They entered into the boat, and were going over the sea to Capernaum. It was now dark, and Jesus had not come to them. The sea was tossed by a great wind blowing. When therefore they had rowed about twenty-five or thirty stadia, they saw Jesus walking on the sea, and drawing near to the boat; and they were afraid. But he said to them, “It is I. Don’t be afraid.” They were willing therefore to receive him into the boat. Immediately the boat was at the land where they were going.
On the next day, the multitude that stood on the other side of the sea saw that there was no other boat there, except the one in which his disciples had embarked, and that Jesus hadn’t entered with his disciples into the boat, but his disciples had gone away alone. However boats from Tiberias came near to the place where they ate the bread after the Lord had given thanks. When the multitude therefore saw that Jesus wasn’t there, nor his disciples, they themselves got into the boats, and came to Capernaum, seeking Jesus. When they found him on the other side of the sea, they asked him, “Rabbi, when did you come here?”
John Calvin 1540 · Public Domain On vv17, 19, 20, 22, 23, 25 17. It was now dark. John passes by many…
17. It was now dark. John passes by many circumstances which the other Evangelists introduce; such as, that for several hours they struggled with a contrary wind; for it is probable that the storm arose immediately after the night began to come on; and they tell us that Christ did not appear to his disciples till about the fourth watch of the night, (Matthew 14:28; Mark 6:48.) Those who conjecture that they were still about the middle of the lake when Christ appeared to them, because John says that they had then advanced about twenty-five or thirty furlongs, are led into a mistake by supposing that they had sailed to the farther or opposite bank; for Bethsaida, near which town, Luke tells us, the miracle was performed, (Luke 9:10,) and Capernaum, which the ship reached, (John 6:16,) were situated on the same coast.
Pliny, in his fifth book, states that this lake was six miles in breadth, and sixteen in length. Josephus (in the third book of the Wars of the Jews) assigns to it one hundred furlongs in length, and forty in breadth; and as eight furlongs make one mile, we may easily infer how little the one description differs from the other. So far as relates to the present sailing, my opinion is, that they did not go over so great a space by direct sailing, but through being driven about by the tempest. However that may be, the Evangelist intended to show that, when Christ presented himself to them, they were in the utmost danger. It may be thought strange that the disciples should be tormented in this manner, while others had nothing to disturb them in sailing; but in this manner the Lord often makes his people fall into alarming dangers, that they may more plainly and familiarly recognize him in their deliverance.
John Calvin's Commentaries (1540-1563) — public domain. Text from the Calvin Translation Society English edition (1840s-50s) via the Christian Classics Ethereal Library (ccel.org). Calvin's coverage is partial (roughly two-thirds of the Bible); uncommented books and verses are honest gaps, never fabricated. The 19th-century editor's footnotes and remarks are omitted so the notes are faithfully Calvin's own voice.
Geneva Bible translators 1599 · Public Domain On vv17, 21 In Mark 6:45 they are willed to go before…
In Mark 6:45 they are willed to go before to Bethsaida, for Bethsaida was in the way to Capernaum.
Geneva Bible (1599) marginal notes — public domain.
John Trapp 1656 · Public Domain On vv17–25 17 And entered into a ship, and went over…
17 And entered into a ship, and went over the sea toward Capernaum. And it was now dark, and Jesus was not come to them.
Ver. 17. Jesus was not come to them] This was worse to them than the storm. It was woeful with Saul when the Philistines were upon him, and God would not come at him, nor answer him, 1Sa 28:15. So when danger or death is upon a man, and God is far from him. That doom, "I will not show you favour," Jer 16:13, was worse than their captivity.
John Trapp, A Commentary or Exposition upon All the Books of the Old and New Testament (1647–1656) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Matthew Poole 1685 · Public Domain On vv17, 23, 25 By the sea is here meant the sea of…
By the sea is here meant the sea of Galilee, or lake of Tiberias, or of Gennesaret. There our Saviour and his disciples had left the multitude; the disciples having taken a boat, and passing over on the other side, and Christ having followed them, the multitude, probably having gone in the night to rest themselves at their several houses, came again in the morning, expecting to have found Christ, and have seen more miracles; being disappointed, understanding that both Christ and his disciples were gone over.
Matthew Poole's English Annotations on the Holy Bible (1683–1685) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
William Burkitt 1703 · Public Domain On v22 Our blessed Saviour having wrought the foregoing miracle, feeding…
Our blessed Saviour having wrought the foregoing miracle, feeding five thousand with five loaves, the people followed him in troops from place to place. Christ, who knew their hearts, tells them plainly, what was their end: they followed him indeed, but not for any spiritual excellencies they saw in him, or soul advantages they expected from him, but for bread: only to have their bellies fed with the loaves, not their souls satisfied with the bread of life.
Oh! how seldom is Christ sought for his own sake, viz. Jesus quaritur propter Jesum, Aug. How natural is it for men to seek Christ for sinister ends and bye-respects! But to seek him only for outward advantages, is the basest abhors. Labour not for the meat which perisheth.
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This prohibition must not be understood absolutely, but comparatively; not as if Christ intended to take them of from their lawful labours, and the business of their callings; but his meaning is, Labour not in the first and chief place for earthly things, which are all perishing; but for bread for your souls to live eternally by; even for the food of my heavenly doctrine, which will make them that feed upon it immortal: and this the Son of man stands ready to give unto you: For him hath God the Father sealed. that is, by a special commission and authority, hath impowered him to dispense all spiritual blessings to them that want and crave them.
Learn hence, 1. That all the things of this life are perishing and fading. The best of outward comforts and enjoyments are meat that perisheth.
2. That it is the greatest of follies to labour intensely and inordinately for, and to set ouraselves with all our might and strength to pursue and follow after, perishing things.
3. That Jesus Christ’s holy doctrine, his heavenly grace, is food that never perisheth, nor diminisheth, how many soever partake of it, but makes all that partake thereof, to be partakers of eternal life therewith.
4. That Jesus Christ is authorized, sealed, and commissioned, by his Father, to give eternal life to such as industriously labour after him, and will not be satisfied without him. Him hath God the Father sealed; that is, Jesus Christ was sealed to the office of Mediator by God the Father; Christ was sealed at his baptism; sealed by his doctrine; sealed by his miracles; sealed by his resurrection; sealed by his unction or supereminent and unparalleled sanctification.
Lord! where will the rejecters of Christ then appear at the great day, who have despised the authority of him, whom the Father commissioned to give eternal life to whomsoever he pleaseth.
William Burkitt's Expository Notes on the New Testament (1700–1703) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Matthew Henry 1710 · Public Domain On v22 In these verses we have,
In these verses we have,
I. The careful enquiry which the people made after Christ, Joh 6:23, Joh 6:24. They saw the disciples go to sea; they saw Christ retire to the mountain, probably with an intimation that he desired to be private for some time; but, their hearts being set upon making him a king, they way-laid his return, and the day following, the hot fit of their zeal still continuing,
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1. They were much at a loss for him. He was gone, and they knew not what was become of him. They saw there was no boat there but that in which the disciples went off, Providence so ordering it for the confirming of the miracle of his walking on the sea, for there was no boat for him to go in. They observed also that Jesus did not go with his disciples, but that they went off alone, and left him among them on their side of the water. Note, Those that would find Christ must diligently observe all his motions, and learn to understand the tokens of his presence and absence, that they may steer accordingly.
2. They were very industrious in seeking him. They searched the places thereabouts, and when they saw that Jesus was not there, nor his disciples (neither he nor any one that could give tidings of him), they resolved to search elsewhere. Note, Those that would find Christ must accomplish a diligent search, must seek till they find, must go from sea to sea, to seek the word of God, rather than live without it; and those whom Christ has feasted with the bread of life should have their souls carried out in earnest desires towards him. Much would have more, in communion with Christ. Now, (1.) They resolved to go to Capernaum in quest of him. There were his head-quarters, where he usually resided. Thither his disciples were gone; and they knew he would not be long absent from them. Those that would find Christ must go forth by the footsteps of the flock. (2.) Providence favoured them with an opportunity of going thither by sea, which was the speediest way; for there came other boats from Tiberias, which lay further off upon the same shore, nigh, though not so nigh to the place where they did eat bread, in which they might soon make a trip to Capernaum, and probably the boats were bound for that port. Note, Those that in sincerity seek Christ, and seek opportunities of converse with him, are commonly owned and assisted by Providence in those pursuits. The evangelist, having occasion to mention their eating the multiplied bread, adds, After that the Lord had given thanks, Joh 6:11. So much were the disciples affected with their Master's giving thanks that they could never forget the impressions made upon them by it, but took a pleasure in remembering the gracious words that then proceeded out of his mouth. This was the grace and beauty of that meal, and made it remarkable; their hearts burned within them.
3. They laid hold of the opportunity that offered itself, and they also took shipping, and came to Capernaum, seeking for Jesus. They did not defer, in hopes to see him again on this side the water; but their convictions being strong, and their desires warm, they followed him presently. Good motions are often crushed, and come to nothing, for want of being prosecuted in time. They came to Capernaum, and, for aught that appears, these unsound hypocritical followers of Christ had a calm and pleasant passage, while his sincere disciples had a rough and stormy one. It is not strange if it fare worst with the best men in this evil world. They came, seeking Jesus. Note, Those that would find Christ, and find comfort in him, must be willing to take pains, and, as here, to compass sea and land to seek and serve him who came from heaven to earth to seek and save us.
II. The success of this enquiry: They found him on the other side of the sea, Joh 6:25. Note, Christ will be found of those that seek him, first or last; and it is worth while to cross a sea, nay, to go from sea to sea, and from the river to the ends of the earth, to seek Christ, if we may but find him at last. These people appeared afterwards to be unsound, and not actuated by any good principle, and yet were thus zealous. Note, Hypocrites may be very forward in their attendance on God's ordinances. If men have no more to show for their love to Christ than their running after sermons and prayers, and their pangs of affection to good preaching, they have reason to suspect themselves no better than this eager crowd. But though these people were no better principled, and Christ knew it, yet he was willing to be found of them, and admitted them into fellowship with him. If we could know the hearts of hypocrites, yet, while their profession is plausible, we must not exclude them from our communion, much less when we do not know their hearts.
III. The question they put to him when they found him: Rabbi, when camest thou hither? It should seem by Joh 6:59 that they found him in the synagogue. They knew this was the likeliest place to seek Christ in, for it was his custom to attend public assemblies for religious worship, Luk 4:16. Note, Christ must be sought, and will be found, in the congregations of his people and in the administration of his ordinances; public worship is what Christ chooses to own and grace with his presence and the manifestations of himself. There they found him, and all they had to say to him was, Rabbi, when camest thou hither? They saw he would not be made a king, and therefore say no more of this, but call him Rabbi, their teacher. Their enquiry refers not only to the time, but to the manner, of his conveying himself thither; not only When, but, "How, camest thou thither?" for there was no boat for him to come in. They were curious in asking concerning Christ's motions, but not solicitous to observe their own.
IV. The answer Christ gave them, not direct to their question (what was it to them when and how he came thither?) but such an answer as their case required.
1. He discovers the corrupt principle they acted from in following him (Joh 6:26): "Verily, verily, I say unto you, I that search the heart, and know what is in man, I the Amen, the faithful witness, Rev 3:14, Rev 3:15. You seek me; that is well, but it is not from a good principle." Christ knows not only what we do, but why we do it. These followed Christ, (1.) Not for his doctrine's sake: Not because you saw the miracles. The miracles were the great confirmation of his doctrine; Nicodemus sought for him for the sake of them (Joh 3:2), and argued from the power of his works to the truth of his word; but these were so stupid and mindless that they never considered this. But, (2.) It was for their own bellies' sake: Because you did eat of the loaves, and were filled; not because he taught them, but because he fed them. He had given them, [1.] A full meal's meat: They did eat, and were filled; and some of them perhaps were so poor that they had not known of a long time before now what it was to have enough, to eat and leave. [2.] A dainty meal's meat; it is probable that, as the miraculous wine was the best wine, so was the miraculous food more than usually pleasant. [3.] A cheap meal's meat, that cost them nothing; no reckoning was brought in. Note, Many follow Christ for loaves, and not for love. Thus those do who aim at secular advantage in their profession of religion, and follow it because by this craft they get their preferments. Quantis profuit nobis haec fabula de Christo - This fable respecting Christ, what a gainful concern we have made of it! said one of the popes. These people complimented Christ with Rabbi, and showed him great respect, yet he told them thus faithfully of their hypocrisy; his ministers must hence learn not to flatter those that flatter them, nor to be bribed by fair words to cry peace to all that cry rabbi to them, but to give faithful reproofs where there is cause for them.
2. He directs them to better principles (Joh 6:27): Labour for that meat which endures to everlasting life. With the woman of Samaria he had discoursed of spiritual things under the similitude of water; here he speaks of them under the similitude of meat, taking occasion from the loaves they had eaten. His design is,
(1.) To moderate our worldly pursuits: Labour not for the meat that perishes. This does not forbid honest labour for food convenient, Th2 3:12. But we must not make the things of this world our chief care and concern. Note, [1.] The things of the world are meat that perishes. Worldly wealth, honour, and pleasure, are meat; they feed the fancy (and many times this is all) and fill the belly. These are things which mean hunger after as meat, and glut themselves with, and which a carnal heart, as long as they last, may make a shift to live upon; but they perish, are of a perishing nature, wither of themselves, and are exposed to a thousand accidents; those that have the largest share of them are not sure to have them while they live, but are sure to leave them and lose them when they die. [2.] It is therefore folly for us inordinately to labour after them. First, We must not labour in religion, nor work the works thereof, for this perishing meat, with an eye to this; we must not make our religion subservient to a worldly interest, nor aim at secular advantages in sacred exercises. Secondly, We must not at all labour for this meat; that is, we must not make these perishing things our chief good, nor make our care and pains about them our chief business; not seek those things first and most, Pro 23:4, Pro 23:5.
(2.) To quicken and excite our gracious pursuits: "Bestow your pains to better purpose, and labour for that meat which belongs to the soul," of which he shows,
[1.] That it is unspeakably desirable: It is meat which endures to everlasting life; it is a happiness which will last as long as we must, which not only itself endures eternally, but will nourish us up to everlasting life. The blessings of the new covenant are our preparative for eternal life, our preservative to it, and the pledge and earnest of it.
