John 6

CHAPTER VI

THE RISE OF OPPOSITION IN GALILEE, CHAPTER 6

The Preliminary Events, 6:1–21.—As chapter 5, relates the rise of opposition in Jerusalem, so chapter 6, relates the rise of opposition in Galilee. Hence only the pertinent events and discourses are selected, and these are presented only with such details as serve to bring clearly to view the attestation of Jesus and to show how it caused such opposition. After these things Jesus went away beyond the Sea of Galilee, the Tiberian. With the simple phrase μετὰταῦτα (compare 5:1) John passes over the months between the festival at which Jesus healed the impotent man (5:1, etc.) and the Passover now approaching, the third Passover during Jesus’ ministry. When John says that Jesus “went away beyond the Sea,” the implication is that for some time Jesus had been working in Galilee, whence he had come from Jerusalem, and that now for the events to be narrated Jesus crossed the Sea of Galilee to its northeastern side. John adds “the Tiberian” for the sake of the general reader, to make sure that he thinks of the right sea, not of the Mediterranean.

John 6:2

2 Without telling us in so many words, John presents Jesus at the height of his Galilean ministry. And there was following him a great multitude, because they were beholding the signs he was doing upon those that were sick. The three imperfect tenses picture Jesus in the full exercise of his activity at this period, including, of course, the present crossing of the Sea. The statement that the crowds were attracted by “beholding the signs he was doing” is intended to parallel 2:23 and to show that in general the situation here in Galilee was a duplication of the previous one which occurred in Jerusalem. Not the teaching but merely the signs were the great attraction. This John wants us to bear in mind for the sake of what follows.

John 6:3

3 And Jesus went up into the mountain and was sitting there with his disciples. Jesus crossed the Sea in order to find a respite from the crowds that followed him, for the news had just come to him that the Baptist had been killed (Matt. 14:13), and because Jesus also had other business with his disciples (Mark 6:31, etc.). The view that Jesus failed to find this respite because the crowds followed him, is refuted by the imperfect ἐκάθητο, “was sitting,” and it is also evident that the crowds, who had had to walk along the shoreline, arrived at the place to which Jesus had crossed by boat some hours later. Without telling us, John assumes that we know that “the disciples” are now twelve in number.

John 6:4

4 The connective δέ (note that it is not γάρ) is parenthetical. Now the Passover, the feast of the Jews, was near. The article “the feast” is not stressed, for in 7:2 another feast is also so designated. The apposition is intended for the general reader who is not particularly versed in Jewish matters. Of course, the mention of the Passover marks the date of this narrative, which also must be John’s intention. But it does more.

It does not, however, explain the flocking of the multitude to Jesus. This has already been most adequately explained in v. 2, and this applies not only to this one day but to this period in general. Moreover, the pilgrim caravans going to the Passover would not follow a route around the Sea to its northeast side, but routes leading southward. Nor is this mention of the Passover to give a setting for the final discourse on the Bread of Life. The two events are too far apart. In the entire discourse not even a slight reference is made to the Passover.

The idea that Jesus would dispense the Bread of Life as a better substitute for the Jewish Paschal feast, a better feast also as typifying the Lord’s Supper, is not only without support in Jesus’ own discourse but contrary to Jesus’ own action when a year later he celebrated his last Passover with the disciples in Jerusalem. Not until after that event was the Jewish Passover abrogated, because not until then was it completely fulfilled. We must not carry thoughts, attractive to ourselves, into the Scripture and then persuade ourselves that we have found them there. The reference to the Passover at this point in John’s narrative is intended to explain the action of the multitude when after the miracle of the loaves they conceived the plan of forcing Jesus to go with them to Jerusalem, there to be made a king. Perhaps we may add that the approach of the Passover and the news of the Baptist’s death foreshadowed to Jesus his own approaching death at the Passover a year hence.

John 6:5

5 John assumes that his readers know the fuller narrative found in Matt. 14:13–21 and in Mark 6:35, etc., together with the briefer account in Luke 9:12, etc. Thus John briefly sketches the situation and adds from the conversation with the disciples what serves his purpose in showing their helplessness to meet the problem that was facing them. After the parenthetical remark οὗν merely resumes the narrative. Accordingly, having lifted up his eyes and having seen that a great multitude was coming to him, he says to Philip. Whence shall we buy bread, in order that these may eat? John is not worried in the least whether his account of what preceded and led up to the miracle will harmonize with the accounts of the other evangelists, for he knows that it does harmonize with them.

John alone tells the incident about Philip, and this he does to amplify the other accounts on two points. If we had only these other accounts we might conclude that the disciples took the initiative when toward evening they asked Jesus to dismiss the multitude; from John’s account we learn that Jesus thought about the needs of the multitude when the crowd first appeared, and that already then he asked Philip whence bread might be obtained for them. We thus see that the request of the disciples to send the multitude away was made after the situation had become acute, namely toward evening, when everybody was hungry. The disciples saw only one thing to be done, namely that Jesus send the multitude away at once. They act as though Jesus had forgotten to think of their needs and, therefore, also add that it is high time to act if all these people are to reach the neighboring villages and are there to buy bread. The answer of Jesus, that the people need not depart (Matt. 14:16), that the disciples should give them to eat, shows that Jesus all along had in mind that he and his disciples should feed these people.

That is why he had taught and healed all this time, unworried about the eating. He had not forgotten by any means but had purposely waited until this time, when at last something had to be done. And he had purposely waited until the disciples could keep still no longer, until they felt that they must take the initiative. But now that they do so, none of them musters faith enough to think that perhaps Jesus himself intended to feed these people and that for this reason he had taught and healed until so late an hour.

The other point is the explanation of Mark 6:37, where the disciples ask, “Shall we go and buy two hundred pennyworth of bread,” etc.? Why did they think of this sum and of asking this question? John tells us: because when Jesus first saw the crowds as they were coming (ἔρχεται), he had first raised the question of getting bread for so many, asking Philip, “Whence shall we buy bread,” etc.? Philip had told the others about this question and about the answer he gave. The other evangelists omit this detail in their accounts, John adds it. The subjunctive ἀγοράσωμεν (always in the first person) is used in a question of deliberation when one asks himself or himself and others what to do. The aorist indicates the single act of buying.

John 6:6

6 Now this he was saying as testing him; for he himself knew what he was about to do. As δέ shows, this remark is parenthetical. We should not wonder why Philip was selected for this testing (πειράζω, “to try out,” thus also in an evil sense “to tempt”) and then try to find a reason in the disposition and the character of Philip. Jesus selects Philip merely as being one of the entire number of the Twelve. If the others stood by and listened or if presently Philip told them about the question and of his answer, the test was intended for all of them. The fact that they passed this test no better than Philip we see from Mark 6:37, where they ask whether they shall go and buy bread, putting Philip’s answer to Jesus into the form of a question. None of them rose higher than Philip’s low level.

Now Jesus asked Philip when the multitude was first gathering. Philip and the Twelve thus had hours of time in which to think over what Jesus might have intended with his question. Yet towards evening, as we learn from Mark, they still think that Jesus had actually contemplated only buying bread for all these people. Note, too, how by this question Jesus raised the problem of food from the very start and bade the disciples solve it. When then he proceeded entirely unconcerned, as though the problem did not exist, until evening was approaching and everybody, the Twelve included, grew real hungry, the disciples could have guessed that Jesus, who saw the problem long before the disciples did, must have had in mind an adequate solution. Yet none of them thought of the wine furnished in Cana, nor of the “hour” for which Jesus there waited.

The fact that Jesus knew all along (ἤδει, used as an imperfect) what he was about to do, John reports as something that he discovered later. Only afterward he saw why Jesus spoke to Philip so early and yet continued until evening, until the Twelve could stand it no longer and felt that they must tell Jesus what to do. The imperfect ἔμελλε is due to indirect discourse, R. 1043, 1029; and the present infinitive following it indicates the course of action in Jesus’ mind.

John 6:7

7 Philip answered him, Two hundred penny-worth of bread is not sufficient for them, for each to take a little something. Philip thinks only of buying and answers only regarding that. He mentions the lowest possible amount, one that would give only “a little something” to each person, not by any means enough to satisfy the appetite. Contrast with this v. 12, “they were filled,” and v. 11, “as much as they would.” To provide only “a little something” would cost two hundred δηνάρια (at 17 cents this would amount to $34), a sum far beyond the balance in the joint treasury of Jesus and the disciples. The genitive is one of price. Jesus, of course, wants to bring out the hopelessness of buying food for all these people.

Philip stops at the prohibitive price; he might have added that no place to buy such a quantity of food was at hand. One impossibility is enough. The idea that the realization of this impossibility should turn Philip’s thoughts into an entirely different direction, and that by means of his question Jesus tried to turn them thus, never occurred to Philip.

John 6:8

8 Evening is coming on, no food is in sight, the case is reaching the acute stage. The disciples tell Jesus to send the multitude away. Jesus replies that they need not depart (Matt. 14:16). He tells the disciples to give them to eat. Even this does not awaken in their minds an inkling of what Jesus has in mind. All they know is to ask whether Jesus at this late hour wants them to go and to scour the country to buy the least amount for these many mouths (Mark 6:37).

To this Jesus replies by telling them to go and to see how many loaves they have. They do this, and a report is quickly made (Mark 6:38). Here John adds more detail. One of his disciples, Andrew, Simon Peter’s brother, says to him, There is a lad here who has five barley loaves and two fishes; but what are these for so many? Whereas the other evangelists mention only the disciples, John says that their spokesman was Andrew, whom we met in 1:45, whose relation to his brother Simon Peter is again noted. This was perhaps done because Andrew was one of the first two who became disciples of Jesus.

The deduction that Andrew was a practical man and that thus he made this investigation, falls by the board, for Jesus told the disciples to go and to see how much bread was there.

John also adds Andrew’s hopeless expression, which has often been repeated since, “What are these for so many?” As was the case with the first question to Philip, so also with regard to this order to the disciples, these men think only that Jesus has in mind by means of purchase or by means of gathering up the supplies still available, to feed this vast crowd. So both times Jesus is told that his suggestions are hopeless. The παιδάριον or “lad” seems to have been a boy who tried to make a little money by selling to the crowd such supplies as he could carry. Barley bread was much used by the poorer classes. In the present instance ὀψάρια, the diminutive plural of ὄψον or “cooked food,” are fish, since this was a great fish country, and prepared fish was eaten with the thin, flat cakes of bread. The singular ἄρτος means “bread,” bread as such or a sheet of bread, which nobody thought of cutting since it was so easily broken for the purpose of eating.

The Greek has the plural ἄρτοι, “breads,” which the English lacks, so that we substitute “loaves,” but should think of flat, round sheets. On ταῦτατί as also being classical see R. 736.

John 6:10

10 According to Matthew, Jesus orders the bread and the fishes to be brought to him, which means that they are to be bought from the lad. Did the disciples think that Jesus intended to secure this food for himself, so that he and a least some of his disciples should not go hungry ? At the same time Jesus said, Make the people sit down. Now there was much grass in the place. Accordingly, the men sat down as to number about five thousand. Note the peremptory aorist in the command and the aorist which states that the command was carried out.

What did the Twelve now think—all these people sitting down as if to dine, and only this bit of food in sight? In the command οἱἄνθρωποι includes the women and the children in the count, οἱἄνδρες counts only the men, compare Matt. 14:21, “besides women and children.” Mark 6:40 lets us see how the count was made: “they sat down in ranks, by hundreds, and by fifties.” Matthew, too, mentions the grass, but John states that the place was covered with grass, both writing as eyewitnesses in distinction from Mark and Luke who were not present. All are seated in orderly fashion with lanes between the groups to enable proper serving. The impressiveness of the miracle is thus also brought out, for over five thousand at one meal is quite a host; τὸνἀριθμόν is the adverbial accusative, R. 486, and ὡς, “about,” states that absolute exactness was not intended.

John 6:11

11 The miracle itself is described in the simplest manner by mentioning only the actions of Jesus. In points such as this the control of inspiration is tangible, for an ordinary writer would certainly elaborate on this great climax of the account. Accordingly, Jesus took the loaves and, having given thanks, distributed to those sitting down; likewise of the fishes, as much as they would. Not even a single exclamation! Not one word beyond the bare facts that John saw and heard! We are not even told that a miracle was taking place; not even that the food kept multiplying as it was being handed out, or how many each sheet of bread and each fish served. Our familiarity with this account should not blind us to all these features.

“Jesus took the loaves” probably as they were together with the fishes in the lad’s basket. Then he “gave thanks” or said grace by using a customary table prayer or perhaps a new form for this occasion. If the prayer was unusual, one of the evangelists would have intimated this fact; none does so. Matthew adds κλάσας, “having broken,” which John covers by διά in the verb, “he distributed”; the bread was about an inch and a half in thickness, baked thus for the purpose of breaking. The other evangelists state that the pieces were taken by the disciples, probably in baskets, collected from people who had carried something in them. Thus loaded down, the disciples functioned as the waiters on this grand occasion.

Jesus gave and gave and gave, and as he gave, there was always more to give. He did not stint, as Philip and the others thought to do by purchasing only two hundred pennyworth of bread, omitting anything to go with the bread. The fact that Jesus did not stint, is mentioned in connection with the fishes; each person could have as much as he wanted, to go with his bread. The imperfect ἤθελον is used because of the repetition.

John 6:12

12 And when they were filled, he says to his disciples, Collect the superfluous broken pieces, in order that nothing may be lost. Only incidentally, as it were, in a subordinate temporal clause, the great fact (aorist) comes out that all these people “were filled,” each having eaten all he could eat. But now, after all this prodigality, Jesus becomes exceedingly saving. A comparatively few had taken more than they could actually eat. Jesus will not have these left-over pieces wasted and thrown away—certainly a lesson for us. Yet here is more.

The great sign has been wrought, its significance is plain to all who will read. It does not mean that Jesus will thus keep on feeding the people with exhaustless supplies of earthly food; he has come on no such mission. We should misunderstand this sign, if we thought that Jesus merely stepped in to meet an unexpected, great bodily need. Verse 6 eliminates that thought. Jesus purposely let the need develop until toward evening it became acute, because from the beginning he intended to work this sign. He could easily have obviated the need.

Any man could foresee that presently all these people would be hungry and, using his common sense, could have sent them away betimes to places where they might find food. But Jesus deliberately detains them, “for he himself knew what he would do.”

John 6:13

13 Accordingly, they made the collection and filled twelve baskets with broken pieces from the five barley loaves which were left over to those having eaten. A κόφινος is a small basket used by travelers for provisions, etc. More was left over than Jesus began with, as John intimates by mentioning side by side “twelve baskets” and “the five barley loaves.” Each of the Twelve came with a basketful. It seems that Jesus did not forget that his disciples, too, must be hungry. How about himself? Why not one more basketful, one for him? May we say that Jesus expected the Twelve to share their abundance with him? He still pours his abundance out to us and expects us to remember him in the poor and needy and in the support of the church.

John 6:14

14 John amplifies the account of the synoptists, Matt. 14:22, etc.; Mark 6:45, etc., but in accord with his purpose. They report only that Jesus sent his disciples away to sail back across the Sea, while he dismissed the multitude and retired into the mountain to pray. John reveals the cause for this action in accord with his purpose to show how also in Galilee the opposition to Jesus now developed. The people, therefore, having seen the signs which he did, were saying, This one is truly the prophet that is coining into the world. The reading varies between the plural “signs” and the singular “sign”; in any case the last sign just narrated is the decisive one, which precipitated what follows; σημεῖον is explained in 2:11. In the relative clause ἃἐποίησεσημεῖα the antecedent is drawn into the relative clause, R. 718.

The imperfect tense, “they were saying,” describes how this word circulated and was repeated and at the same time intimates that something follows in consequence. “The prophet” these people have in mind is the one promised by Moses in Deut. 18:15, whom some conceived as the great forerunner of the Messiah (1:21), and others as the Messiah himself. Note the Messianic designation in ὁἐρχόμενος, “he that is coming.”

John 6:15

15 Jesus, therefore, having realized that they were about to come and kidnap him in order to make him king, withdrew again into the mountain himself alone. The acclaim of the multitude was about to eventuate in action. We need not spend time explaining γνούς, for the purpose of the multitude was obvious, and the powers of perception on Jesus’ part were beyond question (2:24, 25). Their plan was “to come and kidnap” or “snatch him away,” whether he would consent or not, “in order to make him king,” βασιλέα, predicate accusative with αὑτόν. They would carry him to Jerusalem at the coming Passover (v. 4) in a grand, royal procession, gathering increasing adherents on the way, sweeping the capital off its feet in universal enthusiasm. This scheme Jesus frustrates by withdrawing again into the mountain from which he “went forth” in the first place (Matt. 14:14) to meet the multitude. But this time he slips away “alone,” thus it will be harder to find him in the approaching darkness.

John 6:16

16 John writes for readers who have Matt. 14:22–34 and Mark 6:45–51 before them, who thus know to what he refers (v. 17) and are able to combine the new features he offers with the accounts they already know so well. Now when evening came, his disciples went down to the Sea. They lingered until evening (ὀψία, supply ὥρα), not the so-called first evening, from 3 to 6, but the second, from 6 until dark, for we hear that darkness soon set in. “They went down” means from the place where the 5, 000 had been fed, where Jesus left them with strict orders (“constrained,” Matt. 14:22) as to what to do, namely to sail for Capernaum without him a little before dusk.

John 6:17

17 And having embarked in a boat, they were proceeding beyond the Sea to Capernaum. And darkness had already come, and Jesus had not yet come to them. The boat was the one in which they had come (v. 1), the only one on that shore (v. 22). The descriptive imperfect ἤρχοντο pictures the disciples sailing away, withholding for the moment the information as to how their voyage turned out. “Beyond the Sea” states their general and “to Capernaum” their specific destination. We catch the intention of their Master in this way to remove them from the foolish multitude and its plans to make him an earthly king. In a little while he would show them and also let the multitude infer what kind of a king he really was.

In the meanwhile we see the little vessel in its progress toward the setting sun. All is calm and beautiful. The experienced sailors in the boat anticipate no difficulty in reaching their destination not long after dark.

When, after thus picturing the disciples as proceeding on their journey, John remarks that darkness “had already come” and furthermore that “Jesus had not yet come to them,” he refers in advance to what his readers know from the accounts of Matthew and of Mark. The two pluperfect tenses are well explained by R. 904: “The verb in the sentence before is ἤρχοντο (descriptive), and the verb following is διηγείρετο (inchoative, the sea was beginning to rise). The time of these imperfects is, of course, past. But the two intervening past perfects indicate stages in the going (ἤρχοντο) before they reached the shore. Both ἤδη and οὕπω help to accent the interval between the first darkness and the final appearance of Jesus which is soon expressed by the vivid historical present θεωροῦσιν (v. 19). Here we have a past behind a past beyond a doubt from the standpoint of the writer, and that is the very reason why John used the past perfects here.” R. is right when he adds that these tenses “form a very interesting study,” that John often uses them to take us “behind the scenes.”

