John 6

John 6:1-71

Section 2. (John 6:1-71.)Eternal life as a life of faith, and its sustenance. We now have eternal life as a life of faith, a life ministered to and sustained by the bread from heaven, the antitype of the manna, but which (even on that account) transcends it. In the same way as in the last section the history is the text, from which as its occasion the truth is drawn, or which gives shape to it, though this goes far beyond, as there, what the occasion could suggest. The two parts into which the section is in this way naturally divided, are otherwise also in contrast with one another: the first giving the Lord’s presentation to Israel, which was rendered vain by their unbelief; the second, the Christian verity which translates all their blessing into higher truth.

1. (1) The Lord is again in Galilee or the neighborhood, and a great multitude is gathered around him. The question of providing for such a company is raised by the Lord Himself and is addressed to Philip; who replies that it would take more than 200 pence (or denarii) even scantily to supply them. Andrew thereupon suggests that there was a lad there who had five barley loaves and two small fishes; but, as he intimates, there was no real hope in that. Yet the Lord accepts and uses these, even though it veil in some degree the wonder of that which He is about to do. The men are made to sit down, and He blesses and distributes to them; the ministration by disciples, hands is not found in John as in the Synoptists; here we have only the divine hand that really accomplished all. He provides; He ministers: Jehovah, the Creator, in tender care for all; none lost in the general mass; the details cared for, as we see all through nature, not left to the rougher management of subordinates.

By and by, when all are filled, then even the fragments must not be wasted: the very last thing, perhaps, that we should expect from One who could work a miracle like this. But it is not a miracle -a “wonder” merely -but a “sign”: significant all through. Where is the ragged end of nature? where are her mere useless dust-heaps? where will you find the thing she wastes? Nay, her very instruments of destruction are but transformers, and in the interests of preservation: “that nothing be lost” is a principle that runs through all. (2) Christ then is here displayed in divine power amidst the people; and the question comes, as ever, how will they respond to it? They do, in fact, recognize that “this is of a truth that prophet that cometh into the world”; and they would gladly avail themselves of the power manifest, using it, however, for their own ends, and controlling it by their own will. The result is, as the Lord foresees, that they would take Him by force and make Him a King! they would compel Him to be the leader of one of those popular revolts against Roman authority, which at a later time occurred so often. Once committed to it, as they thought, beyond the power of drawing back, He would resign Himself to the will of the multitude and become the Deliverer for which all were looking. How strange a thing is the mind of man, when perverted by that very will which in this case they believe has so much power, but which only avails to cloud all true perception, and to make their reasoning the most pitiable folly. They are going to have a prophet after their own heart, and divine power work at their bidding!

From such reception, which was all that the nation as a whole had for the Deliverer, the Lord necessarily withdraws. He goes up into the mountain, Himself alone, type of that ascension where He was before, which is to follow, and to which He presently refers. Meanwhile His disciples are upon the sea, darkness falling, the sea rising under a contrary wind; and such is the world in the absence of Christ for those that follow Him. “The wicked are like the troubled sea when it cannot rest,” and the “course of this world” which has rejected Him is “according to the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that now worketh in the children of disobedience.” Its being called “the sea of Tiberias” is very significant, the Israelitish city bearing the name of a Roman emperor, the Gentile dominant over those who should have been the people of God, but who are sunk like Jonah in the sea of the nations, even though miraculously preserved. The “ship” in which the disciples are marks these out as a Jewish remnant, which in fact the disciples were when He left the earth, and will be again when He returns to it (see Notes to Matt., p. 158). The Church proper is seen in Peter stepping out upon the waters to go to Jesus; but this we have not here. Only He is seen coming, and they are alarmed, but His word dispels their fear; and when they receive Him into the ship, immediately they are at the land for which they set out. This ends the Jewish part: but which furnishes the principles which are developed and applied in the Lord’s words which follow, and in which the thread of John’s Gospel with its theme, eternal life, is resumed and carried on. 2. The promises to Israel are confirmed and raised to a higher level in Christianity, and thus become the germs and types of fuller and more wondrous blessings. The world in which we are is the world which has rejected Jesus, and into which, as just said, Israel through unbelief has sunk, and for the meantime lost her place and blessing. Into her place on earth the Church is come, but as a pilgrim and a stranger only, with blessings in a higher sphere. That which is abnormal to Israel, to be a stranger and pilgrim upon earth, is normal to the Church. (1) The multitude seek for Jesus, in ships that have reached the place of the miraculous supply of food since the disciples left it in the only one there. Jesus had not gone with the disciples, that they know; but they follow the disciples to the city of His adoption, Capernaum, and to their astonishment find Him there. They ask Him in astonishment “when” -which involves the question, “how -He got there.” But He has no reply to that; only a rebuke for the motive which made them follow Him. It was not because they saw signs: that is, not because they had realized the significance of His miracles. Had they done so, they would have been brought by them into the presence of God; and He would have got His place in their souls. But it was not so: they had but eaten of the loaves and been filled!

