Listen or read the following transcript as D. A. Carson speaks on Jesus as the Bread of Life from John 6:25-59
“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. 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 that 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 that 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 him up at the last day.’
At this the Jews 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.”
This is the Word of the Lord.
It is 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 the vast majority of our 5-year-olds, “Where does food come from?” and most of them will say, “From Jewel-Osco,” or whatever the local supermarket is in your area. Only a few of them brought up on the farm will say, “From plants and animals.” Food for them is that which comes in cardboard or saran wrap or some other container.
Suppose a Chinese gentleman from a village outside Beijing was to ask the question, “What is the staple diet of America?” How on earth can you answer that question? The same 5-year-old might say, “McDonald’s,” but we’ll let that pass. The fact of the matter is there’s no decisive answer possible, because we have such a vast array of choices and so much diversity racially, culturally, and heritage that different parts of the country eat different things too.
You wouldn’t possibly say “grits” if you were living in Chicago. You might in Alabama. In many parts of the world, the answer is unequivocal. “Rice,” or in some places, “Rice and fish.” My sister worked in New Guinea for many years. The answer would have been, “Yams and wild pig.” Or ask yourself the question, “What happens to our food if there is catastrophic drought or ravaging flood?” The answer is, “The price goes up a bit.”
You don’t answer in terms of starvation, eking it out until the next harvest comes back. Besides, it depends a bit on where it is. If the freeze is in Florida, what it means is you have to import more oranges from either California or China or someplace, so the price goes up a bit to cover the transport. Nowadays, we have such a network of transportation and food that where there is ravaging problem, all it means for most of us most of the time is the price goes up.
Fourth question. “Why do we work?” So that you can buy stuff. You wouldn’t answer, “In order to eat.” Not many anymore would answer that. Maybe the poorest of our poor. Oh, if pushed you say, “Well, part of our income obviously goes to buy food,” but it’s not as in first-century Palestine, where up to 90 percent of your income went into buying food. Of course, in that kind of context, you ask, “Why do you work?” and the answer is, “To eat.”
One more question. “What’s your favorite snack food?” Snack food? For billions of people in the world today, the very notion is grotesque. This isn’t to say our ideas about food are morally wrong. Don’t misunderstand me. I’m not trying to indulge a guilt trip. By and large, our ideas are appropriate to our industrialized relatively prosperous society. But we must see that when we read the Bible, it was written in a non-industrialized, agrarian society that was, in fact, rather poor.
All of their associations with words like bread were different from ours. I hear the word bread when my wife says, “On your way home, would you mind stopping and picking up some bread?” Then it’s very easy for me to have a panic attack, because I think of Jewel-Osco with its rows and rows and rows, and I know she wants a certain one, and by now I’ve been married for more than 25 years; I should know which one, but the daunting choice is a bit much.
Actually, at this point it’s not, because she was so ill all of last year I did all of the shopping again for about a year, and I just about managed to get things taped. I’d go at 1:00 in the morning. We have one that goes 24 hours a day. I’d go after everybody else was in bed. At 1:00 in the morning, I’d get up and down those aisles so fast. The only other people there were the shelf stuffers.
Then halfway through the year, when my wife is halfway through her cancer bout, they went and changed the whole shop around. That was one of my biggest crises for the entire year. I can now pick up the seven different grain Roman loaf she likes. I can manage that. Those are my mental associations with bread, but in the first century in Palestine, if you don’t have bread, you starve. That sort of thought never crosses my mind. Not once. If I don’t have bread, it’s because I forgot it on the way home.
In other words, for the first-century hearer of Jesus’ words, expressions like bread or bread of life have to do with the staple that sustains life, that without which you die. That’s the first association, and if you don’t see that powerfully, you cannot feel the power of this passage. On top of all of that, this discourse, this interchange, is put in the context of Jesus’ miracle of the feeding of the 5,000.
Now the significance of Jesus providing bread that sustained those people physically is ratcheted up by his discourse about what sustains them finally with eternal life. So now the sign becomes significant. It is being unpacked by the discourse. In fact, the whole thing has generated a series of false expectations. Some just think this is too good to be true.
Supposing you could have a messiah who would automatically increase your income by 90 percent, which is about what they were devoting their income to to pay for bread. Now he can provide all the food they want. Small wonder, then, that we read in John 6:14–15, “After the people saw the miraculous sign that Jesus did, they began to say, ‘Surely this is the Prophet who is to come into the world.’ Jesus, knowing that they intended to come and make him king by force, withdrew again to a mountain by himself.”
They had false expectations of what the kingdom would bring. That, too, is part of the setting here. They want him, all right, and after the walking on the water in the following verses, they don’t know that he has crossed miraculously during the night, and they’re hunting for him. That brings us to the passage we read. That’s the setup for the discourse that’s going on. We must see, then, that this discourse is framed with certain parameters in view.
