I Am the Bread of Life
John 6:35–59 – That You May Believe
Epiphany of the Lord (Observed) – January 5, 2025 (am)
This is one challenging text of Scripture. It’s one of those we hope doesn’t come up when we’re talking to people about the Bible or the gospel at the office or a coffee shop. We can even wince a bit in our private Bible reading when we encounter Jesus’ words: 53 … Truly, truly, I say to you, a double-ἀμήν saying, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you. How do we explain that? What are we supposed to say?
These are great questions. And I think this would be a great approach to our passage today: just to ask it questions. I think we might find that it’s not all that difficult to receive at all, or to understand, if we just let it speak in the way Jesus first spoke it, in the context in which He said it, and toward the ends to which He was so clearly aiming. Let’s ask five simple questions.
1. What is Jesus teaching here?
He’s teaching that believing (35, 36, 40, 47) in Him brings eternal (40, 47, 54) life (35, 40, 47, 51, 53, 54). It’s pretty hard to miss that. Remember, these people had chased Jesus across the Sea of Galilee (22-24) to here in Capernaum (59) because they’d just seen Him feed five thousand men (1-14), plus women and children, with almost no food. So, what He’s been trying to teach them since v.26 is that there is something vastly more important than food that God the Father has sent Him to give them. It’s actually Himself. 33 For the bread of God is he (a Person!) who comes down from heaven and gives life to the world. That’s what set up the opening statement in today’s text (our theme verse today): 35 Jesus said to them, “I am the bread of life; whoever comes to me shall not hunger, and whoever believes in me shall never thirst.” This is what Jesus is teaching. This is what He wants them to know. Filling their stomachs with physical food is good. It’s satisfying. But physical bodies die and physical food can’t stop that (49). Therefore: 27 Do not work for the food that perishes, but for the food that endures to eternal life…. 49 Your fathers ate the manna in the wilderness, and they died. They experienced the physical food from heaven that you’re chasing. Don’t do that! Recognize that there’s greater nourishment from God that’s so much more important. There’s life from God that’s so much sweeter to receive. In fact, it’s eternal life. It can never be lost! 37 All that the Father gives me will come to me, and whoever comes to me I will never cast out. 38 For I have come down from heaven, not to do my own will but the will of him who sent me. 39 And this is the will of him who sent me, that I should lose nothing of all that he has given me, but raise it up, raise up all who believe, raise them from the dead on the last day and give them eternal life. 40 For this is the will of my Father, that everyone who looks on the Son and believes in him should have eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day. That is what Jesus is teaching here. That’s His point. And it’s entirely clear!
2. Why does Jesus use this metaphor?
Why does He say: I am the bread of life (35, 48), especially given how confusing He knew it must’ve been to them? We’re just so committed to our food, to it being good. We see it as a genuine tragedy if there’s something we like that we need to forfeit. Sometime during July 2020, I ran out of the enzyme that digests dairy. Cheese was my favorite food group. And even though I’m drawn more to salty than sweet, ice cream was my sweet of choice. I can’t tell you how tragic it is to be lactose-intolerant! But is it really? The United Nations website reports that 25,000 die of hunger in our world every day. That is a tragedy. Some sources say it’s fewer than 25,000 but, death aside, the World Health Organization reported that 1 in 11 people worldwide faced hunger in 2023, 1 in 5 on the African continent. That doesn’t just feel unfortunate; that feels immoral. Food is really important to us finite beings. We depend on it for life. We all agree on that with no argument. But because of that fact, the food and life of this world can desensitize us, even blind us, to the food and life of the world-to-come. That’s an infinitely greater tragedy. Jesus wanted to break through the this-world-liness that bound and blinded this crowd (24) and open their eyes to their truest, deepest need. It’s so much more important for them to have Him than to have manna or loaves and fish or cheese or ice cream or any other food. This life can be sweet. But if we could have only one, this life or the next, the next is the only one worth having! And, as we’ve learned from Jesus already, we can have that life only by [coming to Him], by [believing in Him] (35,). Jesus said: 41 … I am the bread that came down from heaven. … 50 This is the bread that comes down from heaven, so that one may eat of it and not die. 51 I am the living bread that came down from heaven. If anyone eats of this bread, he will live forever. And the bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh.
3. What did Jesus want this crowd to learn about Himself?
He wanted them to learn that He was sent by God specifically to secure eternal life for all who believe. We saw that a moment ago (40). 38 For I have come down from heaven, not to do my own will but the will of him who sent me. Even being God Himself (1:1), Jesus is on an errand/mission for God. 39 And this is the will of him who sent me (how often have we wanted to know that?), that I should lose nothing of all that he has given me, but raise it up on the last day. And just in case you’ve not yet understood: 40 For this is the will of my Father, that everyone who looks on the Son and believes in him should have eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day. You see, His teaching here is not really unclear at all. Jesus is God’s unique (3:16) provision from heaven for eternal life, and we need Him more than food.