Food that perisheth for the life that passeth: that was all that they were in pursuit of; let them work rather for the food that abideth, and that ministers to a life which is eternal. What a contrast between these! He does not yet say that He Himself is the bread of life. He would, as with the woman of Samaria, fix their eyes upon the imperishable and eternal, and wake up in them heart-hunger after these. Till they had this, all else would be a riddle which they would not even care to solve. But He tells them that this food the Son of man would give them, not now the Son of God. As Creator He could by the mere act of His will furnish abundantly what this life required; but the food of eternal life only the Son of man could give them: for that, He must become the Son of man; man, in unique humanity; amid all the sons of men, the Son of man. What a difference between the work of creation, with all its display of wisdom, power and goodness, and the amazing self-sacrifice of redemption by a Son of man! The Lord does not, and could not say, “Work for the life,” but for the “food” of the life. The life itself is the fundamental, primary gift which alone makes possible any right working. The dead cannot work into life, but the Lord quickens by His voice, as we have seen. Here we are in another line of things, and there is something for man to do, though he cannot give himself life. When they take Him to mean working works, He tells them that God’s work -the thing He wanted them to do -was to “believe on Him whom He had sent.” But they had been “working” to get that food with which He had fed them; and, great as was the miracle, the food itself was but that of the earthly life. Ah, if they would take the same pains, if they would show the same eagerness, to get the bread of life eternal.

He who had given them the one had been appointed and accredited of God with the seal of the Spirit (as after His baptism by John) to give them the other. Indeed, the bread itself was sealed and certified to them at the same time, the incorruptible food of an imperishable life; and Gift and Giver were the same blessed Person. The multitude, however, at once take openly the position of unbelievers. They can ask Him in the face of the miracle what He is working, and then, naturally enough from the standpoint of those who follow Him because they have eaten of the loaves and been filled, point to the sustenance of Israel by the manna forty years in the wilderness as indeed what they might call a proper “sign.” The Lord answers that the true bread from heaven is not that which Moses gave, but that which His Father gives, and that is He who cometh down from heaven, and giveth life unto the world. There they are brought face to face with that upon which all now depends for them. Eternal life is there for their acceptance or rejection in the Bread of Life, the true Manna, which is Christ Himself. Faith in Him would make them partakers of this precious gift which was not for Israel only but for the world. Wherever the need might be, here was the sufficient supply, free to all that welcomed it. He who had come down from heaven to man sought but for a welcome: how often has He sought in vain! (2) The response, however, seems at first in this case to be all that one could desire. Like the woman of Samaria, and without exposing their ignorance as she did hers, they ask for the gift of which He had spoken. “Lord,” they say, “evermore give us this bread.” How like two cases may be that are nevertheless essentially different! and He who “knew all men, and needed not that any should testify of man,” could not be deceived. Nevertheless, He insists emphatically on the value of the gift: “I am the bread of life: he that cometh to Me shall never hunger, and he that believeth on Me shall never thirst.” This is exactly in the line of what He said at Sychar to the woman, and a little fuller, pointing more to the necessity of faith, and to its character, not as mere belief in a fact, but reliance upon a Person, in whom the fulness of satisfaction was to be found. But alas, this insistence upon faith is no good sign for those to whom. He is speaking; for where faith is, it does not need to turn in upon itself, and does not grow by self-occupation. Nor does he who hungers and thirsts need to be told that the mere contemplation of a feast will not satisfy, but only the appropriation of it.