The gathering storm very likely hastened the darkness. John writes from a very vivid recollection. The puzzling of the commentators about the statement that “Jesus had not yet come to the disciples” is solved, likewise their proposed solutions, such as that the disciples had some kind of an expectation that Jesus would come to them either before they sailed or while they were sailing, or that Jesus had made them such a promise. Nor can the supposed puzzle be solved by charging John with contradicting the synoptists. With “not yet” John merely refers to the coming of Jesus which his readers know from Matthew and from Mark; as Robertson puts it, John’s reference is “beyond a doubt from the standpoint of the writer.” The disciples were sailing on Jesus’ orders. What he intended to do he had kept to himself.

Darkness and storm were upon them—and they were alone. John and his readers know that Jesus came to them, but John says: here they were in this position—Jesus had not yet come.

John 6:18

18 And the sea, a great wind blowing, was beginning to rise. On τέ see R. 1179. The inchoative imperfect means that the sea was rising more and more. The genitive absolute, “a great wind blowing,” states the reason. Matthew writes that the boat was distressed by the waves, the wind being against them. Mark says the disciples were distressed with the rowing. At the start they had used their sail, since the boat was large enough to hold so many passengers and was fitted with a sail. But the contrary wind, as well as its violence, with the darkness complicating the situation, soon made them resort to their oars, thus trying to keep the boat head on against the raging waves—a distressing task, indeed.

John 6:19

19 Having rowed, therefore, about twenty-five or thirty stadia, they behold Jesus walking on the sea and drawing nigh unto the boat; and they were affrighted. The other evangelists mention the time when Jesus came to the boat, about the fourth watch of the night, i.e., toward morning, between 3 and 6, showing that the disciples had fought against the storm all night long. John adds to this information the short distance they had covered by all this work of rowing against the storm, 3⅛ to 3¾ miles, a stadium being ⅛ of a Roman or English mile. As to their location with reference to Capernaum or to any part of the shore we have no intimation, and it is safe to assume that, rowing as they did in the dark and in the open lake, the disciples themselves did not know. Only one thing is certain, they were still far from their destination.

John reports the miracle itself only in a summary way, “they behold Jesus walking on the sea and drawing nigh to the boat.” The only touches are the dramatic present tense “they behold” and the descriptive participles “walking and drawing nigh.” John writes “Jesus,” but at first they could have seen only the indistinct figure on the water moving toward them. Mark adds this point, together with the superstitious thought of the disciples that they were seeing a “phantasm” or ghost. The darkness, the hour of night, the storm and the danger still in full force, the exhausting battle with the oars, all combined to make the disciples give way to the superstitions still lurking in their minds. What would some who now smile at superstition have felt and said if they had held an oar in that boat? Mark adds that Jesus was about to walk past the boat; John reports only his drawing nigh. Jesus was giving the disciples time to recover from their fright, also time to ask him to enter the boat.

When trying to imagine Jesus walking on the sea, we must not overlook the storm and the raging waves. These howled and dashed about him, but they did not affect him in the least. He was not tossed up and down; his clothes and his body were not wet with spray. Before him as he moved his feet a smooth, apparently solid path lay, on which he walked as on ordinary ground. He did not move as a specter is supposed to move; no unearthly light played around him, as painters often imagine. It was simply Jesus as they had left him the evening before—only now he was walking on the storm-tossed sea.

One might inquire whether he had walked all the way from the shore to the boat or had suddenly transported himself to the spot where the disciples first saw him. Curious questions, for which no sign of an answer exists, should not be raised. The aorist “they were affrighted” states the mere fact, and the verb includes all of the Twelve.

John 6:20

20 But he says to them, It is I—stop being afraid! This was done to calm the disciples’ superstitious fear. “It is I” = and no specter. “It is I” = your Lord and Master whom you know so well. The other evangelists report that Jesus’ first word was, “Be of good cheer!” assuring them that all their troubles were ended. And Mark 6:52 adds that despite the wonderful feeding of the 5, 000 the disciples failed to understand with their hardened hearts. These obdurate hearts Jesus now tries again to penetrate with faith. The present imperative often forbids what one is already doing; so here μὴφοβεῖσθε = “stop being afraid!” John makes no reference to the incident regarding Peter but tells us about the landing.

John 6:21

21 They were willing, therefore, to take him into the boat; and immediately the boat was at the land to which they were going. Overagainst the dreadful fear that they were seeing a ghost, a portent presaging that they were all doomed to destruction, John sets the durative imperfect ἤθελον, “they were willing” to take him into the boat, which describes the new feeling and desire: instead of paralyzing fright, this desire and this willingness. If John had written the aorist, he would have expressed the will only as a single act; he chose the imperfect in order to describe a new state of will. True enough, this imperfect does not itself indicate that the will to take Jesus into the boat was carried into effect. That, however, lies in the following aorist ἐγένετο, “immediately the boat was at the land.” For no reader for a moment would think that Jesus was left out on the sea while the boat with only the disciples in it was at that instant at the land. Besides, John counts on his readers knowing what the other evangelists had recorded long ago, how Jesus did enter the boat and also lifted Peter into it.

Thus all the worry about the tense of ἤθελον is brushed away. John neither “differs from” the other evangelists nor “contradicts” them. On the other hand, we need not insist on making the imperfect tense of this verb exceptional, as including the execution of the wish. Least of all will we resort to the supposition that Jesus walked past the boat after calling to the disciples, then suddenly disappeared, and finally came to the disciples after they had landed.

John now mentions something that the other narrators omit. They report only that Jesus entered the boat, and that the storm then instantly ceased, due, of course, to the will and the power of Jesus. John adds the detail that “immediately” the boat “was at the land to which they were going.” In other words, the exhausted disciples were not compelled to begin their rowing again in order to cover the considerable distance to the shore. We now see why John notes the distance covered during the stormy night voyage, some 25 to 30 stadia. He means to say that the boat was still far from shore when Jesus came to it. That distance melted away the moment Jesus stepped into the boat.

By “the land to which they were going” the reader will understand Capernaum, even as v. 17 indicates. This is made certain by the following references, that “on the morrow” the multitude crossed by boats to Capernaum and there found Jesus teaching in the synagogue (v. 59). Besides this the situation requires that the discourse on the Bread of Life be spoken immediately on the day after the feeding of the 5, 000, for it is addressed to those who were thus fed and who certainly would not have remained together for a couple of days waiting in Capernaum for Jesus, but, coming as they did “from all the cities” (Mark 6:33), would have scattered again to their homes in those cities. John’s account is too compact and too closely knit for us to insert at this point Matt. 14:34–36, and Mark 6:53–56, letting Jesus and the disciples land on the plain of Gennesaret on the morning after the storm, spending one or more days among the people of this region, and then finally going to Capernaum. The two aorist participles in Matthew and in Mark, “having crossed over,” are quite general and do not compel us, like the close reference in John, to connect the visit to the region of Gennesaret with the journey by boat through the stormy night. This visit must be set at a later time.

The assumption that 6:59 occurred on the Sabbath, because Jesus was teaching in a synagogue at Capernaum, coupled with the observation that the multitude would hardly have taken so long a journey by boat on the Sabbath in trying to find Jesus, overlooks the action of Jesus and of his disciples. For if the day after the feeding of the 5, 000 was a Sabbath, that Sabbath began the very evening when Jesus himself ordered the disciples to sail the identical distance to Capernaum and would include the night of the storm during which the disciples labored to exhaustion. Assemblies, however, were held in the synagogues not only on Saturday but also on Monday and on Thursday. We are not compelled to think of a Sabbath every time we find Jesus in a synagogue. The statement in 6:4 that the Passover was near is too indefinite to justify a dating of the day of the miracle. It is useless to figure the day of the Passover of this year as being Monday, April 18, in the year 29; and then to set the date of the miracle on the day before, and thus to fix the date of the discourse in the synagogue on the Monday of this Passover.

John narrates the two miracles, that of the feeding of the 5, 000 and that of Jesus’ walking on the sea not merely in order to inform us that these great miracles occurred but for a much higher purpose. They constitute the divine prelude and preparation for the attestation of Jesus in the discourses on himself as the Bread of Life. By placing these miracles into this vital connection John gives us far more than the other evangelists, who say nothing of the teaching on the Bread of Life and content themselves with the miracles as such. In John’s Gospel they are introduced as aids given in advance to faith in order that all concerned might believe that Jesus is the Bread of Life and thus might have what is far greater than earthly help.

The Decisive Discourse on the Bread of Life, 6:22–59.—Its three parts are not coordinated in the ordinary fashion, but the second advances beyond the first, and the third beyond the second. The structure is like that of an inverted pyramid: 1) Jesus gives to him that believes the Bread of Life; 2) Jesus gives to him that believes himself as the Bread of Life; 3) Jesus gives to him that believes his flesh as the Bread of Life.

Jesus Gives the Bread of Life, 22–40

John 6:22

22 On the morrow the multitude which was standing beyond the Sea saw that no other boat was there except one and that Jesus did not enter with his disciples into the boat, but his disciples alone went away. Instead of combining the thoughts of v. 22–24 in one balanced period in the Hellenistic style of writing, John strings them together in the Hebraistic fashion, which results in less smoothness. The perfect participle ἑστηκώς is always used as a present: the multitude “which stands.” It is the situation described in the two ὅτι clauses, the situation produced already the evening before, that John tells us the multitude “on the morrow saw.” We thus need not change εἶδον into the participle ἰδών (a far inferior reading), to throw the seeing back to the previous evening; nor need we put a pluperfect sense into the simple aorist. It was not until the next morning that the multitude really “saw” the situation: first, that yesterday (hence ἦν and not ἐστί, R. 887) no other small boat (πλοιάριον) was there except one, i.e., the one in which Jesus and the disciples had crossed; and secondly, that Jesus yesterday did not go into that boat with his disciples (hence the article εἰςτὸπλοιάριον), but the disciples yesterday went away alone. How much of this the multitude had seen yesterday does not matter to John, but that “on the morrow they saw” this is the point for him, for not until now does the multitude begin to put two and two together. When we understand John thus we need not, by resorting to ἰδών, regard v. 22–24 as an awkward anacoluthon or broken sentence, just because we think that the multitude should have seen all this already during the evening.

John 6:23

23 The next statement is parenthetical, explaining how boats arrived in the morning on which the multitude could also cross to Capernaum. But there came boats from Tiberias near to the place where they ate the bread after the Lord had given thanks. None came from Capernaum, for in the morning Jesus was found there together with his disciples. John does not state for what purpose these boats from Tiberias crossed the lake. It is a fair guess to say, because the boatmen knew that the multitude could not long stay on this lonely shore, and many would want to ride back instead of once more going the long road around the upper end of the Sea. These boats, it seems, brought no passengers, for they are now ready to take on passengers and to carry them just where these want to go. If the boats had come from Tiberias loaded, they could not have helped the multitude to cross and would, of course, have taken only their original passengers back to Tiberias.

Tiberias had been built on the southwest shore of the lake by Herod Antipas, the murderer of the Baptist, and was named in honor of the emperor Tiberius. We have no record that Jesus ever visited that city, for its character was strongly pagan. Outside of the two designations of the sea as being that of Tiberias (6:1; 21:1) the city is mentioned only here and that quite incidentally. Until the fourth century it was the seat of the rabbinical school which produced the Mishna or Jerusalem Talmud and the Masora. In 1925 the author found it a small town, with two ancient towers at the water’s edge, while practically no assured trace can be found of even the location of Capernaum, Bethsaida, and Chorazin (Matt. 11:20, etc.; Luke 10:13, etc.). Note that here for the first time in his Gospel John himself calls Jesus “the Lord.”

John 6:24

24 Accordingly, when the multitude saw that Jesus was not there nor his disciples, they themselves entered the boats and came to Capernaum, seeking Jesus. They evidently first made a thorough search. The Greek preserves the tense of their present finding ἐστί: “Jesus is not here”; compare ἦν to express the absence of any other boat on the previous day, v. 22. They also made sure that the disciples whom they had seen sail away in the evening had not returned during the night. The singular εἶδεν treats “the multitude” as a collective, while εἶδον in v. 22 and the two plurals in v. 24 refer to the individuals. As a body they “saw” that Jesus and the disciples were not there, but they embarked and went away as so many individuals.

They were still a large number, but hardly any longer 5, 000; many, we must suppose, had left the evening before, and others in the morning. Those that secured passage in the boats go to Capernaum, either following a guess that this was the most likely place to find Jesus, or because someone of their number had heard Jesus tell the disciples to sail to Capernaum.

John 6:25

25 It was not long before they found him. And having found him beyond the Sea, they said to him, Rabbi (see 1:38), when hast thou come hither? It is grace on Jesus’ part that he allows these people to find him; he is still willing to work upon their souls. Their question is full of curiosity and yet entirely natural, surmising something miraculous, as John’s elaborate explanations in v. 22, 23 show. They ask “when,” since the time was so short and the way around the shore so long. This “when,” therefore, also includes a “how.” The perfect tense “hast thou come” = and thus art here, R. 896.

Let us note that this question could never have been asked a day or two later, for then Jesus would have had more than enough time to get back to Capernaum in the ordinary way. This again shuts out the view that Jesus and the disciples landed south of Capernaum in Gennesaret and remained there a day or more.

John 6:26

26 While the question hints at a new miracle, it comes from hearts that are eager only to see miracles and not to understand them aright. Hence Jesus does not tell these people when or how he came across so mysteriously but in his answer rebukes their wrong spirit. Many answers of Jesus are on this order. He replies to men’s hearts not merely to their words. He would give what men need not merely what they would like to have. Jesus answered them and said (see 1:48), Amen, amen, I say to you (see 1:51), you are seeking me, not because you saw signs, but because you ate of the loaves and were filled.

The two verbs in the preamble mark the reply as being weighty, likewise the two “amen,” which stamp the reply with verity, and “I say to you,” which stamps it with authority. They ask about him, he answers about them. What he tells them is the plain truth. People do not like to hear what their real spiritual condition is. Shams are so popular, but verity alone saves, even though it is bitter.

“Not because you saw signs” means that these people only saw wonders and never saw signs at all, i.e., signs full of great meaning. We need not make the plural “signs” one of category in order to make it cover only the feeding of the 5, 000; for v. 2 reports that Jesus healed many sick at the place where presently he also fed the multitude, and these healings, too, were “signs” full of significance. On the term “signs” see 2:11. These people failed to see what was so gloriously pictured to them, the divinity of Jesus, his ability to feed their souls as he had fed their bodies, his Savior qualities as the Messiah sent of God. They had held the wonder bread in their hands, had eaten it with their mouths, but had never understood its true meaning with their hearts.

Overagainst the negative Jesus puts the positive, “but because you ate of the loaves and were filled.” Jesus drives this home by using the coarse word χορτάζω, from χόρτος, fodder or hay; they were satisfied like the ox when his belly is full of fodder. That is all these people obtained ἐκτῶνἄρτων (note the article), “out of the bread” that meant to give them so much more. It is easy to see how coarse and low were the desires of these people; but thousands today have no higher desires.

John 6:27

27 As stern as is the rebuke, so strong is the renewed call of grace. Work not for the eating which perishes but for the eating which remains unto life eternal, which the Son of man shall give you; for him the Father did seal, even God. The pivotal word is the imperative, “Work for,” which was selected so as to fit the two kinds of “eating,” βρῶσις, that which perishes and that which remains. On the distinction between βρῶμα and βρῶσις compare 4:32 and 34; the latter signifies both the food and its eating. We are to exert ourselves so that we may have not merely earthly food to eat but spiritual and heavenly food to eat. But “work for” excludes every Pelagian and synergistic sense.

Even earthly food for bodily eating we do not produce by any “working” of ours, it is God’s creature and gift; witness every earthly harvest, also the miracle of the feeding of the 5, 000. In a far higher sense the spiritual food for our eating is that “which the Son of man shall give you.” The entire subject is perfectly elucidated in Concordia Triglotta, 901, 48, etc. Here the question is answered, “How we should conduct ourselves towards these means (Word and Sacraments) and use them” (48). In brief: 1) “go to church and hear” (53); 2) “be certain that when the Word of God is preached purely and truly, according to the command and will of God, and men listen attentively and earnestly and mediate upon it, God is certainly present with his grace and grants, as has been said, what otherwise man can neither accept nor give from his own powers” (55). When Jesus bids the people at Capernaum to “work” thus, he implies that they have not as yet done so. They, indeed, had come and had heard, but altogether superficially, with their ears not with their hearts.

They had clung to the temporal and transient, and every effort of Jesus to give them the eternal they had passed over coldly and indifferently.

Note the utter folly of working for τὴνβρῶσιντὴνἀπολλυμένην, a food and eating the very nature of which is that it perishes. Here is a true description of all earthly food and bodily possession and satisfaction—it “perishes.” True, this food, etc., is also one of God’s blessings—did not Jesus himself feed the 5, 000? For it, too, we may work; for the command, “Work not!” is meant relatively, i.e., do not make earthly food, etc., your life’s chief concern. But ever we must know that because of its very nature all we thus obtain “perishes.” When life is done, what is left of it all for us? Nothing, absolutely nothing.

In striking contrast with this perishable food Jesus places “the eating which remains unto life eternal.” This is the food and eating which truly satisfies the heart and soul, the very nature of which is that it does not perish or come to nothing but remains forever with its blessed effect. The phrase “unto life eternal” should not be construed merely with the participle, as though this food endures to a future period called life eternal, but with the entire expression. For the εἰς phrase denotes purpose with the idea of result, R. 897. This abiding food and eating is “unto life eternal,” it produces life and salvation here and hereafter. How few are those who seek this eating, knowing what it brings forth! This wonderful βρῶσις has been defined as the Word of God; as grace and truth; as a treasure which Jesus bears in himself and gives, namely eternal life; or simply as Jesus himself.

But in v. 32 Jesus interprets βρῶσις as “the true bread out of heaven”; in v. 35 and 48, “I am the Bread of life”; in verse 51; and in verse 55, “my flesh is meat indeed, and my blood is drink indeed.” Summing up these statements, we have as the βρῶσις: Christ who is sacrificed for us. But the term implies also that by faith we eat this βρῶσις and thus have and enjoy “life eternal,” see 3:15.