First, there is a sense of urgency, because the people are pressing him to become a political king. Second, the whole cultural background on food and bread is very different, and there are several things in here that will call us to remember that point. Third, it is in the context of the feeding of the 5,000. Now we are ready to hear what Jesus means when he says, as he does in verse 35, “I am the bread of life.” Four things.
1. Jesus is the one who mediates God’s life to us because he is himself God’s manna.
Verses 25–33: “When they found him on the other side of the lake, they asked him, ‘Rabbi, when did you get here?’ ” They don’t know about the walking on the water reported in verses 16–24. Jesus does not respond to their question but challenges their motives. Verse 26: “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.’ ”
In one sense, of course, they are looking for him because they saw the miraculous sign, but the point Jesus is making is that they saw the miraculous sign and merely saw it in terms of having their fill, in terms of their physical appetites being met and what this signals for the potential increase in their income. They did not see the sign as a sign. They did not see its significance. They saw it only in terms of what it meant for them as a kind of free handout.
So Jesus rebukes their purely materialistic notions of the kingdom. That’s part of what is going on. Earlier they tried to make him king. He’s afraid the same thing could happen again. Today, there are many people who want religion primarily to provide a whole lot of benefits in this life, and that’s all there is to it, but Jesus says, “Do not work for food that spoils, but for food that endures to eternal life, which the Son of Man will give you.”
That’s part of a vast emphasis in Jesus’ teaching. We’re to lay up treasure in heaven, where moth and rust do not corrode, where thieves do not break through and steal. We’re not to lay up treasure here, where all of what we lay up will finally be dissipated. No matter how much you have when you die, you will take with you exactly what I will take with me: nothing.
There’s a great deal in the Bible that just doesn’t make sense anymore unless you have an expectation of life to come. The whole call for suffering in this life, unless there’s vindication at the end, is basically a call to masochism. Even in Jesus’ own case, after all, he empties himself and becomes a no one and a nothing and then submits to the ignominious shame of the cross. “Wherefore God has highly exalted him and given him the name that is above every name.” That depends on an eschatological stance.
It may be that in America 50 years ago we were fighting too much over eschatological details, but nowadays we have a brand of Christianity rife in the land that doesn’t deny that there is life to come, but it’s not very significant. What is significant is how Christianity affects your life now. That’s a vast distortion from the emphases of Scripture. Of course Christ affects your life now. Of course you have eternal life now.
Of course there’s forgiveness of sins now, but the great anticipation in Scripture constantly is the life to come, laying up treasure in heaven. There is very little in Scripture that makes sense without seeing that … very little of Christian ethnics, very little of Christian doctrine, very little of Christian value systems, very little of Christian worldview. “Do not work for food that spoils, but for food that endures to eternal life, which the Son of Man will give you.”
Then Jesus adds, “On him God the Father has placed his seal of approval.” Jesus typically turns the whole thing into a Christological debate. “Hear him. You must have his terms.” Jesus is talking about what is or is not an appropriate goal. That’s what he means when he says, “Do not work for food that spoils, but for food that endures.” He’s talking about what’s the appropriate goal.
They hear the word work and focus all of the attention on that one word. It’s like what happens sometimes when you preach a whole beautifully constructed, textually faithful, theologically rich, spiritually nourishing sermon, and you get somebody at the end who has picked up one phrase and wants to quarrel with you about it for 15 minutes at the door at the end. It does happen. It happened to Jesus.
They pick up the word work, so they say, “What do we do to do the works God requires?” In other words, “If you’re going to talk about work, then bring it on. We can do it.” The naÔvetÈ and hubris are formidable. They display no doubt at all about their intrinsic ability to meet any challenge God may set them. Indeed, a lot of people think that religion is a bit like that. “Tell us the rules. We’ll follow them. How do you get peace? Just tell us what to do. We’ll sort it out.”
If we need more, well, that’s where God comes in. You do the best you can, and then God adds in a little bit of extra at the end. I’ve sometimes told a story of the time when I was studying in Germany quite a number of years ago now, trying to improve my German. There was a young French West African who was studying in the same course. He was a graduate student in engineering and wanted to do his PhD in Germany in engineering, so he was improving his German as well.
His wife was in London studying to be a doctor. Whenever we both got tired of talking in German, which was pretty often, we retreated to a language we both knew, which was French. He was brought up in French West Africa, and I was brought up in French Canada. So once or twice a week we’d retreat to a restaurant. I was single, and his wife was in London. We’d have a meal together and talk in a civilized language.
As time went on, I got to know him a little better, and I saw that once or twice a week he would go to the red-light district of Hamburg and pay his money and have his woman. Eventually, I got to know him well enough that I challenged him on this. I said to him one evening at supper, “What would you do if you discovered your wife were doing the same thing in London?” “Oh,” he said, “I’d kill her.” I said, “Come again?” He said, “I’d kill her. She would deserve it. She would have dishonored me.”
