Priorities, Doctrine, and the Spirit
John 6:60–71
John Lesson #051
May 30, 1999
www.deanbibleministries.org
John 6:51 NASB “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.”
Here we have an analogy. The bread represents His flesh, and His flesh is really a figure of speech, a metaphor which stands for His body. Bread is related to hunger. And Jesus makes it even more clear. [53] “So Jesus said to them, ‘Truly, truly, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink His blood, you have no life in yourselves. [54] He who eats My flesh and drinks My blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day.”
Hunger is satisfied by eating the flesh; thirst is satisfied by drinking the blood. This is metaphorical language here. He is using it to relate to want He has already said before, coming and believing. So eating the flesh and drinking the blood represent accepting Jesus. The eating is something that becomes part of your life, you appropriate it for yourself; that is what the image represents here. Jesus is saying: “Unless you believe in me…” He is making it very graphic here and He is using terminology that is just going to grate on the Jewish consciousness. In v. 54 He changes the word for eating from the Greek word esthio [e)sqiw], the normal word for “eat,” to trogo [trwgw] which has the idea of eating with enjoyment, sitting down to a favourite meal and relishing it. Why is He doing this? Because He is emphasising that they need to be orienting more to grace. There is a pleasure in relying upon Jesus Christ. He just keep upping the ante here and emphasising, contrasting their rejection of grace to God’s provision of grace. The background to this is the stumbling that this is causing and which is introduced in verse 60 NASB “Therefore many of His disciples, when they heard {this} said, ‘This is a difficult statement; who can listen to it?’” Up to this point Jesus has been talking. Now from v. 60 down to v. 71 the apostle John is going to give us a few more editorial comments to help us understand the dynamics that are taking place here.
What is a disciple? The term is from the Greek word mathetes [maqhthj]. It is a word that is misunderstood by many and we have to be careful with it because it has different connotations in the Scripture. The basic meaning is a disciple, a learner, or a student. So we need to retranslate this: “Therefore many of His students, when they heard {this} said …” We are to be students of Jesus Christ and students of His Word. It is used a little more technically to refer not just to a student but to a student who is very positive to the Word. This refers to a believer. It is not synonymous to a believer, not all believers are disciples. A disciple is a maturing believer who is advancing to spiritual adulthood and spiritual maturity. So there is the general sense of just a student, a little more technical sense of a positive believer who is advancing to spiritual maturity, and then the third sense is one of the twelve.
In this passage Jesus talks about three groups of people. He talks about the Jews, e.g. v. 41, 52 where the Jews were grumbling and arguing. This is a reference to those Jews who are negative to the gospel and have rejected Jesus Christ as their saviour. The next group He refers to are the disciples, the general crowd who are believers but not the twelve. Later on He will talk about the twelve, starting in v. 66.
So now, as He has advanced His teaching of doctrine and clarified who He is and His claims, it becomes harder and harder for them to accept and understand what He is saying. The NASB translates this “difficult statement,” and that dilutes the meaning a little. It is the Greek word skleros [sklhroj] which means a harsh, abrupt, abrasive statement. It grates on them. When they here this something inside just tightens up. They can’t understand this, it goes beyond what they are willing to accept. It is not that they don’t understand what He is saying. They do understand what He is saying and they understand what the implications of what He is calling for, a hundred per cent commitment to God’s plan and program, not just salvation, and they are not ready to do that.
John 6:61 NASB “But Jesus, conscious that His disciples grumbled at this, said to them, ‘Does this cause you to stumble?’” Once again, this is a bad translation. “Conscious” is the Greek verb from oida [o)ida] meaning to know, plus the phrase en eauto [e)n e)autw] which means “in Himself.” So He knew in Himself. This relates to the omniscience of God and is a reminder by the apostle John that Jesus knew what was in all men—John 2:24, 25. Jesus knows that there are believers out there who are reacting to the statement and who are beginning to complain. The word “stumble” is the Greek word skandalizo [skandalizw]. This is an interesting word that has as its etymological root the idea of falling into a trap. It is derived from an original reference to a bait set in a trap or a snare. It came to be used metaphorically to refer to something that ensnared someone, and by that it came to refer to something that became a hindrance in a person’s life and caused them to fall by the wayside. It eventually came to mean to become offended or to cause offence. Here it has the idea of causing an offence. So Jesus says to them: “Does this cause you offence?” That is a clue to understanding part of what is happening here.
