Accepting the Bread of Life
John 6:41–51
John Lesson #049
May 16, 1999
www.deanbibleministries.org
In this chapter Jesus is going to say certain things and if with miss this context of the crowd emphasising their own authority to set the standards, their own authority to set the agenda, that the crowd is making a strong claim to autonomy then when we look at what Jesus says well will miss the boat and will end up like many hyper-Calvinists and misinterpret some of His statements to say that God has all the say and man has no say. Jesus is going to make some strong claims to God's authority in this chapter, but the reason He does that is because the crowd is claiming to be the ultimate authority in the universe. What Jesus is doing in making these statements is bringing them back to the reality that God is the ultimate initiator of everything in human history and He is the one who controls human history, not at the expense of individual responsibility of human volition but that the emphasis on individual responsibility is not autonomy. There is a difference. Dependence on the authority of God, orientation to the authority of God, dos not negate human responsibility and individual volition. God decreed in eternity past that His sovereignty would coexist with human responsibility and volition in human history, He will not override it but He will superintend and control history to bring out His end without violating human volition.
We saw last time that Jesus began the bread of life discourse in Capernaum. The people came to Him and Jesus said: "Truly, truly, I say to you, you seek Me, not because you saw signs, but because you ate of the loaves and were filled." They are operating on a physical plane and a material and political agenda. Jesus must shift their focus. This is the hardest thing to do with people who are locked into a materialistic mindset. He tries to shift their focus from the physical to the spiritual, John 6:27 NASB "Do not work for the food which perishes, but for the food which endures to eternal life, which the Son of Man will give to you, for on Him the Father, God, has set His seal."
Then He begins a discourse in verse 32: "Truly, truly, I say to you, it is not Moses who has given you the bread out of heaven, but it is My Father who gives you the true bread out of heaven. [33] For the bread of God is that which comes down out of heaven, and gives life to the world. [34] Then they said to Him, 'Lord, always give us this bread'." They really don't want the bread, they are still thinking materially. They are like the woman at the well when Jesus promised to give her water that springs forth to eternal life. She says, "Where is this water?" She is thinking physically and they are thinking physically as well. [35] Jesus said to them, "I am the bread of life; he who comes to Me will not hunger, and he who believes in Me will never thirst." This is the other important verse for properly interpreting this whole section. The main verb there is "come," the normal everyday word for coming or entering some place. In this verse erchomai [e)rxomai] is used in synonymous parallelism with faith, pistis [pistij]. That tells us that from now on when we see the word erchomai in the text we need to think "believe." That is what Jesus means—the person who comes to Him by faith alone in Christ alone, the person who accepts the free gift of salvation. He who accepts the free gift will not hunger; he who believes in Him shall never thirst.
Now we start in verse 41. It is uncertain whether this was one long discourse by the Lord or whether if He was in Capernaum He taught in one place and then moved to another place, and in between there is the reaction of the Jews. This is probably the way it works until He ends up in the synagogue at Capernaum where He teaches them. The interesting thing in terms of background is that archaeologists have recovered the site of the synagogue in Capernaum. It is interesting to note that over the lintel of the entrance there are various figures carved. The figures are of God giving manna to the Israelites in the wilderness in the Old Testament. The backdrop for this whole chapter is found in Exodus chapter sixteen. Jesus has taught them that He is the bread of life that has come down from heaven. Notice the negative response of the Jews. John 6:41 NASB "Therefore the Jews were grumbling about Him, because He said, 'I am the bread that came down out of heaven'." They were grumbling. This is the Greek imperfect active indicative of gonguzo [gogguzw] which means to murmur, to grumble, to complain, to gripe. Their focus is on Him, they are rejecting His provision, His proposal. So Jesus challenges them at the very point, the very assumption of their human viewpoint agenda. What we see here is a conflict between Jesus and the multitude. Whose agenda is going to prevail? To understand this we have to look at Exodus chapter 16.
The Israelites have been emancipated from slavery in Egypt, have crossed the Red Sea, and now they are in the wilderness and there is no food for them. Exodus 16:2 NASB "The whole congregation of the sons of Israel grumbled against Moses and Aaron in the wilderness…" [7] "… and in the morning you will see the glory of the LORD, for He hears your grumblings against the LORD; and what are we, that you grumble against us? [8] Moses said, '{This will happen} when the LORD gives you meat to eat in the evening, and bread to the full in the morning; for the LORD hears your grumblings which you grumble against Him. And what are we? Your grumblings are not against us but against the LORD'. [9] Then Moses said to Aaron, 'Say to all the congregation of the sons of Israel, "Come near before the LORD, for He has heard your grumblings"…" [12] "I have heard the grumblings of the sons of Israel; speak to them, saying, 'At twilight you shall eat meat, and in the morning you shall be filled with bread; and you shall know that I am the LORD your God'." So if we were going to choose a key word for this passage it would be "grumblings," the griping and complaining of the Israelites. God has provided so much for them, He has delivered them from slavery, but they have no doctrine, no capacity to appreciate their new freedom because they are focused on a political solution and not the spiritual solution. This is the exodus generation and the majority of these Jews are believers, in contrast to John chapter six where the majority are unbelievers.