I said, “Well, you’re doing the same thing.” He said, “Where I come from in Africa, the men are allowed to sleep around. The women are not. She would deserve to die.” I said, “But you told me you were brought up in a mission school. You know God doesn’t grade on a curve depending on your gender. That determines your moral integrity?” He said, “God is good. He’s bound to forgive us. That’s his job.”
There’s a great deal of evangelical thought that thinks of God more or less along those terms. You do the best you can. You follow the rules, and then God will forgive you. That’s his job. It is just so far removed from the passion of the gospel. Jesus sets the record straight. “The work of God is this …” If you’re going to talk now about what God requires … That’s what they’ve said. “What do we do to do the works God requires?”
“If you’re going to talk about what God requires,” he says, “it’s this: to believe in the one he has sent.” This simultaneously emphasizes faith and Christology. You have to come to terms with Jesus, and you have to trust him. Absolutely. It is a kind of Johannine equivalent to Romans 3:28. “For we maintain that a man is justified by faith apart from observing the law.” From their point of view, if Jesus is going to focus so strongly on himself, they will draw back and demand validation.
Verses 30–31: “So they asked him, ‘What miraculous sign then will you give that we may see it and believe you? What will you do?’ ” Then they said, “And we do have a suggestion, a small hint.” “Our forefathers ate the manna in the desert …” They even have a proof text. “… as it is written: ‘He gave them bread from heaven to eat.’ ”
Perhaps the feeding miracle and his mention of food that endures to eternal life had triggered in them some reflection on the Old Testament manna. If he’s talking about bread from heaven, they know about bread from heaven. They’ve read their Bibles. If he talks about food that God himself provides, they know about food that God provides. They’ve read their Bibles. Now he’s talking about himself and himself and himself.
“Well, after all, there’s this wonderful miracle he did yesterday. If he really wants us to follow him and trust him and believe in him and commit ourselves to him in that kind of way, let him do that miracle again.” So they manage to get through this impasse he’s setting up and get back to what they really wanted in the first place, basically to make him king … by force if need be … so he would do all the miraculous stuff day after day after day and provide them with all the wealth.
Imagine if you could double your income. Imagine if you could work so that all the money you did take in was not for food but to buy stuff. You’ve just doubled the economy overnight. Boy, that’s a great president, isn’t it? Indeed, later rabbis argued that the latter redeemer, which is the way they referred sometimes to the Messiah, would call down manna from heaven, as did the former redeemer, Moses.
Whether that tradition goes back to the first century we don’t know. In any case, the crowd was inviting Jesus, at very least, to repeat his miracle and provision of the day before and thus validate himself. Jesus replies, “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.”
In other words, in the first place, Jesus wants to rebuke them for their focus on Moses. That’s a perennial problem of elevating the human leader whom God uses to a place of guru prominence. In Britain, when I was studying there 25 years ago, you could come across people in small chapels in the middle of nowhere who would come up and wring your hand at the end of a service and say, “You know, I was baptized by the Doctor,” who was Dr. Lloyd-Jones. That clearly gave them an inside track with the Almighty.
The Doctor himself was not given to that sort of thing. He was about as catholic in spirit as you could possibly imagine, but somehow they got close to majesty because they had gotten done by the Doctor. In some ways, it’s easier still to look to people from the past, too, some great leader, as the heritage of your tradition. “I am of Paul. I am of Cephas. I am of Apollos. I am of Calvin. I am of Wesley.”
“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.” That’s the first correction. The second correction is what this bread is. It’s not the manna in the wilderness. In fact, farther on, he goes on to insist that that bread in the wilderness could not possibly be God’s final answer to human hunger, because the fathers ate the bread in the wilderness and died in the wilderness. That can’t be the last answer.
Thus, verse 58: “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.” Again in verse 50: “But here is the bread that comes down from heaven, which a man may eat and not die.” He’s saying, “You’re still looking at bread, which even when it was given by God miraculously in the Old Testament could not possibly have been the ultimate bread, because it didn’t give the ultimate life. There was still life only on this plane. The true bread, the true manna, is the one whom God has sent from heaven.”
What that means is that Jesus not only gives bread, as in the feeding of the 5,000; he is the Bread of God. That explains the significance of the feeding. The feeding pointed beyond itself. It pointed beyond simply a miracle, which everybody could see. You’d have to be blind not to see the miracle, but it pointed to who Jesus was, to the food that he was apart from the food he provided.
This is extremely important, and in the context of John’s entire book, huge associations must immediately be pulled in, for this is part of a sweeping theme: how Jesus demonstrably fulfills, brings to focus and climax, antecedent patterns God had disclosed in the Old Testament. In this gospel, Jesus is the true Passover. Jesus is the serpent lifted up on the pole. Jesus is the true temple in chapter 2. He’s the true manna supplied by God. He is the true Lamb of God. If we extend our search farther in the New Testament, he’s the true Priest. He’s the true sacrifice. He’s the true King. He’s the true Son.