Remember that Jesus is dealing with two issues and both relate to His work on the cross. He is talking about those who will come to Him will no longer hunger and those who believe on Him will no longer thirst. So He relates the hunger to the issue of bread and eating, and thirst to drinking His blood. The bread represents His body; the drinking represents His blood. But there is more to it than that. First of all, the literal bread represents His physical flesh which represents His body but not in a physical sense. 1 Peter 2:24 NASB “and He Himself bore our sins in His body on the cross, so that we might die to sin and live to righteousness; for by His wounds you were healed.” So the term “body” here refers to His physical death on the cross. The physical death was not what paid the penalty for our sins. Why? How do we know that? If we go back to Genesis chapter two, God said: “In the day that you eat from this fruit you will die.” Death was not physical. When Adam ate from the fruit he did not die physically, he died spiritually. His later physical death was a consequence of the spiritual death. In fact, all suffering in life is a result of Adam’s spiritual death. So the penalty for sin is spiritual death, not physical death. But Jesus had to die physically because His physical death set the stage for resurrection and ascension, and His resurrection as the first fruits for the rest of us. So when we look at the issue of the body it speaks of His physical death which looks forward to the resurrection and ascension. The blood, in turn, is another representative analogy. The blood of Christ is a symbolic phrase, not a literal phrase. It represents the spiritual death of Jesus Christ on the cross. So taken together, this phrase “the body and the blood” is going to represent the totality of what Jesus Christ did not the cross, both in terms of His spiritual death as our substitute, His physical death set the stage for the resurrection and then the ascension.
In the Old Testament there were various sacrifices. There was a literal blood sacrifice and there was a figurative or symbolic meaning. In the New Testament the blood becomes symbolic of a literal meaning. The blood of the animal in the Old Testament contained the soul or life of the animal. This is stated in several passages. Leviticus 17:10, 11 NASB “And any man from the house of Israel, or from the aliens who sojourn among them, who eats any blood, I will set My face against that person who eats blood and will cut him off from among his people. For the life of the flesh is in the blood, and I have given it to you on the altar to make atonement for your souls; for it is the blood by reason of the life that makes atonement.” Remember that in Leviticus 17 is prohibits the Jews from drinking literal blood. What did Jesus just say? “You have to drink my blood.” The Jews are operating on a purely superficial level and not seeking the true meaning of His words behind the figure of speech, so they are going to be offended. It is going to be very abrasive to them because that sounds as if he is saying that they should do something that will cut them off completely from the nation Israel and will threaten their eternal destiny. But instead of that Jesus is using the phrase to refer to what will be accomplished on the cross. Drinking His blood is analogous to accepting His spiritual atonement on our behalf on the cross. Then He goes beyond that and says: “He who eats My flesh and drinks My blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day,” and He shifts to trogo emphasizing grace orientation. All of His discussion on this just grates on the ears of the disciples. These are believers but He has painted this is such harsh language that they haven’t stepped away from their legalism yet. That is the problem. They can still be believers and still be walking in legalism. Jesus is challenging them to get away from their legalism, to break from Judaism, and to become really grace oriented, and they just can’t handle it. So they leave Him. That is the way it is with so many believers. They are operating on arrogance, on morality, and concepts of trying to gain God’s approval, and they just can’t get much beyond simple salvation.
John 6:62 NASB “{What} then if you see the Son of Man ascending to where He was before?” Notice how He brings the idea of ascension into this. He has already talked about how the body represents the physical death which sets the stage for the resurrection and the ascension. Jesus is tying the whole work of atonement together from crucifixion to ascension. If He ascends back to heaven then He must have come down from heaven. He is challenging them, laying the basis now for their future frame of reference.
John 6:63 NASB “It is the Spirit who gives life; the flesh profits nothing; the words that I have spoken to you are spirit and are life.” In other words, you don’t save yourself. The first mention of Spirit here, pneuma [pneuma], is the Holy Spirit. This relates to the work of the Holy Spirit at salvation. The whole concept of the atonement in Christ’s crucifixion is a stumbling block. Jesus says: “Why does this cause you offence?” This is a problem with the Jews. Romans 9:33 NASB “just as it is written, “BEHOLD, I LAY IN ZION A STONE OF STUMBLING AND A ROCK OF OFFENSE, AND HE WHO BELIEVES IN HIM WILL NOT BE DISAPPOINTED.” 1 Corinthians 1:23 NASB “but we preach Christ crucified, to Jews a stumbling block and to Gentiles foolishness.” Galatians 5:11 NASB “But I, brethren, if I still preach circumcision, why am I still persecuted? Then the stumbling block of the cross has been abolished.” The fact that the Messiah had to come and suffer at the first advent was not expected by the Jews. They expected a kingdom but that is not coming until the second advent. The reason there is a difference is because the Jews rejected Christ at the first advent.