[2.] It is undoubtedly attainable. Shall all the treasures of the world be ransacked, and all the fruits of the earth gathered together, to furnish us with provisions that will last to eternity? No, The sea saith, It is not in me, among all the treasures hidden in the sand. It cannot be gotten for gold; but it is that which the Son of man shall give; hēn dōsei, either which meat, or which life, the Son of man shall give. Observe here, First, Who gives this meat: the Son of man, the great householder and master of the stores, who is entrusted with the administration of the kingdom of God among men, and the dispensation of the gifts, graces, and comforts of that kingdom, and has power to give eternal life, with all the means of it and preparatives for it. We are told to labour for it, as if it were to be got by our own industry, and sold upon that valuable consideration, as the heathen said, Dii laboribus omnia vendunt - The gods sell all advantages to the industrious. But when we have laboured ever so much for it, we have not merited it as our hire, but the Son of man gives it. And what more free than gift? It is an encouragement that he who has the giving of it is the Son of man, for then we may hope the sons of men that seek it, and labour for it, shall not fail to have it. Secondly, What authority he has to give it; for him has God the Father sealed, touton gar ho Patēr esphragisen̂ ho Theos - for him the Father has sealed (proved and evidenced) to be God; so some read it; he has declared him to be the Son of God with power. He has sealed him, that is, has given him full authority to deal between God and man, as God's ambassador to man and man's intercessor with God, and has proved his commission by miracles. Having given him authority, he has given us assurance of it; having entrusted him with unlimited powers, he has satisfied us with undoubted proofs of them; so that as he might go on with confidence in his undertaking for us, so may we in our resignations to him. God the Father scaled him with the Spirit that rested on him, by the voice from heaven, by the testimony he bore to him in signs and wonders. Divine revelation is perfected in him, in him the vision and prophecy is sealed up (Dan 9:24), to him all believers seal that he is true (Joh 3:33), and in him they are all sealed, Co2 1:22.
Matthew Henry's Commentary on the Whole Bible (1708–1710) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.
John Gill 1763 · Public Domain On vv17–25 And entered into a ship,.... In which they came,…
And entered into a ship,.... In which they came, and was waiting for them; or into another:
and went over the sea towards Capernaum; steered their course from Bethsaida, where they took shipping over the sea of Galilee; at least over one part of it, a creek or bay of it, as they intended, towards the city of Capernaum, which lay over against Bethsaida:
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and it was now dark; quite night, which made their voyage more uncomfortable, especially as it afterwards was tempestuous: but the worst of all was,
and Jesus was not come to them; as they expected, and therefore were obliged to set sail and go without him.
John Gill's Exposition of the Whole Bible (1746–1763) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.
John Wesley 1765 · Public Domain On v22 Who had stood on the other side - They…
Who had stood on the other side - They were forced to stay a while, because there were then no other vessels; and they stayed the less unwillingly, because they saw that Jesus was not embarked.
John Wesley, Explanatory Notes Upon the Whole Bible (1754–1765) — public domain. Text via the GEBible commentary corpus.
Adam Clarke 1810 · Public Domain On vv17, 19, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25 Verse 17. Toward Capernaum.] St. Mark says, Mr 6:45,…
Verse 17. Toward Capernaum.] St. Mark says, Mr 6:45, that our Lord commanded them to go along to Bethsaida; and in the course of the history we find they got neither to Bethsaida nor Capernaum, but landed in the country of Genesaret: Mt 14:34. Our Lord seems to have desired them to go either to Bethsaida or Capernaum, which were only a very few miles distant, and on the same side of the sea. The reason why they could reach neither was the storm which the evangelists say rose at the time, and the wind being contrary: the storm being probably excited by the prince of the power of the air. Capernaum lay at the northern part of this sea, and they went along the Galilean or western coast, probably expecting Christ to come to them, on which account they might keep in close by the land. But there are great difficulties in fixing the places mentioned by the evangelists. By some writers Bethsaida and Capernaum are placed on opposite sides of this lake: by others on the same side. Sometimes when our translation speaks of passing over the sea, &c., a coasting voyage only is meant, as we find the disciples landing on the same side from which they had departed: See Clarke on Joh 6:22.
Adam Clarke's Commentary on the Bible (1810–1826) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
Joseph Benson 1811 · Public Domain On vv22, 25 Joh 6:22-24. “In this and the two following verses,”…
Joh 6:22-24. “In this and the two following verses,” says Dr. Campbell, “is contained a sentence more involved than any in this gospel. Indeed it is so unlike the composition of this evangelist, as to give ground to suspect that it has been injured in transcribing. He often indeed uses tautologies; but, except in this instance, they occasion no darkness or perplexity. I have adopted the reading of the Vulgate as preferable upon the whole, namely, On the morrow the people, who were on the sea-side, knowing that there had been but one boat there, and that Jesus went not into the boat with his disciples, who went alone, (other boats, however, arrived from Tiberias, nigh the place where they had eaten, after the Lord had given thanks,) knowing besides, that neither Jesus nor his disciples were there, embarked, and went to Capernaum, seeking Jesus.”
Joseph Benson's Commentary on the Old and New Testaments (1811–1818) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Albert Barnes 1834 · Public Domain On vv22–24 The people which stood on the other side of…
The people which stood on the other side of the sea - That is, on the east side, or on the same side with Jesus. The country was called the region beyond or on, the other side of the sea, because the writer and the people lived on the west side.
Jesus went not with his disciples - He had gone into a mountain to pray alone, Joh 6:15. Compare Mar 6:46.
Albert Barnes' Notes on the Bible (1834–1885) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
Haydock's Catholic Bible Commentary 1859 · Public Domain On vv19, 21 Five and twenty or thirty furlongs. About three or…
Five and twenty or thirty furlongs. About three or four miles.
George Leo Haydock (1774–1849), Haydock's Catholic Family Bible and Commentary, 1859 edition — public domain. Excludes Psalms (Douay-Rheims chapter numbering differs from Protestant) and Deuterocanonical books (Catholic canon only).
Lange's Commentary on the Holy Scriptures 1864 · Public Domain On v22 3. Decisive Declaration Of Christ, And Offence Of Many…
3. Decisive Declaration Of Christ, And Offence Of Many Disciples
Joh_6:22-65
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EXEGETICAL AND CRITICAL
[After a brief historical introduction, Joh_6:22-25, John gives that wonderful discourse which unfolds the symbolic meaning of the miraculous feeding of the multitude, namely, the grand truth that Christ is the Bread of everlasting life, which alone can satisfy the spiritual wants of men. It may be divided into four parts, each of which is introduced by an act of the audience and determined by their moral attitude. 1) The first part is introduced by a simple question of the Jews; “When and how didst Thou come hither?” It exhorts them not to busy themselves about perishing food, but to seek food which endures forever, and which the Son of Man alone can give, Joh_6:25-35. 2) The Jews asking for this imperishable bread, Jesus declares Himself to be the Bread of life that came down from heaven, Joh_6:35-40; Joh_6:3) The Jews murmured at this extraordinary claim; whereupon Jesus repeats the assertion with the additional idea, that His flesh which He was to give for the life of the world, is that Bread of life, Joh_6:41-51. 4) This causes not only surprise but offence and contention among the Jews (Joh_6:52), but Jesus, instead of modifying and explaining, declares in still stronger language that eating His flesh and drinking His blood, i.e., a living appropriation of His person and sacrifice is the indispensable condition of spiritual life reaching forward to the resurrection of the body, Joh_6:52-58. 5) The rest, from Joh_6:59-65, describes the crisis produced by this discourse and furnishes at the same time, in Joh_6:63, the key to the proper understanding of the same.49—The authenticity of this discourse is sufficiently guaranteed by its perfect originality, sublimity, and offensiveness to carnal sense, as well as its adaptation to the situation and the miracle performed. No writer could have invented such ideas and dreamed of putting them into the mouth of Jesus. Nor could any mere man in his sane mind set forth his own flesh and blood as the life of the world. We are shut up here to the conclusion of the divinity of Christ. As to the difficulty of the discourse, we must always keep in mind that Christ spoke for all ages, and that history furnishes the evidence of the wisdom and universal applicability of His teaching. The disciples and the hearers were prepared for it by the two preceding miracles which raised them, so to say, to a supernatural state. The sacramental interpretation will be discussed below in an Excursus.—P. S.]
Joh_6:22-24. The construction of these verses is a matter of great difficulty. [Such complicated sentences are exceedingly rare in John. Two other instances occur in Joh_13:1, and 1Jn_1:1 ff. In this case the parenthetical and involved construction is, as Alford remarks, characteristic of the minute care with which the evangelist will account for every circumstance which is essential to his purpose in the narration.—P. S.] De Wette: “As regards the construction, the sentence is interrupted by the parenthesis of Joh_6:23, and resumed in Joh_6:24 (ὅτε οὗν εἶδεν = ἱδών, Joh_6:22), except that while ἰδών, Joh_6:22, relates to the circumstances under which the departure of Jesus seemed impossible, and the resumptive ὅτε—εἶδεν expresses the certainty nevertheless reached, that he was no longer there.” Meyer: “The construction resumes ὁ ὄχλος, the subject of the whole, with ὅτε οὖν εἶδεν ὁ ὄχλος, Joh_6:24; and Joh_6:23 is a parenthesis which prepares the way for the following apodosis. The participial sentence ἰδὼν, ὁτι to ἀπῆλθον is subordinated to ἐστηλὼς πέραν τ. θαλ., and explains what made the people linger there and stand again the next day in the same place: They thought Jesus must still be on the eastern side of the sea, since no other ship had been there except the one in which the disciples had gone away alone, Joh_6:22, and even the disciples might again be there, since other boats had come from Tiberias, in which they might have returned.” [Somewhat modified in ed. 5th, p. 256.—P. S.] We suppose that here, as often elsewhere in the New Testament a supposed clumsiness and irregularity of expression arises in the sphere of exegesis from our overlooking the conciseness resulting from the vividness of the oriental style. The present passage may be elucidated by the remark that Christ made His escape from the people with extreme deliberation and care, and that the people pursued Him with intense expectation; and the sentence takes this shape: And immediately the ship (in which they were escaping) was at the land whither they were going (for escape from the people); the day following the people (also) which stood (still remained standing, like a wall) on the other side of the sea, because they saw (in the first place) that there was none other boat there, save that one, and that Jesus went not with His disciples into that, but that His disciples were gone away alone (whence it seemed to follow, that Jesus was still in the neighborhood); but (in the second place) that other boats had come from Tiberias nigh unto the place where they had eaten bread by the power of the Lord’s thanksgiving (boats in which the disciples also might have returned). When the people therefore, etc.
Joh_6:24. They themselves entered into the boats.—Took those boats which had come from Tiberias. As these vessels are called πλοιάρια [small boats], and besides were probably not very numerous, having accidentally arrived, it is not to be supposed that the whole five thousand came across.50 Tholuck supposes that the festival-pilgrims would have left, probably finding it necessary to go immediately on to the temple at Jerusalem. This mistakes the point of their extreme excitement. The αὐτοί is not antithetic to a previous passive behaviour of the people (Meyer), but to their wrong supposition that the disciples had been in the ships, and had returned by them. They sought the Lord in the place of His residence, Capernaum.
Joh_6:25. On the other side of the lake.—With reference to the eastern point of departure. According to Joh_6:59, they find Him in the synagogue at Capernaum. Meyer correctly: “The πέραν τ. θάλ. is intended to suggest that the object of their wonder was their finding him on the western side.” When camest thou?—[ΙΙ ότεὦδεγέγονας; In Greek this implies the double question of when and how, as Bengel remarks: Quæstio de tempore includit quæstionem de modo. When didst Thou come hither? and how didst Thou get here (perf. γέγονας) so unexpectedly, like a ghost?—P. S.] The question how seemed the more natural. Yet they appear to suppose immediately that He went round the sea, or crossed at some other point. They ask, when He arrived just here. Meyer thinks they suspected some miracle, and Jesus did not enter into their curious question; but the passage leads rather to the opposite inference. The Lord must expect, not that they had been led by the feeding to think of the walking on the sea, but undoubtedly that they expected of Him so much of the miraculous as to make the question of when superfluous. This triviality is the very thing that betrays the sensuous confusion of their enthusiasm itself.
Joh_6:26. Verily, verily, I say unto you, Ye seek me.—The term here is particularly strong, because it emphasizes a severe personal judgment. Considering this strength of the expression, the interpretation of the correlatives οὐχ’—ἀλλ’ by non tam—quam, in Kuinoel and others, entirely obliterates the thought. Not because ye saw the miracles.—Lücke explains the plural by the healing of sick before the feeding (see the other Evangelists); Meyer groundlessly rejects this, observing that the antithesis is simply the eating of the loaves; that the plural is a plural of category, and goes no further than the feeding. But if they had waited for the kingdom of God as true believers in the Messiah, they would have perceived the spiritual glory in all the miracles. On the contrary, the sensuous expectations of the Messiah fastened selfishly on the eating of the loaves. (Comp. Mat_4:3-4.)
Joh_6:27. Work not for the food.—We think the first word must be emphasized. It is aimed at the chiliastic inclination to laziness in the enjoyment of miraculous food, and resembles the word of Paul in 2Th_3:11-12. But the injunction immediately takes a turn designed to lead their mind to the essential point. Direct your labor not to the food which perisheth, but, etc.—The radical meaning of ἐργά́ζεσθε it is difficult here to preserve in its precise force; and yet we are led to do so by the spirit of the transaction. Luther: wirket, work, produce; De Wette: erwirket, work out; Van Ess: mühet euch, trouble yourselves. Luther also translates ἐργαζόμενος, Eph_4:28, by schaffen, work. There is a double oxymoron or paradox: (1) that they should not labor for the perishable food, which is the very thing they must get by working; (2) that they should labor for the heavenly food, which is not to be earned by labor. The solution lies (1) in the position of the exclamation: Labor, at the beginning of the sentence: Be earnest workers; (2) in the addition of the next words to elucidate the first. Work not for the earthly food, which perisheth; even work for daily bread should not aim at mere material support and sensual enjoyment, but at the eternal in the temporal; (3) in the doing away of all thought of human production in matters of faith by the further words: “Which the Son of Man shall give unto you.”—The food that perisheth; or rather, which spoils, corrupts. Earthly nourishment enjoyed in idleness, without sanctification of the Spirit, is not merely perishable. This word is too weak for ἀπολλυμένην (comp. Mat_9:17 : οἱ ἀσκοὶ ἀπολοῦνται); the food goes to destruction, and with it the man who seeks his life in it. It therefore leaves not only hunger, but also loathing (Num_21:5, in regard to the manna). Decaying food loses not only (1) its efficiency, but (2) its healthful nature, and (3) its very nature itself. On the contrary food which endureth unto everlasting life has (1) eternal efficiency; (2) eternal freshness; (3) eternal durability.—The difference between this and the water which quenches thirst, Joh_4:14. That passage concerns the life of Christ refreshing, quickening, and satisfying the soul; this describes the life of Christ refreshing, nourishing, and supporting the whole being of the man.—Everlasting life;—viewed here in the main as an outward object, but including the internal operation of it.