2. Jesus is the one who mediates God’s life to us because he does his Father’s will.
Verses 34–40. At least he has gotten their attention. He has talked about this bread from heaven, talked about its intrinsic superiority, and if they don’t understand him, they at least see that there is something better on offer. So they say in verse 34, “Sir, from now on give us this bread.” Jesus now speaks plainly, unambiguously, without third-person references to the “one who comes down from heaven” or the like. Now he speaks in the first person.
Jesus plainly declares, “I am the bread of life.” Even so, he wants to correct some of their ongoing misperceptions. One of those misperceptions is bound up with their expression, “From now on give us this bread.” It’s as if they remember that in the Old Testament the manna came down day after day after day, except on the Sabbath, for 40 years, and now he’s talking about providing them a bread that gives eternal life.
Maybe it’s provided daily for eternity. Who knows? “From now on give us this, give us this.” Jesus perceives again that all of their categories are too narrow. They’re too this-world focused. So he replies to that misperception. “He who comes to me will never go hungry, and he who believes in me will never be thirsty.”
This is not saying that we do not need continually, in some sense, to feed on Jesus (we’ll come to that) but that the core hunger, the core emptiness, is utterly satisfied. The core disease is cured. The core rebellion is reconciled. The core hunger is met. An old hymn we used to sing … It has just about faded from view now.
I tried the broken cisterns, Lord,
But, ah, the waters failed!
E’en as I stooped to drink they fled,
And mocked me as I wailed.
Now none but Christ can satisfy,
No other name for me.
At the same time, Jesus’ way of wording it now tells us something of the nature of the metaphor. The metaphor is unpacked in these words: “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.” You have to see, if you’re reflecting on this at all, that this must be some kind of metaphor, because you don’t come to bread. You don’t believe in bread.
You don’t have a loaf of bread, all the seven Roman grains, that is picked up at Jewel-Osco and put down beside you for a bowl of soup, and then you come to it to be satisfied. You don’t do that. You don’t say, “Boy, do I ever believe in that bread in order to be satisfied.” You realize, therefore, that this bread, if it’s Jesus, has to be ingested in something other than the normal way. It is a metaphor, but at this point, they still don’t get it.
Eating him means believing him. Eating him means coming to him. Those who remembered the Old Testament prophets undoubtedly could eventually call to mind passages like Isaiah 55, a mere two chapters after Isaiah 53, much quoted in the New Testament. “Come, all you who are thirsty, come to the waters; and you who have no money, come, buy and eat! Come, buy wine and milk without money and without cost.
Why spend money on what is not bread, and your labor on what does not satisfy? Listen, listen to me, and eat what is good, and your soul will delight in the richest of fare. Give ear and come to me; hear me, that your soul may live. I will make an everlasting covenant with you.” Yes, the very structure of this metaphor is bound up with Old Testament promise.
But many in this crowd have not believed. Verse 36: “But as I told you, you have seen me and still do not believe.” Does that mean, therefore, that God’s purposes have failed? There is a lot of reflection in John’s gospel about unbelief. It’s cast in a variety of different ways. In chapter 8 is one of the most stunning descriptions of unbelief anywhere in all of the Canon. In chapter 8, Jesus goes so far as to say to some of his hearers on that occasion, “Because I tell you the truth, you do not believe.”
Do you hear that? It’s not a concessive clause. “In spite of the fact that I tell you the truth you do not believe.” That would be bad enough. But it’s a causal clause. “Because I tell you the truth, you do not believe.” It’s the very truth, in certain contexts, that compels unbelief. It’s the truth itself. For some people bound up in another worldview who are not willing to change, for whom the whole thing is so alien or foreign or different or repulsive it’s the very truth that is obnoxious. It’s the articulation of the truth that will guarantee unbelief.
That’s reflected on even more in John, chapter 12, where the words from Isaiah 6 are picked up. “Go, tell this people: ‘Be ever hearing, but never understanding; be ever seeing, but never perceiving. Make the heart of this people hard.’ ” What do you do when it’s the truth that is obnoxious? What are your options? Tell lies? There are vast swaths in the church that want to do exactly that.
“If the truth is unpalatable, say more palatable things in the name of contextualization.” Don’t misunderstand me. Not for a moment am I suggesting that we have to be objectionable or repulsive ourselves in our evangelism. Not for a moment am I suggesting that it is right to be old fashioned and to have a sound that echoes the words of the 1630s more than the twenty-first century. I’m not suggesting any of that.