But there is a parallel between the two events, and it is intentional. In Exodus 16 it is Yahweh who provides for the physical nourishment of the Jews in the task of going through the wilderness of Sin. Exodus 16:9 NASB "Then Moses said to Aaron, 'Say to all the congregation of the sons of Israel, "Come near before the LORD, for He has heard your grumblings"." Verse 4 NASB "Then the LORD said to Moses, 'Behold, I will rain bread from heaven for you; and the people shall go out and gather a day's portion every day, that I may test them, whether or not they will walk in My instruction'." Notice it is a daily provision. God does not dump it all at once, it is one day at a time. Why? What is God teaching? He is teaching some fundamental principles that we must have if we are going to advance in the spiritual life. 1) The faith-rest drill, constant dependence upon God, mixing faith with the promises of God. 2) Grace orientation. That God is going to provide enough for everybody, whether they are obedient, disobedient, believer or unbeliever. He is going to provide for everybody on a day-by-day basis. 3) They have to become oriented to doctrine—"that I may test them, whether or not they will walk in My instruction." That is doctrinal orientation.
What we see here is that God has devised ten stress-busters. They begin with getting into the plan of God, or recovery through confession and the filling of the Holy Spirit. This is followed by the faith-rest drill, grace orientation, and doctrinal orientation. These five stress-busters basically define spiritual infancy. When you are a brand new believer, a spiritual baby, you are commanded to desire, i.e. to hunger for, to make a priority of being nourished by the Word of God. Then there are three spiritual skills. A skill is something you have to practice, a technique, something you have to master in order to handle certain circumstances. This is so that when we get to certain application situations or tests we have practiced these things and can use them. So we have a responsibility as a believer every time we get into situations to think, think. Am I going to operate on doctrine or human viewpoint at this point? What is the doctrine to apply? These are the fundamental stress-busters that characterise spiritual childhood and infancy.
The fifth is a personal sense of our eternal destiny. This is where we learn that we are living today in order to prepare for eternity, that the decisions we make today determine who will be in all of eternity. This is where we begin to shift from childhood to adulthood, and that is known as spiritual adolescence. It is at this point that most believers bail out and fail in the spiritual life.
Then we get into the adult characteristics. Numbers 7, 8 and 9 are the love triplex. These are related to one another and they build together. The first is personal love for God, then impersonal love for all mankind or unconditional love, and then, 10, occupation with Christ where we put our focus, the focus of our adoration, our attention, on the person of Jesus Christ. The result of all of this is the inner happiness, the joy of Jesus Christ where we share the happiness of God in our life.
These are the stress-busters that God has provided for us to handle every situation in life. Faith-rest drill, grace orientation and doctrinal orientation become fundamental to any advance in the spiritual life. That is why when God brings the Jews out of Egypt the first thing He is teaching them has to do with daily physical nourishment and sustenance, and they have to rely upon God day by day, moment by moment, and they are learning these three things together. These are the same things that Jesus is teaching in John chapter six.
Exodus 16:12 NASB "I have heard the grumblings of the sons of Israel; speak to them, saying, 'At twilight you shall eat meat, and in the morning you shall be filled with bread; and you shall know that I am the LORD your God.' [13] So it came about at evening that the quails came up and covered the camp, and in the morning there was a layer of dew around the camp. [14] When the layer of dew evaporated, behold, on the surface of the wilderness there was a fine flake-like thing, fine as the frost on the ground. [15] When the sons of Israel saw {it,} they said to one another, 'What is it?' For they did not know what it was. And Moses said to them, 'It is the bread which the LORD has given you to eat'."
In John 6 nothing has changed. They are still in reaction to the provision of God. God chose Israel not because they would be the most spiritually mature people on earth but probably because of their reaction, because He would show that they are the most obstinate, stiff-necked people, and that if He will be gracious enough to save them then He will save everyone. They are still operating on human viewpoint, they are not operating on faith, and so when Jesus says that He is the bread that came down out of heaven they reject that.
