I AM the Bread of Life
John 6:22-51
There are seven I AM statements in the Gospel of John which have predicates which describe something about Jesus. There are also several occurrences of the I AM without a predicate. The way the statement is made in Greek, as it is not grammatically necessary to include to pronoun “ego” as “eimi” means “I am” by itself. By using the emphatic “I AM,” Jesus is echoing Exodus 3:14 where Yahweh names Himself to Moses at the burning bush as “I AM that I AM.” This means that Jesus is making a divine claim for Himself as He is describing Himself as the Yahweh of the Old Testament. The wilderness context of the previous passage where Jesus feeds 5000 men there says that the same Yahweh who brought the manna down from heaven to the Children of Israel is the same one who stood before the crowd and performed the miracle of blessing of a few loaves and fish which fed them all. The leftovers were even greater than what was originally brought.
After the miracle of the 5000, Jesus had sent his disciples away so that they would not be infected with the enthusiasm of the crowd who wanted to arrest Jesus and make Him king. The disciples got held up crossing by the wind and Jesus walked out on the water to meet them. They were of course frightened, but Jesus cheers them up with the words “Be of good cheer. I AM.” The crowds came over to join Jesus on small boats, although Mark indicates others had run on land ahead of the boat when they had crossed over. The crowd gathered together to hear Jesus.
When Jesus started to teach them, He was at the peak of His earthly popularity. By the time Jesus was finished, He would lose most all of them. Here was a man with thousands of followers who was about to be unfriended by them. Jesus knew their hearts. He starts by telling them of their motivation for following Him. They were following Him for what they could get from Him and not out of proper motivation. They had completely missed the sign. All they were concerned about was getting their bellies filled. That bread could only satisfy one’s hunger for a little while. What they really needed was the eternal bread from heaven.
The crowd seemed interested in doing the works of God and asked what they could do. They had seemed unsatisfied with Jesus’ answer to simply believe in Him. They demanded a sign for Jesus to prove who He was. Was not the sign of the feeding of the 5000 in the wilderness enough. They always wanted more. The last sign never satisfied the Children of Israel in the wilderness either. It is the proverbial “What have you done for us lately?” They reminded Jesus that Moses had provided them manna in the wilderness. That claimed for Moses what was really the work of Yahweh. Did Moses really rain bread from heaven upon them? Was not Moses merely the mouthpiece for Yahweh who was the one who rained down the bread? So even in their asking this question, they asked amiss. Jesus reminds them of this truth.
The Father who sent Jesus wanted to give more than just earthly manna. He wanted to give the Children of Israel living bread, which if one ate, they would live forever. This is similar to John 4 where Jesus tells the Samaritan woman that He wanted to give her living water. Earthly water would slake thirst of the body, but Jesus was offering something which would satisfy the thirst of the soul. Jesus in His temptation in the wilderness was told by Satan to turn the rocks into earthly bread to satisfy His hunger. This Jesus has refused to do, quoting Deuteronomy which was spoken by Yahweh to Moses to commit to writing: “Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word which proceeds from the mouth of Yahweh.” Jesus consistently put the value of His teaching above that of performing miracles. The miracles were not ends in themselves. They were signs intended to point men to Himself.
Jesus now says that He Himself is the promised bread who would come down from heaven from the Father. The manna was only an earthly type and sign of this reality. The bread they had just eaten in the wilderness was a sign to this as well. If only the hunger in their bellies had led to their noticing that their own souls were starving. But earthly people are satisfied with earthly sustenance and disregard the greater importance of their eternal destiny. We see this in the Gospel of Mark where the man asks Jesus that if He were willing, He could cleanse him.” This Jesus did, but once the man was healed of his earthly malady, Jesus actually gets cross with the man and throws hi out. He tells him to go see the priests, a command he disobeys. The man had leprosy of the heart as well as body. But he was only interested in his physical malady. He did not care about obedience, which is the fruit of living faith in God.
The crowd which came to Jesus was just like the man with leprosy. Like the Samaritan woman, they asked for the living bread which would satisfy their hunger. It was like that woman who was only looking for a stream of high quality earthly water. She was at that point looking for welfare. She did not want to have to go out into the heat and get somewhat salty well water. Jesus had to set her straight by challenging her. He leads her to the faith and the water He is really talking about. The Samaritan woman repents and believes. But as we shall see, the Jews, through whom salvation was to come would not believe.
In verse 35, Jesus equates Himself with the bread that the Father intended to come down from heaven to give eternal life to everyone else. The definite article says that in this respect, Jesus is different than any bread they knew. This was as exclusive a claim as His I AM statement in 14:6 where Jesus says that He “is the way, the truth, and the life.” No one else, not even Moses is able to meet this need. He first sets out an invitation. The one who comes to him shall never hunger or thirst again. People would of course need earthly food and drink for their bodies, but Jesus is the sole soul food that brings everlasting fulfillment. So far so good.
