really have been taught by God, you’ve listened to my word. You believe me. You trust me, because I have come down from God. How could it be anywhere else?”

We saw last week God himself has insisted his intent is that all should honor the Son even as they honor the Father. It could not be any other way. No one has seen the Father except the one who is from God. Only he has seen the Father. In other words, the same revelation claim we’ve seen in chapter 1, chapter 3, chapter 5, and now again in chapter 6. “I tell you the truth, he who believes has eternal life. I am the bread of life.”

In other words, in all of this … in all of this … there is a stripping of all would-be pretensions, all self-congratulation. When we finally get to heaven, are we really going to be able to get in and say, “Of course, I know I’m here because Jesus died for sinners like me, but let’s be quite frank. My brother heard the message, my sister heard the message, and I heard the message, and I believed it and they didn’t. That’s why I’m here and they’re not. At the end of the day, I made the right decision and they made the wrong decision, and that’s the final turning bit.”

That would be a valid boast, wouldn’t it be, for all eternity? It might not be very likely in heaven where you’ve done away with pride, but still, it is a valid boast, isn’t it? Is the fundamental difference between you and your pagan neighbor that you made the right decision and they didn’t? No. The hymn writers often have it best.

I sought the Lord, and afterward I knew

He moved my soul to seek him, seeking me.

‘Twas not so much that I on thee took hold,

As thou, dear Lord, on me.

At the end of the day, when we are in heaven, we will say, “Thank you, Lord, for saving me,” not “Thank me for making the right decision.” That brings us to the fourth point, and it is perhaps the most important, the deepest of all.

4. Jesus is the one who mediates God’s life to us because he gives his life on our behalf.

We are dealing now with verses 49 to 58. Even a superficial perusal of these verses shows some very, very physical language, doesn’t it? It starts already in verse 50. “… may eat and not die.” Verse 51: “If anyone eats of this bread …” Verse 52: “How can this man give us his flesh to eat?”

Verse 53: “I tell you the truth, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you. Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up at the last day. For my flesh is real food and my blood is real drink. Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood …” Very strong language, isn’t it?

Partly because of the strength of this language, some people see here an unavoidable allusion to Holy Communion, to the Lord’s Table, and some church traditions think that’s what this is talking about all through here. I have to say I disagree with that almost entirely. In the first place, at this point the Lord’s Table hasn’t been introduced.

If you place yourself in the flow of the argument in the book, the words of institution, “This is my body which is broken for you,” would come in chapter 13, the night of the Last Supper. In fact, interestingly enough, they’re not there. In other words, John is so little interested in sacramentarian things that, at the very point where he could have really pushed it, he says nothing.

Even with respect to baptism in chapter 4, when it says Jesus was baptizing many people in that place, then he backs off and says, “Though it was not Jesus who was baptizing but his disciples.” John, it seems to me, does not have a very strong emphasis on church rites or the like, and in any case, you would have to presuppose, in this instance, the words are anachronistic.

Moreover, if John were really interested in talking about the Lord’s Supper, I think he would have used slightly different language. If you look anywhere throughout the rest of the New Testament, the Synoptic Gospels, Paul, or the early fathers after the New Testament right into the middle of the second century, whenever people spoke of the bread, then they remembered Jesus’ words, “This is my body.” Never, “This is my flesh.” Here there is no word for body. It’s flesh all the way through. “You have to eat my flesh.”

If John really did want to make some sort of conscious connection with the Lord’s Supper, the smart thing to do would be to use the words the whole church is using at this point, namely body, but it’s not what he does. Moreover, already the direction of the discourse has been determined by verse 35 which is why I drew your attention to it when we went by that. There Jesus unpacks the significance of the metaphor.

Verse 35: “I am the bread of life. He who comes to me will never go hungry, and he who believes in me will never be thirsty.” In other words, it is not, “He who eats a sacrament will never be hungry.” It is, “He who believes in me.” The whole thing is profoundly Christological. Then why does Jesus use this language?

Now we come to the questions I gave you at the beginning of the talk about our understanding of food. Go back to verse 51. “I am the living bread that came down from heaven. If anyone eats of this bread he will live forever. This bread is my flesh, which I will give for the life of the world.” It is hard for us to recognize like the 5-year-old who thinks food comes from Jewel that all food we eat means something else has died. The only exception is a few minerals. Salt. Go to McDonald’s or Wendy’s and buy a hamburger.

That beef patty has come from some dead cow. The bread is barley or wheat or something that has been cut down and has lost its life. The ketchup? Dead tomatoes lying about somewhere. You have dead onions in there, dead lettuce. There’s nothing in there that isn’t dead, that hasn’t been killed, except too much salt, and anybody brought up in an agrarian society knows that. They’re used to seeing Mom or Dad go to the back door with an ax. Take the chicken. Chop! We don’t do that today. Most of us have never seen that done in our lives, but these people knew about it.

Moreover, for them, bread was their staple. For Jesus to say as he says, “This bread is my flesh which I will give for the life of the world,” either means sheer cannibalism, which is what the Jews are in danger of misinterpreting in verse 52, or it means something along the line of, “I give my life; I die so others live. Your eternal life comes from my death. That’s what it means to eat me. That’s what it means to eat my flesh and to drink my blood.”

You can get out of the metaphor and see what it means, but in that world it means, “I am the staple of eternal life, and without this staple, you’re dead. I die so you may have eternal life, and if you don’t eat this food, there isn’t any other. This is the bread that came from God. This is the bread from heaven. This is the true manna which a man may eat and not die. If you don’t come to terms with this bread, there is no other. This is the staple.”

In other words, this is another way of getting at substitutionary atonement. He dies, the just for the unjust. He dies; we live. He pays for our sin; we are declared just. We are justified because of his death. We have life because he takes our death. This, of course, is entirely in line with a theme that has been developing as we’ve seen throughout the whole book.

In chapter 1, he’s the Lamb of God. In chapter 2, he’s not only the temple of God, but he’s the temple of God which must be destroyed if we are to come into his presence. In chapter 3, he’s the serpent hung up on a pole, in a verb that progresses becomes a book connected with his crucifixion. He is lifted up. We sing in our hymns …

Lifted up was he to die;

“It is finished,” was his cry.

Now in heaven exalted high;

Hallelujah! What a Savior!

The language is Johannine. It has to do with his death, this death by which we live. Later on, we’ll see next week, in John, chapter 11, he’s the one who dies instead of the nation. In chapter 12, he’s the corn of wheat that falls into the ground and dies so that it might bring forth a whole harvest. The book as a whole moves toward … What’s the plotline in the gospel of John? What’s the climax?

It’s the same as in all four Gospels. He’s not just a revealer. He’s not just a model. He’s moving toward the cross. He’s moving toward the passion. He’s moving toward his death that we might live. So here, Jesus is the one who mediates God’s life to us because he gives his life on our behalf.