But here was the feast spread and the welcome and a wonderful assurance: once more, perhaps, as with the parallel saying to the woman, that which may rebuke also the poverty of faith in those who have it, and to understand it we must remember that that first coming to Christ which is once for all, yet implies also a constancy of coming for all needs, an hourly dependence, and a simplicity in taking Him for all; a refusal of all helps to eke out His sufficiency by other means. In this it is that want of truth to Him will make our experience fail in just that measure. Drinking of this world’s water we shall thirst again; going to the world for help, like Abraham with his face towards the south, there will come a famine in our own things, even when we would fain enjoy them. A dishonored Christ will fail to satisfy. Let us not impute to Him what is due to the dishonor we have done Him. We must take Him for all, to find Him all-sufficient. But with the crowd now following the Lord there was not even the most rudimentary faith. “I said unto you, that ye have seen Me even and believe not.” The work He had done they had to acknowledge, and for this they followed Him; but it was their bodies that got the food; they had known neither spiritual hunger nor supply. They had seen Him (as declared in the miracle), but they had not believed. And such is man universally: what hope, then, as to any? The answer given by the Lord is, There is hope in God alone: “All that the Father giveth Me will come to Me”; there is not merely hope, therefore, but certainty that, spite of all the opposition of the human heart to God, Christ shall not lose that which divine love in Him has sought. How fully sure is it then that He can add, “And him that cometh unto Me, I will in no wise cast out.” To reject the gift of His Father’s love would be indeed an impossibility. Even in this, that oneness of His will with the Father’s which He has before asserted, displays itself: “For I came down from heaven, not to do Mine own will, but the will of Him that sent Me.” The love that is in His heart towards men works in absolute conformity to the Father’s will; and necessarily, for “God is love,” and therefore the will of God is the activity of Love itself.