But if, in fact, in the name of communicating, in order not to offend, we manage to trim the truth, we have gained nothing, and we have forgotten that Scripture itself, both in the Old Testament, as in a passage like Isaiah 6 and other passages, and in a passage hinted at here and made very strong in John 8, it speaks of the fact that the truth can, in many circumstances, guarantee unbelief, so we’d better be ready for it.
The same truth that may be an aroma of life unto life may be the savor of death unto death, and we cannot control that outcome. We can’t do it. Does that mean, then, that God’s purposes have failed? No. That brings us to the line of thought I briefly traced out yesterday in verses 37 and following. “As I told you, you have seen me and still you do not believe. Nevertheless, it still remains true. All that the Father gives me will come to me.”
It’s not as if God’s purposes are going to be frustrated. It’s not as if God is going to discover that because of the perversity of human beings ultimately heaven will be unpopulated. “All that the Father gives to me will come to me.” That’s not the only way to refer to believers, those whom the Father has given to the Son. There are a lot of other ways in this chapter. We’ll run through a few of them, and then we’ll reflect on the diversity in a few moments.
“All that the Father gives me will come to me, and once they have come to me, I’m not going to throw them out. I’m not going to cast them out. No, I’m going to keep them in. For I came down from heaven to do not my will but the will of him who sent me. And this is the will of him who sent me, that of all those he has given me, I should not lose one of them.” Then he repeats this again. Now there are two things that must immediately surface here.
First, there is a very strong emphasis on Jesus’ obedience to his Father, on his doing the will of his Father. He came down from heaven to do the will of him who sent him. Often we think of that sort of obedience ultimately in terms of Gethsemane. “Not my will but yours be done.” In fact, it’s John’s gospel that stresses more than any of the other gospels how strongly Jesus is committed to doing his Father’s will.
“My Father loves me because I always do those things that please him,” we’re told. In John 5, in one of the most profound analyses of what it means to confess Jesus as Son of God, in verses 16–30, Jesus keeps saying again and again and again that he always does what the Father gives him to do. He says he does all that the Father does, but he does only what the Father gives him to do. So there is a remarkable notion of sonship.
Sonship is so frequently bound up with functional categories in Scripture. Thus, in the Beatitudes, for example, “Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God.” Well, that’s because God is a supreme peacemaker. If we are engaged in making peace, we’re acting like God, so we must be his son. But Jesus is the Son par excellence, because all that the Father does Jesus also does. That’s one of the great lessons of John 5:16–30.
All that the Father does he also does. I cannot say that. I may be a peacemaker in some situation and, in that context, reflect God and, thus, be functionally a son of God in that context, but I haven’t made a universe recently. I can’t say, “All that the Father does I also do,” but that’s exactly what Jesus says. “Whatever the Father does the Son also does.” He’s the perfect Son. He’s the perfect replication of the Father.
As soon as he said that in John 5, he also says that he always obeys the Father. Jesus does not want to introduce any sort of hint of tritheism. Jesus is not a competing God center. He only does what the Father gives him to do. He only says what the Father gives him to say, and he does everything the Father gives him to do and says everything the Father gives him to say. He’s the perfectly obedient Son, and in this perfection of dependence and obedience, he does everything the Father says and does.
That’s precisely why this sonship is simultaneously the perfect representation of obedience and dependence and, on the other hand, the perfect representation of God Almighty himself, because he does what God himself does. The way that surfaces here is in the cross and all that it does in bringing sons to glory. “I have come down from heaven not to do my will but to do the will of him who sent me. And this is his will, that of all that he gives me I shouldn’t lose one of them.” Then the significance with respect to the cross pops out in a few verses, as we’ll see.
We so often think of the work of Christ first and foremost in terms of his love for us or in terms of its significance for us, and it is right that we should think in terms of its significance for us, but Christ sees his work first and foremost in terms of his own obedience to the Father. There is a sense in which that which drives Christ to the cross is not first and foremost his love for us but his love for the Father.
He came down from heaven to do his Father’s will. That’s why he came. His determination is that God should be glorified. And the Father? What’s God’s purpose? Well, it’s true God so loved the world that he gave his Son. That’s true, but again in John, chapter 5, in this great Son passage, the Father’s intent is that all should honor the Son, even as they honor the Father. In one sense, what drives the Father is his love for the Son. What drives the Son is his love for the Father.
It is this intra-Trinitarian love that undergirds all the display of God’s majesty and glory and salvation and judgment for us. What guarantees, then, that there will be on the last day a vast number in the church of Jesus Christ drawn from every tongue and tribe and people and nation? What drives that? What guarantees it, despite the fact that people may not believe and the fact that sometimes it’ll be the truth itself that compels unbelief?