In the relative clause, “which the Son of man shall give you,” the verb “shall give” removes every synergistic notion from the command, “work for.” For this food and its eating is entirely a gracious gift of Jesus as “the Son of man,” the divine incarnate Messiah (on this title see 1:51). The reading “shall give” has more authority than the present “gives,” although the sense is quite the same. The future “shall give” is relative to the present tense “work for,” in the sense that the moment we are moved to want this gift Jesus bestows it by his blessed grace.

The explanatory clause, “for him did the Father seal, even God,” shows how this Son of man is able to do this wonderful giving. This time Jesus does not say merely that the Father sent him, but that the Father “sealed him,” i.e., sent him and confirmed or attested him as one so sent to give this enduring food unto life eternal. The addition “even God” is placed emphatically at the end. The Father as “God” is the highest possible authority, beyond which no man can go. His seal should at once be recognized and accepted without question. The seal he affixed to Jesus these people had seen on the previous day in the miracles he wrought, especially in that of the bread.

This seal should at once produce faith, and Jesus now refers to it in order to call forth faith from these people now. Luther writes: “It is a Hebrew way of speaking to say that our Lord God has a ring, a signet and seal on his thumb, with which he stamps when he writes and sends out a letter. Such a seal Christ is to be, and no one else; he thereby rejects and condemns all other seals. This is a strong word, which reaches exceedingly far, that whoever would live forever must have this meat which the Son gives and must be found in the Son who is sealed; otherwise, if he has him not, he will miss eternal life, for here is the seal and testimony attached. See now what you have in this text; there you find clearly: the Father has given his seal to the Son. With this word he snatches away from all other teachers, who would nourish me eternally, their honor and merit, and admonishes us to remain with Christ alone.

Therefore go and see whether God the Father has sealed what is preached to you and you are asked to believe; if not, tear the seal away.”

John 6:28

28 They, accordingly, said to him, What shall we do in order to work the works of God? Jesus secures a response, but what a response! Remember the response of blind Nicodemus and that of the Samaritan woman. Yet note the deliberative subjunctive in the question, which suggests doubt on the whole subject, or a wish to do something, not being certain what that ought to be; this is quite different from the present indicative, R. 923, etc. The subjunctive would take Jesus’ answer under advisement; the indicative would ask for Jesus’ orders. The tenses, too, must be noted, “what are we to be doing, in order to be working,” etc.?

The worst part of the answer, however, lies in the use of the plural: in order that we may be working “the works of God,” those commanded by God. These people imagine that there is an entire scale of such works, a multiplicity of meritorious deeds to be done by them. Moreover, they imply that if they knew just what these works are, they may with powers and efforts of their own decide to do them. They think that the “giving” of which Jesus speaks is like the bestowal of wages for such works. Thus these people completely lose sight of the meaning of the miracle of the past day when Jesus gave them a free gift, which was to signify a still greater free gift to be received by them through faith. Jesus speaks of grace; they think only of work-righteousness.

John 6:29

29 The answer of Jesus is a masterpiece. Jesus answered and said to them (the two verbs mark the weightiness of the reply), This is the work of God, that you believe on whom he did send. He keeps the term “work,” the verb for which he used in v. 27, and by one stroke corrects the wrong idea put into it by these people. He turns their wrong plural, “the works of God,” into the correct singular, “this is the work of God.” He makes the genitive “of God” mean, not “commanded by God,” but “wrought by God.” And then in the ἵνα clause, which is in apposition to “this,” R. 400, he plainly defines just what work God works in us. Faith is here called a “work” in a peculiar sense, differentiating it entirely from “works” as righteous acts of ours. We, indeed, must do the believing, but our believing is the work of God.

We trust, but God kindles that trust in us. Compare v. 37, “All that the Father giveth me shall come unto me”; v. 44, “No man can come to me, except the Father which sent me draw him.” Faith is “of the operation of God,” Col. 2:12. Hence faith is not “the fundamental virtue” from which the other works flow. Faith is the opposite of all other works. For faith receives from God; the other works make return to God. All law works (works of unregenerate men) are the very opposition of faith, for by such works men would climb to heaven on their own merit, without a Savior and without faith.

All Christian good works do, indeed, spring from faith, like fruit from a good tree, but always and only from a faith which already has Christ, salvation, life eternal, and needs no good works to merit these treasures which never can be merited.

The present subjunctive “that you believe” means continuous believing; compare the verb in 1:12: trust or fiducia, relying for salvation wholly on Christ. No man can trust anyone of himself; the person whom he trusts by his character, words, acts, etc., always instills the trust. This Jesus ever sought to do by his person, words, deeds, and by his Father’s mighty attestation. Thus we trust, but at the same time this trust is wrought in us. Only to him who trusts Jesus can he give salvation; all who refuse to trust him would not accept the gift from him but think they can obtain it elsewhere. Thus also Jesus at once designates himself as the one who is absolutely trustworthy: believe “on whom he did send.” This summarizes his Messianic mission and at the same time points to his exalted person.

Only then dare any man refuse to trust Jesus if Jesus is not the person he says he is, and if he is not sent by God as he says, and if God’s attestations of Jesus are false. The relative “on whom” has the antecedent drawn into itself: “on him whom,” etc.; and ἐκεῖνος is emphatic: he, the Father, God! Note how faith recurs in this discourse: v. 35, 40, 47, and figuratively: v. 50, 51, 53, 54, 56, 58. Also in the confession of Peter, “We have believed,” v. 69.

John 6:30

30 They, therefore, said to him, What, then, art thou doing as a sign that we may see and may believe thee? What art thou working? Both John’s οὗν and that in the question itself bring out the idea that this question is intended to be a legitimate deduction from what Jesus has just said. Asking so much of us, they say, what art thou doing to justify that? Note the emphatic σὗ placed after the verb. They keep both of the verbs they used in v. 28 and thus emphatically give Jesus back his own demand: “what art thou doing? what art thou working?” i.e., now or at any time.

What they mean comes out in the predicate accusative: what art thou doing “as a sign”? They thus cast the blame back on Jesus himself. If he would do more, they would respond with more. When Jesus fed them miraculously the day before, had they not wanted to make him king? If Jesus wants them to do more, he himself will have to do more in the way of a sign. They fail entirely to see that they had not understood the meaning of the miracle they had witnessed.

If Jesus had given them a list of works to do, they would have been ready to attempt them; but this insistence of his on faith only makes them balk. Not grasping what Jesus means by this faith, they catch only that he means more than they have done and so ask for more from him.

The two aorists in the ἵνα clause are not ingressive, “come to see and come to believe,” as R. 850 states; their force is, “that we may actually see and actually believe.” The latter verb is construed only with the dative, “believe thee,” i.e., what thou sayest.

John 6:31

31 To re-enforce their counterdemand that Jesus do more if he demands so much, these people point to what Moses had done. Our fathers did eat the manna in the wilderness, as has been written, Bread out of heaven he did give them to eat. The periphrastic perfect “has been written” implies: and is now on record. In Ps. 78:24 the LXX has “bread of heaven,” but these Jews revert to the Hebrew “bread out of heaven.” Exod. 16:4 reads, “I will rain bread from (out of) heaven for you,” the prepositional phrase modifying the verb. In the quotation the emphasis is on the character of the bread not on the manner of giving, hence the wonderful gift is termed “bread out of heaven.” That, these people mean to say, was a sign far greater than what they had witnessed yesterday. Jesus only multiplied some bread he already had, but Moses gave the fathers bread right out of heaven.

What had Jesus to compare with that? A shrewd kind of reasoning is thus offered which is apparently sound yet is false in its very premises. As they put it, Moses is far greater than Jesus—why, then, does Jesus claim to be so exceedingly great? If he is, let him bring on a sign that is greater than this one of Moses’.

John 6:32

32 This demand Jesus ignores because it is met the moment these people are shown what “the true Bread out of heaven” really is. Jesus, therefore, said to them, Amen, amen, I say to you, Moses did not give you the bread out of heaven, but my Father is giving you the genuine bread out of heaven. For the bread of God is that which comes down out of heaven and gives life to the world. Only in a superficial sense could the manna in the wilderness (as is done in the Psalm) be called dagan shamajim, “heaven-bread,” for after all it was only like other earthly bread, satisfying only the body from day to day. So again with the seal of verity and authority (see 1:51) Jesus corrects these people. The point of the correction lies in the twice used term “bread out of heaven,” which is then defined at length as “the bread of God,” actually “coming down out of heaven (origin) and giving life to the world” (exceeding great effect).

Note the constrasts: Moses—my Father; did not give—is giving; bread out of heaven, as these people understand it—bread out of heaven, as Jesus understands it; out of heaven, not applicable to the manna, which never was in heaven—out of heaven, applicable to the genuine bread, which actually was in heaven and actually comes down out of heaven. This genuine (ἀληθινόν) bread Moses could not give, nor even God through Moses. Since Jesus speaks of this bread he says nothing about the fathers but uses the pronoun “you” in both clauses.

John 6:33

33 The γάρ clause makes Jesus’ meaning plain by stating just what “the bread out of heaven” is. It is “the bread of God”—“bread,” indeed, always “bread,” because we are to receive and to eat it and thus to obtain what it conveys. But actually bread “of God,” derived directly from God himself, das wesenhafte Brot Gottes. What lies in this weighty genitive is expressed in the predicate, the two present participles being combined under one article and thus made a unit. These participles describe the character and the quality of this bread of God, hence are really timeless. Like no other bread that ever existed, not even the manna, this bread is such as actually “comes down out of heaven” from God himself in heaven and thus is such also as “gives life to the world.” This ζωή (1:4; 3:15) is the life principle itself.

It does not only keep the life that one already has alive by nourishing it, it actually brings and gives life, the true and eternal life, to those who are dead and have no life. In this sense it is “the bread of God,” and a bread that does this is not a mere creature of God like other bread and like the manna, it descends from God’s own being out of heaven where God is. And being such bread, its effect is for no limited number but actually for “the world,” for the universe of men. The manna fed only “the fathers,” only for a few years, and only their bodies which perished in the wilderness. Think, then, by comparison, what this “bread of God” is. The sentence reads naturally with “bread” as the subject and the articulated participles as the predicate.

Some would invert this and would make the articulated participles the subject, regarding them as substantivized, “he that comes down and gives is the bread of God,” i.e., proving by coming down and giving (the effect) that he is the bread of God (the cause). But this inversion is unnatural, and no reader would make it of his own accord. The fact that this bread is a person descended from God in heaven on a mission to bestow life on the world, is still not revealed but will be most clearly stated in a moment.

John 6:34

34 So captivating is this description of the bread of God that it draws even from these unspiritual people the request that Jesus give them this bread. They said, therefore, to him, Sir, evermore give us this bread. This case is identical with that of the Samaritan woman in 4:15. The respectful address “sir” or “lord” shows that no irony is intended as though these people mean, “We do not believe there is such bread, but since you claim there is, give us some of it!” They do really want this bread; they are impressed by its great desirability. But the emphatic adverb “evermore” betrays the fact that they still think only of bodily bread that will obviate their baking and their buying from time to time, that they can eat constantly without effort whenever they grow hungry.

John 6:35

35 Right through this unspiritual denseness flashes the reply of Jesus, destroying once for all every notion of bodily bread and bodily eating. Jesus said to them, I am the Bread of Life. He that comes to me shall in no way hunger, and he that believes in me shall in no way thirst ever. Here is one of the great I AM statements of Jesus, shining like the noonday sun. Jesus is this bread. Who now can any longer think of mere bodily bread? He it is who came from God out of heaven and gives life eternal—he, sent of God on this mission for the world. To him men must come, in him they must trust, and thus men eat and drink him with the result that they shall never again hunger or thirst. No reply, in words so few, could be more to the point once for all to set these people right.

“The Bread of Life,” like “the water of life” in chapter 4, is Biblical allegory which unites the figure “Bread” with the reality “Life” and thus always interprets itself; compare “living water” in 4:10. In 14:6 the allegory is dropped and only the reality is predicated, “I am the Life.” Compare Gen. 3:22; Rev. 22:2 and 17. The figure “Bread” connotes eating, which in the reality “Life” means coming to Jesus and trusting in him. It is especially necessary to note that the predicate has the article. Jesus does not say, “I am Bread of Life,” which would mean that others, too, are such Bread; but, “I am the Bread of Life.” Subject and predicate are indentical and thus interchangeable (R. 768, read at length), so that Jesus could also say, “The Bread of Life is I.” He and he alone is “the Bread of Life”; apart from him no such Bread exists. Other “I am” statements of Jesus are of the same type, such as, “I am the Light of the world”; “I am the vine”. etc.

As clear as is the brief word on the Bread, so clear also is that on the eating. This statement resembles the parallelism of Hebrew poetry:

“He that comes to me shall not hunger,

And he that believes in me shall in no way thirst ever.”

The present participles are substantivized by the articles, with the present tense indicating only quality; and the second elucidates the first, for only he comes to Jesus for this Bread who trusts him. “Coming” is often used for believing, but here, in order to obtain the greatest clearness, both are placed side by side. In the two phrases with the participles the textual authority is in favor of πρὸςἐμέ and εἰςἐμέ, the emphatic pronouns instead of the enclitic forms of these pronouns; which also harmonizes with the emphatic ἐγώ: “I am … comes to me … believes in me.” A striking point for correcting the notion of mere bodily eating is that Jesus without a word of explanation adds the idea of drink to that of bread. Faith is both eating and drinking, so that either may be used or both; compare 4:10, etc. Thus to eat and to drink, Jesus says, abolishes hunger and thirst forever, 4:14, which corrects the request, “Evermore give us this bread.” Life, once given, lives on and on, even natural life, although this has a terminus, while spiritual life (unless it is destroyed by unbelief) has none. In both statements note the strongest form of negation in οὑμή, first with the aorist subjunctive, “shall in no way hunger,” and secondly with the future indicative, “shall in no way thirst,” to which is added the adverb “ever.”

John 6:36

36 To the Jews at Jerusalem Jesus had to say, “You will not come to me, that you may have life,” 5:40. To these Jews in Galilee Jesus must now say the same, But I said to you that you have both seen me and do not believe. With “I said to you” Jesus refers to v. 26, where he told these people of their guilty unbelief; and here, where his self-revelation is so vivid and clear, this unbelief still persists. These Galileans now know both the Bread and the eating; but this Bread does not attract them, this eating they refuse. “Both … and,” καί … καί here connect opposites: instead of “you have both seen and do believe,” Jesus is compelled to say, “you have both seen and do not believe.” The perfect “have seen” implies that what they saw is still before their eyes, i.e., the miracles of the past day together with all that Jesus reveals to them. The present tense, “and do not believe,” matches this perfect; they still go on without trusting Jesus. Here the guilt of unbelief becomes evident.

When the blessed reality of life and salvation in Christ is placed before the eyes and the hearts of men, so that they are made to see them, and when they then refuse to believe and to accept these gifts, their guilt is on their own heads. But Jesus points these people to this their guilt, not in order to cast them off forever (although they deserve that), but in order to drive fear into their conscience.

John 6:37

37 The Jews of Jerusalem had turned against Jesus, and now these Galileans were doing the same. But Jesus is not a mere man, operating alone as best he can with his human wisdom and his strength. He tells these Galileans plainly who is behind him, and how, therefore, his work will reach its glorious goal without the least question. But by saying this to these people and by telling them how he will carry out the Father’s gracious will in all who believe by giving them eternal life and by raising them up on the last day, Jesus raises the question for them: how about themselves? Do they mean to turn against the Father, contradict his saving will, and thus, as far as they are concerned, by their own folly shut themselves out from life now and hereafter? Thus once more Jesus grips their hearts, drawing them from unbelief to faith.

The absence of a connective need not indicate a pause on the part of Jesus; it is sufficiently explained by the turn of the thought. The Galileans are not believing; from them Jesus turns to the great host that will believe. All that the Father gives to me shall get to me; and him that comes to me I will in no wise cast out. First the mass: “all that,” etc.; then each individual: “him that,” etc. The neuter singular is used as an abstract expression and as such sums up the whole mass of believers of all ages and speaks of them as a unit (R. 409); it is even stronger than if Jesus had used a masculine plural. Yet beside this unit mass Jesus places each believer as an individual, for all faith is highly personal.

When Jesus says of this unit mass that the Father “gives” it to him, he describes the gift as being in progress, as more and more of this mass is being made Jesus’ own. In v. 39 Jesus uses the perfect tense: all that the Father “has given to me,” which describes the gift as having been made once for all and as now being permanent as such a gift. The difference between the tenses lies only in the point of view, which is brought out in the respective predicates. For all that the Father “gives to me,” Jesus says, “shall get to me.” He sees the gift flowing to him in a great stream through the coming ages; and although the gift is so great, running through so long a period, all of it shall reach him, not even the slightest part of it shall fail to come into his possession. That is the case, of course, because the Father’s gift cannot possibly fail. To match the neuter πᾶν Jesus uses ἥξει, “shall get to me”; not ἐλεύσεται, “shall come to me.” The former does not suggest a voluntary action on the part of the mass, because πᾶν indicates mass only as such. When it comes to the individual, we see that each is described as ὁἐρχόμενος, “he that comes to me.” In v. 39 the perfect tense, “all that he has given to me,” pictures the gift from the viewpoint of the last day when Jesus will appear and will not have lost any part of this gift and will then put it beyond all possibility of loss by raising the entire mass of believers from their graves.

But in these expressions, “all that the Father gives,” and, “all that he has given,” Jesus speaks of all believers of all ages as already being present to the eyes of God, he also thus is giving them to Jesus. This Jesus does repeatedly: v. 65; 10:16 and 29; 17:2 and 9 and 24. There, however, is not a fixed number, in some mysterious way chosen by an absolute decree of God to be such a gift to Jesus. Such an exegesis is wholly dogmatic and carries into what Jesus says a thought that is not contained in his words. On the other hand, equally dogmatic is the view that those who constitute God’s gift to Jesus are those who in the first place are morally better than the rest, or who at least act better than the rest when the gospel is brought to them. These words of Jesus are without a trace of either predestinarianism or synergism.

God’s grace is universal. He would give all men to Jesus. The only reason he does not do so is because so many men obdurately refuse to be part of that gift. On the other hand, God’s grace is alone efficacious. Every man who believes does so only and wholly by virtue of this grace. Thus the words of Jesus concerning the Father’s gift to him and its getting to him raises the question for these Galileans, “Do they want to be a part of this gift, or do they mean to exclude themselves?” “Shall get to me” implies that Jesus accepts the gift.

“Him that comes to me” makes the matter individual, personal, and a voluntary act. The Father’s drawing (v. 44) is one of grace alone, thus it is efficacious, wholly sufficient, able to change the unwilling into the willing, but not by coercion, not irresistibly. Man can obdurately refuse to come. Yet when he comes he does so only through the blessed power of grace. Him that comes thus (the present participle only describing the person as such) Jesus “shall in no wise cast out,” a strong litotes for “shall most certainly receive.” The Son could not possibly contravene the will of his Father. Back of the individual’s coming to Jesus lies the Father’s giving (and having given, v. 39) that individual to Jesus.