Father and Son are in absolute unity, therefore, here: the Son devoting Himself to carry out the salvation which is of God for man. “And this,” He adds, “is the will of Him that sent Me, that of all which He hath given Me I should lose nothing, but should raise it up at the last day.” Resurrection has thus to come in for the fulfilment of what He is speaking of. Israel rejecting Him, as He sees in the crowds that are now about Him, the Kingdom which had been announced as at hand would be delayed, and faith might have to wait for the accomplishment of what it sought in resurrection. And in any case, resurrection must come in at the “last day” (the close of Israel’s age of law), and before the Kingdom. Death must be swallowed up in victory (Isaiah 25:8) or how much would be lost! and He it is who must accomplish this. He repeats this immediately, only in a somewhat stronger way, that “this is the Father’s will, that whosoever seeth the Son and believeth on Him should have eternal life, and He would raise him up at the last day.” This is surely not meant to set aside the duty of watching for the Lord, on the part of believers of that time, nor to say, therefore, that all would necessarily die, to be raised up. The quickening of the mortal body (Romans 8:11), in the case of those who are alive when the Lord comes, brings into the complete likeness of the risen saint, and is an action of the same character as resurrection. For His present purpose it was not needful to distinguish between them. Israel’s seeing and not believing on Him was to be made the occasion of the call of a people characteristically heavenly, and to this the words before us point. But the Jews murmur at the greatness of His claim. To them He is but the son of Joseph: they know as they think, both His father and His mother; and how then can He say He has come down from heaven? Jesus only replies that, except the Father draw him, no one can come to Him; and such an one He will raise up at the last day. Then He explains that this drawing is by divine enlightenment, as the prophets had spoken of being taught of God. Every one who had heard from the Father and learned of Him came to Jesus. And yet, on the other hand, no one had actually seen the Father but Himself, who was of Him. Thus man with his back to the light walks in his own shadow, with God unknown; and God has to pursue him with that unwelcome light, make him to realize his condition and his need of Jesus, that he may find the unseen Father in the Son. Here, then, the bread of life -the means of eternal life -is found. Those who ate the manna in the desert nevertheless died. For him who eats of the true heavenly bread, there is no real death: he will live forever. The lost knowledge of God, the moral link with Him, has been restored; and this is a life which so possessed will endure. The estrangement from God, which brought in death -which is in itself death -is over. Divine life -the divine nature -is in him who by faith in Christ is reconciled to God. But for this another thing is needed, which the Lord now goes on to, and which the manna fails even to represent. The bread from heaven it does, Christ in humiliation, in the wilderness of the world; yet abiding as the “hidden manna” -the manna preserved in the ark -for the land also; like the bread that abideth to eternal life. But now the manna fails to represent that which we find in the “bread of God,” which now assumes a sacrificial character: “the bread that I will give is My flesh, which I will give for the life of the world.” (3) Immediately there is a a clamor again. “The Jews” -who are probably here, as they are more distinctly in the next chapter, the Judeans, in contrast with the Galileans, and always His bitterest adversaries -“the Jews therefore contended with one another, saying, How can this man give us His flesh to eat?” There were with them no spiritual needs to make them infer a spiritual meaning, and the Lord does not explain. We shall find presently that when He does so, it has no effect in preventing many even of His professing disciples dropping off from Him. Here He only insists the more on the truth and necessity of what He is declaring. With another of His strong affirmations, He carries His statement further than before, and gives it fuller emphasis: “Except ye eat the flesh of the Son of man, and drink His blood, ye have no life in you: he that eateth My flesh and drinketh My blood hath eternal life, and I will raise him up at the last day. For My flesh is truly food, and my blood is truly drink.” They were accustomed to such figurative speech; and the words would not sound as if they had been spoken elsewhere than in that eastern land. Moreover the impossibility of taking them literally would seem apparent, while the sacrificial system of the law would naturally suggest the thought of reference to it in the words of Christ. But to drink the blood of the offering was in entire opposition to the law, which forbade the drinking of any blood. Yet the giving His flesh for the life of the world, of which He had spoken, could be nothing else but sacrificial, while the feeding upon the flesh by any other than the priests could only apply to the peace-offering. Our Christian knowledge enables us easily to put by the side of our Lord’s words passages from the Old Testament history, the prophets and the psalms, which should have helped the listeners to understand their application. In their own Targums stands recorded their own interpretation Messianically (partially, at least) of Isaiah 53:1-12 and Psalms 22:1-31; Psalms 40:1-17, besides much else. But the conclusion was unwelcome to their unhumbled pride, and Christ crucified was “to the Jew a stumbling-block.” Let us turn from them to consider for ourselves what His words mean. Appropriating faith could hardly be more vividly pictured than in the eating and drinking of Christ’s flesh and blood. The Supper