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The Spirituality of the Gospel of John: Part 4

John 6:25-29

Listen or read the following transcript as D. A. Carson speaks on the topic of the spirituality of the gospel of John from John 6:25-29.


Probably no chapter of John’s gospel, perhaps even no chapter of the entire New Testament, has been used to justify what is often called sacramental spirituality more than John 6. So in this first session, I want to look at John 6. Then in the second session, I will speak briefly, for only 15 minutes or so to try to pull a lot of things together, and then we’ll open it up for a question and answer time, which will go in almost any direction. Who knows?

In this first hour, I would like to focus attention on John 6:25–59. I shall begin by reading all of those verses. This now is after the feeding of the 5,000 and then Jesus crossing the lake at night, walking on the water. It takes a while for the crowds to catch up with him the next day. We then read:

“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 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 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 eternal 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 could 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’s a remarkable fact that our relatively prosperous, industrialized, Western world entertains ideas about food that no other culture has ever had before the twentieth century. For instance, ask any 5-year-old, “Where does food come from?” What will they say? Well, it all depends on what your nearest supermarket is, your nearest grocery store is, Tesco’s or wherever it is that you go and buy at.

Not many of them, except perhaps the odd kid on a farm, will say, “From plants and animals.” Food is that stuff which you by nicely wrapped in plastic, buried in Styrofoam, or found in tins. That’s what it is, isn’t it? Another question. “What is the staple diet of Canada?” The question is just irrelevant here, isn’t it?

Partly because there are so many immigrants that people eat different things. Partly we have so much choice that to think of “staple diet” is just incoherent. It’s not the right set of categories for a Canadian palate, is it? Nevertheless in many, many parts of the world, the answer would be a single word: rice, let us say, or fish and rice, or yams and wild pig, or whatever, depending on what part of the world you’re from.

Question three: “What happens to our food if there is catastrophic drought or ravaging flood?” The prices go up. That’s it. But in many parts of the world and virtually all parts in the past if you asked that question the answer would be, “Well, you starve.” But nowadays with the worldwide system of transportation, instead of transporting oranges from Florida because they had an early freeze you bring them in from California. If they’ve had a nasty fire, you fly them in from Spain. If that isn’t any good, well, there are lots of other places you can bring your oranges in from. It just puts up the cost a bit.

Question four: “Why do we work?” Probably, I suppose, if we asked on the streets of Toronto, “Why do we work?” the answer would come back more often than not, “So we can earn money to buy stuff.” Isn’t that what we would say? But before the industrialized world, the simple answer would be, “In order to eat.”

Because 80 percent of your income in most such cultures went on food. In fact, in the first century not only did 80 percent of the average worker’s income go on food, but because people were paid by the day, if you went a couple of days without work, your family could jolly well starve. That’s the way it still is in some parts of the world.

One more question: “What’s your favorite snack food?” Cheer up, I’m not asking you to volunteer the information. I’m going to have to have a meeting of confession at the end. But snack food? For billions of people, the whole notion is incoherent. Before the Industrial Revolution, it was incoherent virtually everywhere. It was totally unfamiliar.

This is not to say that our ideas on food are morally wrong. Do not misunderstand me. I’m not trying to give us all a bad conscience with a new kind of legalism. By and large, our ideas are appropriate to our industrialized society. This is the time and place where we live, but we must see when we read the Bible that it was first written in a non-industrialized agrarian society that was, by and large, fairly poor.

So all the associations already in the background, already in the mind of both the writer and the reader about food and all that sort of thing are just very different from our associations. For a start, the two staples in Palestine in the first century were bread and fish. When I hear the word bread, let’s say if my wife phones me at Trinity and says, “Dear, we’re a little low on bread.”

“Okay, I’ll pick some up on the way home.” So I go into our supermarket and there are rows and rows and rows of bread. The only way I get the right one is because I remember what the package looks like. I mean, I don’t remember whether it’s 14-grain or 16-grain or how much whole wheat is in it or whether it’s sliced.… I don’t remember any of that stuff.

All I remember is the color of the package. If they don’t have that color package there, I’m in big trouble. I have to choose one on my own. Every once in a while I exercise a little masculine independence and I just start reading those labels and pick one that grabs my fancy. “Why did you get that one, dear?” “I just thought I would.” That’s the association in my mind when I hear my wife mention bread.

It’s not the association in anybody’s mind in the first century. It’s a staple. Without bread, you die. I’d never think of bread in those terms. Without this kind of bread, I get one with another color package. So suddenly the whole passage begins to look a little bit different if we can think our way back into what some of these terms would signal by their associations in the first century. That’s the first set of associations you must bear in mind when you come to this passage.