And in the same way getting to Jesus means complete reception by Jesus. And this reception is made so strong, not because Jesus would refuse no one coming to him, but because Jesus could not possibly deviate from his Father’s will.

Observe how subject and predicate are reversed, so that each becomes emphatic: gives to me the Father. Likewise, “all that,” etc., is emphasized as being the object by being placed in front. And again, “to me shall get,” places the stress on the verb. These points are unfortunately lost in translation. The strong negative οὑμή, “in no wise,” is the same as that used in the previous sentence in v. 35. Also, ἐκ in the verb is strengthened by the appended adverb ἔξω “To throw out outside” means out of the blessed circle of those who belong to the Son: “outside,” into outer darkness.

John 6:38

38 The perfect agreement of Jesus as the Son with the Father he now states in the most direct way. Then in v. 39, 40 he adds the sum and substance of the Father’s will which alone is normative for Jesus as the Son. By thus putting himself back of the Father, Jesus makes plain to these Galileans that their unbelief is really opposition to the Father and to that Father’s gracious will which Jesus is carrying out in his work with them; and that faith in Jesus alone makes them true to the Father. The stress is on the unity of the Father and Jesus as his Son. For I have come down from heaven not in order to be doing my own will but the will of him that did send me. While the stress is on the purpose clause, which, therefore, also is expressed both negatively and positively, we must not overlook the main clause, in which Jesus says in so many words: “I (the Father’s Son) have come down (perfect tense: and thus am now here) from heaven (ἀπό, elucidating ἐκ, ‘out of’ in the previous verses).” And “I have come down from heaven” states in most literal fashion what in v. 33 Jesus says of himself as “the Bread of God,” that this “comes out of heaven.” Standing there in human form before his hearers, Jesus tells them whence he came: “from heaven” to earth.

He himself thus enunciates the Incarnation in the simplest and most matter-of-fact way. The fact that these people understand Jesus to say just this their own questioning in v. 41, 42 shows beyond a doubt. Here in Galilee the same issue regarding the identity of Jesus as the Son of God is raised as was controverted in Jerusalem, 5:19–47. And here in Galilee unbelief again turns on this supreme issue. It has always done so, and it always will.

But the Person is wholly tied up with the purpose of his coming from heaven. This is not and never could be the doing of his own will, i.e., one different from that of the Father, a will with volitions conflicting with those of the Father. “My own” is the possessive adjective, added by a second article in the Greek, thus has as much emphasis as the noun “the will” to which it is attached. This negation is made so strong because it constitutes the real basis of all unbelief. Only then is unbelief in Jesus justified when it is able to prove that Jesus is doing only his own will and not the Father’s will. In fact, all who still claim to believe in God and yet reject Jesus thereby assert that he was false to God. The other way out is for unbelief to alter and to falsify God’s will and then to say that Jesus performs this altered will (to be nothing more than an example for men to copy), which, however, is nothing but rejection of God and his Son by one and the same perversive act. And this thought, too, Jesus meets in the next two verses.

After a negative ἀλλά brings in the contrary: “on the contrary, I have come down from heaven in order to be doing the will of him that did send me,” and we might translate the substantivized aorist participle: the will “of my Sender.” Having come for this purpose and for this alone as the Son from the Father, how could this Son possibly be untrue to his Father? He would have to repudiate his mission, repudiate his Father, whose mission he came to carry out, repudiate his own Sonship. Do these people mean to say that Jesus is guilty of such an act? Only then would their unbelief in him be justified. It rests on an utter and a monstrous impossibility. Jesus convicts the unbelief of his hearers and once more presses them to believe in him.

John 6:39

39 Jesus says “the will of my Sender,” and this must be defined, for everything depends on what this will is. Thus Jesus twice over defines this will. Now this is the will of him that did send me, that all that he has given me I shall not lose any of it but shall resurrect it at the last day. Once more (v. 37) the neuter πᾶν, “all,” is used as a designation for the whole mass of believers. But now, since Jesus is thinking of the consummation at the last day, he uses the perfect tense “has given to me.” This tense reaches back to the point where the Father “did send” his Son on his saving mission “from heaven.” Then the gift was first made, and it stands as such since then. It was made by virtue of the infallible foreknowledge of God, to which all who would ever be brought to faith were present before they came into existence. In the mind of God, the giver, and of his Son, the receiver, no uncertainty ever existed about those who in all ages are made his own by grace through the gospel and by faith.

The subfinal ἵνα clause is in apposition to “the will of him that did send me” (R. 992) and states the contents of that will. This will, however, has two parts, one that pertains to acts of Jesus (v. 39), and another which pertains to the blessing of believers (v. 40). The construction is anacoluthic, B.-D. 466, 3, and R. 718. We may regard πᾶν, etc., as either a nominative or an accusative absolute that, after the two verbs, is resumed first by the phrase ἐξαὑτοῦ, secondly by αὑτό. The Father’s will is (negatively) that Jesus shall lose no part of this great gift to him but shall bring the whole of it to the consummation of the resurrection at the last day. Regard ἐξαὑτοῦ as partitive: not lose “out of it” any part; and αὑτό as the opposite: resurrect “it,” all of it.

The verb ἀπόλλυμι occasionally means “to lose,” and the aorist tense (here, of course, the subjunctive) is constative: in all that Jesus does from the beginning to the final consummation of his mission he is not to lose any part of all that the Father has given him. This blessed and gracious will Jesus will most certainly carry into effect. Let none of these Galileans for a moment suppose that in his dealings with them he is making a single mistake and losing a single soul that otherwise could be won. All who are lost are lost altogether through their own perverse and unnatural unbelief.

Not to lose = to keep, and that forever. This includes the final act of Jesus’ mission: “on the contrary,” the Father’s will is “that I shall resurrect it (all of it) at the last day.” After ἵνα the Koine permits the future indicative, especially when a second verb is used. Even the bodies of those given to Jesus shall not be lost through the power of death. Jesus says, “I shall resurrect it,” i.e., “all that he has given to me”; and again in v. 40, “I shall resurrect him.” The verb ἀναστήσω (from which we have ἀνάστασις, “resurrection”) is too definite to think of anything save the bodies of believers. We are resurrected when our bodies are called out of the grave and are united with our souls and are glorified as are they. Souls cannot be resurrected.

As the very body of Jesus was raised from the tomb, so our very bodies shall be raised from their dust and decay. As an act of omnipotence, like the creation, the resurrection of our bodies is utterly beyond human conception.

This resurrection of believers, of all of them, shall take place “at the last day.” Then time shall be no more. This surely is a specific date and is in perfect harmony with 5:29. Those who speak of a double resurrection, one at the opening of the millennium and one at its close, place the resurrection of the godly first, that of the rest last. Here Jesus says nothing about the latter, but he says most clearly that “all that he (his Sender) has given him” he shall resurrect “at the last day.” No other day shall follow. No further resurrection shall follow. The godly shall not be divided into two or more groups. All of them shall rise “at the last day,” all of them at the same time. The dream of a millennium is thus shut out.

John 6:40

40 What the Father’s will is regarding the acts of his Son cannot be fully understood unless we further know what his will is regarding those who believe in Jesus. Thus v. 40 is added to v. 39 by an explanatory γάρ. For this is the will of my Father, that everyone that beholds the Son and believes on him shall have life eternal; and I myself will resurrect him at the last day. In v. 39 we have the Father’s will concerning Jesus and his mission, hence the designation: the will “of him that did send me.” We have no such mission, hence now: the will “of my Father.” In v. 39 we have the mass as an undivided whole: “all that he has given me,” just as in the first part of v. 37. Now we have each and every individual composing this mass: “everyone that beholdeth,” etc. But note that not one is left out.

So in v. 37, too, the mass was individualized. But there the description was only general: “him that comes to me”; now this coming is fully described by two characterizing or qualitative present participles: “everyone that beholdeth the Son and believeth on him.” To come to Jesus is to behold the Son and to believe on him. The two participles really refer to one act, involving the intellect which by beholding aright recognizes truly, and the heart or will which in that moment of true recognition gives its trust or confidence. In order to behold, someone or something must be brought to our vision; and in order to believe or trust, someone or something must come to us that is able to awaken and arouse such trust. Here it is “the Son,” purposely thus named, the Son of the Father, more trustworthy than whom no one can be named. Our beholding and our trusting are the normal effect of the Father’s showing us his Son and bringing us into contact with him.

It would be the height of abnormality, of flagrant perversity, of senseless unreason to have the Son thus brought to us and for us to turn from him in distrust.

Jesus does not say that it is the Father’s will for us to behold the Son and to trust in him. Instead he passes by these subjective means and at once names the goal, which is that every believer “shall have life eternal,” touching the intervening means only lightly. Yet he who desires the end must necessarily desire also the means. Hence we may say that the Father’s will is that we behold the Son and believe in him. But only to this end: that we “shall have life eternal,” ζωή, the principle or very substance that constitutes life. Beholding and trusting in the Son puts us into true inward contact with him, and since he is the Bread of Life, or literally Life itself, this inner contact with him fills also us with life.

His life enters our souls, and so we “have life.” The present subjunctive (3:15, 16) ἔχῃ = “shall be having” from the instant of beholding and believing on and on forever. This spiritual life, like our physical life, is itself invisible but is strongly manifested by its activities. The believer does a thousand things that unbelievers cannot possibly do. To say that the believer “has life eternal” is to say that the unbeliever lacks this life, in other words, is spiritually dead, far from the source of all the light, joy, and blessedness that goes with life. Shall this blessed will of the Father be done in these Galileans, or do they mean by guilty unbelief to frustrate that will ?

This life of the believer is not merely to pass unharmed through temporal death and to last forever as the believer’s possession, it is to fill also his body as well as his soul. Thus the Father’s will is that our bodies should be raised from the grave and be at last made full partakers together with our souls of this life in all its final glory. Thus Jesus adds, not now as an expression of his Father’s will, not in a second clause after ἵνα (as in v. 39), but in a coordinate separate statement of his own, “and I myself will resurrect him at the last day.” That he shall do this as the consummation of his mission is his Sender’s will. That he will do this is his own personal promise to every believer. Hence he now says ἐγώ, using the emphatic pronoun, “I myself,” which is absent in v. 39. We may imitate the Greek emphasis, primary on the verb, secondary on the pronoun: “and UPRAISE him will I Myself.” All that this means for the believer’s body, for the date of this act, etc., has already been shown in v. 39 and should again be considered here.

Jesus Gives Himself as the Bread of Life, 41–51

John 6:41

41 The offense in Jesus’ words is practically the the same as that in his words spoken to the Jews at Jerusalem, 5:18. The Jews, therefore, were murmuring concerning him, because he said, I am the Bread which did come down out of heaven. And they were saying, Is not this Jesus, the son of Joseph, of whom we ourselves know the father and the mother? How now is he declaring, Out of heaven have I come down? Here John calls these Galileans “the Jews,” a term which he uses so constantly in combination with the hostility to Jesus. The two imperfects describe their grumbling and their talking to each other after Jesus had stopped speaking.

They fastened their objection on the statement of Jesus that he is the Bread “which did come down out of heaven.” For in v. 33 they substitute the aorist participle which refers to the single act of thus coming down out of heaven. In this they were right, for only this past act lends this quality to Jesus.

John 6:42

42 Over against this declaration of Jesus these Jews place what they themselves (emphatic ἡμεῖς) know about him. They are acquainted with his parentage: “Is not this Jesus,” etc.? “It most certainly is!” With οὗτος they use a contemptuous tone, R. 697. Only Galileans from the neighborhood where Jesus lived so long could thus speak of his father Joseph and of his mother. The mention of Joseph is no evidence that he was still alive at this time. The final question specifies the point of the objection, how the son of parents they knew so well can stand before them and expect them to believe his declaration, “Out of heaven have I come down.” That, indeed, is the vital point in all that Jesus said to them. It has ever been the stumblingblock and rock of offense for unbelief.

John 6:43

43 Although nothing was said directly to Jesus, he interrupts their grumbling, understanding it completely (3:23, 24). Jesus answered and said to them (1:48), Stop your murmuring. The present imperative refers to the preceding imperfect and thus bids the action that was going on to stop, R. 851.

Only in one way can the question raised by these Jews be effectually answered. Not by the way of the mere intellect, but by the way of actual experience. The former is hopeless in man’s sinful state. Tell the intellect that this man Jesus is the incarnate Son and gives eternal life; forthwith the intellect with its theoretical reasoning and argument will deny the one, or the other, or both statements. That is why the gospel is not an argument, a piece of pure reasoning, a set of logical propositions and religious theory or hypothesis like those of science, or anything else addressed only to the intellect. It is “the power of God unto salvation,” Rom. 1:16, “that your faith should not stand in the wisdom of men, but in the power of God,” 1 Cor. 2:5.

Like any power, this divine power is not merely known theoretically or intellectually but is realized in the actuality of experience in a man’s own life. He alone knows that power who has undergone its operation in himself. See the case of the Samaritan woman in 4:29 and of her townspeople in 4:41, 42. A fine example is the blind man in 9:30–33. Hence Jesus does not here commit the folly of explaining his Incarnation to these grumbling Galileans, for that would be the surest way of confirming them in their unbelief. Here, as always, Jesus follows the other way.

He keeps applying the power that saves the sinner by changing his spiritual death into spiritual life eternal. Once this power actually enters a soul, that soul is taught of God and has learned of God by the actuality of its own experience. Its intellect is more than satisfied, because the soul itself is satisfied. It knows that Jesus did, indeed, come down out of heaven, even as he says, because it has as a most blessed gift the very life he brought us out of heaven, the life that shall live in heaven forever.

John 6:44

44 This is why Jesus continues his reply as he does. No one can come to me unless the Father who did send me shall draw him; and I will resurrect him at the last day. Luther has put these words into classical form: “I believe that I cannot by my own reason or strength believe in Jesus Christ, my Lord, or come to him; but the Holy Ghost has called me by the gospel, … and will at the last day raise up me and all the dead, and give unto me and all believers in Christ eternal life. This is most certainly true.” Here Jesus explains the Father’s “giving” mentioned in v. 37 and 39: he gives men to Jesus by drawing them to him. This drawing (ἑλκύειν) is accomplished by a specific power, one especially designed for the purpose, one that takes hold of the sinner’s soul and moves it away from darkness, sin, and death, to Jesus, light, and life. No man can possibly thus draw himself to Jesus. The Father, God himself, must come with his divine power and must do this drawing; else it will never be effected.

But significantly the Father is here again called the one “who did send me.” Only as the Sender of Jesus does he draw and as such he draws to Jesus. His drawing power is exerted altogether through the mediation of Jesus, whom he sent for this purpose. The drawing is here predicated of the Father; in 12:32 it is predicated of Jesus, “And I will draw all men unto myself.” Like all the opera ad extra, this, too, belongs equally to all three Persons. The Sender of Jesus is here mentioned because of the unbelieving Galileans; they are to understand that it is God himself who is now dealing with them through Jesus whom he has sent. The power by which these Jews are at this very moment being drawn is the power of divine grace, operative in and through the Word these Jews now hear from the lips of Jesus. While it is power (Rom. 1:16), efficacious to save, it is never irresistible (Matt. 23:37, “and ye would not”). Nor is this power extended only to a select few, for in 12:32 Jesus says, “I will draw all men.” The power of the gospel is for the world, and no sinner has fallen so low but what this power is able to reach him effectually.

The promise in v. 40 is renewed with only the shift of ἐγώ from one emphatic position to another that is equally emphatic. By this emphatic pronoun the Sender and the Sent are again placed on the same level. In v. 40 Jesus summarizes what he says in v. 37–40, inserting only the elucidation concerning the Father’s power which does the drawing. This is why the promise concerning the final consummation in the blessed resurrection is added to the work of drawing. The beginning of the work in the Father’s drawing is coupled with the crowning of this work in the Son’s resurrecting those drawn.

John 6:45

45 Whereas Jesus first uses διδόναι, “to give,” in v. 37 and 39, he adds ἑλκύειν, “to draw,” in v. 44. He now takes the next step and makes fully clear how this giving and drawing to Jesus is effected by the Father. It has been written in the prophets, And they shall all be people taught of God. Everyone that did hear from the Father and did learn comes to me. “It has been written” (periphrastic perfect) and is thus still on record, “in the prophets,” in that portion of the Old Testament which the Jews commonly designated “the prophets.” Isa. 54:13 (compare Jer. 31:33, 34; Joel 2:28; etc.) describes the blessed condition of Jerusalem’s children after accepting the sacrificed and glorified Messiah (Isa. 53) in repentance and faith. Among these blessings is this: all will be people taught of God, and great the peace of thy children. The emphasis is on the genitive “of God,” which is subjective, naming God as the teacher; R. 516 makes it ablative “by God.” All that they hold and believe is God’s own teaching, none of it comes from themselves or merely from men.

Thus we see what it means to be drawn by the Sender of Jesus, namely to be “people taught of God.” The verbal διδακτοί is used as a noun, the predicate of “shall be.” This plural Jesus resolves into its component individuals: “everyone that did hear from the Father and did learn,” he, and he alone, belongs to these people taught of God. The two aorist participles are really timeless (R. 859), but as qualitative aorists they describe actuality, actual hearing and learning. They also belong together as a unit idea, effective hearing resulting in actual learning; for the two participles have but one article. The fact that some, like these Galileans, hear with deaf hearts and ears and refuse to learn is here not considered by Jesus. This hearing and learning from God denotes reception from God who gives by means of teaching his Word; we receive when that Word makes us hear and learn. By attaching the phrase “from God” to the first participle this phrase has the emphasis; then by adding the unmodified second participle this participle receives emphasis.

What we receive is from God by way of actual learning.

The result of this teaching and this learning is not by any means merely intellectual. We have already heard that God thus draws us by teaching us. Hence everyone so taught “comes to me.” The participles “everyone that did hear and learn” are without an object, yet the great teacher is the Sender of Jesus, and the effect of his teaching is that everyone so taught comes to Jesus. This teaching and this learning thus deal with the coming to Jesus as to the Son sent by the Father to give life. To come thus means to believe and to receive life.

John 6:46

46 The quotation from the prophets, “people taught of God,” and the interpretation, “everyone that did hear from the Father,” παρὰτοῦπατρός, need further elucidation. How does God as a teacher meet his pupils? How do we get to his side (which is the thought in παρά), so as then to hear “from this Father” as his children? Not in an immediate way but mediately through his Son. Not that anyone has seen the Father, save he that is from God, he indeed (οὗτος, emphatic) has seen the Father. The Old Testament is very plain regarding the impossibility of mortal, sinful man while remaining in this state seeing God.