What drives it? That blessed intra-Trinitarian relationship by which God gives some people to the Son, so that all will honor him as they honor the Father, and by which the Son himself, in obedience to the Father, perfectly carries out his Father’s will, so that all those he has given to him he keeps. That’s what the text says. We have thought too much of God in terms of his service to us, that God exists primarily to make us happy, content, better, or good, but, in fact, we will come to deepest, most adoring, worshipful faith when we see that he really is the center.
3. Jesus is the one who mediates God’s life to us because he reveals God to us.
Verse 41: “At this the Jews began to grumble about him because he said, ‘I am the bread that came down from heaven.’ ” It’s his authority claim they don’t like. They want to be able to stand in judgment of him. They are offended by a certain kind of personal claim. Not by his offer to give bread, or even by his claim to be bread, but by his claim to have come down from heaven.
There is an authority status they don’t like, and Jesus responds in verse 43, “Stop grumbling among yourselves. No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him, and I will raise him up at the last day.” The grumbling in Jesus’ view was not only insulting but dangerous. It presupposed that divine revelation could be sorted out by talking the matter over, and thus they were diverting attention from the grace of God. Those who are confident of their own ability finally never come.
There’s a wonderful story of a group of traveling hippies in the Dirty 60s who were doing Europe. One day they were visiting the Louvre in Paris, one of the great museums of the world. As they were going by painting after painting and seeing Rembrandts and Van Goghs and Monets, and so forth, they were making disparaging, sneering, condescending comments.
One of the assistant curators of the museum, hearing these ignorant travelers making their cheap remarks before masterpieces, eventually came up behind them, and in his broken English, he said to them, “Gentlemen, in this museum, it is not the paintings that are being tested.” When we confront Jesus, it is not finally Jesus who is being tested. So stop grumbling.
What kind of drawing is it in verse 44? By what kind of drawing does the Father draw men and women to himself? This is not the savage constraint of a rapist but the wonderful wooing of a lover. Otherwise put (verse 45), it is by an insight, a teaching, and illumination implanted within the individual in fulfillment of Old Testament promise, which is here a paraphrase of Isaiah 54:13. We’ve had Isaiah 53 earlier in the book. Now Isaiah 54. Isaiah 55 was referred to earlier.
“They will all be taught by God.” That’s a constant promise connected with the new covenant. In Jeremiah 31 and Ezekiel 36 … “The blessed Holy Spirit will be poured out. The law will be written on our hearts.” At the same time, it is important to recognize the diversity of ways in which these people can be referred to. They are the ones who listen and learn. Verse 45b: “Everyone who listens to the Father and learns from him comes to me.”
Alternatively, they are taught by God. Back in verse 35, “They believe on me” or “They come to me,” or in verses 37 and following, “They are given by the Father to me.” Do you hear the diversity? If you come from a strong Arminian tradition, you are likely to be really happy with all of those ones that talk about listening and learning and believing, and if you come from a strong Reformed tradition, you’re likely to be happy about all of those passages that speak of the Father giving certain people to the Son and they’ll be taught by God.
One of the ways of remaining biblically faithful, even if you disagree sometimes with other believers about how these things fit together, is by integrating into your own God talk all of the ways the Bible has of referring to believers. If you leave some out, either by overlooking them or because they’re distasteful to you, to that extent, sooner or later, you’re denying some corner of the truth without actually overtly denying it. You’re merely disowning it. You’re ignoring it.
How do you like to refer to people who come to Christ? “Somebody trusted Christ as his personal Savior.” Do you know that that expression doesn’t show up anywhere in the Bible? I don’t mind if you use it, but it’s not biblical. It’s not unbiblical, but it’s not biblical. How about at the end of one of your university missions or the like, commenting as you report back to the church, “And as many as were ordained to eternal life believed.” That’s Acts 13:48. Why not use it? It’s one of the ways of talking in the Bible, so use it.
If you also want to say, “Well, some did listen and learn,” that’s biblical too. Use it. Use the diversity of ways the Bible has in all of their plentitude and tension, even when you may disagree with how they fit together, so that your whole accountability in your God talk, in the way you think, is in biblical terms. Otherwise, sooner or later, the structures of your external structures will domesticate your theology, and you will be no longer thinking biblically.
Jesus goes on to say, “No one has seen the Father except the one who is from God …” What is required is the unique revelation of the Son. “… only he has seen the Father. I tell you the truth, he who believes …” There’s this category that was brought up in verse 35. “… has everlasting life. I am the bread of life.”
So then, Jesus is the one who mediates God’s life to us because he reveals God to us. He reveals God to us both in that he is the ultimate disclosure … He is the one who comes from God. No one has seen God but Christ himself. He is the unique revealer. He also reveals God in the private recesses of the heart. “They shall all be taught by God.” That’s standard New Testament theology.
Thus, in 1 Corinthians 1 and 2, what we need is both a public placarding of the gospel, this public display of God’s wisdom that human beings think of as folly, and the work of the Spirit, so that the natural person does understand the things of God, because otherwise the natural person won’t. What is needed is both a public revelation, this unique revelation from God in Christ, and this private work in the heart.