The second set of associations is that this takes place after the feeding of the 5,000. So in some ways this is an unpacking of what that miracle meant. In other words, that miracle was not just a miracle. It was a sign. It was sign-ificant. It was significant. It was pointing to something beyond itself. So in part, this exposition is an unpacking about what that sign was about too. So you must bear that in mind.

Then on top of all of that, there are some Old Testament antecedents that this passage alludes to. In particular, the repeated references to manna in the Old Testament. So you have to remember what the Old Testament storyline was about and how manna functioned there. Then it seems to me if we bear those three things in mind, that is the literary context, historical context within the gospel of John, and the Old Testament background especially to do with manna and the like, and the kind of associations that bread had in the first century, then we’re on our way to making sense of this passage.

It may be helpful if we outline the main flow of thought in four headings.

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

That’s the thrust of the argument in verses 25–33. Jesus has crossed the lake and is now on the western side of Galilee. The crowds have apparently come back, crossing at the fords probably at the north end and have caught up with him and asked, “Rabbi, when did you get here?” They don’t know about the walking on the water episode reported in verses 16–24.

Jesus does not respond to their question, however, in verse 26, he challenges their motives. “I tell you the truth, you’re looking for me not because you saw the miraculous signs, but because you ate the loaves and had your fill.” Well, in one sense they are looking at him precisely because they did see the miraculous sign.

Although they saw it, they didn’t see the miraculous sign. They didn’t see how it was sign-ificiant. They didn’t see how it was pointing to something. They just had their fill. They saw it at a very superficial level. You must look at it from their point of view. If Jesus can provide food out of sheer miraculous power, then that is the equivalent to 80 percent of their income.

How would you like to have a king who could supply you with 80 percent of your income every day by miraculous fiat? You’ve just taken a huge boost in income, in disposable income. Just think of the summer chalet you’re going to buy up there in Galilee. But Jesus rebukes their purely materialist notions of the kingdom, their crass materialism, their failure to see what this miracle pointed toward.

“Do not work for food that spoils.” That’s the problem. They understand the material significance of such a power. “Work rather 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.” So once again, as very commonly in the Gospels and especially in the gospel of John, not only does Jesus direct their attention away from the purely material to that which endures unto eternal life, but he turns the whole thing as well into much more of a christological debate.

That is, “You’ve got to understand who did this, who gave you the miracle. What does this say about the Son of Man? What does it say about the one on whom God has set his seal of approval? You’ve got to understand this in relationship to me,” he is saying. But what they have heard in what Jesus has said is the little word work.

Verse 27: “He says, ‘Do not work for food that spoils, but for food that endures to eternal life.’ So they reply, ‘What must we do to do the works God requires?’ ” In other words, they have deeply misunderstood. What Jesus was talking about is not how well we can work to get something. He is trying to establish a right goal. Don’t work for this goal, but for another goal.

He’s not trying to set out a theology of works just because he’s used the word work. He is tying it to their physical labor. You see your labor in terms of producing bread. Now somebody has given you the bread and you think, “This is fantastic. We work for bread, now someone has done this work for us.” It’s all in terms of work.

When Jesus then says, “Work for something for eternity,” they’re still hearing the word work. They haven’t understood that Jesus is not trying to develop here a work theology (that’s not the point at all) but a different set of goals. They focus on the word work and the nature of what God requires. Their naivetÈ is formidable. They display no doubt about their intrinsic ability to meet any challenge God might set them.

It’s almost as if they’re saying, “All right then, all right then. What work must we do to get this miracle? It would be nice to have it every day. Just tell us what to do and we’ll do it, and then we’ll have all of this wealth.” A lot people think that religion is like that. It’s very common in paganism. You scratch the gods’ backs and then they pour out their blessings upon you.

It is less common in Judaism, but still transparently known there. God help us, it’s not unknown in evangelicalism, too. So long as you have your morning devotions exactly right or so long as you sing the right kind of hymns or so long as you use the right version of the Bible or so long as you witness at least once a week, or whatever it is, then God will bless you.

Get your works right, because God is a sort of God who will only bless you if you get your works right. Scratch God’s back and he scratches yours. But Jesus sets them straight. Verse 29: “The work of God is this: to believe in the one he has sent.” Clearly in this context “the work of God” does not mean “the work that God does.” Subjective genitive. It means “the work that God requires.” That is, you’re thinking of works that God requires. “Let me tell you what God requires,” he says. “It’s faith. It’s faith.”