of the Lord has kept continually before us the language here, which ritualism would spoil by insisting upon a real partaking in a so-called “sacrament” of a living instead of a dead Christ. Its being His death in which at His table we remember Him takes away the whole foundation of a doctrine which debases and carnalizes what is of the deepest spiritual import. We need not take it up here where we are warned on every side that it cannot be an ordinance of which the Lord is speaking when He says, “Except ye eat and drink, ye have no life in you,” any more than when on the other hand He says, “He that eateth and drinketh hath eternal life.” The ordinance speaks of that of which the words speak; and the truth is symbolized in act there, and in words here. Let us note that on the one side, if we eat not we have no life, -nothing that can properly be called that: if we have eaten we have eternal life: eternal life or no spiritual life at all: that is what the Lord’s “verily, verily” affirms. Moreover, He is speaking of life in you: the eternal life is therefore in you; otherwise it would be saying, if you eat not you have no life in you, while yet, if you eat, you still have no life in you: which would be, of course, too incongruous to maintain. Christ’s flesh is given for the life of the world, and here the flesh and blood are apart: this is a sacrificial death, in which, according to the law, the blood was carefully poured out before the flesh was either burned or eaten. There was an exception to this, when the sin-offering was burned outside the camp; but this is the peace-offering; which, while it does not go so fully into the work of atonement, dwells more upon the effect of it. The passover had this character, where the whole household fed upon that the blood of which was on the door-posts. Accordingly it is the “passover, the feast of the Jews,” which was at hand when these words were spoken. The difference between the flesh and blood is evident. The “blood is the life”; and “it is the blood that maketh atonement for the soul.” Thus it speaks of the work accomplished, as only in death could it be accomplished; while the flesh is the victim that has died; in type, the Person of the Lord Himself. Thus the Person is first dwelt upon, the Bread from heaven; and then “the bread which I will give is My flesh.” The drinking the blood is characteristic of Christianity, as compared with that which was before it. The work is known and entered into, with its blessed effect as bringing us to God. Death has become the sustenance of Life. It is not however of the present power of resurrection of which the Lord speaks here, but of going on to it as that in which our portion is. Christ having gone out of the world by death, and we having entered into the fellowship of His death, we wait to be with Him. Of this identification of ourselves with Him, and of Himself with us He goes on to speak. His flesh is truly food, His blood is truly drink. The food we take becomes by assimilation part of our very selves; and this wondrous food which has in it the true and eternal life (we being the dead and it the living) works “contrary to nature” to assimilate us to itself. Thus we abide in Him and He in us: Christ makes us His own, and then lives in us as His own. He compares with this even His own human life as sent of the Father. As Man, He thus lived by reason of the Father, the Father’s will being that which He was here to carry out. Even so with him in whom Christ as received by him abides, he lives by reason of Christ: Christ it is who is the explanation of his life, its thought and purpose. This is a life which is true life, a life therefore over which hangs no shadow of death: it abides for ever. (4) But even to many of His disciples this was a hard saying, and they stumbled at it. They were thinking of the “Kingdom and glory,” and wanted nothing of the “Kingdom and patience” which must precede it. To eat and drink into His death, whatever this might mean, was not the fulfilment of their carnal expectations. They had in truth no heart to inquire further, and stopped at the mere letter and the flesh. The Lord assures them therefore, He was going up where He was before. As to what He had been saying, the flesh could profit nothing; the Spirit of God alone could give life, and His words were spiritual -suited to the work of the Spirit -and quickening where He wrought.

But some of them had no receptive power -no faith; and here He spoke with the consciousness which had been ever present with Him, of who it was that believed not, and how unbelief would end in apostasy and betrayal. He could find no hope but in that love-gift of the Father, of which He had spoken, and which assured Him of a people that should come to Him. Thus He was prepared for rejection; and they took Him at His word, and rejected Him. “Upon this many of His disciples went back and walked no more with Him.” Such was the dropping off that He had reason to turn even to the twelve and ask, Were they going too? Faith in Simon Peter answered for the rest, there was no other to whom to go: it was, and so it has remained, Christ or none at all! And for those for whom it is so there are “words of eternal life” which are found with Him; all the more surely that, as they are unacceptable to carnal men: words which in their unearthly purity proclaim indeed the “Holy One of God.” Peter speaks for them all, but they are not in fact united in the same testimony: for now as the truth develops, and the light shines amid the darkness, the darkness gathers strength in opposition to it. This seems to be the time when in the defection going on among professed disciples, the heart of Judas begins to conceive its first malignant schemes of hostility to the Lord. His character is at least now formed as what the Lord declares him to be, a “false accuser” -a “devil.” The seed of the betrayal has already taken root within him.