So that notion is shut out completely. When the prophet spoke of that most blessed future period, saying that then Israel should be a “people taught of God,” he referred to the coming of God’s Son in human flesh. In this Son the Father would actually come to his people and would so teach them that they would actually hear him speak, as one person speaks to another. The Son is, of course, the one exception (εἰμή). He is, therefore, characterized as ὁὢνπαρὰτοῦΘεοῦ, “he who is from God,” he who has this characteristic mark. Note how the παρά phrase “from the side of God” explains the previous ἐκ phrases: “out of heaven.” The demonstrative οὗτος takes up the previous characterization: he who is from God, “he indeed” has seen the Father.

Both times we have the extensive perfect “has seen,” so that the effect of that seeing is still present to him.

The entire statement has one purpose: if no one ever saw God, and Jesus alone has seen him because he comes from him, it is Jesus who makes us “people taught of God,” for through him we hear and learn from the Father. This explains completely how the Father draws to the Son, and how by his drawing he gives to the Son. The question for these Galileans was: “Has this been done in us? are we people thus taught?”

John 6:47

47 After all this has been made plain, Jesus again turns to the main thought, the call to faith. He is even now executing the drawing of the Father, and none who hear him can ever say, when they refuse to come to him, that they have not been drawn. Amen, amen, I say to you, He that believes has life eternal. Once more Jesus uses the double seal of verity and with it that of his final authority. The Father’s giving (v. 37 and 39), drawing (v. 44), and teaching (v. 45), making us “hear and learn,” is accomplished as to its purpose and its effect when faith is kindled in the heart. Hence the subject of the emphatic statement is ὁπιστεύων, “he that believes,” the qualitative present participle describing the person as one animated by confidence and trust.

By adding nothing further to the substantivized participle the weight of thought rests on the believing as such. Of course, just as in the drawing, teaching, hearing and learning, so also in the believing, a corresponding object is implied, yet here the thought turns on the participle, i.e., on the person who is described as one marked by faith. He, and he alone, “has life eternal,” as already explained in v. 40. The participle also has the force that this person has life eternal from the first instant of his believing onward and as long as he believes. The moment he would cease to believe, that moment he would cease to have life. It is believing or trusting that joins him to Jesus and thus to life eternal.

Faith has life and, we may also say, is life. It has life because it is the constant reception of that divine grace and gift which frees us from death and makes us one with God. It is life because faith is the divine spark or flame which animates the soul and distinguishes us from the spiritually dead (5:24–26).

John 6:48

48 With this statement Jesus has returned to his central theme: I am the Bread of Life, i.e., the Mediator of that life, v. 35. The repetition is, of course, emphatic, but here it also introduces a fuller elaboration. We also see that the human figure of bread is strained in order to convey the greatness and the fulness of the thought for which it is employed. This is often the case with the figurative language used in the Scriptures, for all human illustrations are weak when it comes to portraying spiritual realities completely. Ordinary bread only sustains physical life, but Jesus as the Bread of Life not only sustains spiritual life but even gives us this life. Hence also he is not merely “bread” or “bread of life” but actually “living Bread” (v. 51), i.e., Bread full of life, the reception of which gives and sustains life.

John 6:49

49 This is made exceedingly clear by reverting to the manna mentioned in v. 31–33. When the Galilean Jews pointed Jesus to the manna which Moses gave them, Jesus replied on the point of origin: the manna never was in heaven and never came down out of heaven whereas Jesus both was in heaven and came down out of heaven. Now to the point of origin that of the effect is added. Your fathers did eat the manna in the wilderness, and they died. This is the Bread that comes down out of heaven, in order that one may eat of it and not die. The comparison is striking indeed.

Pointedly Jesus says “your” fathers and does not include himself among these Jews by saying “our” fathers. In the same pointed way he speaks of “my” father in v. 32; compare the elucidation of that verse. The two aorists are historical and state the undeniable facts: “they did eat” and “they died.” So after all, though it was miraculously given, the manna was not superior to other earthly food. It only sustained the bodily life temporarily; it could never be called “the Bread of Life” in the full sense of the word. “And they died” means only that they were at last overtaken by temporal death, including Moses himself. We have no right to make the verb mean eternal death. It is true enough that the Israelites perished in their sins (Acts 7:42 and 51; Heb. 3:16–19, R.

V.), but ἀπέθανον does not include that fact. What Jesus says is that the manna was only like other earthly bread, including the bread with which the 5, 000 had been fed on the previous day. Those who get no better bread eventually die. They will have lived only the common earthly life with no higher life in them, and so their dying is a sad end, indeed. The only life they have they then lose, for the only bread they have eaten is one that thus lets them die at last.

John 6:50

50 But look at “the Bread of Life.” Its very character is different, for it “is the Bread that cometh out of heaven.” The present participle does not refer to a constant descent out of heaven but describes the quality of this Bread as being something constant. By having descended out of heaven, by having become incarnate, and by assuming his saving mission, Jesus is the Bread that has this wonderful quality of being derived from heaven. All that can be predicated of the manna lies on the plane of the natural life; all that can be predicated of the Bread of Life lies on the plane of the spiritual life. Hence the purpose clause governed by ἵνα, which modifies the entire statement: “in order that one may eat of it and not die.” God’s intention is that we shall eat of this Bread, and the intended result of this eating is that we shall escape death. As the food, so the eating and its effect both in the case of the manna and in the case of the Bread of Life. Those who eat only the earthly bread prolong only their earthly life and finally die in temporal death and never attain more.

Those who eat of the Bread of Life obtain the spiritual and heavenly life, which passes unharmed through temporal death and enters into eternal blessedness. “He that believeth on me, though he die, yet shall he live; and whosoever liveth and believeth on me shall never die,” John 11:25, 26. “And not die” refers to spiritual and eternal death. This death we who eat of the Bread of Life escape; this death they who spurn the Bread of Life fail to escape. Note the strong contrast in the two verses 49 and 50: “and they died”—“and (shall) not die.”

John 6:51

51 The facts stressed in v. 48–50 are now restated with modifications and additions, so as to make them clear beyond all question. I am the living Bread that did come down out of heaven. If one shall eat of this Bread he shall live forever; and the Bread, moreover, which I will give is my flesh, in behalf of the life of the world. First, a restatement of v. 48, again focusing everything upon Jesus with the emphatic pronoun ἐγώ, “I,” “I myself, and no other.” And now “the Bread of Life” is explained by “the living Bread,” or “the Bread that lives,” for the participle is made as emphatic as the noun itself by having the article repeated: ὁἄρτοςὁζῶν. “The Bread of Life” = the Bread which belongs to the true Life; “the Bread that lives” = the Bread that is full of the life it is intended to impart; the Bread, the very quality and character of which is that it lives and makes him alive who partakes of it. In literal language, Jesus is full of Life and the Giver of Life. A second attributive participle is added by another article: “that did come down out of heaven.” This time the participle is the aorist, declaring the historical fact of thus coming down. On this fact rests the quality of this Bread expressed in v. 50, as in v. 33, by the descriptive or qualitative present participle “coming down.” Thus once more in the clearest and simplest way we are shown just what Jesus is for us.

The figure in “Bread” always connotes eating; and thus Jesus once more speaks of the eating. To eat = to believe in Jesus, v. 47. In v. 50 we are told that it is God’s purpose that we eat this Bread, or literally that we believe in his Son (v. 40). This purpose will, of course, be carried into effect, and thus Jesus now adds, “if one shall eat of this Bread.” He uses the condition of expectancy: there shall be those who eat. Some will refuse to eat, but many will be moved to eat. In v. 50 the negative effect of this eating is stated: he that eats “shall not die”; now the positive effect is placed beside the negative: “he shall live forever.” The one, of course, always implies the other: not to die = to live forever.

The aorist φάγῃ means “come to eat.” One act of eating bestows life (4:14; 6:35). The phrase εἰςτὸναἰῶνα, literally “for the eon,” views eternity in human fashion as a vast extent of time and is the Greek way of saying “forever”; compare the corresponding adjective αἰώνιος, “eternal.” See also on 14:16. We must place side by side the Bread of Life, τῆςζωῆς; the Bread that lives, ὁζῶν; he that believes has life eternal, ζωὴναἰώνιον; and shall live forever, ζήσεταιεἰςτὸναἰῶνα—each expression illuminating the other.

Thus the entire thought is rounded out and made complete, the wonderful circle of salvation is closed. Jesus, the Life, is the center. All who are made one with him by faith are joined to him and are made full partakers of his life, not only of something which he has, or of something which he does (we following his example), but of what he himself is.

But in this figure of the Bread lies a still deeper meaning, one which shows us completely just how Jesus is, indeed, the Bread of Life and also just how we eat of this Bread by faith. And so, with one circle of thought complete and closed, at once another, reaching out still farther, is started. The first centers in the origin of Jesus, in his being Life itself descended out of heaven from the Father on his saving mission into this world of sin and death. The second centers in this mission, or rather in its vital and central act, namely in his sacrificial death. The new distinctive terms are thus “my flesh,” or more fully “the flesh of the Son of man and his blood (v. 53), and corresponding with these expressions our “eating” his flesh and “drinking” his blood by faith. This second circle of thought is joined to the first when Jesus now adds, “and the Bread, moreover, which I will give is my flesh, in behalf of the life of the world.”

The reading with the two connectives καί … δέ is assured, not, however, in the sense of “but also,” which in no way fits the thought, but in the sense of “and … moreover”; for καί tells of an addition that is made, and δέ presents this addition as something that is new and different from what precedes. The new feature is “my flesh.” Before the ὑπέρ phrase some important texts add the relative clause ἣνἐγὼδώσω, “which (flesh) I will give for the life of the world,” A. V. While the weight of textual evidence is against this clause, its thought is in harmony with what Jesus here says. In the turn which the thought here takes too little attention has been paid to the emphatic ἐγώ: “and the Bread which I shall give is my flesh.” In what Jesus now states the contrast is not between the Bread which he is and the Bread which he gives but between the gift the Father gives and the gift which Jesus himself shall presently give. The former is the Bread of Life coming down out of heaven, i.e., the incarnate Son in his entire saving mission.

As regards this gift the Father is the Giver, yet so that the Son, too, is called the Giver (v. 27 and 32, 33). When the gift is viewed as coming down out of heaven, the givers are the Father and the Son. But in this mission of the Son an act of giving is involved which belongs in a peculiar way to Jesus alone as the incarnate Son. This gift Jesus had not yet made, hence the future tense, “which I shall give.” It is the gift of his flesh and his blood in the sacrifice upon the cross. This gift Jesus himself will make. “The Son of God gave himself for me,” Gal. 2:20. “Christ hath given himself for us,” Eph. 5:2. “I lay down my life,” John 10:17. “The Son of man came to give his life a ransom for many,” Matt. 20:28. In this sense Jesus says, “the Bread which I shall give is my flesh.” This specific gift lies within the comprehensive gift.

And this specific act of giving on Jesus’ part is the vital part of the comprehensive gift, namely that act which truly makes him for us the Bread of Life, enabling us to eat and to drink by faith.

Since both subject (ὁἄρτος) and predicate (ἡσάρξμου) have the article, the two are identical and convertible, R. 767, etc. Thus the contention that we must here reverse the order and read, “my flesh (subject) is the Bread (predicate)” is untenable. The proposition is true either way. Yet the argument, that because the Bread has been mentioned before, therefore it must be the predicate, is specious; for the reverse holds good: since Jesus has repeatedly spoken of the Bread, he now tells us what it is, namely “my flesh.” More important by far is the question, whether the word “flesh” here, and “flesh and blood” in v. 53, connote and imply the sacrificial death of Jesus on the cross. This has been emphatically denied. It seems that for this reason, too, the addition “my flesh which I will give for the life of the world” is repudiated.

We dare drop these words for no such reason. The Scriptures know of no gift of Christ’s “flesh,” or, as these objectors put it, Christ’s humanity or Menschlichkeit in behalf of the world apart from and without his sacrificial death on the cross. Take away the death, and the flesh of Christ ceases to be the Bread of Life for us. With the cancellation of the sacrificial death any participation in the flesh and the blood, any eating of his flesh or drinking of his blood, becomes an impossibility. The future tense δώσω demands the death, for this gift is yet to be made on Calvary. If “my flesh” refers to Jesus’ humanity without or irrespective of his death, the tense would have to be an aorist, or at least the present, for then the gift of the flesh must refer to the Incarnation, a gift already made.

Yet such a gift would be no gift, for the Incarnation without the sacrificial death would not bring life eternal to the world. Ideas such as that the flesh of Jesus, when it is imparted to us, becomes in us “a tincture of immortality,” at last vivifying our flesh in the resurrection, or that by means of Jesus’ flesh a germ is planted into our bodies and is kept alive and fed by means of the Lord’s Supper to grow forth from our dead bodies in the resurrection, are completely shut out when the flesh of Jesus is rightly viewed as the Bread of Life in connection with the sacrificial death upon the cross.

If we adopt the text: my flesh “which I will give for the life of the world,” the construction as well as the sense are plain. But we must drop the relative clause for textual reasons and must read: “the Bread which I will give is my flesh, in behalf of the life of the world.” In this reading the ὑπέρ phrase cannot be construed as a modifier of “my flesh,” for the copula ἐστίν intervenes. The article would have to be repeated before the phrase in order to make it a modifier of “my flesh,” or the phrase would have to be converted into a participial or a relative clause. The construction, then, must be that the final phrase is an adverbial modifier of the predicate, and since the subject and the predicate are interchangeable, this adverbial modifier belongs to the entire sentence. In other words, when Jesus shall give as the Bread his flesh in the sacrificial death, this “is in the interest of the life of the world.” While the phrase is brief and compact it is entirely clear: the Bread, the flesh, the future act of giving, all together have one purpose or object, they intend that the world may have the true heavenly life. It is mere quibbling to pit the one expression, “giving into death,” against the other, “giving for us to eat,” and to stress this difference as excluding the death in this statement of Jesus and in the others that follow.

True enough, the two acts may be distinguished: it is one thing for Jesus to give himself into death, and it is another to give himself to us as the Bread of Life. Yet the two are indissolubly joined together: by giving himself into death Jesus gives himself to us as the Bread of Life. In v. 53 the blood is placed beside the flesh to indicate the more that Jesus is speaking of his death. Now this blood, once shed on Calvary when Jesus gave himself into death, is ever after the fountain of life for the world. By being given in the one atoning act on the cross it was given as the source of life for all sinners, 1 John 1:7; Heb. 9:14; Rev. 7:14; and 1 Pet. 2:24, where “stripes” are used for flesh and blood in conformity with Isa. 53:5. In v. 33 Jesus says, “The Bread of God … gives life to the world.” This universality is now again emphasized: “in behalf of the life of the world.” This living Bread, the flesh of Jesus sacrificed on the cross, is so full of life and salvation that all the world may take and eat and live forever.

Jesus Gives to Him That Believes His Flesh as the Bread of Life, 52–59

John 6:52

52 The Jews, therefore, were contending with each other, saying, How is this one able to give us his flesh to eat! The moment Jesus mentioned his flesh contention arose among his auditors, whom John again designates as “the Jews,” a term used by him to indicate their hostile temper. The imperfect ἐμάχοντο describes the passionate exchange of words among themselves, no longer spoken in undertones like the previous murmuring mentioned in v. 41, but in open exclamations. The verb shows that they were divided; yet this does not mean that some supported Jesus while others contradicted them, but that some raised one objection while others clashed with them in raising a different objection. Thus there was a battle among them. The objection of all of them is summarized in what is rather an unbelieving exclamation than a question, “How is this one able to give us his flesh to eat!” The derogatory οὗτος has a touch of scorn: this man, the son of Joseph, whose father and whose mother they knew, v. 42. In spite of his miracles they persist in regarding him as a mere man; and thus it appears wholly preposterous to them that he should be able to give them his flesh to eat.

The article τὴνσάρκα has the force of the possessive pronoun “his flesh.” These Jews understand Jesus correctly when they exclaim regarding his giving them his flesh “to eat,” for this is exactly what Jesus means (v. 53). If the Bread he will give is his flesh, then the connotation of eating that lies in “Bread” extends also to “my flesh.” On the assumption that Jesus is a mere man the eating of his flesh would be nothing but a horrible cannibalism—an outrageous idea. They say only, give “us” to eat, whereas Jesus said, in behalf of the life “of the world.” The fact that Jesus himself has thus shut out their preposterous notion of masticating his physical flesh with their teeth and digesting it in their stomachs, their blindness fails to note. What these Jews voice here in Capernaum has come to be called “the Capernaitic mode” of eating. For the old Jewish unbelief still persists, justifying itself by holding to the idea that the flesh of Jesus could be eaten only in the gross physical way, thus rejecting not only what Jesus says in this discourse on the Bread of Life, but also what he says when instituting the Lord’s Supper, telling us to take and to eat his body and to drink his blood.

Both the spiritual eating by faith here meant by Jesus and the sacramental eating of Christ’s body and blood in the Lord’s Supper are toto coelo removed from all Capernaitic eating, which rests on a false conception of the person of Jesus and on the denial of the personal union of his two natures, the human and the divine. Luther lays his finger on the little word my flesh: “With great, mighty letters we ought to engrave what Christ says: MY, MY flesh. But they will not look at this my. The fanatics cannot grasp this word my. But with the word my he distinguishes and separates himself from all other flesh whatever it may be called. For here my flesh is as much as, I am God and God’s Son, my flesh is filled with divinity (durchgoettert) and is a divine flesh.

His flesh alone will do it. To this God would have us attached and bound fast. Apart from the person who is born of Mary and truly has flesh and blood and has been crucified we are not to seek nor find God. For we are to grasp and find God alone by faith in the flesh and blood of Christ and are to know that this flesh and blood is not fleshy and bloody, but both are full of divinity.” On the different modes of the presence of Christ’s body see Concordia Triglotta, 1005, etc.

John 6:53

53 Jesus, therefore, said to them, Amen, amen, I say to you, Unless you eat the flesh of the Son of man and drink his blood, you have not life in yourselves. Instead of softening his words regarding the eating of his flesh Jesus, we may say, hardens them. On “Amen,” etc., see 1:51. Yet this hardening is only a fuller and more explicit statement. It is impossible for him to retract a single word, for that would put falsehood in place of truth. Jesus had abundantly prepared these Jews and now reveals the truth in its fulness. He can do nothing else. If the truth, fully and clearly presented, does not produce faith, nothing else will.