Which the Son of man shall give unto you.—Undoubtedly based on the figure of laborer and employer, as in Joh_4:36, and in the parable of the laborers in the vineyard, Mat_20:1 sqq. In His service they must work only for the eternal food, and this He would give them. And as the eternal food can come from God alone, He declares that He is sealed as steward of the Father; appointed and accredited with commission and seal (σφραγίζειν also denotes confirmation, appointment with a seal). He is sealed (accredited in particular by the miraculous feeding as a sign) as the Son of His Father’s house, commissioned or sent from God. He thus seems to appoint them as laborers of God; and hence the question that follows.
Joh_6:28. What shall we do, that we might work the works of God?—They seem ready to consent to the requirement of Christ. They wish to be in a general sense the servants of God, and do His work. But that their spirit in the matter is rather chiliastic than moral (Meyer) is shown (1) by their asking about works in the plural; (2) by their stress on their doing. The case is like that in Joh_8:30 : an apparent or conditional readiness, arising from chiliastic misconception. Not exactly a merely moral legalness of mind, though it includes this. Two interpretations: 1. The works which God requires, has commanded (De Wette, Tholuck). [Alford: the works well pleasing to God, comp. 1Co_15:58.—P. S.] 2. The works which God produces (Herder, Schleiermacher). The former interpretation is true to the mind of the people.
Joh_6:29. This is the work of God, that ye believe in him whom he sent.—Jesus meets the plural with the singular,51 and their proposal to do with the demand of faith in Him whom God sent. The connection of ideas is close: As servants of God they must yield themselves with unreserved confidence to the messenger of God; through Him alone do they become capable of doing anything, Joh_6:50; Joh_17:3; 1Jn_4:17. Bullinger, Beza: Faith is called a work per mimesin. Tholuck, on the other hand: Faith is itself a work. It is the decisive work of the man, in which resides the decisive work of God. [Mark the distinction between believing Christ, which is simply an intellectual assent to an historical fact and which may be ascribed to demons and infidels, and believing in Christ as an object of confidence and hope, which implies vital union with Him. This is both a work of Divine grace and the highest work of man. Godet finds here the germ of the whole Pauline theology and also the bond of union between Paul and James. Faith is the greatest act of freedom towards God; for by it he gives himself, and more man cannot do. In this sense James opposes works to a faith which is nothing but an intellectual belief; and in an analogous sense Paul opposes active living faith to dead works of mere outward observance. The faith of Paul is in fact the work of James, i.e., the work of God. Schleiermacher calls this passage the clearest and most significant declaration that all eternal life proceeds from nothing else than faith in Christ,—P. S.]
Joh_6:30. What signs shewest thou then?—i.e.: To prove that Thou art the one sent of God? For that He professed Himself to be this messenger, is evident from what He had said. The term Messiah is indeed not used, but it is implied. Some have considered the question strange, because the people had just yesterday been miraculously fed. Grotius supposed it to be put by persons who had not been present at that feeding; the negative critics found in it a contradiction of the preceding account (Bruno Bauer, and others): De Wette considers the conversation as having no reference to the feeding. But we must bear in mind, that the people presumed that Jesus, if He were the Messiah, must have accepted their acclamation and their proclamation of His royalty; and that, instead of doing so, He had, to their great chagrin, eluded their design. They therefore demanded that He more satisfactorily attest Himself than He did by that feeding. A sign from heaven they probably did not, like the Sanhedrists and Pharisees, intend; but no doubt a perpetual miraculous supply of bread under the new kingdom now to be set up. This is indicated by the explanatory addition: “What dost Thou work?” τί ἑργάζῇ. What dost Thou produce? Ironically pointed at His demand that they should work. The chiliastic Messiah must take the lead of all the people as the greatest master-workman. The expression is doubly antithetic: putting His working against theirs, and especially putting a working in testimony of His Messiahship against His declaration of it.
Joh_6:31. Our fathers did eat manna.—Meyer: “The questioners, after being miraculously filled with earthly bread, rise in their miracle-seeking, and demand bread from heaven, such as God gave by Moses.” What they wanted was, no doubt, primarily continuance; though not this alone. The thought is: If Moses perpetually fed his people with bread from heaven, it is too little that the Messiah, the greater than Moses, should give His people only one transient miraculous meal, and as it were put them off with that, He ought to introduce the Messianic kingdom by giving every day a miraculous supply, and that by all means finer than barley loaves, superior manna. Comp. Mat_4:3.
As it is written, He gave them bread from heaven. (Exo_16:4; Psa_78:24; Psa_105:40). Meyer: The Jews considered the manna the greatest of miracles.52 As Moses was the type of the Messiah (Schöttgen, Horæ Talm., II., p. 475), a new manna was expected from the Messiah Himself: “Redemptor prior descendere fecit pro iis Manna; sic et redemptor posterior descender faciet Manna.” Midras Coheleth. Fol. 86, 4. (Lightfoot, Schöttgen, Wetstein.)
The manna (מָן), which miraculously furnished the Israelites in the Arabian desert [for forty years] the means of support, Exodus 16; Numbers 11, etc., fell during the night, and in the morning lay as dew upon the earth, Exo_16:14, in small grains (like coriander-seed, Exo_16:31), sweet, like honey, to the taste. It had to be gathered [every day except the Sabbath] before the sun rose, or it melted, Joh_6:21. “The quantity divided daily to each person, Exo_16:16, Thenius (Althebräische Masse) estimates at somewhat over two Dresden quarts” [about three English quarts.—P. S.]. On the well-known oriental (medicinal) manna of natural history, see Winer, sub v This appears even in southern Europe on various trees and shrubs; then in the east (manna-ash, oriental oak, especially the sweet-thorn), likewise tarfa-bush; abundant in Arabia, particularly in the vicinity of Sinai. A resinous exudation, resembling sugar, appearing sometimes spontaneously, sometimes through incisions made by insects or by men; appearing specifically on leaves and twigs. Several travellers assure us that in the east the manna falls as dew from the air. Even in this case a vegetable origin must be presumed. Our idea of the miraculous manna must be formed after the analogy of the Egyptian plagues: A natural phenomenon miraculously increased in an extraordinary manner by the power of God for a special purpose.53 At present scarcely six hundred-weight are gathered on the peninsula of Petræa in the most favorable years.—According to Chrysostom and others the manna came from the atmosphere, and so from just below the real heaven.
Joh_6:32. It is not Moses [οὐ before Μωυσῆς] that gave you the bread from heaven.—Introduced with a: Verily, verily. Not questioning the miraculousness of the manna (Paulus), but denying that the manna of Moses was from the real heaven, and was real manna. The question is not of a manna in an ideal sense, but of the real, true manna. Tholuck: “The negation is to be taken not absolutely, but only relatively.” It is relative, of course, considering the affinity of the symbol to the substance; but it is also absolute considering the infinite difference between them. According to Meyer the words “from heaven” in both cases (and in Joh_6:31) relate not to the bread (for then the phrase would be τὸν ἐκ τ. οὐρ.), but to δέδωκεν and δίδωσιν; and “in like manner in Exo_16:4, מִן הַשָׁמַיִם belongs not to לֶחֶם, but to מַמְטִיר.” But we must not forget that the nature of the bread is described with the source of it: Bread of heaven, Psa_78:24; Psa_105:40. Just on account of the former of these two passages, to which the words before us refer, and where the Septuagint has ἄρτου οὐρανοῦ, Tholuck, not without reason, prefers the usual interpretation.
[My Father giveth you; δίδωσιν, now and always, opposed to δέδωκεν, which is said of Moses. Bengel: Jam aderat panis, Joh_6:33.—P. S.] The true bread from heaven.—[ἀληθινός, genuine, veritable, essential, as opposed to derived, borrowed, imperfect, while ἀληθής, true, is opposed to false. Comp. note on Joh_1:9, p. 66.—P. S.] Exactly parallel with the true light (Joh_1:9); the true vine (Joh_15:1); and to the same class of expressions: the true well of water, the true medicinal fountain, the true shepherd, etc., substantially belong.
Joh_6:33. For the bread of God is that which cometh down from heaven.—The decisive declaration by way of a description of the bread of God; ὁ καταβαίνων referring to ἄρτος, not to Christ (against Paulus, Olshausen).54 Without this bread there is no substantial life, and no substantial nourishment of life. [Unto the world, i.e., all mankind; in opposition to the Jewish particularism which boasted in the manna as a national miracle. Bengel: Non modo uni populo, uni ætati, ut manna cibavit unum populum unius ætatis.—P. S.]
Joh_6:34. Lord, evermore give us this bread.—Comp. the request of the woman in Joh_4:15. The people presume that Christ is the agent of the Father’s gift. Interpretations: 1. Dim suspicion of the higher gift [perhaps the heavenly manna which, according to the Rabbis, is prepared for the just in heaven; comp. Rev_2:17] (Lücke, Tholuck, and others). 2. They think the bread something material, separate from Christ (De Wette, Meyer, [Godet]). And in any case their prayer is more decidedly sensuous and chiliastically perverted, than the prayer of the woman of Samaria. [Some take the prayer as an irony based on incredulity as to the possibility of such bread. Not warranted.—P. S.]
Joh_6:35. I [Ἐγώ] am the bread of life.—[Transition from the indirect to the direct form of speech, as in Joh_6:30, and a categoric answer to the request of the Jews: “Give us this bread,” together with the indication of the way how to get it. Here is this bread before you, and all you have to do is to come unto Me. I am the bread, and faith is the work or the means of getting it.—P. S.] Most emphatic and decisive assertion. Still stronger than that in Joh_4:26, since it was more open to contradiction; though here it is not the profession of Himself as the Messiah by name. (Philo, Allegor. legis, lib. III.: λόγος θεοῦ ψυχῆς τροφή)—He that cometh to me.—Is willing to believe, and uses the means of faith that he may believe. Conversion in its Christian aspect. Not, as Meyer makes it, only a different phrase for πιστεύων.55 According to Meyer the expression: “Shall never thirst,” is a confusion of the figure, and anticipates the drinking of the blood of Christ, which follows. But it is rather an introduction to Christ’s further declaration of Himself. As faith is developed, it brings, besides the importation and sustenance of the spiritual life, the satisfaction also of having drunk. It is less natural to make this addition, with Lücke [and Alford], a description of the excellence of the heavenly bread over the manna [which was no sooner given, than the people began to be tormented with thirst and murmured against Moses, Exo_17:1 ff.—P. S.]
Joh_6:36. But I said unto you.—He said this to them not, as Lücke and De Wette have it, at Joh_5:37; for there He was speaking to the Sanhedrists in Jerusalem; but, as Grotius [Bengel] Luthardt and others, [Stier, Olsh., Hengstenberg, Godet] make it, at Joh_6:26; though He there said it to them in other words. [Christ quotes Himself here, as He often quotes the Old Testament, more after the spirit than after the letter.] According to Euthymius Zigabenus [and Alford] the Lord refers to some utterance not recorded; according to Meyer it means: I wilt have said [εἶπον=dictum velim] to you just now; which it can mean,56 as to the letter, but must not mean here. That ye have even seen me.—They have already seen Him in a Messianic function at the feeding, and yet did not see the sign in His miracle, and so did not truly see Him. So near were they to salvation; but they lacked faith. A paraphrase of Joh_6:26. [The two καί are correlative and bring out the glaring contrast of the two facts of even seeing the Son of God in His glory, and yet not believing in Him.—P. S.]
Joh_6:37. All that the Father giveth me.57—As to the connection: The judgment just uttered is true of the body of those who were before Him. It is not intended to exclude the thought that there were some among them, whom the Father had given to Him. It is, therefore, not in absolute antithesis to what precedes (as Meyer makes it). All. Neuter. The strongest expression of totality, as in Joh_3:6, [totam quasi massam, as Bengel has it; comp. also Joh_17:2, where πᾶν is likewise used of persons in this emphatic sense of totality.—P. S.]58 That the Father giveth me. [The same as whom the Father draws, Joh_6:44.—P. S.] Not only the gratia præveniens, operating through nature and history, conscience and law, (comp. Joh_6:44), but also the effectual call to salvation—the gratia convertens—itself, is the work of the Father. The conversion, the coming to Jesus, is the answer to the call. Tholuck: It runs through the Gospel of John as a fundamental view, that all attraction towards Christ presupposes an affinity in the person for Christ, and then this affinity is the operation of the Father; and so here the un-susceptibility of the people is traced to this want of inward affinity. The phrase δίδοσθαι παρὰ τοῦ πατρός is also in Joh_10:29; Joh_17:2; Joh_17:6; comp. in the Old Testament, Isa_8:18 : “I and the children whom the Lord hath given me.” The Predestinarians refer this passage to the eternal election [Augustine, Beza], the Arminians to the gratia generalis, the ability to believe [Grotius: pietatis studium], the Socinians to the probitas, natural honesty and love of truth, etc. We consider that in the “giveth” the three elements of election, predestination (fore-ordination), and calling are combined, Rom_8:29. But undoubtedly fore-ordination is very especially intended. [Shall come unto me, πρὸς ἐμὲ ῆξει. By an act of faith. Comp. the following τὸν ἐρχόμενον. Godet distinguishes ἥξει from ἐλεύσεται, and explains it: will arrive at Me, will not suffer shipwreck, but infallibly attain the goal. He calls the usual interpretation tautological, in as much as the gift consists in the coming, but this is not correct; the δίδωσι is the act of God, and the ἔρχεσθαι the act of man, i.e., faith in actual motion towards Christ.—P. S.]
And him that cometh to me, I Will in no wise cast out.—Every one who comes to Him is welcome. The only criterion is the coming or the not coming; no matter what the previous condition or guiltiness; the coming bespeaks the will of the Father, which it is the office of Christ to fulfil. [Οὐ μὴ ἐκβάλω ἐξω does not refer to Christ’s office as Judge at the resurrection, but to the present order of grace, and is a litotes, i.e., it expresses in a negative form more strongly the readiness of Christ to receive with open arms of love every one that comes to Him.—P. S.]