4. Jesus mediates God’s life to us because he himself gives his life on our behalf.
Verses 49–58. This is a strange passage. He has just finished saying, “I am the bread of life.” Then he refers back to the manna again to try to make the difference between that manna and what he is as the manna.
“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.”
There’s the transition clause. Up to that point it has been review and clarification, crystalizing what has already been said. Then he introduces the word flesh, and then he starts to use the most amazingly physical terminology. “How can this man give us his flesh to eat? What sort of cannibalistic notion is this?”
“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.” What sort of language is that? Many in the history of the church see in these verses a reference to Holy Communion or, depending on your tradition, the Eucharist, the Lord’s Table. In my view, that’s a huge mistake.
Amongst liberal scholars, it’s seen to be a reference to the sacrament (usually their terminology), precisely because they think John’s gospel is historically full of anachronisms. In other words, they are not convinced that it is reliable history. They don’t think Jesus said anything like this. This is later Johannine theology that’s read back onto Jesus. So this is the church’s theology of the sacrament being read back onto Jesus’ lips. So this is a kind of sacramentarian theology.
I would want to argue on other grounds that I don’t have time to explore here this morning that John is remarkably careful to distinguish between what the disciples understood after the event and only what they understood before the event. Thus, for example, in John, chapter 2, when Jesus says he is the temple from God, John himself remarks, “The disciples didn’t understand what he was saying.” Not only the bad guys, but the disciples didn’t understand what he was saying.
“But after he had been raised from the dead, then they remembered his words in the Scriptures.” John is doing that. At least 16 times in his gospel, he distinguishes very carefully between what the disciples understood back then in the days of Jesus’ flesh and what they only came to understand later. So why should we think he sort of blew it here and read back later stuff onto the lips of Jesus?
Moreover, in all of the descent of tradition that has come down to us, in 1 Corinthians, in Luke/Acts, in Matthew, and then in the early decades of the Christian church, never is bread at the Lord’s Table referred to as flesh. Jesus’ body sometimes, but never Jesus’ flesh. Here it’s flesh language that’s used. If this is reading the standard terminology from the Lord’s Supper back into the time of Jesus, why don’t they use the standard terminology?
Moreover, in verse 35, we’ve already been told that eating Jesus means believing Jesus. It’s already misunderstanding the metaphor. This is not a sacramentarian passage; it’s a Christological passage. Moreover, John, of all of the gospel writers, is perhaps least interested in sacraments or ordinances. For example, back in chapter 3, when we’re told that Jesus baptizes more people than John, chapter 4 immediately adds, “Of course, it wasn’t Jesus himself baptizing; it was really the disciples who were doing it,” almost as if there is a distancing of Jesus from baptism.
By the time you get to chapter 13 and the Lord’s Supper, it’s only John’s gospel that does not record the words of institution. John is not heavily interested in things sacramental. So how are we to read this? It’s here that what I said at the beginning about the way we look at food begins to pinch. When you ate last night, whether you ate at one of these KC Barbecue places or just slipped into McDonald’s or sat down to a really decent dinner … Whatever you ate, what did you eat?
Basically, with only minor exceptions, you ate a lot of dead stuff. If you went to McDonald’s, you ate dead cow, dead barley, dead tomatoes, dead lettuce, dead a lot of stuff. The only stuff that wasn’t dead was, in fact, the salt, of which there was too much, and maybe a couple of other minerals. Everything you eat, with the exception of a few minerals, has died. Dead carrots, dead peas, dead lentils, dead pigs, dead chickens, dead everything.
They’ve all died so that you can live. Either they die or you do. Any kid brought up on a farm knows it, and we don’t. So when Jesus says, “I give my flesh for the life of the world, and you must eat it,” when he has already set the frame that he’s the manna from heaven and that coming to him and eating him really means believing in him, what is he claiming by this? “You must eat my flesh.”
It’s not that he’s becoming barbaric or going over the top or hinting at some form of cannibalism, even less talking about sacramental theology. He’s saying, “I have to die for you to live. Either I die or you do.” That’s the whole point. Verse 51: “This bread is my flesh, which I will give for the life of the world.” There is no hope for this world for its life unless the right food for this life gives its life and dies.
That is consonant with the whole stream of this great and glorious book. In John, chapter 11, for example, when Caiaphas, speaking out of mere political expediency, says, “It’s better for this man to die than for the whole nation to perish,” John picks up that the man is speaking better than he knows. “Oh yes, he would die for the nation, and not only for the nation, but also for all those who would come.”