The Jews exclaim, “How can this one give us his flesh to eat!” Some commentators think that this question is altogether wrong, having in mind not merely its Jewish or unbelieving feature but all inquiry as to the how. Likewise, the reply of Jesus is regarded as a simple declaration of the necessity of eating his flesh and as a refusal to explain how this eating can be accomplished. But this is a misconception. If we are to eat Jesus’ flesh in order to have life we must surely know how this is to be done. If he gives us his flesh as the living Bread, we must know how this Bread is to be eaten, in order that we may receive it. Jesus answers this question but does so in his own way by combining the manner with the necessity.

Of course, he does not satisfy either unbelief or curiosity, but he does open the way to faith. The speculation which would unravel all mystery will not be satisfied, but the soul that hungers and thirsts for life and salvation will know both how he gives us his flesh to eat and thus also how we may eat it and live. The case is somewhat like that of Nicodemus who also asked about the how in regard to regeneration (3:4). There as well as here Jesus uses the solemn assurance of verity and authority, “Amen, amen, I say to you,” in order to overcome unbelief and doubt and to emphasize the importance of his words. There as well as here he repeats his former statement but with the necessity he combines the explanation needed for faith.

He begins with the negative side, as in v. 50; but at once (in v. 54) adds the positive side, as in v. 51. “Unless you eat the flesh of the Son of man” is a protasis of expectancy, ἐάν with the subjunctive, for Jesus expects that some will eat. Yet οὑκἔχετε “you have not life in yourselves,” is an apodosis of reality, as if Jesus reckons also with unbelief and its loss of life. Jesus adds his own Messianic title “the Son of man,” he who is man, indeed, and thus has flesh and blood but who at the same time is far more than man, namely God’s Son in human flesh sent for our redemption. On this title see the exposition in 1:51. The addition of this title is of the utmost importance. By thus naming himself, Jesus declares that if he were, indeed, a mere man, he could not give his flesh to men to eat; but since he is “the Son of man,” the God-man, sent as the Messiah from heaven itself, therefore he can so give his flesh.

The premise of unbelief is false, and that fact annuls its logical conclusion. Here the how of these Jews receives its first decisive answer.

The second lies in the significant addition “and drink his blood.” The spirit of Jesus is misconceived when we are told that he made this addition “in order to increase the offense.” Jesus never sets out to give offense. When men take offense they do so wholly without cause. Unbelief always takes offense at the truth, but always does so without reason. The more truth unbelief meets, the more it takes offense, revealing its true nature, its folly of unreason, and its inexcusable guilt. Yet truth alone can turn unbelief into faith, and the greater the measure of truth, the greater its power to convert offended unbelief into satisfied faith. To say that the addition about drinking the blood of the Son of man is without special significance, that it only helps to describe the humanity of Jesus, is to cancel from this final and fullest declaration of Jesus the very feature which is distinctive and most explanatory.

For to parallel the eating of the flesh with the drinking of the blood of the Son of man, as Jesus parallels them here, is to point in the clearest way to his own sacrificial death. This parallel explains what eating and drinking really mean, namely participation in the sacrifice. By the death of the Son of man his blood is shed in sacrifice. It is folly, then, to think for one moment of drinking that blood in a physical (Capernaitic) manner. To drink the blood thus shed is a spiritual act in toto, an acceptance by the soul of the efficacy of that blood once shed and of the atonement and expiation wrought by its being shed. “Flesh and blood” is here not a unit as in Matt. 16:17 and Heb. 2:14, but “flesh” is separated from “blood,” and “blood” is separated from “flesh” by means of the sacrificial death. On having life see 3:15.

The present tense is noteworthy, since the negation refers to present possession and to its continuance. In the protasis the two verbs “eat” and “drink” are properly aorists, because only one act of reception secures life. The addition of the phrase “in yourselves” emphasizes the idea of permanent possession in the verb, “have not in yourselves.”

John 6:54

54 The tremendous importance of eating the flesh and drinking the blood of Jesus is pressed upon these Jews by the addition of the positive statement to the negative: He that eats my flesh and drinks my blood has life eternal; and I will resurrect him at the last day. The English is unable to render the peculiar force of ὁτρώγων, which is more realistic than the verb ἐσθίω, “to eat,” the aorist of which is used in v. 53 (φάγητε). It is the German knabbern, audible eating, manducare or mandere. The two present participles are qualitative and merely characterize the person, one article combining the two. We may read ὁτρώγωνκαὶπίνων like ὁπιστεύων with regard to a quality conveyed by continuous action: eating and drinking and going on in these actions; or like ὁκαταβαίνων in v. 33 and 50 with regard to a quality impressed by the single act of eating and drinking once only, this one act producing a permanent character (compare with v. 33 and 50; the aorist for the same act in v. 41 and 51; and the perfect in v. 38 and 42.)

It is in vain to argue against what is so evident, that the present statement is only another form of v. 47 (compare v. 40), “He that believes has life eternal.” The gospel knows of no way except believing by which I may “have life eternal.” Some recent commentators are led astray by a misconception of faith, which they conceive as an act of man’s own free will, something that God requires of us, “a moral obligation,” “an ethical deed.” This leads them to conclude that eating the flesh and drinking the blood of Jesus cannot denote faith, for so to eat and to drink is to receive something not to render something ourselves. But the essence of faith is exactly this, that we receive from Jesus, that we abandon all else and let him give himself to us, his blood-bought merits, his flesh and his blood sacrificed for us. The ancient saying is true: manducatio est credere. No truer and richer definition of faith can be given than this: faith = to eat Christ’s flesh and to drink Christ’s blood. It is idle to charge that “no sensible man would entertain the thought” that believing can be an eating and a drinking. Like this discourse on the Bread of Life is the word of Jesus in Matt. 5:6, “Blessed are they which do hunger and thirst after righteousness; for they shall be filled”; also John 7:37, 38, “If any man thirst, let him come unto me and drink.

He that believeth on me,” etc.; also John 4:10, etc. If the point of comparison is asked for, it is simply that eating and drinking, like believing, is a receiving of the most intimate and vital kind. As eating and drinking receive food to be assimilated in the body, so believing receives Christ with the atonement made through his sacrificial flesh and blood. But the figure is less than the reality, for bodily eating only sustains life already present while spiritual eating or believing expels death, bestows life, and sustains that life forever.

For the second time Jesus pointedly parallels his flesh and his blood as sacrificial gifts and even continues this parallel in the next two verses. How his death is connoted by the term “flesh” or σάρξ appears in 1 Pet. 3:18, “being put to death in the flesh”; in Eph. 2:15, “having abolished in his flesh the enmity”; in Col. 1:22, “in the body of his flesh through death”; and in Heb. 10:20, “through the veil, that is to say, his flesh.” To these add the following concerning the blood, which point even more directly to the death, and this a sacrificial one: Lev. 17:11, “For the life of the flesh is in the blood: and I have given it to you upon the altar to make an atonement for your souls: for it is the blood that maketh an atonement for the soul.” Heb. 9:22, “Almost all things are by the law purged with blood; and without shedding of blood is no remission.” 1 Pet. 1:18, Ye were redeemed “with the precious blood of Christ, as of a Lamb without blemish and without spot.” Acts 20:28, “the church of God, which he hath purchased with his own blood.” Add Heb. 9:14; Eph. 1:7; Rev. 5:9. This more than answers the claim that flesh and blood are here used only for the Leiblichkeit of Jesus as in Matt. 16:17; Gal. 1:16; 1 Cor. 15:50, without reference to Jesus’ death.

In order to make fully clear what kind of “life” this “eating and drinking” convey and what it means “to have life eternal,” Jesus repeats his promise from v. 40, “and I (emphatic ἐγώ, I myself) will resurrect him at the last day”; compare the explanation in v. 39 and 40. This “life” or ζωή not only passes unharmed through temporal death, it also assures the body that is stricken by this death of a blessed resurrection at the last day of time. “To have life eternal” means the restoration even of the body at the last day in the resurrection of the blessed. This resurrection was a well-known article of the Jewish faith, 11:24. What the Jews did not know is that the life which comes to us by faith in Christ’s death alone guarantees the blessed resurrection to us. In order to be raised up in glory at the last day we must eat the flesh and drink the blood of Jesus, i.e., partake of the Bread of Life, believe. Note especially the ἐγώ in this mighty promise.

It is the answer to the derogatory οὗτος in v. 52. He indeed, who is able to say, “I myself will resurrect him,” is able also to give us his flesh to eat so that we may have life even as he declares. Will not these Jews finally see with whom they are dealing?

John 6:55

55 With γάρ Jesus explains why the eating of his flesh and the drinking of his blood bestow life eternal and include the resurrection of the blessed. For my flesh is real food, and my blood is real drink. Both are ἀληθής, deserving that epithet in the fullest sense of the word, a βρῶσις or food that is eaten and will then do exactly what Jesus says, a πόσις or drink that is drunk and will then do exactly what he declares. Other meat and drink was offered in Old Testament times (for instance that mentioned in 1 Cor. 10:3, 4), and men have always had earthly food and drink. None of these deserves the predicate “real.” The sacred meat and drink of the old covenant could only typify and promise the “real” food that was to come, and all other meat and drink is but for a day and has in it no abiding vitality (v. 26, 27). The flesh and the blood of Jesus alone are able to bestow “life eternal” and the resurrection unto glory.

The word ἀληθής, “real” or “true,” cannot be used to support the view that Jesus is here speaking of the Lord’s Supper (some versions have the adverb ἀληθῶς, “really,” “truly,” which changes the thought only slightly). For here Jesus answers the Jewish objection that his flesh cannot possibly be the Bread of Life or be given to us to eat. To men of this mind Jesus asserts that his flesh and his blood are real food and drink which will do what he says; not an imaginary, or worse, a false and deceptive food and drink.

John 6:56

56 The previous explanations answer the question as to how Jesus can give his flesh to us to eat by pointing to himself as the Son of man, by placing his blood beside his flesh, and by emphasizing that these are real food and drink. The answer thus far deals with the gift itself. When we understand the gift properly we shall no longer doubt or deny that it can be given. But the gift is to be received. The Jewish unbelief denied not only that Jesus could give his flesh but also that they, the Jews, could receive or eat his flesh. “How can this one give us his flesh to eat!” So complete is Jesus’ reply that he fully covers also this vital point. He that eats my flesh and drinks my blood remains in me, and I in him.

Compare the allegory of the Vine and the Branches, 15:1, etc. To eat and to drink means to be spiritually joined to Jesus, the Son of man. Our souls embrace him and his sacrificial death in faith and trust, and he embraces us as now drawn to him (v. 44) and given to him (v. 37 and 39). That is why Jesus once more speaks of “my flesh” and “my blood,” his sacrificial death, and of our eating and drinking, which denote the reception of this death and sacrifice by faith. By this gift from him and its reception in us he and we are joined inwardly: ἐνἐμοί … ἐνσὑτῷ. As long as we remain apart from Jesus and inwardly separated from him we are in spiritual death; the moment we are inwardly joined to him we are freed from this death and have life eternal.

This effect of faith is usually termed the unio mystica, or mystical union of the believer with Christ. It is pictured as an indwelling (μένει) by means of the figures of a house, a household, a temple, the marriage relation, a body and its members, a garment, etc., in a great variety of passages, the fundamental form of which is Jesus in us, we in him. Both expressions “in us” and “in him” designate our benefit and ours alone; both denote our salvation. When it is said that he abides in us, he is our life, light, joy, pearl of great price, peace, crown. “He in me, and I in him” = 1) Jesus the life element in which we life and move and have our being spiritually; 2) Jesus the life center, preserving, molding the spiritual life within us. A false mutuality and reciprocity are introduced when Jesus is made the beneficiary with us, when it is assumed that he cannot exist as the head without us as the members, or that, when he makes us his body, we in turn make him the head. For this entire discourse a caution is in place, namely to curb the imagination lest it run into a spurious and an overdone spirituality and seek unknown depths which prove mazes of error.

John 6:57

57 Eating and drinking (believing) join to Jesus and thus give us life. Just how this effect is brought about is also clearly explained, and in this part of the explanation the climax of the entire discourse is reached. Even as the living Father did send me, I myself also live because of the Father; and he that eats me, he also shall live because of me. While this explains all the previous statements on the believer’s having live eternal even as the pivotal terms are “living,” “live,” and “shall live,” this declaration summarizes all that precedes. Once more it reveals who Jesus really is, how we can thus be joined to him, and how as a result we can have life forever.

The life we receive through faith is traced back to this ultimate source, “the living Father,” who as such has life in the absolute sense, as an essential attribute, whose life is not derived from another, from whom all other life is derived. When Jesus says that the living Father “did send me,” by that weighty participle “living” he describes his mission as being one that is intended to convey life to us who had lost it through Adam’s sin. As the one thus sent to bestow life Jesus is “the Bread of Life.”

The second point in this explanation is: “I myself also live because of the Father.” The emphatic ἐγώ = “I,” who was

thus sent to be the Mediator of life to men, Jesus, as he stood there in human flesh before his hearers; compare “the Son of man” in v. 53. “Even as … also” combines the living Father and Jesus who “lives” in a special manner. For καθώς is to be construed with the first καί (κἀγώ) not with the second (καὶὁτρώγων). Our versions and many commentators translate the second καί “so,” which is not correct and would require οὕτως. The thought expressed by this translation is also incorrect; for the similarity expressed by καθώς is one that exists only between the Father and Jesus, not one that obtains between the Father and us. We can never “live” καθώς, in the same manner as the Father. This is true only of Jesus, as 5:26 has made plain with ὥσπερ … οὕτως.

Here Jesus is speaking as the Son of man (v. 53), with reference to his human nature. He is meeting the objection of the Jews who see in him a mere man (v. 42), who, therefore, could neither give them his flesh to eat, nor impart to them life eternal. To these objectors he declares that as the one sent by the living Father, standing thus before them incarnate in his human nature, he “too lives,” even as the living Father sent him to convey life to us. In 5:26 he says that the Father, who has life in himself, “did give” him to have life in himself also, i.e., in his human nature, that nature which he uses as the medium for bestowing life upon us (“my flesh,” “my blood,” “to eat and to drink”). The same thought is here expressed by the phrase διὰτὸνπατέρα, “because of the Father,” his Sender. This phrase states the reason or the ground for his having life even as his Sender has life.

If only his divine nature and not his human nature had this life, he could not convey life to us by means of his sacrificial flesh and his sacrificial blood, which belong to his human nature. To make his flesh and his blood the means for bestowing life on us, life had to be in them, just as life is in the divine nature of Jesus and in the living Father who sent him. In the divine nature of the Father and the Son life dwells as an essential and absolute attribute irrespective of us; in the human nature of Jesus this same life dwells as a gift (5:26) by reason of the Father who sent Jesus (διὰτὸνπατέρα) with respect to us, in order that through his flesh and his blood and his sacrifice on the cross life eternal might be imparted to us.

“And he that eats me,” me, who lives because of the Father, me, whom the Father made the source of life for men by sending me on the mission that culminates in the sacrifice on the cross (“my flesh,” “my blood”), “he, too, shall live because of me.” It is true that Jesus abbreviates when he says “he that eats me”; for to eat him means to eat his flesh and to drink his blood by accepting his sacrifice in faith. This pronoun “me,” however, includes much more than the flesh and the blood of Jesus. In the first place it reverts to the pronoun “me” in the previous statement: “the living Father did send me,” and to the two pronouns in v. 56: “he remains in me, and I in him.” Thus “me” denotes the entire person of Jesus with both of his natures. We are joined by faith to the entire person of our Mediator Jesus. Yet this union with him takes place only through his human nature or the reception of his flesh and of his blood. These are the one door by which he in his entire person comes to us, and we to him.

The emphatic repetition of the subject in κἀκεῖνος, “he also,” has the force of “he alone and no other” shall “also live.” The future tense “shall live” is not in contradiction to the present tenses “has, have life eternal, remains in me” (v. 47, 53, 54, 56), but like the future tense in v. 51, relative to the moment of eating; “shall live” the moment he eats. The final phrase, shall live “because of me” receives special force since it parallels the phrase “because of the Father.” The former, like the latter, states the ground or reason for our living. This is not the mere act of our eating; it is the person to whom we are joined by this eating. The living Father’s life reaches down to us through his Son, but through his Son as fitted out with flesh and with blood, by these and by these alone being enabled to make contact with us dead sinners. When this contact is made, the entire Son with his life is ours, “in us,” and so we live “because of him,” by reason of having no less than him. While the two διά phrases are parallel, this parallel must not be pressed.

This is done by those who translate the second καί “so”; for they make us live because of Jesus, just as Jesus lives because of the Father. Jesus shuts this out by emphatically stating, “he that eats me he also (he alone) shall live.” Our living is conditional on our receiving Jesus; the moment the condition ceases in that moment our life is gone. No such condition exists for Jesus. He lives as the Mediator of life for us by virtue of the living Father’s mission. The every essence of the divine life of the Father is the human nature of Jesus. We live because of him in a different way, not by also receiving the essential divine attribute of life, but by having that attribute touch our souls and by this touch kindling spiritual life in us.

His is the divine essence of life itself, ours is the product, a creation, of that life, 2 Cor. 5:17; Gal. 6:5; Eph. 2:10.

John 6:58

58 The concluding statement merely rounds out the entire discourse by once more contrasting the transitory effect of the earthly manna and the permanent effect of the Bread that came down out of heaven. This is the Bread that did come down out of heaven, not as the fathers did eat and did die. He that eats this bread shall live forever. Jesus means to say: I have now told you fully about this Bread that actually came down out of heaven (καταβάς as in v. 41 and 51; compare the other tenses in v. 33 and 50, and in v. 38 and 42) and how it differs from the manna which left the fathers to die (v. 49). The final thought which Jesus impresses upon his hearers is the blessed effect of eating this Bread: it makes him who eats it live forever (the εἰς phrase as in v. 51 and in 14:16). The discourse thus closes with an implied invitation.

Do these Jews want to live forever? Let them come and eat of the Bread of Life!

John 6:59

59 These things he said by way of teaching in a synagogue in Capernaum. This remark intends to separate what follows from the discourse just completed. We must combine “teaching in a synagogue,” and not “he said in a synagogue.” Note that “synagogue” is without the article. John means to tell us that this discourse was spoken by way of public synagogue teaching before all who had gathered there. What follows was spoken elsewhere and thus somewhat later and only to those who had begun to be Jesus’ disciples. On the point that this teaching of Jesus in a synagogue does not imply that the day was necessarily a Sabbath see v. 21.

The final phrase “in Capernaum” does not intend to repeat what we gather already from v. 24, for this would be quite unnecessary. Placed at the end, the phrase is made emphatic. John means to convey to us that Capernaum repeats what Jerusalem (5:1, 2) began, namely unbelief and opposition to Jesus. Chapter six is the counterpart to chapter five.