In other words, this is very close to what Paul writes in Romans 3:28. “For we maintain that a man is justified by faith apart from observing the law.” In other words, sola fide is already taught by the Lord Jesus, but not quite in Pauline categories. The same sort of thing is also taught by Jesus in John 5:24 and elsewhere.

But the crowd thinks, “If Jesus is going to focus so strongly on faith in himself, then they will draw back and demand validation. ‘Why should we trust you?’ ” “The work of God is this: to believe in the one he has sent.” Not only is Jesus talking about sola fide, he is talking about solus Christus.

He is saying, “Not only must you understand that what God requires is faith, but the one in whom you must entrust your faith, the one in whom you must believe is none but the one God has sent.” They back off a bit and they say (verses 30 and 31), “Yeah, yeah, yeah, but in that case, we want some validation. Why should we put so much faith in you? What miraculous sign then will you give that we may see it and believe you?”

I mean, there are a lot of charlatans around, a lot of false messiahs. Indeed in Jesus’ day they were all over the place. They came and went, came and went. Most of them were crushed by the military power of Rome. “So why should we trust you? What sign would you do? We know you did the one yesterday. But what would you now do? Let’s give you a hint,” they say.

“Our forefathers ate the manna in the desert; as it is written: ‘He gave them bread from heaven to eat.’ ” Thus, they’re back at what they really want. “If you want to be validated in our eyes so that we trust you, then do what you did yesterday again. After all, it’s a biblical principle. If you’re really God’s emissary, what did God provide for our forefathers?

The first messiah, Moses himself, well he gave them bread from heaven to eat. Shouldn’t the second messiah do the same? We have a text here. You did it yesterday, so we know you can do it! So do it again and we’ll believe you.” It’s not clear that this teaching extends all the way back to the time of Jesus, but certainly later rabbis argued that the latter Redeemer, as they call the Messiah, would call down manna from heaven as did the former redeemer, that is Moses.

Such views may have been current in the first century, but in any case the crowd was inviting Jesus at very least to repeat his miracle of the previous day and thus validate himself before their eyes. Jesus’ response in verses 32 and 33 is dramatic. He corrects them on two points. First, “I tell you the truth, it is not Moses who has given you the bread from heaven, but it is my Father.”

In other words, they have fastened much too much attention on Moses, as if he’s done this out of some sort of intrinsic merit or value or power or spirituality in himself. But Jesus won’t have it. Although he can speak very respectfully of various Old Testament figures, including Abraham and Moses and David and elsewhere, in no case does he allow them to have the kind of claim that he makes for himself.

In no case does he claim that if you’ve seen Moses, you’ve seen God. He says that thing for himself, but he won’t say it with respect to Moses. “Before Abraham was, I am,” he says. He doesn’t say, “Before Abraham was, Moses is.” So he wants it to be very clear in their eyes that although Moses was the one who mediated God’s blessing to the people, he did not do so out of intrinsic merit or intrinsic authority or power. It was the Father, God himself, who sent bread from heaven.

Then the second point on which he corrects them is this. The manna of the Old Testament time was merely (in our terms) typological. It was not the ultimate bread from heaven. It was not the ultimate manna. It was merely the manna that was pointing to the real manna. “I tell you the truth, it is not Moses who has given you the bread from heaven, it is my Father who gives you the true bread from heaven. For the bread of heaven is he who comes down from heaven and gives life to the world.”

In other words, in the Old Testament manna was given, and that was what kept the people alive. God gave manna from heaven day by day, day by day, day by day. That’s what gave life to the people. But it only gave life to the people day by day, day by day as long as the manna was given.

When they entered into the Promised Land, there was no need for this kind of miraculous support. They worked and grew their crops and fed their families. That’s how they lived. In any case, they all died one by one. There was nothing magical. It wasn’t some sort of magic manna. Once you had that, then you had the fountain of youth and then you would never ever die. They all died. There aren’t any Israelites around that are 1500 years old.

Jesus is saying, “They’re all dead. It’s not the ultimate manna. No, no, no. The real manna, which gives you eternal life, well it does come down from heaven too, but not quite the same way. It doesn’t sort of fall out of the sky or condense in the early morning dew. It comes down from heaven, all right. It’s he who has been sent from heaven and gives his life for the life of the world.”

In other words, the whole point of this first paragraph is that Jesus is the antitype of the manna. As elsewhere in this book, he’s the antitype of the temple. He’s the antitype of the vine. He’s the antitype of the Passover and so on and so on. Understand these things aright, God says, and there is a pattern of things, a pattern of relationships established in the Old Testament which points forward to something beyond themselves.