Joh_6:38. For I came down from heaven, etc.—Expressing the complete condescension and humiliation in the estate of the Redeemer. But how could His will be different from the Father’s? The ideal will of the Son of man, in and Of itself, must continually press towards the perfecting of the world and of life, and therefore legitimately lead to judgment. But in the spirit of redemption Christ continually directs this current of rightful judgment by the counsel of that redemption which is in operation till the end of the world; and this is His humiliation to the death of the cross, and this His patience, in the majesty of His exaltation.
Joh_6:39. And this is the will of him that sent me [according to the correct reading instead of the Father’s will] that of all which he hath given me.—The decree of redemption. Hence the perfect: Which He hath given me. Spoken not from a point of view in the future (as Meyer says); nor with reference to election, but with with reference to the perseverance of the divine purpose of salvation, to which the perseverance of the patience of Christ and the perseverance of believers correspond (see Rom_8:29 ff.). I should lose nothing.—Let nothing be lost by breaking off before the final decision of persistent unbelief in every case. But should raise it up.—Evidently meaning the resurrection to life. The Son is not only to continue, but to carry to its blessed consummation the work of resurrection. It is not, therefore, the day of death (Reuss),59 nor specifically the first resurrection (Meyer), which is intended. The last day, ἐσχάτη ἡμέρα.—The period of judgment and resurrection from the second coming of Christ to the general resurrection, Revelation 20.
[The resurrection of the body is the culmination of the redeeming work beyond which there is no more danger. Bengel: Hic finis est, ultra quem periculum nullum. Citeriora omnia præstat Salvator. This “blessed refrain,” as Meyer calls it, is three times repeated, Joh_6:40; Joh_6:44; Joh_6:54; comp. Joh_10:28; Joh_17:12; Joh_18:9. What stronger assurance of final resurrection to life everlasting can the believer have than this solemnly repeated assurance from the unerring mouth of the Saviour: “I shall raise him up on the last day.” But true faith is no carnal confidence, it is always united with true humility. The more we trust in Christ, the less we trust in ourselves. All is safe if we look to Christ, all is lost, if we look to ourselves alone. Christians should pray as if all depended upon God, and watch and work as if all depended upon themselves.—P. S.]
Joh_6:40. That every one that seeth the Son.—A stronger putting of the gracious will of God in its final intent. Hence again naming the Son in the third person. “What John said to his disciples, Jesus now says openly to the Jews: Faith in the Son has everlasting life. Who the Son is, He gives them to know by declaring that He will raise up these believers.
Joh_6:41. The Jews therefore murmured at him.—A new section of the affair, occasioned by the Jews’ taking decisive offence at the preceding discourse. The οὖν is again very definitive. The verb γογγύζω, of itself, denotes neither, on the one hand, a whispering, nor, on the other, a grumbling or fault-finding; but the murmuring is here the expression of fault-finding, and is made by the context (“among yourselves,” and by the antagonism (“at Him”) synonymous with it.—The Jews. In the ὄχλος itself the Jewish element was aroused (De Wette); but no doubt the Pharisaic members of that synagogue are here especially concerned; and even Judas, whose very name is Jew, here seems to have already become soured (see Joh_6:64).
The bread which came down from heaven.—This declaration transcended their idea of the Messiah; and that in it which, unconsciously, most offended them was its offer of a suffering or self-sacrificing Messiah. Hence the Lord afterwards brought this out with special prominence. But they seized the declaration in another aspect. When, without directly claiming it, He indicated His divine sonship by saying that He came down from heaven, they considered Him as contradicting His known origin. A sensuous, narrow, literalistic apprehension.
Joh_6:42. Is not this Jesus.—The οὖτος, primarily, strongly demonstrative. The same person, of whom we know that He sprang from Nazareth and rose to be a Rabbi, pretends to have come down from heaven. This contrast and the skepticism of the people add a contemptuous tone to the pronoun. The son of Joseph.—These words do not imply that both the parents were still living (Meyer), but that the people considered both (whom they once knew) to be His parents. Of Joseph, whom the tradition represents as advanced in years at the time of his marriage to Mary, we have no trace in the Gospels after the childhood of Jesus (comp. Mat_13:55). [John introduces here the Jews as speaking from their own stand-point. They, of course, knew nothing of the mystery of the supernatural conception, and would not have appreciated it, if Jesus had corrected them. This was a truth for the initiated, and was not revealed even to the disciples before they were fully convinced that Christ was the Son of God.—P. S.]
Joh_6:43. Murmur not among yourselves.—Jesus intended not to draw out their thoughts, but goes on to expose their defect.
Joh_6:44. No man can come to me.60—Here: reach Me; in particular: reach an understanding of My nature, apprehend the Spirit in the flesh, Deity in humanity, the Son of God in the Nazarene. Except the Father draw him.—Ἑλκύειν denotes all sorts of drawing, from violence to persuasion or invitation. But persons can be drawn only according to the laws of personal life. Hence this is not to be taken in a high predestinarian sense (Calvin: It is false and impious to say non nisi volentes trahi;61 Beza: Volumus, quia datum est, ut velimus; Aretius: Hic ostendit Christus veram causam murmuris esse quod non sint electi). Yet on the other hand the force of the added clause, denoting a figurative, vital constraint, subduing by the bias of want, of desire, of hope, of mind, must not be abated. The drawing of the Father is the point at which election and fore-ordination become calling (the vocatio efficax), represented as entirely the work of the Father. Meyer: “The ἑλκύειν is the mode of the διδόναι, an internal pressing and leading to Christ by the operation of divine grace (Jer_30:3, Sept.), though not impairing human freedom.” The element of calling is added through the word of Christ. Hence: The Father who sent Me. As sent of the Father, He executes the Father’s work and word. The congruence of the objective work of salvation and the subjective operation of salvation in the individual.
[Ἑλκύειν (or ἕλκω, fut. ἕλξω, which is preferred to έλκύσω by the Attic writers), to draw, to drag, to force, almost always implies force or violence, as when it is used of wrestling, bending the bow, stretching the sail, or when a net is drawn to the land, a ship into the sea, the body of an animal or a prisoner is dragged along, or a culprit is drawn before the tribunal (comp. Joh_18:10; Joh_21:6; Joh_21:11; Act_16:19, and the classical Dictionaries, also Meyer, p. 266). It is certainly much stronger than δίδωσι, Joh_6:37, and implies active or passive resistance, or obstructions to be removed. Here and in Joh_12:32, it does, of course, not mean physical or moral compulsion, for faith is in its very nature voluntary, and coming to Christ is equivalent to believing in Him; but it clearly expresses the mighty moral power of the infinite love of the Father who so orders and overrules the affairs of life and so acts upon our hearts, that we give up at last our natural aversion to holiness, and willingly, cheerfully and thankfully embrace the Saviour as the gift of gifts for our salvation. The natural inability of man to come to Christ, however, is not physical nor intellectual, but moral and spiritual; it is an unwillingness. No change of mental organization, no new faculty is required, but a radical change of the heart and will. This is effected by the Holy Ghost, but the providential drawing of the Father prepares the way for it.—P. S.]
Joh_6:45. It is written in the prophets, etc.—[This verse explains what kind of drawing was meant in the preceding verse, viz., by divine illumination of the mind and heart.] Prophets, i.e., the division of the Holy Scriptures called the Prophets. Yet the phrase is no doubt intended to assert that the particular passage, Isa_54:13, (quoted freely from the Sept.), is found in substance throughout the prophets (which Tholuck calls in question; comp. Isaiah 11; Jer_31:33; Joe_3:1). Taught of God.—Taught by God; the genitive with the participle denoting the agent. The promises of universal illumination in the time of the Messiah. In the prophet the point of the passage quoted lies in the “all” in contrast with the isolated enlightenment under the Old Testament. And here, too, this universality is not denied, though it is to be limited to all believers. The children of the Messianic time are the “all” from the fact that an inward, immediate divine illumination gives them faith in the word spoken by Christ. Cyril, Ammonius, and the older Lutheran expositors: Taught of God, per vocem evangelicam; the mystics: by the Spirit working with the outward word, by the inner light; Clericus, Delitzsch, and others: by the prevenient grace.—It is the calling provided for by election and fore-ordination; but it is this calling considered inwardly, as the operation of the Father by the Spirit;—an operation distinct from the spiritual life which proceeds from the Son, but not separate from it. Effectual calling, on its intellectual side: the enlightening of the mind.
Every man that hath learned of the Father.—According to the reading ἀκούων, we suppose the hearing the Father is to be conceived as continuous. As soon as the having learned is thereby effected, the man, as one taught of God, comes to Christ. The reference is of course to the whole discipline of the Father, which proceeds from His election; but it is to this (1) as becoming manifest in the effectual calling, and (2) as therein reaching its goal. Hence it is not the elect simply in view of this election (Beza), that are intended; still less the elect in a predestinarian sense.
Joh_6:46. Not that any one hath seen the Father.—Explaining, that those who are taught of God in the Messianic age, still have need of the Messiah. Different interpretations: (1) The Lord would contrast His true seeing of God with that of Moses (Cyril, Erasmus). (2) He would forestall the spiritualistic view, that the inward manifestation of God supersedes the historical Christ (Calovius, Lampe). (3) He would mark a difference in degree and kind of revelation (Bengel: Videre interius est, quam audire; Tholuck). The third interpretation does not, as Tholuck thinks, set aside the second. The same fact, that the historical Christ is the positive fulfilment of all previous revelation and knowledge of God, and is therefore indispensable, is expressed in a different way; but all such facts as that He is Reconciler, King, Redeemer, are rooted in the fact that, being the Son; He is, in His perfect vision of God, the absolute Prophet (comp. Joh_1:18). Save he who is of God.—The full divine nature was necessary to the full view of God.
Joh_6:47. He that believeth on me hath everlasting life.—Here again it must be observed, (1) that Christ has put His previous Messianic statements in a general form, not in the first person, but that He connects His soteriological statement, His declaration of salvation, directly with His person; and (2) that He asseverates: Verily, verily. This is, therefore, Christ’s positive offer of Himself as the personal Saviour; and now follows the declaration.
[Mark the present tense hath (ἔχει), not shall have. Eternal life is not confined to the future world, but is ever present and becomes ours as soon as we lay hold of Christ who is eternal life Himself. The resurrection of the body is only the full bloom of what has begun here. Mark also that faith, and nothing else, is laid down here, and in this whole discourse (comp. Joh_6:40; Joh_3:15-16,) as the condition of eternal life. The eating of Christ’s flesh and the drinking of His blood, to be consistent with this, is only a stronger form of expressing the same idea of a real personal appropriation of Christ by faith. This refutes all forms of ecclesiasticism which throw any kind of obstruction between the soul and Christ, as an essential condition of salvation, whether it be the authority of pope or council or creed or system of theology, or the intercession of saints, or good works of our own. Salvation depends solely and exclusively upon personal union with Christ: all other things, however important in their place, are subordinate to this. Without faith in Christ there can be no salvation for any sinner: this is the exclusiveness of the gospel; but with faith in Christ there is salvation for all of whatever sect or name: this is its charity.—P. S.]
Joh_6:48. I am the bread of life.—Tholuck (like Meyer), on Joh_6:47-51 : “After repelling the objection of the Jews, Jesus returns to His former theme in Joh_6:32-40, and in the first place repeats the same thought.” We find here not a return, but an advance, carrying the thought forward from the person of Christ to His historical work. This appears from what follows. “Of the life.” Referring to the preceding promise of eternal life. “Τῆζ ζωῆς. Genitiv. qual. and effectus.” Or probably, conversely, the genitive of form or mode of existence. [That is, not: “the bread which has the quality and effect of life, the bread which is and which gives life;” but: “the life which is bread; the life existing and offered in the form of bread, and operating as bread.”—E. D. Y.] Previously the bread was the subject, with various predicates (the person); now the bread becomes an attribute of the life (the giving and the effect of the person). The life as bread, not the bread as life. That Jesus is the life, follows from Joh_6:46-47. This thought is expanded further on.
Joh_6:49. Your fathers did eat manna.—The manna gave no abiding life, because it was not essential life.
Joh_6:50. This is the bread.—By this the bread may be known as the true bread: that it comes down from heaven for the purpose and to the effect that whosoever eateth of it shall not die; or, more precisely: It cometh down from heaven, in order that men may eat of it (the μὴ ἀποθάνῃ affecting this first clause), and that he who eateth of it may not die. The definition of the true bread by its origin, its design, and its effects. The μὴ ἀποθάνῃ is more exactly expressed in the κἂν ἀποθάνῃ of Joh_11:25.
Joh_6:51. I am the living bread.—I am the bread living. The life is now the logical subject. The Vulgate: Ego sum panis vivus (,) qui de cœlo descendi; the bread living, who [1st pers.] have come down from heaven.
If any man eat of this bread.—Because Christ is the living bread, He offers Himself as bread, and communicates by the eating of this bread a living forever. Christ, therefore, now distinguishes Himself as life from the bread of life as a gift.
And the bread that I will give.—No longer: The bread which I am. The καί—δέ, [atque etiam] is to be noted [i.e., καὶ ὁ ἄρτος δέ, ὃν έγ. δ.: “And the bread, now, which I will give.”] See Tholuck.62 Is my flesh.—The bodily, finite, historical form of Christ, which He yields up for the world in His death, and thus gives to the world for its nourishment, Joh_2:19; Joh_3:14. Not only the sacrifice of Christ in His atoning death to procure the eternal life of the world (Meyer), but also the renewal and transformation of the world by its participation of the sacrificed life of Christ; as, in Joh_2:19; Joh_3:14, death and resurrection are combined. It seems strange that the second ἣν ἔγὼ δώσω [after ή σάρξ μου ἐστίν] should be wanting in Codd. B. C. D. L. T. [and א.], the Itala, the Vulgate, and three times in Origen; so as to be stricken out by Lachmann and Tischendorf [Tregelles, Alford, Westcott and Hort—P. S.] Tholuck accordingly says, with Meyer: “A pregnance like this: The bread which I will give, is my flesh, for the life of the world,—would be as contrary to the style of John as the repetition ἣν ἐγὼ δώσω is agreeable to it.” And he conjectures: “The omission may have been caused by the preceding δώσω.” But the addition, too, may very easily have been made for doctrinal elucidation, to make the sentence point more distinctly to the atoning death. If, therefore, we let the above manuscripts decide, the death and resurrection are united; the point of the sacrificial death by itself is not yet so distinctly brought, out in this place; and this seems more congruous with Joh_3:14 (and with the conception of the Jews in the sequel). Therefore: My flesh for the life of the world. The manifestation in the flesh is necessary to the full life. The flesh of Christ will be the life of the world. That is, the giving up of His flesh in death and the distribution of His flesh in the resurrection will be the life of the world. Yet in the giving up of His flesh, His sacrificial death is mainly intended, and in the eating of it, faith in the atonement; and as this element in the conception is to be distinguished, on the one hand, from the fact that Christ is the bread in His person, in His historical life itself, so, on the other hand, it is to be distinguished from the fact that He, in His flesh and blood, prepares His life, glorified through death, for a eucharistic meal for the world.