Look at their response. They try to refute His argument and disprove His claim by taking a superficial approach. John 6:42 NASB "They were saying, 'Is not this Jesus, the son of Joseph, whose father and mother we know? How does He now say, "I have come down out of heaven"?" Notice Jesus' response. He is hardnosed here. John 6:43 NASB "Jesus answered and said to them, 'Do not grumble among yourselves. [44] No one can come to Me unless the Father who sent Me draws him; and I will raise him up on the last day'." This is a very important verse, a verse that is often taken out of context, often mistranslated, and often used by hyper-Calvinists to argue for what they call "irresistible grace." That is a misinterpretation of this passage.
Remember the context. They are asserting their authority over against God's authority. They are on negative volition, they are resisting common grace. At the point of God-consciousness they were negative to God. Jesus begins in v. 44 by saying, "No one can come to Me." In the Greek there is a compound pronoun oudeis [o)udeij]—o)u = negative; eij = one. This is an exclusive term and means every member of the human race; "can come to me" is where we come to the verb, which is the aorist active indicative of dunamai [dunamai]. Usually it is translated "can," it is the word for ability and the word from which we get our English word dynamite. Plus the infinitive of erchomai [e)rxomai], to come. So, "No one has the ability to come to me." What does that mean? Remember the context, go back to verse 35. What Jesus means by coming to Him is believing in Him. So this is synonymous with belief or faith alone in Christ alone. "unless the Father who sent Me draws him." What is this saying? It is saying that God exercised in eternity past what is called antecedent [because it comes prior] grace. This is the divine initiative in eternity past to establish a plan of salvation to overcome the resistance of the sin nature and bring men into a saving relationship with Him. It is what we normally refer to as the council of divine decrees and God's establishment of the plan of salvation in eternity past. What this passage is saying is that God took the initiative in eternity past in order to provide salvation for the human race. "… the Father who sent Me." He is subtly reminding them of His own authority orientation, that He is totally subservient to the Father. He is not acting independently of the Father's plan, as they are, but He is acting in dependence upon the Father's plan. Then we have the important verb "draws him." This is the aorist active subjunctive of helkuo [e(lkuw]. The word means to draw, to drag, to attract, or to pull something that gives resistance and to overcome that resistance.
We will come across some Calvinists at some point who will create a semantic fallacy that is called an illegitimate totality transfer. To explain that, every word that we utter has a root meaning. But then it has some secondary meaning and various other nuances and shades of meaning. In John 21:11 Peter drew the net to land. He is pulling the fish against their will, they don't want to be caught. So there is a nuance of dragging against the will. We also have that nuance in Acts 16:19: "…they seized Paul and Silas and dragged them into the market place before the authorities." Is that nuance of against the will inherent to the root meaning of the word helkuo? No. But what happens is when you make that the root meaning then you end up making John 6:44 say that God drags everybody into salvation and overcomes their volition. In other words, God is the one dragging everybody kicking and screaming into the kingdom of heaven and nobody wants to go there. Calvinists define the T in their acronym TULIP as total depravity, and how they define total depravity is crucial because their definition is that man, because he is a sinner cannot and will not ever want to know God, he will always resist God and is hell-bent on rejection of God no matter what God does. And God must choose them and drag them into the kingdom in order for them to be saved because man can't even will it on his own. That loads the whole TULIP with the fact that man will never exercise positive volition.
A better understanding of it is total inability, i.e. that man is totally unable to do anything to save himself; God had to do everything. That is what we believe and affirm.
What are some other meanings of helkuo? If against the will is not part of the inherent meaning how do we prove that? John 12:32 NASB "And I, if I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all men to Myself." Not just some men, not just believers, but all men to Himself. There it has the basic meaning of attraction. Of the six uses of this word in the New Testament all but one is in John. In John 18:10 he uses the word: "Simon Peter then, having a sword, drew it and struck the high priest's slave…" He draws the sword out of the scabbard, there is no resistance there. In fact, if you are a good soldier and you know that you have to use this weapon in battle you want it to come out of that scabbard with as little resistance as possible. So we see that the idea of resistance and against the will is not an inherent nuance of the word but is just there is some contexts. The basic meaning is to attract or to draw, and the way that God draws all men to Himself is through the gospel message of the cross. So Jesus is saying that God will take the initiative in the plan of salvation but the individual has to respond and accept the gospel.