“The true manna is not what happened in the days of Moses. The true manna, well, you’re looking at him sent down from heaven. He alone gives eternal life.” So here’s the first point of the text then. Jesus is the one who mediates God’s life to us. Not now as an agent or anything like that, but because he himself is God’s manna.

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

Verses 34 and 35. Apparently, judging by verse 34 the Jews understand little of this at the time. They were a bit like the woman at the well in chapter 4. He talks about this living water and she says, “Sir, give us this water.” They say, “Sir, from now on give us this bread, this bread that is eternal-life bread. This is really terrific. We saw what you did yesterday. We can believe that you can do anything. From now on give us this bread!”

Some people are eager to latch on to what appears to be a very good thing without any real thought. So Jesus now speaks plainly and he corrects them on a couple of points. But he speaks unambiguously, verse 35, “I am the bread of life.” Now there’s no reference to himself in the third person, as in verse 33. “The bread of God is he who comes down from heaven.”

Well, you can understand why some were a little slower, might not have picked up that reference. Now he speaks frankly in the first person. “I am the bread of life.” On the other hand, he wants not only to make this point. He wants to correct them on other points. They have said, “From now on give us this bread,” because they got the bread yesterday and they understand then that what he must do is give them similar bread today and tomorrow and the next.

Bread goes moldy with time. Even the manna didn’t last all that long. You had to eat it and then collect some more the next day. Still, it was provided. “So from now on give us this bread.” Jesus says, “You really don’t understand. Not only am I the bread, but he who comes to me will never go hungry and he who believes in me will never be thirsty.”

The thought is not unlike that found in chapter 13, verses 9 and 10 at the foot washing. The person who has been washed by Jesus does not need another bath, only his feet washed, as it were. So there’s a sense in which if you take in this bread of life, then your hunger is forever staved. You already have eternal life.

There is some sense in which you continue to feed on Jesus. We’ll come to that in due course. There is some sense in which you continue to take nourishment from him, but there is a profound sense in which once you close with this Jesus, once you believe in this Jesus, this deep hunger is forever satisfied. It’s not a question of going back and doing it again.

To put it in conversion terms, it’s not as if you accept Jesus into your heart today and then accept him into your heart tomorrow and then accept him into your heart the next day and then accept him into your heart the day after that. You keep getting converted and converted. No, no, no. It doesn’t work like that. Once you’ve got this manna, in fact, you are satisfied. You have eternal life.

There are implications of this beyond this context. There is a broader sense in which Christians may well say, after a life of trying to pursue spirituality here, there, and everywhere else,

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.

That is built into the text as well, but there is something even more important you must grasp here. Now unambiguously, Jesus mingles the metaphorical and the nonmetaphorical. Unless you see this, you will end up misinterpreting the entire rest of the chapter. But here Jesus unambiguously not only identifies himself as the bread from heaven but unpacks the metaphor by mingling the metaphor with a nonmetaphor. That is, with what the metaphor points to.

“I am the bread of life. He who comes to me will never go hungry.” Well, you start saying, “He who comes to me,” and you’re no longer talking about bread.… I mean, if I’m feeling hungry, I don’t go into the kitchen, get out some bread, stick it on the counter, and then come to it and then I’m no longer hungry. I eat it.

But you’re now breaking away from the metaphor and there is a sense in which, in the nonmetaphorical world, you don’t literally eat Jesus, you come to him. In fact, he makes it even clearer. “He who believes in me will never be thirsty.” I have never once believed in a loaf of bread and found it satisfying.

I don’t take out a piece of whole wheat bread and stick it on the counter and butter it and say, “I believe in you.” In other words, this text is explicitly unpacking the metaphor, what it means to take in Jesus, to eat Jesus. What is means is to come to him and believe in him. That’s what it means, unambiguously so. Eating him thus means believing in him.

There are reasons why John puts it in this way, why Jesus puts it in this way. It’s not as if the metaphor has no intrinsic value to it. The intrinsic value to it is astonishingly important. We’ll come to it in a moment. Nevertheless, you must not confuse the metaphor to reify it to the level of a sort of independent notion so that ingesting Jesus is a kind of sacramental, spiritual act which brings a separate kind of independent spirituality.

In fact, those who remember their Old Testaments may think of Isaiah 55:1–3 here. “Come, come to the water. Buy that which is without money and without price and they will not be thirsty.” Verse 36: “But as I told you, you’ve seen me and still you do not believe.” Does that mean then that God’s purposes have failed?