We must now answer the question whether this discourse deals only with the spiritual eating of faith or with the oral sacramental eating in the Lord’s Supper. We reply, only with the former. The eating of which Jesus speaks throughout (note for instance v. 53) is absolutely necessary for salvation. Yet all the saints of the old covenant were saved without the Lord’s Supper, so was the malefactor on the cross, so are all babes and children in the new covenant. This fact alone is decisive. It has never been answered by those who maintain the contrary concerning John 6.

The old principle holds true: only the contemptus, never the defectus of the Supper condemns.—Secondly, the eating of which Jesus here speaks is always and without exception salutary (see for instance v. 54). It is impossible to affirm this of the oral eating in the Sacrament.—Finally, it is inconceivable that Jesus should urge upon these unbelieving (v. 36) Galileans a sacrament not yet instituted and urge upon them the sacramental eating of which no one could know until the institution had taken place. It is in vain to point to Nicodemus upon whom Jesus urged baptism; for the Baptist baptized thousands, Nicodemus knew of this sacrament, and Jesus explains its effects to him.

Recognizing the force of these facts, some seek a compromise, admitting that primarily this discourse does not deal with the Lord’s Supper, yet maintaining that secondarily or indirectly it does. They claim that Jesus so expressed himself that his words find their ultimate and most complete fulness in the Lord’s Supper. These are divided among themselves as to the way in which they suppose that Jesus here refers to the Sacrament. Some hold that the words of Jesus constitute only a preparatory prophecy of the Supper; others, that the idea of the Supper is included, the feeding of the 5, 000 being “a significant prefigurement” of the Supper; still others, that the Supper is included by way of inference. All these generally make much of the fact that John’s Gospel reports neither the institution of Baptism after the resurrection of Jesus nor the institution of the Supper; and they assume that John reported the conversation with Nicodemus in lieu of the former, and the discourse on the Bread of Life in lieu of the latter. The general answer to these views is the old hermeneutical rule of Hilary: the true reader of the Scriptures is he who expects the passages of Holy Writ themselves to furnish their meaning, who carries nothing into them, who takes out only what they bring, and is careful not to make the Scriptures say what he thinks they ought to say.

The specific answer to these views is, that they confuse the spiritual eating by faith, which is to take place equally with regard to the three means of grace (Baptism, the Word read, taught, and preached, and the Lord’s Supper) with the oral eating peculiar to the Supper, which invariably takes place, All ought to eat and to drink by faith when they are baptized, when they hear and read the Word, when they receive the Lord’s Supper; but all do not so eat and drink by faith, many use these means of grace so as not to receive life eternal through them. But no one ever partook of the Lord’s Supper who did not eat and drink orally, with his mouth, the consecrated bread and wine, and in, with, and under this bread and wine the body and the blood of Christ conveyed to him by the earthly elements. To eat and to drink by faith is an inward spiritual act that is always salutary; to eat and to drink the elements of the Supper orally is an outward act which sometimes is not salutary but unto judgment, 1 Cor. 11:28, 29.

The Result of the Discourse on the Bread of Life, 6:60–71.—Jesus left the synagogue, and most of “the Jews” scattered. Only those who counted themselves among his “disciples” remained with him as he walked away. We now learn what occurred in the case of these. Many, therefore, of his disciples after hearing (this) said, Stiff is this statement. Who is able to listen to him? The “disciples” were Galileans who had begun to follow Jesus, and their number was considerable.

A severe sifting now takes place among them. Many of them spoke as here indicated, yet not all. Comparing v. 66, we see that a number remained true, which explains how eventually five hundred brethren assembled to meet the risen Savior in Galilee, 1 Cor. 15:6. The aorist particle ἀκούσαντες, “having heard,” or “after hearing,” means to say that after the services in the synagogue were over, the more these disciples thought of what they had heard Jesus say, the more their objection grew. The verb εἶπον means that they voiced their thoughts to themselves.

These disciples find what Jesus says σκληρός, “stiff,” dried out and hard, like a twig that has become brittle. The word does not here mean dark and difficult to understand but objectionable, offensive, impossible to accept and to believe. By οὑτοςὁλόγος we must understand the entire discourse on the Bread of Life, even also as it is a closely knit unit. The objection that began in v. 30, 31, that came out in the murmuring in v. 41 and in the open contention in v. 52, here continues. Some think that it refers especially to the idea of the bloody death in the way in which Jesus spoke of his flesh and his blood; others, denying that Jesus had such a death in mind, think of the carnal hopes and expectations of these disciples, which find no support in the words of Jesus; still others suppose that these disciples think only of a gross and carnal eating of the flesh of Jesus and of a similar drinking of his blood. Those, finally, who think that Jesus spoke only of his Leiblichkeit or Menschlichkeit in general imagine that the objection lies in the idea of eating and drinking the human nature of one whom these disciples saw standing before their eyes like any other man.

These attempts reflect the various interpretations which the different commentators have applied to the cardinal points in the discourse itself, some of them being decidedly wide of the mark. These disciples objected to the entire discourse: that Jesus should call himself the Bread of Life, descended out of heaven, whose flesh they must eat and whose blood they must drink as the real food, full of life, and thus giving them life eternal and the resurrection of blessedness. The whole of it these disciples find σκληρός, intolerable. Hence they exclaim, “Who is able to listen to him?” If αὑτοῦ is to refer to λόγος, we should expect the accusative αὑτόν. Yet the old rule: the genitive to indicate the person heard and the accusative the thing heard, is not strictly observed. These disciples, however, turn away from Jesus (v. 66) and refuse to hear him any longer, so we translate, “Who can hear him?” and not, “hear it?”

John 6:61

61 Jesus does not need to be told what is passing through the minds of these disciples. To some extent the way in which Jesus saw them acting and talking together betrayed to him what was wrong. But by his higher powers Jesus perceives all that is in the hearts of these disciples (3:24, 25). Like his omnipotence in the miracles, so he uses his omniscience again and again in dealing with men to the extent that this was necessary in his mission. Now when Jesus knew in himself that his disciples were murmuring concerning this, he said to them, Does this entrap you? The phrase ἐναὑτῷ means: in his own mind, R. 587.

And “concerning this” refers to the matter about which these disciples were complaining, it is thus identical with “this” in the second question. What is meant does not need to be specified, since those concerned know. The verb σκανδαλίζειν means to serve as a σκάνδαλον, the crooked stick to which the bait is fixed in a trap and by which the trap is sprung; thus, literally, “Does this entrap you?” The idea is: “Does this prove fatal to you?” A trap that is sprung kills its victim. This point is lost in the translations of our versions, “cause you to stumble” (R. V.), “offend you” (A. V.), neither of which need be fatal.

On stumbling, even on falling, one may arise again; so also one may be offended and get over it. But a dead-fall trap kills.

John 6:62

62 With a second question Jesus points these murmuring disciples to the great key which unlocks the difficulty that was entrapping and holding them in unbelief. It is the same key he had offered his hearers from the start when in v. 27 and then again in v. 53 he had called himself “the Son of man,” as now also he again does, adding in v. 40 “the Son”; and when he said of the Bread that it comes down out of heaven (v. 33 and 50), that it came down out of heaven (v. 51 and 41), and that he himself who is this Bread “has come down from heaven” (v. 38), which the Jews repeat, changing only the preposition. If, then, you shall behold the Son of man going up where he was before—? The protasis stands alone, naturally with a rising inflection like a second question, leaving the apodosis to be supplied by the hearers, “what then? say it yourselves!” This is a case of aposiopesis, which differs from ellipsis or mere abbreviations by the passion or feeling put into the words. “One can almost see the gesture and the flash of the eye in aposiopesis,” R. 1203.

By calling himself “the Son of man” for the third time and by now adding his ascent to heaven to the descent out of heaven, which he has mentioned repeatedly, he once more in the plainest way tells these disciples who he actually is. The key to the entire discourse on the Bread of Life is Jesus, the Father’s Son (v. 40), sent out of heaven on his saving mission and thus now incarnate, the Son of man (see 1:51), standing as man before these disciples. The mention of his ascent only completes the picture of himself which he wants these disciples to have; for he descended out of heaven only on his mission, and thus evidently will again ascend when that mission is performed. The participle ἀναβαίνων is only the counterpart to καταβαίνων (v. 33 and 50) and καταβάς (v. 41 and 51). They are even connected by the clause, “where he was before,” which Jesus uses instead of “to heaven.” To the very place from which he descended he will again ascend. Jesus thus tells these disciples: “You are right, indeed, if I were only a man like other men, no matter how great a man, I could not be the Bread of Life out of heaven, could not give you my flesh nor my blood, nor could you eat that flesh and drink that blood, and, of course, you could not thus have life eternal, nor could I resurrect you at the last day; but I am the God-man, and thus all that I say is true.”

We thus see that Jesus is not increasing the offense for his hearers but making the fullest effort to remove the offense they had taken. Nor is he raising a new point, which may cause new offense, but is stating the key point over again and more clearly. The implication is the same as it was in the entire discourse: How can unbelief find justifiable room when men are shown who Jesus really is? “When you shall see the Son of man ascending where he was before—?” what then? how then can you maintain unbelief? We need not enter the debate regarding what “ascending” here means. It certainly refers to the Ascension not merely the visible rising of Jesus’ human form from the earth until a cloud withdrew it from sight (which is only the first part) but, as the addition “where he was before” shows, combined with the visible also the invisible part when beyond the cloud the earthly form of Jesus was transferred in a timeless instant to the glory of heaven. It is useless to make this ascending refer to the “dying,” or to bring in the general offense always connected with the cross. Likewise, instead of the ascent hindering faith in that it removes the body of Jesus to heaven, it constituted a strong help to faith by that very removal; for, like all the previous references to Jesus as the God-man, this ascension of his body to heaven leaves us most decidedly with the one sacrificial act which makes his flesh “real food” and his blood “real drink” (v. 55) such as can be received spiritually by faith alone and thus shuts out every carnal mode of reception.

The condition ἐάν with the subjunctive is one of expectancy; hence we should translate, “if you shall see” (A. V.) and not “if you should see” (R. V.). The point to be observed in all conditional statements is that they present to us only the speaker’s or the writer’s thought about the matter, how he wants us to look at it, and not the actuality as it is or as it will be (if it is future). So here. Jesus knows that he will, indeed, ascend.

He might say so directly. But that would be like a challenge to these already unbelieving disciples, provoking their outright denial. By using the condition of expectancy Jesus obviates such a clash. He secures their consideration of his ascension as a solution of their difficulty, as again revealing the divine nature of his person. We need not disturb ourselves about the verb “shall see” addressed to these disciples. Even the Eleven saw only Jesus’ departure from the earth and not his entrance into heaven.

This entrance the Eleven and all believers “see” in the same way, by faith in the Word and by his rule at the right hand of his Father in his church and over all the earth. The verb θεωρέω includes the seeing with the mind and the soul not only that with the physical eye.

John 6:63

63 As the statement on the ascension of Jesus is formulated so as to call out faith, so also are the next two statements: The spirit is that which makes alive; the flesh profits nothing at all. The utterances which I have spoken to you, spirit they are, and life they are. Verse 62 deals with the source, the divine person of Jesus; v. 63 deals with the effect, the life bestowed by this divine person. These two, the person as the source, the life as the effect, form the framework of the entire discourse. This is true even of the concentrated statement, “I (person, source) am the Bread of Life (life eternal, effect).” The discourse answers the question as to how we dead sinners may obtain life eternal (the effect). It answers: through the God-man alone via his flesh and his blood (the source).

Hence, like the discourse itself, any added explanations seek solely to make plain these two: the source and the effect. Thus the way to faith is opened, and all real cause for doubt and unbelief is removed.

When this object of v. 62 and 63 is clear, we see that the latter removes all false conception regarding the life (the effect) as wrought by the person (the source) through the medium of his flesh (including, of course, his blood, here left unnamed only for the sake of brevity). The proposition Jesus presents is general, an axiom that needs no proof: the spirit not the flesh makes alive. Leave out the spirit, and all the flesh in the world, including that of Jesus, could not kindle a single spark of life; the spirit alone quickens and makes alive. This holds true even for physical life (Gen. 2:7) and certainly also for spiritual and eternal life (Eph. 2:5). A flood of light thus illumines the discourse. When Jesus spoke so pointedly about his flesh and his blood bestowing life eternal on all who eat and drink, how could anyone dream that he meant flesh only as flesh and blood only as blood?

Did not Jesus constantly say “my flesh,” “my blood,” and add, “he that eats me,” and name himself as “the Son” (v. 40), and “the Son of man” (v. 27 and 53, God’s Son sent by the Father and thus in human flesh) ? Did he not tell these disciples that his flesh is “the living Bread” (v. 51) and thus “the real food” (v. 55), and that eating his flesh and drinking his blood make us abide in him, and him in us (v. 56)? Let the other Jews miss all this, of these Jews who counted themselves disciples of Jesus he certainly had a right to expect that they would understand What he said so clearly, that his flesh and his blood, sacrificed for us, unite us with him and the divine spirit of life that dwells in him—thus and thus alone giving us life eternal.

This abolishes the old error that when Jesus says, “the flesh profits nothing at all,” he includes also his own flesh. Doing this, Jesus would deny every statement concerning his flesh made in his previous discourse and would assert that when he says “flesh” he means the very opposite, namely “spirit,” thus turning his entire discourse into nonsense. The flesh of Jesus, given into death for us and lying in the tomb until the third day, was quickened again (1 Pet. 3:18) and became the means by which Jesus himself with his spirit enters our souls and quickens us to spiritual life. The notion that “spirit” here means the true spiritual sense of the words of Jesus, and that “flesh” here means the carnal or Capernaitic sense held by the Jews, introduces figures of speech where no figures are indicated. As to the word “spirit” we must say that, as the opposite of “flesh,” it cannot denote the Holy Spirit. When the general principle here enunciated by Jesus is applied to him, “spirit” means Jesus’ own spirit and is identical with his person and his being. Those who press the figure of the Bread in the discourse to refer only to food for nourishment to sustain life already present overagainst the bestowal of life, are answered by τὸζωοποιοῦν, “that which quickens,” which makes alive (see the remarks on v. 48).

When Jesus adds, “The utterances which I have spoken to you, spirit they are, and life they are,” he continues his tone of rebuke to those disciples. Just as they should long have known that the flesh by itself never quickens, so they should have known the nature of every utterance that falls from Jesus’ lips. The pronoun ἐγώ is emphatic: because I make these utterances they are what I say. The better reading is the perfect, I “have spoken,” although the present, I “speak,” does not alter the sense, for Jesus refers to all his utterances which include his recent discourse on the Bread of Life.

Both τὰῥήματα and the corresponding verb λελάληκα denote the vehicles which Jesus employs for communicating with his disciples, namely the terms and expressions he chooses for the speech that falls from his lips; λόγος and λέγω would refer more to the thought. Jesus thus refers to such terms as “bread,” “flesh,” “blood,” “to eat his flesh,” “to drink his blood,” and, in fact, to every form of expression employed in the recent discourse and at other times. His disciples should surely by this time know that not one of these expressions coming from his lips is hasty, ill-considered, extravagant, or faulty in any way. On the contrary, the vehicles Jesus employs are perfect, and that in the highest possible sense: “spirit they are, and life they are.” Note how the two predicates are kept apart, so that each stands out by itself. The sense is made trivial by those who interpret: My words are of a spiritual kind and the expression of my spiritual life. We must connect “spirit” and “life” with the preceding statement, “The spirit is that which makes alive.” Thus every term and expression that falls from Jesus’ lips is full of his own divine spirit and, therefore, full also of his own divine life and thus reaches out to us in order to enter our souls.

This, however, cannot mean that now suddenly Jesus is substituting these ῥήματα for his flesh and his blood as conveyors of life to us, which would simply cancel his entire previous discourse. Nor can he place his “utterances” beside his flesh and his blood as a second means for bestowing life on us, which would again contradict that discourse (see its summary in v. 53). Cast aside all such dual notions. The ῥήματα and the realities are one; we have neither without the other; the identical spirit and life are in both. Take the ῥῆμα or vocable “the Son” in v. 40—it is vacuous without the actual Son. Take the actual Son—he remains nothing to us until this word comes to us and tells us that he is “the Son.”

John 6:64

64 What Jesus says about his ῥήματα being spirit and being life connects not only with the fact that the spirit is the quickening power but also with the other and very sad fact: But there are some of you that do not believe, which John elucidates (γάρ) by adding: For Jesus knew from the beginning who they were that did not believe and who he was that would betray him. The fault does not lie with the expressions which Jesus uses, every one of which is so filled with spirit and with life that it can be said to be spirit and to be life. No mind can suggest more adequate expressions for transmitting the spirit and the life to the hearers of Jesus. The fault lies with some of these disciples and hearers, who, indeed, hear these expressions but refuse to accept what they are and contain, namely the blessed realities, the spirit and the life. They understand Jesus well enough; they see what his ῥήματα bring; but this is what they do not want and will not have. They seek earth, and when heaven is urged upon them, they turn away in disappointment; in fact, the more they are made to see heaven in Jesus, the more they determine not to have it.

When Jesus here charges these disciples with unbelief, John feels compelled, because of what Jesus presently adds concerning Judas in v. 70, to inform us that Jesus became aware of this unbelief, not by the evidence it furnished of its presence by murmuring and raising objections, but that he knew of it “from the beginning”; and in this knowledge of Jesus John includes also the future traitorous act of Judas. The phrase ἐξἀρχῆς is definite as such, without the article, R. 792; but what point of time is referred to? John’s statement is general and not restricted to the unbelief of these Galilean disciples alone. The Greek, unlike the English, does not change the tenses after the main verb “Jesus knew” but retains the tenses that indicate the moment when this knowledge first began: “who they are that do not believe, and who he is that shall betray him” (English: “who they were that did not believe, and who he was that would betray him”). We see that this is the same supernatural knowledge, used by Jesus as needed in his mission, as that with which John acquaints us in 1:42, etc., and in 2:24, 25. We are thus led to say that Jesus knew what course any man’s heart would take from the first moment when Jesus came into contact with that man.

The effort to make “from the beginning” mean only from the moment when unbelief actually begins in one attached to Jesus, is due to the desire to escape what some consider a grave moral difficulty. They usually exemplify by a reference to Judas: If Jesus knew when he first met Judas that Judas would be his betrayer, how could Jesus, having that knowledge, nevertheless choose him as one of the apostles? A moment’s thought, however, shows that we fail to escape this question with its difficulty when we assume that Jesus did not know at the time he chose Judas that Judas would betray him but discovered the secret unbelief at a later time, i.e., not until that unbelief actually arose in Judas’ heart. For then the question would be cast into a new form: Knowing the unbelief of Judas and to what it would lead, how could Jesus retain Judas as one of the apostles?