In John 10, Jesus is the Good Shepherd, but he’s an odd shepherd. He gives his life for the sheep. In fact, he came to give his life for the sheep. Good shepherds might risk their lives for the sheep and might accidentally give it because they’re trying to save the sheep, but he came for the very purpose of giving his life for the sheep. He pushes the shepherd metaphor all the way to the wall. In John 12: “Unless a corn of wheat falls in the ground and dies, it doesn’t bring forth fruit. It abides alone.” So also here. Jesus is the Bread of Life.
So on the Lord’s Day, when we take bread at the Lord’s Table, and we hear the words repeated, “Do this in remembrance of me,” we take that bread and eat it, and it sustains us just a little, and we remember that we are sustained unto eternal life because the true Bread from God, in obedience to his Father’s will, for our sakes, gave his life that we might live. He bore our sins in his own body on the tree, and we live in him.
Very often in our hymns and in our heritage, feeding on the Word of God has come to mean, in many of our circles, studying the Bible, and there is a great biblical stress on the importance of studying the Word of God. Far be it from me to minimize that. When Joshua takes over, for example, he is told, “This word of the law shall not depart out of your mouth, but you shall meditate in it day and night, for then you shall make your way prosperous, and then you shall have good success.”
Or in Deuteronomy 17, when Moses looks forward to the time when eventually there will be a king, he writes, “When he takes the throne of his kingdom, he is to write for himself on a scroll a copy of this law, taken from that of the priests, who are Levites. It is to be with him, and he is to read it all the days of his life so that he may learn to revere the Lord his God and follow carefully all the words of this law and these decrees and not consider himself better than his brothers and turn from the law to the right or to the left. Then he and his descendants will reign a long time over the kingdom in Israel.”
So the first thing George Bush is to do when he comes to power, if he were following this model, is not figure out who his secretary of state should be or how to fill up the cabinet or what thing to send to Congress first. The first thing he should do is take the Hebrew Deuteronomy, or perhaps it’s the Hebrew Pentateuch (it’s not quite clear; it’s the Book of the Law), and write it out longhand.
Not download it from a hard drive to a burner without it passing through his brain, but he’s to write it out so carefully that the manuscript is clear so he can read it and read it and read it all the days of his life so that he might learn to revere the Word of God. That’s what the text says. And not to turn aside from the left or to the right, and not to think of himself better than others. That’s what the text says.
If those three verses in Deuteronomy had been observed … just those three … all the rest of Old Testament biblical history would have been different. Then you read on, and you read, “Your word have I hidden in my heart, that I might not sin against you. How will a young man cleanse his way but by taking heed according to your word?” How does Psalm 1 open up? Verse 1: “Blessed is the man who does not do all these disgusting things.” Verse 2: “Rather, on his law he meditates day and night.” That defines the righteous person in Psalm 1.
Then you come to the New Testament likewise. How are we to reform our minds? How are we to be conformed to Christ? “Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your minds.” So there’s a great deal in Scripture that has to do with thinking God’s thoughts after him, with replenishing our minds, feeding our souls on the Word of God. That’s all true.
But let us be frank. It is at least possible to study the Word of God as an academic without it feeding you, without it being the sort of thing that burns you, shames you, elevates you, nurtures you, rebukes you, encourages, admonishes, and transforms. There’s no delight in it anymore. How were the people taught in the Old Testament? They were taught by the privations of the wilderness that man does not live by bread alone but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God.
Now do you hear the contrast between bread and word? In that context, the bread is physical bread that is a necessity of life, but man does not live by bread alone. Not even the necessities of life are more important than every word that comes from the mouth of God. Jesus picks up on that passage in answer to the Devil’s temptation and his own temptation in Matthew, chapter 4. Even the necessities of life are not to compare with every word that comes from the mouth of God.
What that means for us who are in the vocational ministry is since it is the definition in the New Testament of elders and pastors, as opposed to other offices, to be teachers of the Word of God, how great is this responsibility to feed people with the living Word of God? That passage in Deuteronomy 8, picked up by the Lord Jesus in Matthew 4, is a way of saying that the true bread from God is not the bread we eat; it’s the bread of the Word of God.
We sing in our hymns, “Bread of heaven, bread of heaven, feed me till I want no more.” That’s all right, but it’s not the point here. Just as in Scripture the Word of God can be God’s gracious self-disclosure, or even his inscripturated Word, but the Word par excellence is Jesus himself, so the Word of God by which we feed our souls is Scripture, but the Word par excellence is Jesus … dead, resurrected, exalted … who gave his life that we might live.
He died so that we live. He is the Bread from heaven. All of our handling of the Word of God, the Scripture, as our food must lend back to this gospel-centeredness so that we receive the ultimate nourishment of our souls from Christ himself, the Word par excellence, the Bread from heaven, or there is no hope for us at all. Let us pray.
O Lord God, in the siren calls of so many peripheral things, forbid that we should lose sight of the central and most important things. Have mercy upon us, Holy God, we pray. Feed us till we want no more. In Jesus’ name, amen.