If there are very substantial numbers of Jews who don’t believe that Jesus is the Messiah and who do not accept that he is the promised manna, then does that mean somehow that God’s purposes have failed? No, of course not. Because after all, “All that the Father gives me will come to me, and whoever comes to me I will never drive away.”

When I was a young man I sometimes heard this verse being explained as a Calminian verse. On this analysis of the verse, the first part is Calvinistic, and all the Reformed types are supposed to say, “Amen.” “All that the Father gives to me will come to me.” There it is. Irresistible grace. “Whoever comes to me I will never drive away.”

There it is, the Arminian invitation. All you have to do is come to Jesus and you will be accepted. Thus, it’s a wonderful Calminian verse and we can all go home and stop fighting. But it’s not quite what the text means. When I was a lad, my father used to tell me, “A text without a context becomes a pretext for a proof text.”

In this particular context, there’s simply no way that that’s what the second part means. There are some wonderful texts in the Bible that issue lovely invitations, but this isn’t quite one of them. It is a litotes, a figure of speech in which you affirm something by denying the opposite. “So how many people were at the theater last night?” “Oh, not a few.” Not a few means quite a lot.

In other words, you’ve denied the opposite in order to say something positive. We have many idioms like that. So when Jesus says here, “He who believes in me will never be thirsty. As I told you, you have seen me and still do not believe. All that the Father gives me will come to me, and whoever comes to me I will never drive away.” What does he mean? “Whoever comes to me I will never drive away.” It’s a litotes. I won’t drive him away, but rather I will do? What?

Now the question becomes, “What is the litotes affirming?” I won’t drive him away, I will.… Now the Calminian explanation is “I will welcome him in. I won’t drive him away. So long as they come and sort of knock on the door I will welcome him in.” Jesus does welcome in guilty sinners. That’s not an issue, whether you’re Reformed or not. But it’s simply not what is meant in this context. “I won’t drive him away; I will keep him in” is what is meant. Unambiguously so, it cannot be understood any other way.

First of all, because the whole notion of keeping someone, “I won’t drive him away,” presupposes that they’re already in. They’re already in and I won’t drive him out. So the opposite of that then is “keep them in.” Intrinsically, the litotes works that way. But even more, it becomes clear in verses 38–40. “For I came down from heaven not to do my will but to do the will of him who sent me. This is the will of him who sent me, that I shall lose none of all that he has given me.”

In other words, verse 37 says, “All that the Father has given to me will come to me.” There’s the grace. “And in fact, all that come to me because the Father’s given them to me, I’ll preserve them because I came down from heaven to do my Father’s will, and my Father’s will is that of all of those he’s given me, I should lose none of them. In fact, that’s what I’ve done. I haven’t lost one.”

Then in case we didn’t get it, he repeats it again in verse 40. “For my Father’s will is that everyone who looks to the Son and believes in him will have eternal life, and I will raise him up at the last day.” In other words, this bread of God infallibly sustains the life of those the Father has truly given him, if we are to maintain the metaphor, because he does his Father’s will.

If you take this paragraph seriously, 37–40, you must conclude that it is no more possible for someone whom the Father has truly given to the Son to fall away than it is for the Son to fail to obey his Father. Indeed, that is exactly what it would take, the failure of the Son. He came to do his Father’s will and his Father’s will, amongst other things, is this: that he should lose none of those the Father gives him.

This brings us also to the great prayer of chapter 17, which those of you at the banquet last night heard a little of. There Jesus says, “Now I have kept all of the ones you have given me, but I’m going away, so now you protect them.” Even in his final prayer as he’s going to the cross, he’s concerned that the Father’s will be done with respect to the elect. Here then is the second point. Jesus is the one who mediates God’s life to us because he does his Father’s will.

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

Verses 41 and following. “At this, the Jews begin to grumble.” Not because they’re tripping over irresistible grace, but because they hear Jesus claim to come down from heaven. They’re tripping over that. As far as they’re concerned, they know his origins. They know who his mommy and daddy are. So he is putting on a lot of airs if he claims to have come down from heaven in some sense.

They’re offended by a personal claim. Not by his offer to give bread or even by his claim to be the bread but by his claim to come down from heaven. Jesus’ response is found in verses 43 and 44. The grumbling was not only insulting, it was dangerous. It presupposed that divine revelation could be sorted out by talking the matter over and thus, in fact, by diverting attention from the grace of God. Those who are very confident of their own ability to assess things and evaluate and to stand over the revelation just don’t come.