But Jesus makes a very strong clarification to this invitation introduced by the strong word tin Greek, translated “but.” This word “alla” has the idea of replacing or qualifying what has just been said. The invitation has been sent. If anyone believes, they can come. But no one comes. Jesus notes that they have seen for themselves, yet stubbornly refuse to believe. Had they not come to Jesus? Did they not call themselves His followers. Yet Jesus emphatically denies that they are His followers. For some reason, verses 36-40 are left out of the lectionary which distorts the meaning of the passage considerably. Perhaps what Jesus says sounds too “Calvinistic.” Perhaps moderns are offended that Jesus makes demands that they follow Him on His terms and not theirs. There are some doctrinal issues in these verses, but we have to deal with them as we do not have the right to cut out what offends us in the Bible and only cherry pick the verses we like.
In verse 37, Jesus says “Everyone whom the Father has given to ME will come to me.” Now Jesus was long before Calvin and far greater. It seems impossible to me to evade what is said here. It does not say “All who have free will can come to me.” It says that the Father has granted certain people to come to Jesus. And it also says that all the people God has given Jesus will come. It seems here that it is God who does the deciding. It is what God does and not what we do that matters. We have already seen in this passage that God is not asking us to do great works for Him, but simply believe that the Father has sent His Son. In fact, this is the entire appeal of the Gospel of John.
In the second have of the verse which is an extended parallelism, Jesus also says that he will not throw out anyone who comes to Him. But who will come? Certainly, there are many who came to Jesus. He was speaking to a huge crowd. But in a sense, they were not coming to the Jesus the Father had sent. They thought Jesus was something else, another Moses perhaps. But Jesus was far greater than Moses. I would think they caught the idea of “I AM.” They were absolute monotheists, as long as God was abstract and far off. But they could not accept that Yahweh stood right before them and was speaking to them. They could not accept a God close at hand. The children of Israel in the wilderness did not want to get close to Yahweh either. They told Moses to go up for them. They trembled and feared at a God at hand.
Verses 38-39 give the reason that Jesus would not reject anyone who truly comes to Him. This is because He had come to do the will of the Father. In this He was perfectly obedient. As the Son of God, He was perfectly capable of keeping all whom the Father had trusted Him with. He would lose none of them, but surely resurrect them on the last day. Verse 40 gives the conditions of acceptance. Those who see Him and believe on Him will have everlasting life. He had already compared himself with the serpent lifted up in the wilderness that saved those who believed and looked upon the bronze serpent.
It would be an understatement to say that the Jews’ reception of Jesus’ message was less than favorable. Like their forefathers in the wilderness, they grumbled. Certainly they knew Jesus. He was the son of Joseph and Mary of Nazareth. He was only a mere man. How could He have come down from heaven. Jesus’ response to this grumbling was to further scold the Jews. “Stop grumbling!” He tells them. Then He repeats in effect what He had already said. Only those whom the Father had drawn would truly come to Jesus. These would be saved and have eternal life. The next statement can be taken one of two ways. Jesus said that the prophet stated that everyone would be taught about God, or perhaps by God. Either statement is of course true. Jesus implies that He is the fulfillment of that prophecy. Those who have learned of the Father would come to Jesus who would give them eternal life. Those who don’t come have not properly listened. Their god is other than the God of the Bible.
Jesus reminds them that all who ate the wilderness manna were long dead. They were murmurers also. They grumbled and unbelieved themselves out of the Promised Land. Only Joshua and Caleb who faithfully believed entered from that generation. Now Jesus was promising something far greater than the time of Moses, and they were about to murmur themselves out of the greater promise. They would not eat of this heavenly bread. Just like the Israelites tired of the manna in the wilderness and grumbled, so were the Jews murmuring against Jesus, the heavenly bread. Yet Jesus again repeats that He was the bread of life.
This passage ends with Jesus saying that those who would be saved would have to eat His flesh, This would only escalate the murmuring as we shall see in the next passage.
It would do us well at this point to ponder how this passage affects us. We live in a world of easy believism. Many think of God as an ooey-gooey god of love. And they think of Jesus as “meek and mild.” We want to hold the Christmas baby in our arms. But what do we do with one who is Lord of Heaven and Earth? The same Yahweh who thundered at Sinai is the same Word who became flesh. Is is said by Moses at the mount that he exceedingly feared and trembled. But where is the fear of God today?
The bread is available for the taking. But those who come must come on His terms and not theirs. Instead of seeing salvation as something God owes is, and grace as free for us to choose or not, we should be humble enough to realize that God owes us absolutely nothing. All we deserve is eternal damnation for our disobedience. God is free to offer grace to some, none, or even all. Free grace belongs to God alone. We must appreciate not our own choice but that the Father chose to save rather than destroy. All those who look to Jesus and believe on Him shall be saved. I am not going to try to attempt to reconcile God’s electing sovereignty and the choice of man. Augustine was smart enough to leave it as a mystery, and so shall we. But we should be comforted by the fact that if we believe on and come to Jesus, we shall be eternally secure. But we must come humbly before this throne of grace. We come as supplicants beating our breasts and crying out: “Lord, be merciful to us a sinner.” Until we change our attitude and our presentation of the gospel to agree with the one Jesus preached, there will never be revival.