John 6:45 NASB "It is written in the prophets, 'AND THEY SHALL ALL BE TAUGHT OF GOD.' Everyone who has heard and learned from the Father, comes to Me." Jesus tightens up His argument." The last sentence here is a summary statement. The verse break here is bad. The first half of the verse is a quote from the Old Testament in a new covenant passage. Isaiah 54:13 NASB "Is 54:13 "All your sons will be taught of the LORD…" The context of Isaiah 54 is that this is a prediction of what will take place in the Millennial kingdom when Messiah comes and it emphasises the ultimate source of learning spiritual truth. We are taught of God. How do we learn spiritual truth? Because God teaches it to us. Man on his own cannot understand the things of God because we are spiritually brain dead and it is God the Holy Spirit who makes these things clear to us. God the Holy Spirit functions at the moment of God-consciousness as the human spirit. Jesus is not interpreting the passage, He is just quoting it to establish His point that ultimately people learn spiritual truth directly from God. Then He concludes: "Everyone who has heard and learned from the Father, comes to Me." Once again He is identifying Himself closely with the Father. If you believe the Father you will come to me; if you don't believe the Father you won't come to me. His sub-text is: You are rejecting the Father. You have rejected the Father's provision so you are not going to come to me. You have been negative at God-consciousness, you are negative at gospel hearing and you are not accepting me. Then He goes on to talk about the fact that everyone learns revelation of God.
John 6:46 NASB "Not that anyone has seen the Father, except the One who is from God; He has seen the Father." Cf. John 1:18: "No one has seen God at any time; the only begotten God who is in the bosom of the Father, He has explained {Him.}" It is Jesus Christ, the second person of the Trinity who is the revealer of God the Father. All revelation comes from God because He is the only one who has immediate knowledge of God. He has immediate and complete intimacy with God the Father because they are one. They are distinct persons but they are one in essence. He knows everything that God has because the Scriptures are the mind of Christ, 1 Corinthians 2:16, and He is revealing His thinking to us in the 66 books of the Bible.
John 6:47 NASB "Truly, truly, I say to you, he who believes has eternal life. [48] I am the bread of life." Here He uses the phrase ego eimi [e)gw e)imi], I AM, the personal name of God in the Old Testament, Yahweh. Jesus again claims full deity. Then He drives home the point. [49] "Your fathers ate the manna in the wilderness, and they died." What happened in the Old Testament was just a physical miracle in order to demonstrate a spiritual reality. They ate the manna in the wilderness and they died, it wasn't enough to sustain them forever. Remember, the Passover is approaching. Passover took place when God redeemed the nation out of Egypt, then they went into the wilderness where God fed them by means of manna. What we have seen is that that is a picture of three things: the faith-rest drill, grace orientation, and doctrinal orientation. Why is eating used as an illustration of this? First of all, eating in non-meritorious; everybody can eat. The issue is grace and God's provision. Every single day we have to eat and that stresses the continual orientation to grace, day in and day out. Then, eating is mandatory for life. If you don't eat you don't live. We have to eat to have physical life; we have to eat in order to nourish our spiritual life.
1 Corinthians 10:1 NASB "For I do not want you to be unaware, brethren, that our fathers were all under the cloud and all passed through the sea; [2] and all were baptized into Moses in the cloud and in the sea; [3] and all ate the same spiritual food." The manna was physical food but it represented spiritual food and grace orientation. Eating the physical food was an illustration of relying on grace. [4] "and all drank the same spiritual drink, for they were drinking from a spiritual rock which followed them; and the rock was Christ." Notice verse 6: "Now these things happened as examples for us, so that we would not crave evil things as they also craved." The Old Testament is examples for us.
John 6:50 NASB "This is the bread which comes down out of heaven, so that one may eat of it and not die." When they ate the physical bread they died, but if you eat the spiritual bread, which is Jesus Christ, you will not die. He is promising eternal life. Then He identifies Himself. [51] "I am the living bread that came down out of heaven; if anyone eats of this bread, he will live forever; and the bread also which I will give for the life of the world is My flesh." This verse is a notorious verse in the Scriptures. This verse has nothing at all to do with communion. "If anyone eats" is a 3rd class condition: maybe they will; maybe they won't. The word for "eat" is the aorist active subjunctive of phago [fagw]. If this was a present tense verb it would be continual action in present time. Aorist is past, it is a summation, it is all summed up at one point. What He is saying is, you eat once. That is salvation.
In verse 52 the Jews misunderstand this and they take the metaphor, flesh, literally. There are many Christians throughout history who have made that same mistake. John 6:52 NASB "Then the Jews {began} to argue with one another, saying, 'How can this man give us {His} flesh to eat?'" He is not talking literally, He is talking metaphorically.