They’re in need of rebuke. You don’t come by evaluating. “Stop grumbling among yourselves. No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him. If you take umbrage at all of this, why get all upset? You don’t want to come in any case, so why are you complaining and bellyaching?”

In fact, you will not come and enjoy this eternal life as long as you think in those terms. You come broken. Not as if you’re doing God a favor. Not as if you’ve made the right choice because you’re a little brighter than others and some are a bit thick. No, no. “If people come, they come at the end of the day because the Father who sent me draws them.”

No one will finally get to heaven and say, “Yeah, well, God was pretty good by presenting the gospel to a lot of people. A lot of them rejected it, but I made the right decision myself.” Paul asks the rhetorical question, “Where is boasting? It is excluded.” Of course you made a decision. Of course you did, but it’s a decision empowered by grace. “For no one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him, and I will raise him up at the last day.” Thus both the coming and the final resurrection on the last day are the fruit of the Father’s grace.

Moreover, there’s biblical sanction for this too, isn’t there? What of this drawing? “It is written in the Prophets, ‘They will all be taught by God.’ ” This drawing, the kind of drawing that the Father exercises, is not the savage constraint of a rapist. It is rather the wonderful wooing of a lover or the gentle teaching of the kindest and most persistent teacher.

Otherwise put, it is by an insight, a teaching, an illumination implanted within the individual in fulfillment of the Old Testament promise found in Isaiah 54:13. This is really a paraphrase of that verse. Isaiah 54:13 in its context is addressed to the restored city of Jerusalem that the prophet foresees.

“All your sons will be taught by the Lord, and great will be your children’s peace.” It’s part of this vision of ultimate restoration that is found in the new covenant promises and in the ultimate restoration and postexilic and post-exodus promises. “All your sons will be taught by the Lord, and great will be your children’s peace.”

In other words, they will not simply be taught by mediating prophet, mediating priest, mediating king. The very nature of the new covenant is that mediation will be gone! That’s what Jeremiah 31 says, isn’t it? In Jeremiah 31, God says: “The covenants in that day will not be like the covenant I made with your fathers, which they broke. No, they will all know me, from the least to the greatest. No longer will a man teach his neighbor saying, ‘Know the Lord.’ ”

That’s the way the ancient covenantal structure worked. There were prophets and there were priests and there were kings whose job it was to say, “Know the Lord” and they had a special inside track with God. They were all one species or another of mediator. Their job was to say, “Know the Lord.”

They had a special enduement of the Spirit of God. “But in those days, all of my covenant people will know me, from the least to the greatest. They will all be taught by God,” which is why in the New Testament although there are teachers, there are no mediating teachers. Although there are priests, it’s only because we are all priests. There are no mediating priests except Jesus himself.

In 1 John, there are a couple of wonderful passages that say, “You no longer have need of anyone to teach you.” Do you remember these passages? “You no longer have need of anyone to teach you.” You read the commentaries and they’re indignant. John, they say, is a big fat hypocrite. He says, “They don’t need anyone to teach them.” What on earth does he think he’s doing but teaching them?

What he really means is not, “They don’t need anybody to teach them.” He means, “They don’t need anybody else but me to teach them,” which proves that dear old John is some narrow-minded, right-wing, sectarian. But John is in fact simply alluding to this Old Testament theme, these Old Testament passages.

That’s what the new covenant promises insisted upon. We will not need anyone to teach us. That is, in this mediating way. Because the very nature of the locus of the new covenant is that all those in the covenant know the Lord. They will all be taught by God. Whereas I am a teacher in the church and whereas many of you are teachers in the church in one level or another, at no point are you or I a mediating teacher.

That is, a teacher who teaches because we have an inside track with God, a special enduement. Anything that I have access to, in principle, you have access to. It may just be that I’ve studied a little longer. I have certain responsibilities, but I have no special inside track with God. The very nature of the new covenant precludes that.

We are all taught by God. That’s the nature of the new covenant. It’s the nature of the priesthood of believers. It’s all taught in principle by Jesus. “It is written in the Prophets: ‘They will all be taught by God.’ So then as a result understand this, that everyone who listens to the Father and learns from him, comes to me. The reason they come to me is that I am the very supreme revelation of God himself. After all, no one has seen the Father except the one who is from God; only he has seen the Father.”

That’s exactly the authority revelation claim that Jesus makes to Nicodemus. “No one has been to heaven to check this out, but I came down from heaven. I can tell you. You can’t know any other way.” “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.”