“… the flesh profits nothing.” In other words, we can’t do anything ourselves. We are operating on our own agenda but it is the Holy Spirit who gives life. He is not denying the faith or the volition of the individual, we simply believe and we are saved through faith, not because of faith. Then it is God the Holy Spirit who creates that human spirit and regenerates us. “…the words that I have spoken to you are spirit and are life.” That is, all that He has said in explaining the gospel and who He is. They are spirit because they produce a human spirit in us if we believe, and they are life. Then He emphasizes the point in the next verse.
John 6:64 NASB “‘But there are some of you who do not believe.’ For Jesus knew from the beginning who they were who did not believe, and who it was that would betray Him. [65] And He was saying, ‘For this reason I have said to you, that no one can come to Me unless it has been granted him from the Father’.” Once again, He is emphasising ultimately the Father’s sovereignty. We have seen that God’s sovereignty co-exists in history with human freedom. God’s sovereignty does not override our freedom, does not negative our volition and belief, but ultimately it is God who saves us, we do not save ourselves.
John 6:66 NASB “As a result of this many of His disciples withdrew and were not walking with Him anymore.” Some of them left because of what was said about the gospel. But what He is really teaching is submission to the authority of God. And that is the way it is with so many believers. It is fine that they are going to end up in heaven but they have their own agenda for life today. They don’t want to commit to the plan of God and submit to the authority, so instead of operating on humility and teachability they, just like the crowds, have their own agenda for life on earth and they really don’t care about learning about God’s plan and program for the spiritual life. These were not walking with Him anymore, but they were believers. Just like those believers who withdrew, many believers today are failures in the spiritual life because they cannot submit to the authority of God in their life.
John 6:67 NASB “So Jesus said to the twelve, ‘You do not want to go away also, do you?’” This is a real biblical invitation, the end of the service. I’ve given my sermon on the bread of life, now we are going to have the invitation. Everyone has gone except the twelve, and Jesus turns to them and says: “Why don’t you guys leave?” When was the last time we heard an evangelist says that?
John 6:68 NASB “Simon Peter answered Him, ‘Lord, to whom shall we go? You have words of eternal life.’” Peter speaks up for them all: “You have doctrine of life.” Only by listening to what you teach can we know what life is and what life is all about. Only by submitting to doctrine are we going to have life today and life eternal. [69] “We have believed and have come to know that You are the Holy One of God.” This is another title for Jesus Christ. They recognize that He is Messiah, that He is holy, and that he is the incarnate Son of God.
John 6:70 NASB “Jesus answered them, ‘Did I Myself not choose you, the twelve, and {yet} one of you is a devil [diaboloj, accuser]?’” Jesus responds with a little foreshadowing here. Judas is one who is a rejector and an accuser. He rejects the gospel and challenges the claims of Christ. So apparently He knows in His heart that whenever He teaches Judas is rejecting what He says and criticising those remarks.
John 6:71 NASB “Now He meant Judas {the son} of Simon Iscariot, for he, one of the twelve, was going to betray Him.” Now we see the tremendous literary techniques of the apostle as he begins to foreshadow the coming of the cross. In all the other Gospel the same dynamics take place. In the first half of the Gospel Jesus is teaching the crowds, confronting the Pharisees, presenting His claim as the Messiah. Then it comes to a climax and there is the rejection of Christ by the leaders and by the people. Then with that rejection of His claims as Messiah Jesus shifts His message and shifts His strategy and he begins to focus on teaching the disciples, because once the leaders and the people have rejected Him the kingdom is going to be postponed. John shows this in this chapter. It starts off with Jesus at the height of His popularity, and by the end of the chapter all but the twelve have left Him. What did he do to cause everybody to leave? Jesus taught doctrine. The more accurately you communicate doctrine the more abrasive it is going to be to people who are operating on human viewpoint, and the more it is going to drive them away.