Joh_6:52. The Jews therefore strove among themselves.—Here a dispute arises concerning the sense in which the Lord could give men His flesh for the life of the world. And this dispute is described as a dispute of the Jews. Yet it is not a question of the interpretation of Christ’s word, but of the offensiveness of it, which here sets the Jews at strife. The skeptics and cavillers lead, saying: How can this man, etc. They seem disposed to charge the word with an abominable meaning, taking it literally.
Joh_6:53. Unless ye eat the flesh of the Son of man, and drink his blood.—Jesus recedes not for the offense, but with a verily, verily, He goes further, and now divides the flesh into flesh and blood, and to the eating adds drinking, which He had first introduced at Joh_6:35.
Mark further: (1) This truth, enforced with verily, verily, is now expressed in four different forms; four times the Lord speaks of eating and drinking His flesh and blood. (2) The first time in a conditional injunction on the Jews with reference to the Messiah, in the negative form of threatening: “Unless ye eat, etc., ye have no life in you.” The second time in a positive statement referring to Jesus Himself, in the form of promise. The third time, in a statement of the nature and substantial effect of the flesh and blood of Christ, on which the preceding practical alternative is founded: “For my flesh is meat indeed,” etc. The fourth time, in explication of all these three propositions: “He dwelleth in Me, and I in him.”
For the interpretation, we must remember that elsewhere flesh (σάρξ), by itself, denotes human nature in its full concrete manifestation (Joh_3:6); hence the flesh (σάρξ) of Christ, likewise, is the manhood of Christ, His personal human nature. But flesh and blood (σὰρξ καὶ αἶμα) elsewhere denotes inherited nature; in Peter (Mat_16:17), for example, his old, hereditary Jewish nature, with its associations and views; in Paul (Gal_1:16), his Pharisaic descent, spirit, and associations; in Christians (1Co_15:50), the mortal, earthly nature and form, received from natural birth, which cannot inherit the kingdom of God. Accordingly the flesh and blood of Christ are the peculiar descent and nature of Christ in historical manifestation; the historical Christ. As the flesh and blood of historical mankind are reduced to the material and nutriment of its culture and development, its humanity; so the flesh and blood of the historical Christ are given to be the nutriment of mankind’s higher spiritual life, its divinity. And when the partaking of His flesh and blood is made the indispensable condition of salvation, the meaning is: The life of man proceeds only from the life of Christ completed in death; only by Christ’s actual person being made the especial vital element of mankind, the nourishment and refreshment of the real life of man,—by this means alone does man receive true life.
The four sentences of this passage may be arranged in the following system:
(1) The flesh and blood of Christ are really the food and drink of man; i.e., the sacrifice and the participation of the actual, divine-human Christ are for mankind the only escape from death, and the only way to the higher, spiritual life.
(2) Because nothing but the full reception of the historical Christ can effect full communion with Him, consisting in the believer’s dwelling in Christ (justification), and Christ’s dwelling in the believer (sanctification).
(3) Therefore he that eats, takes the nutriment of eternal life, which works in him to resurrection.
(4) He who takes not this nourishment, has no true life, and can attain to none.
Note: (1) the phrase flesh and blood (σὰρξ καὶ αἶμα) in our passage differs from body and blood (σῶμα καὶ αἷμα) in the words of institution of the holy Supper: the former applying to the whole historical, self-sacrificing Christ, the latter simply to His individual person just coming forth from the sacrifice. (2) In the preparation of the σὰρξ καὶ αἷμα for food, the life, death, and resurrection of Christ are blended in one, the leading element being the death; as in σῶμα καὶ αἷμα the two are blended under the leading aspect of the new life.—Tholuck: “The addition of αἷμα to σάρξ abates nothing from the notion (Mat_16:7; Eph_6:11; 1Co_15:20), but only expresses still more definitely, that is, by its two main constituents, the sensible human nature.” This, therefore, in its earthly manifestation (Joh_6:50; Joh_6:58), is to be spiritually received, and Joh_6:50, continuing to qualify the succeeding verses, shows that it is to be received especially in its atoning death, to which also the αἷμα may perhaps particularly point. The addition of αἷμα, however, denotes primarily the generic life in the individualized σάρξ. The flesh and blood of Christ are the historical Christ in His entire connection with God and man (as the “Son of God and of Mary”), as made by His death the eucharistic meal of the world;—certainly, therefore, a new point, with death as the most prominent aspect. [It should be added that the blood of Christ in the New Testament always signifies His atoning death for the sins of the world, comp. Rom_3:25; Col_1:14; Col_1:20; Heb_9:14; Heb_9:20; Heb_10:10; 1Pe_1:2; 1Pe_1:19; 1Jn_1:7; Rev_1:5. It must refer to the same sacrifice here, and flesh must be interpreted accordingly. Flesh and blood are the whole human life of Christ as offered on the cross for the propitiation of the sins of the world, and thus become the fountain of life for all believers.—P. S.]
Various Interpretations:
1. The atoning death of Christ: Augustine,63 Luther, Melanchthon, Calvin, Beza, [Grotius, Calov.] Lücke, and many other modern expositors (see Meyer).64
2. The entire human manifestation of Christ including His death (Paulus, Frommann, De Wette, etc.)
3. The deeper self-communication of Jesus, faith eating and drinking in the human nature of Jesus the life of God (Hofmann, Schriftbeweis, [ΙΙ. 2, p. 245 ff.]. “Not the giving of His flesh, but His flesh itself Jesus calls food.” (Delitzsch).
4. A prophetic discourse in anticipation of the Lord’s Supper (Chrysostom, most of the fathers [Cyril, Theophyl., Euth. Zigab., Cyprian, Hilarius, perhaps also Augustine, but see p. 228,] and Roman Catholics [Klee, Maier], Calixtus [a moderate Lutheran, strongly opposed by the high Lutheran Calovius], Zinzendorf, Bengel, Michaelis, Scheibel, Olshausen, Kling, etc., Kahnis,65 Luthardt [Wordsworth]; according to Heubner, the Reformed Church [he should say the Reformed theology] with the exception of Calvin).
5. A mythical discourse here anticipating the Lord’s Supper, as John 3 anticipates baptism. (The negative critics, Bretschneider, Strauss, Baur, etc.).
6. The Lord does not speak here of the Supper itself, but expresses the idea on which the Supper is founded. (Here Meyer names Olshausen, Kling, Lange).
As to the first interpretation: Unquestionably the atoning death is in view, but in connection with its antecedent (the historical fact of Christ) and its effect (the historical gospel).
As to the second: The subject is no longer only the living person of Christ itself, but that which it will yield by its sacrifice of itself.
As to the third: The further pressing of the words themselves takes us to the very mode by which the life of Jesus is changed into the food and drink of mankind (death).
As to the fourth: The Lord’s Supper itself cannot be the subject. (Heubner quotes the Lutheran church as denying this hypothesis, especially Luther. Yet it is plain from the foregoing that this exegetical antagonism is not confessional.) (a) The discourse would anticipate too much, and be unintelligible. (b) Joh_6:53 would teach the absolute necessity of taking the communion rather than of evangelical saving faith. (“Even the Lutherans consider the Supper not absolute but only ordinarie necessary.”) (c) The expression σὰρξ καὶ αἷμα; is not equivalent to σῶμα καὶ αἷμα. (d) A manducatio spiritualis is here intended; for the partaker is assured of eternal life, which is only conditionally the case in the fruitio oralis. (e) The eating here described is perpetual.
As to the fifth: It is disposed of with the assumptions of that school of criticism in the Introduction. (The σὰρκα φαγεῖν of Ignatius and Justin can prove nothing. It has its origin here.)
As to the sixth: As the specific ordinance of baptism is, in chap. 3, lodged in germ in the general idea of baptism as already known to history, so the specific ordinance of the Lord’s Supper is here present in germ under the general idea and historical forms of the evening meal.
The hearers of Jesus were on their way to eat the paschal lamb; He says to them: Ye must eat Me, the real paschal lamb now offered in the history of the world. This then unquestionably contains a prophecy of the holy Supper, though it is not the Supper itself that is directly described.—The emphasizing of the person is the decisive point. Personal reception of the historical person of Christ in its communication and sacrifice of itself (through the medium of the word and sacrament) is the fundamental condition of personal eternal life.
Respecting the copious literature of this section, see Tholuck: Meyer [p. 273]. The dissertations of Kling, Müller,66 Tischendorf [De Christo pane vitæ, 1839], the works on the Lord’s Supper by Ebrard, Kahnis, Lindner, [Rückert, Nevin], Dieckhoff, the Excursus of Lücke,67 etc., are of mark.
Joh_6:53-54. Unless ye eat [φάγητε] … and drink. … He that eateth [τρώγων] my flesh and drinketh my blood.—Eating and drinking denotes full, actual faith, full, actual appropriation by faith. According to Hofmann, faith is not the thing directly in view, but is presupposed. The reception here meant is distinct from faith.68 Against this see Joh_6:40; Joh_6:47, and the many passages in which the πιστεύειν is represented as the sole condition of the ζωὴ αἰώνιος. Τρώγειν [to gnaw, to crack, to chew, repeated four times, 54, 56–58.—P. S.], though in its general meaning equivalent to φαγεῖν, is a stronger expression (De Wette, et al., against Tholuck);69 and to it πίνειν is added. The tropical phrase is interpreted not so well by Eph_3:17 and Sir_24:21, as by the institution of the paschal lamb, and from the eating and the manna from which the discourse started. It is the strongest assertion of the personal aspect of salvation. In you, ἐν ἑαυτοῖς; see Joh_5:26.
Joh_6:55. My flesh is true food [ἀληθὴς βρῶσις].—Ἀληθής is better attested than ἀληθῶς. [See Text. Notes.] Tholuck considers it the antithesis of the real to the pretended, and disputes the sense ἀληθινός [genuine, veritable] (Origen, Lücke, etc.). Rightly, if it be understood that the ἀληθινός, as opposed to the symbol (in this case, e.g., the manna), is strengthened to ἀληθής, and the symbol falls to nonentity and falsehood, the moment men put the symbol against, the reality for which it stands.70 And my blood, etc.—“The life of the flesh is in the blood,” says Lev_17:11. Here it is said, in ver John 63: “It is the Spirit that quickeneth;” and in 1Co_15:45. If, now, as we have said on Joh_6:53, the flesh denotes rather the individualized nature of man, and the blood rather the general, then the blood of Christ also bears a reference to His generic life as Christ in distinction from His flesh, His personal manifestation in history. The connecting notion between His blood and His flesh is His life. We must eat His distinct historical form in believing, historical contemplation, but His life we must drink in spiritual contemplation and in the appropriation of fervent faith.
Joh_6:56. Dwelleth in me, and I in him.—A Johannean phrase (Joh_15:4; Joh_17:23; 1Jn_3:24; 1Jn_4:16). Denoting personal community of life with Christ in its two correlative fundamental forms which appear singly in Paul: We in Christ, is the first (Gal_2:17); Christ in us, the second (Gal_2:20). From this effect of the heavenly food the reception of it may be more precisely defined: The vital appropriation of the whole person of Christ. This is not a unio mystica (Meyer, Tholuck) in the stricter theological sense, though the living faith contains the basis for it. That an effect like this cannot be claimed for the reception of the Lord’s Supper in and of itself, is plain. Yet the reception of the holy communion is the most efficient and copious medium, and the appointed seal; the believing participation is the highest specific act and form of this vital communion; and for this reason the unbelieving participation forms the most violent collision with this vital communion to judgment.
Joh_6:57. And I live by the Father.—Here also the vital correlation is the main thing; Christ lives in the Father; that is, by the contemplation of the living, almighty Father, who is life absolute, and pure life, Christ is living and is sent by the Father. The Father lives in Him; that is, Christ has His own life by the Father’s living in Him for the Father’s sake, i.e., He lives for the Father. (Διά with the accusative denotes not the cause: by the Father,71 and hardly the ground: because the Father has life;72 but the entire purpose and direction. “The Father will and must have such, He seeks such,” Joh_4:23. Angelus Silesius: “I am as much to Him as He is to me”). So he … shall live by me.—Here the eating is again the eating of Christ Himself. He to whom it is the nourishment of His life to sink Himself in the personal presence of Christ, as Christ has sunk Himself in the contemplation of the Father,—he is sent forth by the life of Christ, and lives for Him, as Christ is sent forth by the life of the Father, and lives for the Father. (“He shall divide the spoil with the strong” [German version: “He shall have the strong for a prey”]. Isaiah 53.
Joh_6:58. This is that bread. Conclusion of the whole matter. As Christ had passed from the bread which He in Himself presents, to the bread which He gives, He here returns to the bread which He Himself is. Yet not merely in the same sense as before is He now Himself the bread. There it was Christ in His historical manifestation; here it is the eternal Christ, by the eternal intuition (τρώγων) of whom we live forever.
Joh_6:59. These things said he in the synagogue, as he taught in Capernaum.—A historical note, accounting, in particular, for the fact that not only the Judaistic spirit in the popular mass which followed Him, but also many of His old adherents and disciples in Capernaum itself took offence at His words. From this locality of His discourse the sensuous construction of the eating of the body of Christ has been styled a Capernaitic eating.