The fact that Jesus gets this far and brings back the metaphor, “I am the bread of life,” shows that he is not finished using this metaphor even though he has spent all of the intervening verses unpacking it outside the metaphorical world. Thus, in the third place, Jesus is the one who mediates God’s life to us because he reveals God to us.

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

Verses 49–58. Now the language here becomes immensely physical, and you shouldn’t forget it. “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 comes down from heaven. If anyone eats of this bread, he will live forever.” This is still a summary of the metaphorical structure.

Then he says, “This bread is my flesh, which I will give for the life of the world.’ […] ‘How could this man give us his flesh to eat?’ […] ‘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.” Feeds here almost means munches. “This is the bread that came down from heaven. Your forefathers ate manna and died, but he who feeds on this bread will live.”

So you can understand while those in a certain tradition of theology.… Let’s say you adopt transubstantiation or even something more moderate, you can understand why now this is strong evidence, it is argued, for a certain vision of the Lord’s Supper itself. How could anybody at the end of the first century read these verses without thinking about the Lord’s Supper?

In fact in many, many, many churches.… Romish, Anglican, Anglo-Catholic, Presbyterian, Baptist, Free Church … these verses are sometimes cited and read at the Lord’s Table, are they not? But before we make too tight a connection, we should bear certain things in mind. First, standard liberalism has a certain invested commitment to reading this text in the light of what became the Eucharist, Holy Communion, because they believe that John’s gospel is massively anachronistic.

In other words, they don’t give high marks to John’s gospel for being historically accurate. But if you begin by presupposing (there are some other things to say, and I’ll say some of them in a moment) that John is describing, even if in his own words, exactly what took place during Jesus’ ministry, then you must understand that this takes place before the words of institution.

This takes place before the Last Supper. So when it was first uttered, there is no way that this could have legitimately been understood as a reference to what had not yet been instituted, precisely because it had not yet been instituted. In other words, the more you give high historical value to John as a writer, the less likely you are to see this in the first instance as referring to Communion, the Eucharist.

Secondly, you have to remember as well that in all of the records that have come down to us (the records in the Synoptic Gospels, the records in Paul, and then amongst the early church fathers all through the second century, for example), in no case are the bread and the wine of the Lord’s Supper ever referred to as “flesh and blood,” but as “body and blood.” It’s quite remarkable.

Thus Paul says, “As you drink this cup and eat this.” “This is my body which is broken for you.” Not this is my flesh which is broken for you. That’s the standard use, the standard terminology in all the passages that unambiguously reflect the Lord’s Supper. The word flesh is not used. It’s the word body that is used.

So if Jesus, knowing where he’s going and what he is going to institute, wants this to be tied directly and tightly to the Lord’s Supper, then it’s a bit surprising he didn’t use what would become standard terminology. In fact, even if you allow John a little bit of editorial freedom, the use of his own words as he tries to convey all of this at the end of the first century, why doesn’t he use the word body here instead of flesh if he wants, first and foremost, to call to mind Holy Communion?

But in the third place, the entire exposition of the chapter, so long as you don’t read verses 51c to 58 stripped out of the context, the entire context of the chapter shows that here this eating of Jesus is in fact believing in Jesus. It is not, first and foremost, a sacramental act at all. It is first and foremost a metaphor to talk about how Jesus is received.

Moreover, in the fourth place, if you think that this book is so sacramental, do you not find it a bit strange that in John 13, there is no record of the words of institution? In other words, at the Last Supper report that John gives us, there is no report of the words of institution. There is in Matthew. There is in Mark. There is in Luke. Paul picks it up in 1 Corinthians 11, but there is no report of the words of institution, “This is my body, which is broken for you,” in John’s gospel. None.

Well, of course, those who are more sacramentally inclined say John didn’t have to. He already put it in John 6. But that already presupposes what is to be proved. If John was so interested in sacramental theology and sacramental spirituality, it is surely astonishing that the words of Jesus himself do not authorize the whole business.

Then one recalls what I briefly pointed out yesterday, that even when it comes to baptism, John can report a certain kind of self-distancing between Jesus and baptism. It wasn’t Jesus who baptized; it was his disciples. Yet at the same time, there are two other things that must be said. Let me come at the first of them through the side door.

In an hour and a half or so we’ll leave these lovely premises and we’ll go home. Along the way, we’ll stop somewhere to eat. Some will stop at a fast food joint. Some might stop at a nicer restaurant. Who knows? Maybe you’ll stop at McDonald’s. What will you eat? You will eat dead cow, dead lettuce, dead barley, and dead tomatoes.