4. Why was it so hard for this crowd to understand Jesus?
Two reasons: first, they were so locked into their desire for physical food that they just couldn’t grasp that what He was offering was so much more, that there’s a food which is infinitely more important than, for instance, bread and fish. That didn’t make sense to them, and they just couldn’t get over the hump. Manna had been such a miracle! So had the feeding of the five thousand! That food kept people alive in wilderness places! How could there be food more significant than that? Well, now we can see it, here, today, but only because Jesus has broken through our blindness. That hadn’t yet happened for these people.
Second, they had a hard time processing that Jesus was from heaven. When 41 … he said, “I am the bread that came down from heaven.” 42 They said, “Is not this Jesus, the son of Joseph, whose father and mother we know? How does he now say, ‘I have come down from heaven’?” That just didn’t make sense to them and it got in the way of their understanding Him. Now, for us today, it still gets in the way. Because Jesus needed to addresses it with them, it tends to blur His main point in our eyes as well. But no longer!
5. Why is this passage so hard for us to understand?
Again, there are two reasons: first, we really don’t do much better a job holding on to Jesus’ metaphor than they did. We tend to lose it when He gets toward the end of today’s text as though He’s no longer talking about believing in Himself for eternal life and calling Himself the bread of life (35). We get confused because we forget that Jesus is the reality—He is what we truly need most—and food is used to illustratate that. Bread is the metaphor. We forget that believing is our appropriate response. Believing is the reality. Eating is the illustration of believing. It’s the metaphor. 29 … This is the work of God, that you believe in him whom he has sent. Or, our theme verse: 35 … I am the bread of life; whoever comes to me shall not hunger, and whoever believes in me shall never thirst. 53 So when Jesus said to them, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you,” was He suddenly switching it around to make eating the reality, the work of God (29), setting belief aside? No, not at all. He was just telling these folk that, even if they insist on holding onto the idea of eating (52), He’s not going to let go of the reality that’s been His aim from the start, that He is the Father’s provision for their life. 51 I am the living bread that came down from heaven. If anyone eats of this bread (believes), he will live forever. And the bread that I will give for the life of the world—that which we must lay hold of by faith (belief) as though it were food that we’re eating—is my flesh, my incarnate body and the full mission it confirms that I’ve been sent into this world to accomplish (cf. Carson 1991 295). Thus: 54 Whoever feeds on my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day. 55 For my flesh is true food, and my blood is true drink, Jesus says, in just the same way as I’ve been talking about from the start of this conversation.
We don’t have time to talk about the second reason today because it’s very involved. But I still need to mention it because many important biblical and theological themes are connected to it. This passage is hard for us to understand because we get it mixed in and entangled with our understanding of Communion such that we feel a strong need to reference Communion as we seek to explain what Jesus is teaching here. And that is just not helpful. Or, I should say that it’s more unhelpful than helpful. Echoes of Communion are here, but that’s not the subject here. Some wonder why John, who gave such attention to the evening of the last supper, five chapters (cc.13-17), didn’t include an account of Jesus’ institution of Communion as the other Gospel writers did (Mat.26:26-29; Mar:14:22-25; Luk.22:14-22). I sincerely wonder if, at least in part, it wasn’t in order to lessen any possible confusion between this powerful conversation and that significant event. In any case, the main thing I would encourage us to do is to make sense out of Joh.6 first by just following the conversation of Joh.6. Then, after that’s firmly established in our minds, we can begin folding it in with our understanding of Communion and each of the other passages that address that subject.
Conclusion
So, what is our takeaway today? We just need to hear Jesus’ teaching and learn what He wants us to know about Himself. Believing in Him brings eternal life. He was sent into this world by the Father to accomplish that purpose. He is God’s provision for life, eternal life, the life we most desire. It’s like belief in Him is the food from heaven that sustains eternal life just like manna or loaves and fish or our daily bread sustains our life here and now.
And those who receive this life through Jesus are said here to be a gift from the Father given to the Son that the Son highly treasure and cares for with meticulous attentiveness as part of His obedience to the Father, as the Father’s will for Him (37-39). How could our salvation be any more special than that?
So, there’s our takeaway. Hopefully from now on Joh.6 isn’t a passage we try to avoid in our conversations about the gospel, but maybe even one we bring up ourselves—Jesus’ own clear instruction of Who He is and what He was sent into this world to do and what that opens up for us and how immensely special that is! Not only do we receive an infinitely valuable gift from God—eternal life by [faith] in Jesus—but we who believe are an infinitely valuable gift of God—from the Father to the Son.
With this as backdrop, let us now come to the Lord’s Table a heart of refreshed thanksgiving for the body and blood of Christ.
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Resources
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NEXT SUNDAY: Do You Want to Go Away As Well? John 6:60–71