Joh_6:60. Many therefore of his disciples, when they heard this.—Many of His adherents in Capernaum and the vicinity. Μαθηταί in the wider sense. See the woe of Christ on Capernaum, Bethsaida, and Chorazin, Mat_11:20 ff. Hard; σκληρός, harsh, stern, rigorous; opposed to μαλακός, soft, tender, gentle. דִּבַר־עֶצֶב, Pro_15:1. Hard to solve, hard to do, hard to bear. The interpretation is contained in the next words: Who can hear it? i.e., bear it. Hence not: hard to understand (Chrysostom, Grotius, Olshausen). According to Tholuck and others: presumptuous, for its making life depend on a scandalous eating of His flesh and blood (on man-eating). De Wette (Kuinoel, Meyer): Because they would not admit the thought of the death of the Messiah; not because they understood literally the eating of His flesh (Augustine, Grotius, Lücke). Unquestionably in the sequel, the suffering Messiah and His death on the cross were, as Meyer observes, the standing and specific σκάνδαλον of the Jews (Joh_12:34; 1Co_1:23). This interpretation is further commended by the fact that on this occasion Judas seems to have conceived his first aversion. Yet the succeeding utterance of the Lord gives a still more distinct clew. Formally, they certainly stumbled at the idea of eating flesh and drinking blood, in consequence of their Jewish laws of purity in reference to such acts and in reference to the abomination of human sacrifice. But then, materially, the thought of His sacrifice for their salvation which shone out intelligibly enough, was most certainly hard to them. They sought the Messianic kingdom in a rain of miraculous manna and other blessings from heaven; He would have them find everything in His own person, and even in the sacrificial suffering of that person. And the more repugnant to them the suggestion of this idea, the more they inclined to stick to the letter in which it was expressed, and to find it hard.
Joh_6:61. Knew in himself.—Ἐν ἑαυτῷ. Bengel’s sine indicio externo is too strong. There were indications, no doubt, of their aversions; but He also knew how to interpret them as the searcher of hearts. Doth this offend you?. Σκανδαλίζει. The Jewish idea of offence, σκάνδαλον; i.e., the taking offence or occasion of falling (see σκάνδαλον, מוֹקֵשׁ et מִכְשׁוֹל in Bretschneider; (comp. Rom_9:33; 1Co_1:23; Gal_5:11; 1Pe_2:8).
Joh_6:62. What and if ye shall see the Son of man ascending where he was before?—Aposiopesis [from ἀπο-σιωπᾶν, to be silent]. That the form of the broken sentence may be completed by What shall ye say then? (τί ἐρεῖτε; according to Euthym. Zig., Kuinoel, and others) is groundlessly disputed by Meyer. The only question is whether the meaning then would be: shall ye then still take offence? (ἔτι τότε σκανδαλισθήσεσθε;) or shall ye then not he more offended? (οὐχὶ μᾶλλον δκανδαλισθήσεσθε;) Opposite interpretations:
1. Meyer, after De Wette: The ἀναβαίνειν, etc., denotes the dying of Jesus (comp. Joh_7:33; Joh_13:3; Joh_16:5; Joh_16:28),73 and to the beholders, who saw only this humble, ignominious fact of the death of Jesus, this amounted to the highest offence (so Beza, Semler, etc.; the οὖν also is adduced in support).
2. Olshausen [Hengstenberg, Godet, Alford] and others, after the expositors of the ancient church: Ἀναβαίνειν denotes (as in Joh_20:17) the ascension of Christ, and with this, or with His exaltation, offence must cease. Thus the question is: Will ye then still be offended? Augustine, et al.: Then will a deeper insight into the φαγεῖν τὴν σάρκα come.74 Calvin: Then will the offence which they took at His sensuous manifestation, be done away. Lyser: Then, by His glorification, the glorification of His flesh for food will also be provided for. Luthardt: The glorified state of existence will take the place of the fleshly.
Meyer groundlessly urges, that the ascension, as a visible occurrence, is not attested by any apostle,75 and in the unapostolical accounts76 none but disciples in the narrower sense are mentioned as eye-witnesses.77 The fact itself was nevertheless a visible one.
Meanwhile it is doubtless no more the ascension exclusively which is here in view, than it was exclusively the atoning death a little while ago. There the death includes the life and the exaltation; here the exaltation includes the death, chaps. 3 and 12 But it is evidently the exaltation viewed especially as produced by the Spirit, of which the next verse speaks. Hence in the same general sense as in Mat_26:64. It must also be considered, that Christ throughout gives to the Jews not only His death, but with it also carefully His resurrection, for a sign (Joh_2:19; Mat_12:39; Mat_16:3, the sign of Jonah). The resurrection destroyed the offence of the cross itself for the believing; and therefore for such it does away also the offensive word. At the same time it glorified the personal life of Jesus by the outpouring of the Holy Ghost for the world’s believing participation. Nevertheless the Judaists continued to be offended, and perhaps for this reason the word of Christ remained an aposiopesis. [ὅπου ἦν τὸ πρότερον clearly implies the pre-existence of Christ; comp Joh_1:1; Joh_8:58; Joh_17:5; Joh_17:24; Col_1:17; Rev_1:8.—P. S.]
Joh_6:63. It is the Spirit that maketh alive, the flesh profiteth nothing.—[Christ does not say My Spirit (τὸ πνεῦμα μου), and My flesh (ἡ σάρξ μου); the sentence is general and contains a hermeneutical canon which applies not only to this, but to all the discourses of Christ, and the proper mode of apprehending and appropriating Him. It must not be understood so as to conflict with the preceding declaration concerning His flesh. The flesh without the Spirit, or the flesh as mere matter and materially eaten, is worthless; but the flesh with the Spirit is worth much, most of all the flesh which the Logos assumed for our salvation (Joh_1:14) and which He sacrificed on the cross for the sins of the world.—P. S.] Interpretations:
1. Of the holy Supper: spiritual participation [πνεῦμα], as opposed to Capernaitic or material [σάρξ]. So Tertullian, Augustine,78 Rupert v. Deutz, Calvin, [Grotius] Olshausen, Kahnis [Lehre vom Abendmahl, p. 122]: “That which imparts to the eater of My flesh the virtue of eternal life, is not the flesh as such, but the Spirit.”
2. The Spirit is put for the spiritual apprehension of the word of Christ, the body representing the carnal apprehension (Chrysostom and many others, Lampe).
3. The πνεῦμα is the human soul, which animates the body (Beza, Fritzsche).
4. Not His bodily manifestation, the approaching dissolution of which was so offensive to them, but His Spirit is the life-giving thing. His bodily substance merely of itself profits nothing towards the ζωοποιεῖν. Under the figure of physical life, in which the spirit animates the flesh, Christ expresses the truth that the historical side both of His life and of His word, needs to be animated and glorified by His Spirit. This they should and might see clearly in His very words. The substantives assert: They are pure spirit, pure life.
How Luther and Zwingle contended over the sense of these words, see in Heubner, p. 321 sqq. Zwingle appealed to these words against the Lutheran doctrine of the Lord’s Supper79; Luther distinguished the flesh and My flesh, and explained “the flesh” as the carnal, corrupt mind of man. The verse no more supports Zwingle against a bodily presence of Christ, than it speaks, according to Luther’s interpretation, of the corrupt flesh of the sinner.
Joh_6:64. For Jesus knew from the beginning.—Ἐξ ἀρχῆς means not, metaphysically from the beginning of all things (Theophylact), nor from the beginning of His acquaintance with each one (De Wette, Tholuck), nor from the beginning of His collecting of the disciples around Him, or the beginning of His Messianic ministry (Meyer; comp. Joh_16:4; Joh_15:27), nor from the very murmuring (too special: Chrysostom, Bengel), but from the first secret germs of unbelief. So also He knew His betrayer from the beginning. [On Judas see note to Joh_6:71.]
Joh_6:65. Therefore said I unto you, that no man can come unto me.—That is, He expressly gives them again to understand that He had spoken that sentence not as a mere theoretical proposition, but with reference to the faith and the unbelief towards Him which was forming itself in particular persons.
[Excursus on the Sacramental Interpretation of this discourse.—The relation of the passage, Joh_6:51-58, to the Lord’s Supper involves two questions: 1. Whether the flesh and blood (σὰρξ καὶ αἶμα) of Christ here spoken of, are the same as His broken body and shed blood (σῶμα καὶ αἶμα) in the words of institution of that sacred ordinance (Mat_24:26-28 and parallel passages), or the living humanity of Christ (comp. the meaning of σάρξ in Joh_1:14, and the note there); 2. Whether eating and drinking (τρώγειν or ἐσθίειν80 and πίνειν) signify, literally, sacramental fruition (manducatio oralis), or, figuratively, the spiritual appropriation of Christ by faith. If the discourse had been preceded by the institution of the sacrament a reference to it could not be mistaken; but as it was spoken long before the institution of this ordinance, and to hearers who as yet knew nothing of it, such a reference is made doubtful. This doubt is strengthened, first by the use of the term flesh instead of body; secondly by the substitution of Me, i.e., the living Person of Christ (Joh_6:57 ὁ τρώγων με, comp. the ἐγώ in 35, 40, 51) for His flesh and blood, as the object of appropriation; and thirdly and mainly by the fact that Christ presents here the eating of His flesh not as a future, but a present act, and as the essential condition of spiritual and everlasting life, which, if understood sacra-mentally, would cut off from the possession of this life not only the disciples present on that occasion, but also all the saints of the old dispensation and the large number of Christians who die before they receive the holy communion (infants, children, death-bed converts, Quakers, and all unconfirmed persons). If participation in the Lord’s Supper were a necessary prerequisite of salvation, Christ would undoubtedly have said so when He instituted the ordinance. But throughout the Gospels, and especially in this discourse (comp. Joh_6:40; Joh_6:47), He makes faith the only condition of eternal life. He first exhibits Himself as the bread of life, and promises eternal life to every one who eats this bread, i.e., who believes in Him. He then holds out the very same promise to all those who eat His flesh and drink His blood, which, consequently, must be essentially the same act as believing. The discourse, therefore, clearly refers to a broader and deeper fact which precedes and underlies the sacrament, and of which the sacrament is a significant sign and seal, viz., personal union of the believing soul with Christ, and a living appropriation of His atoning sacrifice. This union culminates in the celebration of the Lord’s Supper and is strengthened by it; and so far the discourse had, in the mind of Christ who looked at the time forward to His death (Joh_6:51 : “My flesh which I shall give for the life of the world,” comp. Joh_6:60; Joh_6:70), a prospective bearing on the perpetual memorial of His sacrifice, and may be applied to it indirectly, but not directly, or in a narrow and exclusive sacramentarian sense. We must distinguish between a spiritual manducation of Christ by faith, and a sacramental manducation; the former alone is essential to everlasting life, and is the proper subject of the discourse. John omits an account of the institution both of baptism and the Lord’s Supper, which was known to his readers from the gospel tradition and the Synoptists, but he gives those profound discourses of Christ which explain the spiritual meaning of the sacraments, namely the idea of regeneration which is signed and sealed in baptism (chap. 3), and the idea of personal communion with Him, which is celebrated in the Lord’s Supper (chap. 6). This suggests a very important doctrinal inference, viz., that the spiritual reality of regeneration and union with Christ is not so bound to the external sacramental sign that it cannot be enjoyed without it. We must obey God’s ordinances, but God is free, and we should bless whom He blesses. High sacramentarianism is contrary to the teaching of Christ according to St. John.
As to the history of interpretation we may distinguish three views:
1. The discourse has no bearing either direct or indirect on the sacrament of the Lord’s Supper. So Tertullian, Clement of Alex., Origen, Basil among the fathers, Cardinal Cajetan, Ferus and Jansen among Roman Catholics, Luther, Melanchthon, Calov, Lücke, Tholuck (wavering) among the Lutherans, Calvin, Zwingli (doubtful), Beza, Bullinger, Grotius, Cocceius, Lampe (tom. II., 258 sq.), Hammond, Whitby, Barnes, Turner, Owen, Ryle among the Reformed, Paulus, Schulz, De Wette among the rationalists.
2. It refers, by prophetic anticipation, directly and exclusively to the Lord’s Supper. This interpretation has consistently led to the introduction of infant communion in the early Catholic and in the Greek church. So Chrysostom, Cyril, Theophylact among the fathers, the Schoolmen and Roman Catholic expositors with a few exceptions, Calixtus, Zinzendorf, Scheibel, Knapp among Lutherans, Wordsworth among Anglicans, Bretschneider, Strauss and Baur among the Skeptics.
3. It refers directly to the spiritual life-union of the soul with the Saviour by faith, and indirectly or inferentially to the sacramental celebration of this union in the holy Supper. So Augustine (perhaps),81 Bengel, Doddridge, Kling, Olshausen, Stier, Lange, Luthardt, Alford, Godet.82
It cannot be said that the question has a denominational or sectarian interest. The sacramental interpretation has been both opposed and defended by divines of all confessions and in the interest of every theory of the Lord’s Supper, the Roman, the Lutheran, the Calvinistic, and the Zwinglian. The Romanists (Cardinal Wiseman, e. g., who wrote an elaborate treatise on John 6) urge the literal meaning of the very strong language used repeatedly and without explanation by our Lord, as an argument for the dogma of transubstantiation; and even Tholuck is of the opinion that the Catholics have the advantage of the argument if the discourse be understood of the sacrament. But it seems to me that both transubstantiation and consubstantiation are clearly excluded 1) by the canon of interpretation laid down in Joh_6:63; John 2) by the declaration of our Lord concerning the effect of the fruition of His body and blood which is in all cases eternal life, Joh_6:54; Joh_6:56-58; while Romanists and (symbolical) Lutherans agree in teaching that unbelievers as well as believers may sacramentally eat the very body and drink the very blood of Christ, the one unto judgment, the others unto life. No such distinction has any foundation in this passage, but is at war with it.83 Moreover the Romish withdrawal of the cup from the laity is (as was already urged by the Hussites) incompatible with Joh_6:54-56 where the drinking of Christ’s blood is made as essential as the eating of His body. As far as the discourse bears a sacramental interpretation at all, it favors the Reformed theory. But by this I mean not the now widely-prevailing Zwinglian view, which is hardly compatible with the strong and mysterious language of our Lord, but the Calvinistic, which acknowledges the mystery of a spiritual real presence and a communication of the vital power of Christ’s humanity (σάρξ) to the believer by the Holy Spirit.—P. S.]