In fact, everything you eat will have died except for a few minerals like salt, of which there will be too much. Everything else you eat will have died for you. Because if you don’t eat all these things that have died, then you die. That’s one of the most commonplace self-evident perspectives that we have lost in the Western industrialized world.

You’re brought up on a farm in an agrarian society and you know that either the crops and the animals die so that you can eat or you die. They give their life for you. That’s the truth. Oh, hens may simply make a deposit while pigs make a sacrifice. But even then, it’s worth remembering that that deposit of the hen would become life if you didn’t eat it first.

From another perspective, it is life, an embryo. It is life in principle. It’s just not running around the yard yet. You eat it before it has a chance to do that! You stop that egg from becoming a chicken wandering around the yard to fill your stomach. In other words, the notion of substituted life is transparent to anyone living in a preindustrialized agrarian society.

That’s one of the reasons why Jesus uses this metaphor so powerfully. “You’ve got to eat me. You’ve got to drink my blood, eat my flesh.” He’s already shown in the preceding verses that he doesn’t mean this literally. “You’ve got to come to me. You’ve got to believe in me,” and so on. But there is a sense in which what he is saying because of this powerful metaphor is, “Either I live and you die, or I die and you live. It’s one of the two.”

Which is exactly how it is when you eat. Either the cow dies or you die. Either Jesus dies or you die. It’s precisely in that sense that you eat his flesh and drink his blood. You consume him or you are damned. You die. Now once you see that that’s what John 6 is genuinely talking about, and in all fairness, once you see it in John 6, I really don’t understand how you could take John 6 in any other way. It’s so transparent once you see the flow of the argument.

Then there is one more thing to say. By the time this was written up and was circulating in the church, even when people understood it and understood it well as referring back to the time of Jesus and what Jesus said about his own death and so on, it could scarcely fail to carry forth evocations of Holy Communion in any case. It did. It did amongst the church fathers.

In my view, they didn’t get all the evocations right all the time, but they were right to see that there are evocations here of the Lord’s Table. The question is, “What kind of evocations?” The point is that this speech is pointing back to the death of Jesus in a somewhat analogous way to the manner in which the Lord’s Table points back to the death of Jesus.

In that sense, this speech and the Lord’s Table are running on parallel lines, both of them pointing back to the death of Jesus. But to say that this speech is pointing to the Lord’s Table precisely misunderstands this chapter. Because of the parallelism, this points back to the death of Jesus the way the Lord’s Supper points to the death of Jesus.

Inevitably, it is appropriate to read these texts at Holy Communion as a kind of parallel thought provided people do not misunderstand what the text is saying, as if this is describing Holy Communion. So that somehow now we misunderstand and make the Communion itself the explicit means of bringing life. That’s not what this text is saying. The explicit means of bringing life is not Holy Communion. It’s Christ dying on the cross!

However the subtleties may be worked out between memorialism and the Reformed view of the sacrament and so on and whether you prefer sacrament or, as I do, the term ordinance and half a dozen other things, the fact of the matter is that even those of us who see some grace mediated by the institution which Christ himself has given, cannot understand it as the means of grace that brings to us and gives us eternal life in and of itself. That was precisely what was given by Jesus!

However much we may not like mere minimalism, we must remember that the distinctive commandment of the Lord himself, with respect to the words of institution was, “Do this in remembrance of me.” For God help us, we need all the remembrances possible to bring us back to the cross again and again and again. Thus, this right that God has given, repeated endlessly in the church brings us back again and again to first principles, first things: the cross itself, to Christ himself. Thus becomes for us a wonderful means of grace.

Jesus, Thou Joy of loving hearts,

Thou Fount of life, Thou Light of men,

From the best bliss that earth imparts,

We turn unfilled to Thee again.

We taste Thee, O Thou living Bread,

And long to feast upon Thee still;

We drink of Thee the Fountain-head,

And thirst our souls from Thee to fill!

What does that mean? Understood within the context of John 6, such words can only mean, “We go back to the cross again and again and again.” There we find grace to help in time of need.

Is there enough evidence for us to believe the Gospels?

In an age of faith deconstruction and skepticism about the Bible’s authority, it’s common to hear claims that the Gospels are unreliable propaganda. And if the Gospels are shown to be historically unreliable, the whole foundation of Christianity begins to crumble.
But the Gospels are historically reliable. And the evidence for this is vast.
To learn about the evidence for the historical reliability of the four Gospels, click below to access a FREE eBook of Can We Trust the Gospels? written by New Testament scholar Peter J. Williams.