In the first place, the future participle ὁπαραδώσωναὑτόν blocks any escape by dating the knowledge of Jesus only from the moment when unbelief actually enters. For ὁπαραδώσωναὑτόν refers to a future definite act: Judas is he who shall betray Jesus. The articulated future participle is futuristic not volitive, R. 878, note also B.-D. 356. It states what shall take place, not what one wills to do. In other words, Jesus knew that Judas would turn traitor long before Judas exercised his traitorous volition. How far in advance Jesus knew this, therefore, makes no difference.

Moreover, this exemplification by means of Judas must not be allowed to mislead us. For the question here raised is far older than Judas. It begins with Adam and includes a large number of others. How could God create Adam when God knew that Adam would fall? or create those of whom he knew that they would be damned? or receive into the church those of whom he knew that they would turn out hypocrites and renegades? In fact, how could God create Satan knowing what Satan would become? As regards Judas: Jesus chose him not for the purpose of betrayal but only with the knowledge of that betrayal.

No act of God’s or of Jesus’ shut the door of grace for Judas, their foreknowledge did certainly not do so. This foreknowledge rested on the act of Judas, not the act of Judas on the foreknowledge. If the act had been the reverse, the foreknowledge would have accorded with the reversal. The human mind cannot penetrate the profundity of the divine mind in these questions. All we can say is that Jesus bowed to the Father’s will and did this perfectly also in the grace he vouchsafed to Judas to the very last. Furthermore, even if Judas had never existed, the deadly wickedness of sin in man would have turned in murderous opposition to Jesus when the holy Son of man came to draw them to heaven, and a tragedy like that of Calvary would have been the result.

One thing more must be added: when the wickedness of any man becomes unchangeably fixed, God takes it in hand and in his providence uses it for his own purposes. In the face of Mark 14:21 the intimation that the moment Judas felt the enormity of his crime, this may yet have become his salvation, must be rejected.

John 6:65

65 And he was saying, On this account I have said to you, that no one is able to come to me except it have been given to him of the Father. Jesus made no pause or break in his words; “and he was saying,” with the descriptive imperfect ἔλεγε, merely informs us that Jesus went on speaking, the tense asking us to dwell on what he says. In v. 44 Jesus had said, “No man can come unto me except the Father which sent me draw him”; and in v. 37, “All that the Father gives to me shall get to me.” To these two statements Jesus again refers, only changing the active form into the passive, “have been given to him.” To come to Jesus is to believe in Jesus; and the ability to come is never without the coming. In our abstract thinking we must never separate the two and imagine that the Father grants the ability and that we then may decide whether we will use this ability or leave it unused.

The best commentary on this giving and this drawing is furnished in Concordia Triglotta 1087, etc.: “The Father will not do this without means, but has ordained for this purpose his Word and Sacraments as ordinary means and instruments; and it is the will neither of the Father nor of the Son that a man should not hear or should despise the preaching of his Word and wait for the drawing of the Father without the Word and Sacraments. For the Father draws, indeed, by the power of his Holy Ghost, according to his usual order, by the hearing of his holy, divine Word, as with a net, by which the elect are plucked from the jaws of the devil. Every poor sinner should therefore repair thereto, hear it attentively, and not doubt the drawing of the Father. For the Holy Ghost will be with his Word in his power and work by it; and that is the drawing of the Father.—But the reason why not all who hear it believe, and some are therefore condemned the more deeply, is not because God had begrudged them their salvation; but it is their own fault, as they have heard the Word in such a manner as not to learn (v. 45) but only to despise, blaspheme, and disgrace it, and have resisted the Holy Ghost, who through the Word wished to work in them.”

Where the ability to come and the coming are not given, this is not due to the will or the effort of the Giver but to the contrary, hostile will and obdurate, resisting effort of him who should be the recipient, Matt. 23:37, “ye would not.” “On this account,” διὰτοῦτο, refers back to the statement, “But there are some of you that do not believe.” Faith and coming to Jesus is not theirs and is not given to them because in their persistent preference of unbelief they are determined not to receive it. Their lack of faith is not excused by any inactivity on the Father’s part, for this does not exist; their non-faith is blamed onto them because they nullify the Father’s activity of giving and drawing. “Judas would have liked nothing better than for Jesus to have allowed himself actually to be made a king by the Jews; that would have been a Messiah for his avarice, for his earthly-mindedness.” Besser.

John 6:66

66 In consequence many of his disciples went back and were no longer walking with him. The phrase ἐκτούτου is not temporal, although some think it is; for τούτου has no antecedent of time. Likewise, we cannot accept the view that “this” refers only to the hard statement of the discourse in the synagogue and not to the words spoken in v. 61–65. These disciples did not leave Jesus as they were departing from the synagogue, they left after Jesus once more spoke with them. The view that only the discourse in the synagogue furnished them their reason for leaving, and that what Jesus said afterward furnished no such reason, misconceives the latter statements of Jesus. By charging these disciples with not believing (v. 64) and not receiving the Father’s gift Jesus intimates that he does not consider them his disciples. “This” caused the break. “Due to this” they dropped Jesus.

Jesus labors faithfully, patiently, and long, but eventually calls for a decision. This withdrawal from Jesus should have included Judas, but, covering his inward defection with hypocrisy, he remained one of the Twelve.

The aorist “they went away” merely states the fact in a summary way. Inward separation ends in outward separation. But these are not losses, because, as John indicates in his remark in v. 64, Jesus never counted the presence of such disciples as gains. We need not assume that all of the “many” left in a body but rather that they dropped away in successive groups. When John says, “they were no longer walking with him,” he intimates that hitherto they had done this, all of them following Jesus about from place to place, always returning to him, when for a little while it had been necessary for them to leave. This apparently promising custom now ceased.

The phrase εἰςτὰὀπίσω, literally “to the things behind,” means that they went away from the things Jesus was offering them, back to the things that had occupied them before, their common everyday affairs. These transient, empty affairs still seem to be the real values of life to many.

John 6:67

67 When these withdrawals had thinned the ranks of Jesus’ followers and were about complete, which must have taken place some days after the discourse in Capernaum, Jesus spoke also to the Twelve. John assumes that his readers know how Jesus had chosen them in order to train them as his special messengers or apostles. Jesus, therefore, said to the Twelve, You, too, surely will not also be quietly leaving? The connective οὗν marks this question as the outcome of the withdrawal of so many others. The interrogative particle μή implies that Jesus expects a negative answer. This he actually received.

Yet we must note that the shades of expectation suggested by μή vary greatly according to the emotion involved: protest, indignation, scorn, excitement, sympathy, etc., R. 917 and 1175. Here the feeling of assurance prevails. We may note that θέλετε is used as an auxiliary and, for one thing, gives the question a polite form. To what extent this verb refers to the will and volition of the Twelve may be questioned as it is used also for indicating only the future. Thus the question may be, “Are you, too, about to leave,” or, “Do you, too, intend to leave?” To be sure, remaining with Jesus is without compulsion, entirely voluntary. Note, however, the difference between ἀπῆλθον and ὑπάγειν, the former denoting open withdrawal ἀπό or from Jesus, the aorist stating the past fact, the latter denoting secret or quiet slipping away, ὑπό, under cover, perhaps of some excuse, the present tense describing the proceeding.

Jesus does not ask this question on his own account as though seeking comfort for the loss of the many in the faithfulness of the Twelve; but for the sake of the Twelve themselves, whom the defection of so many is to help to establish the more in faith and in the true and intelligent convictions of faith. Since this is the purpose of the question, we must drop ideas such as that Jesus here “sets the door wide open” and says, “if you will, you may depart.”

John 6:68

68 Simon Peter answered him, Lord, to whom shall we go? Utterances of life eternal thou hast; and we on our part have believed and have realized that thou on thy part art the Holy One of God. John agrees with the synoptists in picturing Peter as the leader and on notable occasions the spokesman of the Twelve. The critical view that throughout John’s Gospel another disciple, one who remains unnamed in the Gospel, (meaning John himself) is put into greatest prominence ahead of Peter, is deprived of its support both in 1:40, etc., where Peter is first introduced, and here where John reports Peter’s grand confession for the Twelve as a body. Undoubtedly, John called him only Simon in daily intercourse with him, but when late in life he writes this record for the church, he here adds the name the Lord bestowed upon Simon and writes “Simon Peter”; he does so also in 6:8 and elsewhere where “Simon” alone would suffice.

The question of Jesus, which betrays emotion, evokes deep feeling on Peter’s part, which is at once revealed when he has his reply begin with a counter-question, “Lord, to whom shall we go?” Unjustified thoughts are read into this emotional question when the addition is made, “now or ever,” for Peter’s response refers to the question of Jesus and a definite going away such as that which the Twelve had witnessed in the unbelieving disciples. Peter’s question is misunderstood when it is taken to mean that he and others had left the Baptist and had substituted Jesus for him, and that Peter’s question contemplates the possibility of again substituting another master in place of Jesus. Peter had not left the Baptist in any vital sense but was following the Baptist’s own instruction and direction by following Jesus (see 1:35, 36). Those disciples who had forsaken Jesus did not choose another master whom they preferred to follow instead of Jesus, they only disowned Jesus. Thus Peter also continues by stating why he and the Twelve cannot possibly follow a like course and also disown Jesus. Those others preferred to shift for themselves, and this, as Peter declares, the Twelve cannot do.

In the succinct statement of the reason why the Twelve cannot leave Jesus as others had left him, “Utterances of life eternal thou hast,” there is no σύ as a contrast with πρὸςτίνα. Thus there is not a contrast between Jesus and some other possible master to whom the Twelve would go if they could find such a better master. The emphasis is on the object “utterances of life” which is placed in front of the verb. Since Jesus has these, they cannot leave him. Because Jesus has these utterances, the Baptist bade his own disciples to follow Jesus; he himself also followed Jesus as all his attestations show, although by God’s arrangement he had his own office and was not to become one of the apostles. When Peter uses ῥήματα he borrows this term from the words of Jesus in v. 63 and uses it in the same sense (see the elucidation above).

Of the two predicates: “spirit they are, and life they are” (v. 63), Peter chooses the second, but by no means as though he were avoiding the first, for the second includes the first; for Jesus himself binds them together when he says that the spirit (agent, cause, source) makes alive (effect). The “utterances” of Jesus are the vital vehicles of language for the divine realities (Bread of Life, my flesh, my blood, etc.) by which “life eternal” is brought to us, that hearing these “utterances” we may appropriate the realities they name and thus have what they convey, namely “life eternal.” When Peter says thou “hast” he means that these “utterances” form the treasure which Jesus dispenses to all who come into contact with him and hear him speak.

John 6:69

69 The counterpart is the next statement, “and we on our part have believed and have known that thou on thy part art the Holy One of God.” The utterances of Jesus were spurned by those who left Jesus as being a stiff and objectionable λόγος (combining the utterances with the realities they express) but they won the hearts of the Twelve. The emphatic pronoun ἡμεῖς balances only the equally emphatic following pronoun σύ: “we on our part” have believed, etc., that “thou on thy part” art, etc. Of course, what Jesus has (and bestows) is balanced also by the reception wrought in the Twelve, but this balance lies in the thought as such not in any pairing of terms. Yet “utterances” are fittingly followed by the verbs “believe” and “realize,” for they are intended to be received in confidence and trust, with full reliance of the heart, and in true understanding of just what they mean, with full realization of the heart as to what they bestow (“life eternal,” v. 68). The perfect tenses reach back into the past, to the moment when this faith and this realization first began, and at the same time they reach to the present, in which both actions continue. Thus Peter confesses that the Twelve have long believed, etc., (in fact, from 1:42 onward), and all that Jesus has said has only confirmed their faith.

R. 423 is right when he says that the order of the verbs is just as true here as the opposite order in 17:8. A certain kind and amount of knowledge precedes actual faith and trust and is usually also considered an integral part of it; for no one can possibly trust a person or a truth of which he does not know. On the other hand, a certain kind of knowledge always follows faith and confidence, a knowledge that is possible only as a result of this confidence. This is the knowledge of actual experience, here the experience which the Twelve had with Jesus during the two years and more of their contact with him. This knowledge is impossible for those who refuse to trust Jesus. The verb γινώσκειν invariably means “to know,” but when it is used regarding spiritual knowledge, its meaning is intensified, and its sense is expressed by “to realize” with a knowledge that truly illuminates and grasps what it has learned.

The assured reading is: “that thou on thy part art the Holy One of God.” This designation of Jesus is so exceptional that it is not surprising to find a commoner title in place of it in many texts, and this substitution has some variations; this is especially to be expected since Matt. 16:16; Mark 8:29; and Luke 9:20 (which describe another occasion when Peter confessed for the Twelve) contain more ordinary terms. Thus in the A. V. “that Christ, the Son of the living God” is derived from Matt. 16:16. We need not collect the Old and the New Testament passages in which ἅγιος is applied to other servants of God, for in Peter’s confession it is used regarding Jesus in the supreme and the Messianic sense, in which no one save Jesus can be called “the Holy One of God.” Jesus himself helps us to interpret this title when in 10:36 he designates himself as the One “whom the Father sanctified and sent into the world.” He is “the Holy One of God” as the God-man sent on his saving mission into the world. As such he is ἅγιος, separate unto God. This includes the two thoughts, that Jesus is wholly separate from the world, which is unholy because of sin, yet that he comes from God to rid the world of its unholiness and sin and to separate men in true holiness unto God.

The fact that Jesus in his person and his life is also himself sinless and “holy” in this sense is a self-evident but entirely minor thought. The genitive Holy One “of God” is possessive. A study of the adjective ἅγιος in C.-K. 34, etc., yields highly valuable results for all passages in which this term or any of its derivatives are employed.

John 6:70

70 Great joy fills the heart of Jesus on hearing this adequate and earnest confession on the part of Peter. But this joy is combined with deep pain, for Jesus knows what Peter could not know, namely that not all of the Twelve believed in their hearts as he had confessed. Jesus answered them, since Peter had spoken for all of them, and all had given silent assent to Peter’s words, Did not I elect you the Twelve for myself? and of you one is a devil. The question with its implied affirmation is rhetorical and expresses the feeling of Jesus. Both pronouns are emphatic and are made more so in the Greek by being abutted: “I you” did elect. The middle voice “did elect for myself” conveys the thought with sufficient clearness, namely to be my followers in a special sense, to be trained as my apostles for your great future work.

The apposition “the Twelve” is without emphasis and yet has its significance. John felt it deeply when in v. 71 he repeats: “one of the Twelve.” This number is symbolical, dating from the twelve patriarchs and the twelve tribes of Israel, so often used with reference to the apostles, and with the constant tragic meaning that Judas was “one of the Twelve,” finally in Rev. 7:4, twelve times twelve thousand (144, 000), 12:1, twelve stars, and 21:12–22:2, six times in the description of the new Jerusalem.

By his own act (ἐγώ) and for himself (middle voice) Jesus made this election of “the Twelve.” John is certain that his readers know the account of this act from the other Gospels. With a simple “and” the terrible adversative fact is added: “and of you (partitive use of ἐκ) one is a devil.” All efforts to modify διάβολος so that it means only a slanderer, adversary, enemy, or traitor, break down before the analogy of Scripture wherever this word is used as a noun. It is stronger and intended to be stronger than “devilish,” or “son and child of the devil” (8:44; 1 John 3:10); it is as strong as the term “Satan,” which Jesus once applies even to Peter, Matt. 16:23. “Devil” designates the real moral nature of Judas and the mind that had finally developed in him. Those other disciples who did not believe in Jesus left him, and nowhere are such men called devils; but Judas remains, remains even as one of the Twelve, remains and consents to Peter’s confession, not with ordinary hypocrisy, but with lying deceit such as Jesus predicates of the very devil himself in 8:44.

So early Judas had completely broken with Jesus. “Is a devil” means now, at this time when Jesus says so, not that he already was a devil when Jesus chose him. When Judas lost his faith we are not told. Now that he has lost much more, we are told of it. This should suffice as the explanation as to why Jesus here makes this revelation. Usually it is assumed that Jesus means to utter only a pastoral warning to the Twelve not to think themselves safe just because he had elected them as apostles; but this is superficial and cannot be established by αὑτοῖς, namely that Jesus here speaks to all of them. He tells them about this “one” at this early time, so that a year from now they may remember how their Master foreknew all that Judas would do.

Secondly, Jesus intends his revelation for Judas personally. This man is to know that Jesus knows him absolutely as just what he is, “a devil.” He deceives his fellow-apostles but not the Son. With all his might Jesus strikes a blow at the conscience of Judas by this word “devil.” In his dealings with this human devil Jesus omits nothing that may frighten him from his course and turn his heart from Satan to his Savior. So great is grace that it goes on with its blessed efforts even where foreknowledge infallibly makes certain that it shall fail. This, too, the Eleven are to remember after Jesus has died and has arisen and they go out on their mission.

John 6:71

71 The fact that Jesus secured this effect of his revelation John shows in his closing statement. Now he was speaking of Judas, the Son of Simon Iscariot; for this one would betray him—one of the Twelve. John gives us the full name of the traitor: “Judas, (son) of Simon Ish-Kerioth” (man of Kerioth, a town in Judea, Josh. 15:25). Some texts have an accusative instead of the last genitive: “Judas Iscariot, (son) of Simon.” The traitor is thus distinguished both from the other Judas among the Twelve and also from the other eleven all of whom were from Galilee. The reflection that he hailed from Judea not from Galilee and thus became the traitor, is rather meaningless. The demonstrative οὗτος fixes our attention upon him in the explanatory remark that he was to become the traitor.

The imperfect ἤμελλε with the present infinitive circumscribes the future tense but is able by means of the imperfect tense of the auxiliary to place this future back to the time when Jesus spoke as he did; the delivering Jesus into the hands of his enemies (παραδιδόναι) was future at that time. John usually reports without a show of feeling on his part. This makes the feeling, here expressed in the final apposition “one of the Twelve,” the more effective. With this tragic apposition John closes the two chapters (five and six) in which he describes the rise of the Jewish opposition to Jesus, first in Judea, then in Galilee, and points in advance to the fatal deed which precipitated the final tragedy. This unspeakable deed was the act of “one of the Twelve.”

R. A Grammar of the Greek New Testament in the Light of Historical Research, by A. T. Robertson, fourth edition.

B.-D. Friedrich Blass’ Grammatik des neutestamentlichen Griechisch, vierte, voellig neugearbeitete Auflage besorgt von Albert Debrunner.

C.-K. Biblisch-theologisches Woerterbuch der Neutestamentlichen Graezitaet von D. D. Hermann Cremer, zehnte, etc., Auflage, herausgegeben von D. Dr. Julius Koegel.