DOCTRINAL AND ETHICAL
1. See the exegesis itself, particularly on Joh_6:31-32 ff.; and Joh_6:52 ff. [And the Excursus above.—P. S.]
2. Christ, the life of the world is, as the bread of life, the necessary means of life for the awakening, quickening, and strengthening of men to a personal eternal life. Salvation is not in outward enjoyment and outward things, but in the heavenly life of the Spirit (antithesis of the heavenly and earthly mind); the striving after heavenly things consists not in legal, perfunctory works, but in the inward, single, personal, divine work of faith (antithesis of the spiritual and the legal nature); life consists not in the doing of spiritual things as such, but in the person of Christ Himself (antithesis of personal and perfunctory Christianity). The personal life, however, manifests itself (1) in the total, undivided consciousness (Christ Himself), (2) in its giving of itself (His flesh), (3) in its impartation of life (flesh and blood).
The Spirit (chap. 3) brings the heavenly birth to life; the well
of life (chap. 4) gives the first thing in regeneration, the refreshment of the soul thirsting for life with the peace of God; the healing waters of life (chap. 5) give the restoration of the life from disease and death (spiritual and bodily); the bread of life, the heavenly manna (chap. 6), gives an eternal, substantial existence.
By the idea of the personal life of Christ all personal relations are glorified. (1) Calling becomes a laboring in the service of God. (2) Labor becomes a production of heavenly food. (3) Bread becomes the person of Christ, the flesh and blood of Christ; eating and drinking become a real corporeo-spiritual participation and receiving into one’s self of the highest life. Hearing is a hearing of the voice of God, which invites to this feast; seeing is the perfect knowledge of intuition.
This chapter thus contains the symbolism of bread, of industrial calling, of labor, of eating and drinking, of hearing and seeing; the symbolism of the whole life of sense in its central relation to the personal life and to the highest personality.
3. Laboring in manifold divided earthly works for earthly food in the service of the world has the perishing of the life itself, with the perishing of the meat, for its reward (Gal_6:8; 1Jn_2:17); but the working of the one divine work in the service of God, faith in Christ, has the heavenly manna for its reward. He who is intent upon partaking of the supreme person, comes to the delight of personal, eternal existence in the kingdom of God.
4. The exaltation of the manna of the desert as a symbol of the real manna. Without this real manna the life of man is a breadless desert in the strictest sense. The marks of the bread of God: (1) It must come down (not fall down) from heaven: be Spirit-life, personal life, divine life. (2) It must give life to the world. Not merely give respite to physical life now and then, but first awaken, then sustain and renew, personal life forever.
5. Earthly interest in Christ and in Christianity in distinction from heavenly. The chiliastic spirit in opposition to the spirit of the kingdom.
6. It is remarkable how this discourse of Jesus not only kindled strife, among the Jews, but has also fed the controversy of different confessions [denominations] in the evangelical church. Controversies over the doctrine of predestination have hung upon the words of Joh_6:37; Joh_6:44; Joh_6:64-65; and upon the words of Joh_6:53 sqq., and 68 sqq., controversies over the holy Supper. The middle age has transmitted to the evangelical church a far too meagre doctrine of spiritual personality; else would the doctrine of personality be found to yield the higher synthesis of the Reformed and the Lutheran doctrines both on predestination and the Lord’s Supper.
Without the personal drawing of the Father no coming to Christ is conceivable; but the Father, too, draws only in a personal way, i.e., under the form of freedom. Hence in Joh_6:44-45 divine determination and human freedom are linked together.
Without the appropriation of the entire historical personality of Christ, spirit and body, no full, saving partaking of the redemption purchased by Christ is conceivable; but in this partaking every medium of redemption is conditioned through the life and the Spirit of the Redeemer. Hence, on the one hand, we are required, with a fourfold emphasis, to eat and to drink the flesh and the blood of Christ, and on the other, we hear the strong condition: “It is the Spirit that quickeneth; the flesh profiteth nothing.”
7. Honest striving, the unconscious drawing of God to holy living.
8. Whispering and murmuring, the indication of narrow-minded offence at the word of truth.
9. The mark of those who are truly taught of God: They pass (1) from the old world [paganism] into the Old Testament, (2) from the Old Testament into the New, (3) through the New Testament into a new world.
10. He that believeth on me hath (1) life, (2) eternal life.
11. Christ the bread of life in the three stages of the manifestation of His life: (1) In His person and history. (2) In His “flesh,” or “His giving Himself a sacrifice,” whereby He is transformed from the curse of the world and the burnt-offering and expiation of God into a pure and entire thank-offering of believing man. (3) Therefore is His “flesh and blood,” wherein He makes His historically finished life, by historical ordinances, the life of the world. The first stage represents the true bread itself; the second, the preparation of it for eating; the third, its being perfectly ready for believing participation: flesh and blood.
And then there are also three stages in the partaking of Christ: (1) The putting of confidence in Him as personally the source of life. (2) Firm faith in the life which is in His sacrificial death. (3) The ideal communion, which on the one hand receives the life of Christ in spirit and body through His historical ordinances, the summit of which is the Lord’s Supper, and which, on the other hand, ever refers the actual world more and more to Christ, and makes it, in labor and in enjoyment, the manifestation of Christ. The Christian must first of all eat the flesh and blood of Christ, in order at last to eat this flesh and blood in all things.
12. The four great words concerning the flesh and blood of Christ, confirmed with the “Verily, verily.” (1) Joh_6:53. The want of this eating and drinking of the flesh and blood of Christ is the want and loss of life (even of one’s own, personal life; “No life in you”). (2) Joh_6:54. The eating and drinking of the flesh and blood of Christ yield eternal life even now, and resurrection hereafter. (3) Joh_6:55. The first reason: His flesh and blood are the real staff of life (meat and drink). (4) Joh_6:56. The highest reason: The partaking of His flesh and blood is the condition of community of life with Him (“dwelleth in Me, and I in Him”). The transfiguration of the passover, of the paschal lamb, of the paschal feast of the Jews.
13. The living of Christ in God is not only the root, but also the type of the living of believers in Christ. So surely as God is the source of life, Christ, as the pure revelation of God, is the focus of the life in the world. But so surely as Christ is this focus, he who refers his life and his world to Christ, and Christ to his life and his world, stands in the kingdom of eternal life.
14. The most comforting and most glorious of all the words of Christ a hard saying to the Jewish mind.
15. The transfiguration of the humiliation of Christ and of its blessings by His exaltation. Christian morality, the union of spirit and nature in Christ. The organization of the Spirit (sacraments and church); the spiritualizing of the organization (the natural life of man), till God shall be all in all.
16. “It is the Spirit that quickeneth,” etc., hold true (1) in our natural life, (2) of the word of Christ, (3) of the historical manifestation of Christ, (4) of the sacraments, particularly of the Supper of the Lord. The revelation of the Spirit glorifies the Lord as the life of the world, which makes the new world the body of Christ, wherein everything is bread of life for all.
17. It is the problem of faith, and of theology, to carry out the synthesis of Spirit and flesh in the right way, (1) in regard to the relation between God and the world in general, taking the world not, indeed, as the body of God, yet doubtless as a revelation of Him; (2) in regard to the word’ of Holy Scripture; (3) in regard to the person of Christ; (4) in regard to the ordinances of Christ, the church, and especially the sacrament of the Supper. The first step in this process is the simple, direct recognition of the actual manifestation of Spirit and flesh in concrete unity. This simple recognition, under the symbolical primitive religion, sees God revealed in the world; under the religion of revelation in general, it sees the Spirit of God revealed in the theocracy and the Scriptures; in the apostolic Christianity, it sees the Son of God in the several miracles of His life; in the primitive church, the unity of the Spirit of Christ and His ordinances.
Yet the consciousness of a distinction and antithesis between the Spirit and the flesh is everywhere present. And because the earthly mind, along this whole line, is inclined to lose the sense of this opposition, and because, in the mass of men, it does actually lose it, the strong distinction becomes a necessity (“It is the Spirit that quickeneth; the flesh profiteth nothing”).
The Old Testament distinguishes between God and the world in opposition to heathenism. Christ distinguishes between the living revelation and outward theocracy and the letter of Scripture, in opposition to Judaism. The Antiochian criticism and the mediæval mysticism distinguish between the spiritual personality of Christ and its several relations and manifestations, against the traditional exegesis. The Reformation distinguishes between the spirit of the true church and its external form; and between the substance and the form of the sacrament.
But these distinctions look to the restoration of the true union. Christ exhibits the true union of God and the world both in His person and in His consciousness (the incarnation of God); Christian theology works out the known synthesis between revelation and Scripture (the word of God in its organic life); sacred criticism aims at a view of the gospel history whose heart and pulse is the personal Christ (religious history is not documentary); evangelical dogmatics seizes the kernel of the true church in the visible church (ideal tradition is not external tradition), and in place of the mediaeval identification of grace and the external sacramental performance it puts, in the Lutheran view which is more fervent for the union, the organic synthesis, and in the Reformed [Calvinistic] view which is more careful of the distinction, the symbolical synthesis (inseparableness of word and sacrament).
Hence it follows that the dangers of the Lutheran view lie in the direction of confusion, and the dangers of the Reformed view in the direction of separation; and that therefore the two views themselves can have their safest operation only in living synthesis. And the true union, the third and highest step, consists in the recognition of the Spirit as in relation to the flesh, (1) the sole power, (2) a transforming, renewing power, (3) a glorifying power, taking on itself the flesh as its transparent crystal-like organ. Hence, also, Christ here points on to exaltation.
18. Jesus, the heart-searcher in reference, above all, to the faint germs of faith and unbelief.
HOMILETICAL AND PRACTICAL
See the Doctrinal and Ethical reflections.
The flight of Jesus over the sea, and His discourse in the synagogue at Capernaum, a continuation of His victory over the tempter in the wilderness, Matthew 4—The decisive and divisive discourse of the Lord concerning salvation in personal life-union with Himself.—Those who seek salvation in impersonal Christian things with an impersonal conduct, cannot find salvation in the person of the Lord with personal faith.—The hoping of the mere mind in Christ is vain: 1. Vain both in ifs naked form of earthly-mindedness and selfishness and in its sanctimonious dress of chiliastic enthusiasm. 2. Vain both in its standing and lingering (on the eastern side of the sea), and in its haste and running (to the western shore). 3. Vain whether in its effort to magnify Christianity in secular style (to make Christ king of bread), or in its effort to belittle it according to a worldly standard (to deny its heavenly descent and its heavenly nucleus, the atonement). 4. Vain in its desire to alter Christianity, instead of itself becoming altered by it. Conclusion: Vain, i.e., ruinous.—The true servants and workmen of God, and the true work of God.—The demand of the sensuous and legalistic way of thinking, that Christ should in an Old Testament manner go beyond the Old Testament: Christ should surpass Moses: 1. In miracles of outward benefit (“What dost thou work?”). 2. In requirements of eternal law (“What shall we do?”). 3. In terror of external judgment (as king of the Jews ruling over the heathen).
Verily, verily, not Moses, but the Father in heaven, gives the bread of God.—Christ is the bread of God in His personal divine life, Joh_6:32-40 : (1) The typical and the true bread of God, Joh_6:32-33. (2) The false and the true appetite for this bread, Joh_6:34-38. (3) The liberating and quickening operation of this bread, Joh_6:39-40.—Christ gives the bread of life in His giving up of His flesh in His atoning death, Joh_6:41-51 : (1) He gives it not to the murmurers, but to them that are drawn and taught of the Father, Joh_6:41-47. (2) He gives with it the full partaking of eternal life, Joh_6:48-50. (3) He gives it in giving Himself, Joh_6:51. (4) He gives it in giving His flesh for the life of the world, Joh_6:51.—Christ institutes the meal of life in making His flesh and blood a feast of thank-offering to the world, Joh_6:52-59 : (1) The offence at the words concerning the flesh of Christ; Joh_6:52. (2) The heightening of the offence by the fourfold assertion concerning the flesh and blood of Christ, Joh_6:53-56. (3) The ground of this assertion: the life of Christ in the Father, Joh_6:57. (4) The conclusion of this assertion, Joh_6:58-59.—Christ transfigures the meal of life into a meal of the Spirit, Joh_6:60-65 : (1) By His exaltation, Joh_6:62. (2) By the sending of the Spirit, Joh_6:63. (3) By His word, Joh_6:63. (4) By the excision of unbelievers, Joh_6:64.
On single sentences: Joh_6:25. To these Jews the second miracle of Jesus (the walking on the sea) remains a close secret, because they do not recognize the divine sign in the first (the breaking of bread).
Joh_6:26. “Verily, verily, ye seek Me,” etc. They have seen not the miraculous sign in the feeding, but only the feeding in the miraculous sign.—Thus they are a type of all false friends of religion, who seek not the kingdom of heaven in earthly advantages, but only earthly advantages in the kingdom of heaven.
Joh_6:27. Christ, who has not where to lay His head, intrusted by God with the official seal which makes Him steward for the whole world.
Joh_6:28-29. The legalistic Christian thinks he can do works which earn for him the blessing of God; whereas the gospel requires a work in which God is the agent: faith.—Faith is a work of man from God, with God, for God; and for this very reason as much the work of God as it is the highest, freest work of man. The miraculous feeding the seal and sealing of the divine steward.
Joh_6:30. Ingratitude towards the Lord: how it always forgets the past sign from God, and demands a new one.
Joh_6:31. How an earthly mind can pervert even the Scripture.—The true bread from heaven can be given to us not by man, but by God alone (the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ).
Joh_6:33. Marks of the bread of God: 1. It comes down from heaven. 2. It gives life to the world.
Joh_6:34. “Lord, evermore give us,” etc.: the vain prayer, to the very face of the Lord: 1. Because it recognizes not the Giver in the bread. 2. Because it recognizes not the bread of life in the Giver.
Joh_6:35. The answer of Jesus aims to disclose their spirit (1) by insisting on the figure, the representation of the bread in His person; (2) by enlarging the figure: bread for hunger and thirst; (3) by explaining the figure: Come to me, believe on me.—Christianity the truth and the true sanctification of eating: 1. Making faith an eating. 2. Making eating faith.
Joh_6:36. The incapacity of the earthly-minded man to see into the mystery of the divine life. One can see Jesus, the church, her reformers, her great spirits, with the eye, without seeing the spirit, or the glory of the personal life.—They will see and believe things, but they have not seen nor believed His person.
Joh_6:37. It needs a stirring of the personal life of love descending from God, to see the glory of the personal life in Christ.—Christ draws all divinely chosen and kindred ones into His kingdom, since (1) all that the Father gives Him, come to Him, and (2) none who come to Him, does He cast out.
Joh_6:38. Him that cometh, etc. He casts out none, because He judges men not by the perfection of their life, but by the dispositions, affinities, and beginnings of it.—As the Spirit attaches Himself everywhere to the work of the Son (Joh_14:26; Joh_16:13), so the Son everywhere to the work of the Father,—Christ aspires not, according to His own will, to an ideal position of life for Himself, but enters, according to the will of His Father, into the historical duty of life. His will is of heavenly purity, and yet His life is a continual sacrifice of His will.
Joh_6:38-40. The gracious will of the Father: 1. In regard to the Redeemer. 2. In regard to those to be redeemed and those redeemed. 3. In regard to the way of redemption.—The purpose of the Father in Christ: 1. What it forbids (Joh_6:39 : “lose nothing”). 2. What it enjoins (Joh_6:40).—Thus He is in both views the bread of life: 1. Redeeming from death. 2. Imparting eternal life.—The unfolding of personal life in redemption: 1. In the first phase of redemption (in Joh_6:39) personality is but feebly developed; the needy life is spoken of (in the neuter), which is in danger of being lost; in the next phase (in Joh_6:40), we have no longer the mere rescue from destruction, but the conferring of the highest life; and here personality comes clearly to view. 2. In the first case redemption has to do with lost men in the mass; in the second, with individuals. 3. There the redeemed one is comparatively passive; here he is an active person, turned to the Redeemer, finding life in the beholding of His life. 4. There redemption bears chiefly the impress of divine predestination; here it takes that of human freedom.—The gracious operations of Christ go on to glorious completion in the last day.—The greatness of the promise of a new, infinite fulness and freshness of life at the end of the world.—How often the Lord points forward to the completion of His work at the last day.
Joh_6:41. “The Jews then murmured:” The characteristics of the illiberal partisan spirit: 1. They murmured. 2. They murmured to one another. 3. They murmured against the Lord and His word.
Joh_6:42. The old and ever new offence at the words of Christ respecting His heavenly origin: 1. Because He is from Nazareth, He cannot be from heaven. 2. Because He is the Son of Man, He cannot be the Son of God.—The sinful world’s condemnation of itself in its sundering of the divine and human natures in Christ.—The deceptions of vulgar conceit in matters of the Spirit. 1. The people think they know Him, because they know His parents. 2. They think they know His origin, because they know His foster-father. 3. They think they know His mother, because they know her poverty and lowliness. Comp. Joh_7:27; Mat_13:55.
Joh_6:43-44. “Murmur not among yourselves:” the drawing of partisan spirit a drawing of the earth, against the drawing of the Father from heaven.—The drawing of the Father to the Son.
Joh_6:45. As one must first be a believer, to become a true disciple of God, so must one, in another view, be first taught of God, in order to become a believer.
Joh_6:46. The revealing of God, as it was the peculiar property of Christ, is above every experience of God in sinful men. Comp. Joh_1:18.—We begin the new life by hearing an obscure word (see Gen_12:1); He has seen from eternity the face of the Father.
Joh_6:47. “He that believeth on me, hath,” etc.
Joh_6:48. Christ the bread of life: (1) The bread as life. (2) The life as bread: (a) the true manna; therefore (b) the bread of God, bread of heaven, bread of life.—The true bread to be known especially by the fact that it gives itself.—It is the nature of a loving personality, to give itself.—He gives Himself, as the Father has given Him.—He gives His only life to death, to awaken the world out of death to life. While He was dead, the life of the world hung on the single seed and glowing spark of His life, which broke forth for the resurrection and re-animation of the world.
Joh_6:52. They wonder that they should eat His flesh; then Ho speaks of eating His flesh and blood.—Christ the true paschal lamb (1Co_5:7).
Joh_6:53-56. The four great asseverations of the Lord concerning the eating of His flesh and the drinking of His blood. See above.—The appropriation of the historical personality of Christ in its vital, heavenly operation by means of Christ’s historical ordinance.—How Christ still gives Himself even now in His flesh and blood, in His full human form and His entire heavenly nature, to be eaten by men.—How the eating of the flesh and blood of Christ is effected: 1. Through His word, particularly His history. 2. Through His sacraments, particularly the sacrament of His body and blood.—In ourselves also Christianity must in a holy sense, become flesh and blood.—How Christ does away the opposition between the spiritual and the bodily in His kingdom: 1. Corporealizing the spiritual (word in sacrament, gospel in church). 2. Spiritualizing the bodily (members into instruments of righteousness, the world into His Father’s house).
Joh_6:57. As Christ lives by the Father, we should live by Him.—He who lives in Christ, stands at the focus of eternal rejuvenation.
Joh_6:58. All who have lived only under the law and in symbols, have eaten manna and are dead. Most have died under heavy judgments, Heb_3:17. Comp. the history of the mediæval church (Corpus Christi, festivals, battle-fields, the plague).
Joh_6:59. The wonderful sermon of Christ on the bread of life delivered in the synagogue of the Jews at Capernaum.
Joh_6:60. The grandest living word of Christ, a hard saying to the Jewish mind.
Joh_6:61. Offence at the word of salvation.
Joh_6:62. How that which is dark and enigmatical in the humiliation of Christ is cleared up by His exaltation.
Joh_6:63. “It is the Spirit,” etc.
Joh_6:64. The words of Christ as spirit and life, and as a type of His whole administration. The spirit and life hidden from unbelievers, even when they gush with spirituality and vitality.—Christ knows the beginnings of unbelief as well as of faith.
Starke. Joh_6:26. Hedinger: Self-interest may lurk under the holiest works.—Zeisius: O how subtle a poison is selfishness!
Joh_6:29. Quesnel: The great work of God in us is the work of a living faith which works by love.
Joh_6:32. Majus: Christ the most precious gift of God, in which and with which are given to us all things. Rom_8:32.
Joh_6:33. Quesnel: O Bread of God, thou art life indeed, true life, eternal life, life of body and of soul, life not of one people only, but of all nations!
Joh_6:35. Canstein: Not only in His person is Christ the life, but from Him life goes forth to all men; natural life, since He is the Word of the Father, Gen_1:3; Act_17:28; the life of righteousness in His believing ones before the judgment seat of God, Rom_8:10; spiritual life in regeneration, 1Pe_1:23; and eternal life, inasmuch as all the glory of believers not only comes from Him, but also consists in their partaking of Him and in His being all in all to them.—Osiander: No temporal possessions and bodily pleasure can truly satisfy and quicken the heart; nothing but Christ.
Joh_6:37. Quesnel: Pastors after the example of the chief Shepherd, should receive all whom God sends to them, and labor for their salvation.—So surely as Christ did not suffer in vain, so surely shall no penitent be cast out.—Jesus not only does not cast out a penitent sinner, but will also lead him into His inmost sanctuary.
Joh_6:39. Rom_8:31. What belongs to Christ, though esteemed lost in the eye of the world, is not therefore lost in truth; in the resurrection of the dead all shall come together again in universal joy.
Joh_6:41. Here we find the counterpart of the murmuring of the Israelites in the wilderness, where they were fed with manna. Here the Jews murmur against the true manna.—Hedinger: Reason stumbles at divine teaching, 1Co_1:18; 1Co_1:23-24.
Joh_6:42. Jesus, subjected to great contempt. If thou, dear Christian, art now thought meanly of, thou art like the Saviour, and thou shalt be honored for it forever.
Joh_6:44. The drawing of God is not a drawing by force, yet it is a drawing with power. Augustine: “Ramum ostendis ovi et trahis illam. Nuces puero demonstrantur, et trahitur, etc. Trahit sua quemque voluptas. Quomodo non traheret revelatus Christus a patre. Ergo tractio illa non fit violenter sed mediate.” Php_2:13.
Joh_6:45. Zeisius: Every one who comes to Christ by faith is taught of God.—Hearing, learning of the Father, and coming, are intimately joined together.—The Holy Ghost teaches in experience as in His own school.
Joh_6:47. The spiritual life of faith is a beginning of the eternal life which consists in vision.
Joh_6:48. If thou art full of the most costly dainties, and hast not eaten of the bread of life, thou wilt soon be hungry enough, and must be hungry forever.
Joh_6:49. Joh_6:31 has “our Father;” here the our is changed with design into “your.”—He means by it not all the fathers; for the believing received a spiritual food (1Co_10:3); but the unbelieving whose footsteps they were following, Mat_23:32 : 1Co_10:5.—If we do not rightly use the riches of God’s goodness, we incur the heavier judgment.
Joh_6:57. Lampe: The power which gives heavenly food to the inward man, must be applied to walking in the way of the Lord, and earnestly carrying forward His work.—Gossner: The weightiest and highest truths, which most quicken and comfort the faithful, confound the ungodly.
Braune: The sacrament, which did not exist till after the institution, is not intended here; but, as in the conversation with Nicodemus we have the idea of baptism, so here we have the idea of the Lord’s Supper.—Before His resurrection His Spirit was hidden under the flesh; but since the resurrection the Spirit so pervades and advances the flesh that it now can make good everything He here says of it. So may it be said of our eye: What is hidden in the little bit of flesh? (Then follows a contrast between the living eye and the dead.)—Lisco: 1. Jesus enjoins laboring for the imperishable meat, Joh_6:25-31. (a) He rebukes the earthly mind, Joh_6:25-26; (b) He exhorts to labor for the imperishable food, Joh_6:27; (c) He points out that the labor is faith, Joh_6:28-29. 2. Jesus Himself is the true bread of life (Joh_6:30-31), Joh_6:32-40, etc.—Gerlach: All earthly food only nourishes here below the perishable life, and perishes with it; but as the man whom it is given to nourish, does not perish, it points to and produces hunger for an imperishable food for his immortal spirit.—The manna was primarily only an earthly food, etc.; though it was certainly an emblem of the nourishing, fostering faithfulness of God, a pledge of grace, a sacrament in a certain sense, 1Co_10:3. However since it primarily nourished only the body, while in virtue of the nature of this nourishing it gave food to the spirit, etc., Christ could contrast it with the true bread of heaven.—On Joh_6:37 (Luther): This is spoken after the manner of the Scriptures, which, where they deny, do in the very strongest manner assert; when Christ says: “I will in nowise cast out,” it is as if He said: I will receive with joy; and this depicts as well His willing and hearty obedience to the Father, as His most precious love.—The word flesh in the New Testament is never equivalent to the word body. The former signifies primarily the mass, the substance, of which the earthly body distinctively consists; the latter, the skilfully constructed whole.—This discourse also explains the double form of the Holy Supper, and shows how those who withhold the cup from the laity, deprive them of their free personal communion with Christ (the spiritual priesthood, 1Pe_2:5; 1Pe_2:9; Rev_1:6), and so far as in them lies, reduce the laity to a general mass of Christian people governed by a few full members of the Lord.
Heubner: False love to Jesus may be (1) sensuous, sentimental; (2) selfish; (3) hypocritical; (4) ostentatious, ambitious.—The earthly mind and love to Jesus are absolutely incompatible.—Contrast between Moses and Christ.—Moses could not communicate inward spiritual life.
Joh_6:36. O, to think of the theologians who have been occupied for years with the New Testament, yet have no love to Jesus,—what ossified hack souls84 they must be!—The nearer Christ comes to the heart, the more life, love, light.
Joh_6:37. The gospel of Christ is a message of salvation to all.
Joh_6:43. Unbelief has infectious power.
Joh_6:45. A more particular explanation of the drawing. Being taught of God. The phrase eating and drinking frequent among the Jews for spiritual enjoyment (see Lightfoot, etc.)—Besser, Joh_6:30 : They degrade the “believe on him,” to a “believe thee.”
Joh_6:38-40. Chemnitz calls attention to the terms in this discourse, seeing (Joh_6:36), beholding [the “seeing” of Joh_6:40], believing, and eating and drinking,—as denoting so many steps of faith: 1. Historical knowledge (notitia). 2. Hearty assent (assensus) 3. Trusting (fiducia). 4. Personal appropriation (applcatio). Schleiermacher: They were quite mistaken in looking upon the manna miracle of Moses as one which had been to their fathers a ground of faith in the mission of Moses. The first thing with which the Lord consoles Himself, (over their unbelief), is His great, indomitable long-suffering.—The Lord’s invitation to vital union with Him.
[Christ the source of spiritual and eternal life. 1. Natural life in the plant, the animal, and in man; its character, pleasures, miseries, vanity and death; 2. Spiritual life, its origin, character, development, and final consummation in the resurrection to glory everlasting. Augustine [Tract. in Joh. xxvi. 13. Tom. iii. 499): O sacramentum pietatis, o signum unitatis, o vinculum caritatis! Qui vult vivere, habet ubi vivat, habet unde vivat. Accedat, credat, incorporetur ut vivificetur.—Ibid. (iii. 501): Hoc est ergo manducare illam escam, et illum bibere potum, in Christo manere, et illum manentem in se habere. (Joh_6:57.)—Burkitt (Joh_6:51-59). Carnal persons put a carnal sense upon Christ’s spiritual words, and so occasion their own stumbling.—Learn, 1. That the Lord Jesus Christ is the true spiritual food for all believers; 2. That those and those only who feed upon Him by faith, shall obtain a life of grace and glory from Him.—Ibid. If the passage be understood of the sacramental eating and drinking (which Burkitt rejects), then woe to the Church of Rome for denying the cup to the laity.—As meat is turned into the eater’s substance, so believers and Christ become one; and by feeding on Him, i.e., by believing on Him, there follows a mutual inhabitation; Christ dwells in them, and they in Him.—P. S.]
Lange's Commentary on the Holy Scriptures (Critical, Doctrinal, and Homiletical), ed. John Peter Lange, English translation edited by Philip Schaff (1864–1880) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Robert Jamieson, A. R. Fausset & David Brown 1871 · Public Domain On vv18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 25 sea arose, &c.--and they were "now in the midst…
sea arose, &c.--and they were "now in the midst of it" (Mat 14:24). Mark adds the graphic and touching particular, "He saw them toiling in rowing" (Mar 6:48), putting forth all their strength to buffet the waves and bear on against a head wind, but to little effect. He saw this from His mountain-top, and through the darkness of the night, for His heart was all with them; yet would He not go to their relief till His own time came.
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown — Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.
Daniel D. Whedon 1874 · Public Domain On vv21–25 21. Willingly—As they had before dreaded his approach, so…
21. Willingly—As they had before dreaded his approach, so now they are eager to receive him on board; and as soon as his feet touched the deck the ship is at land. How, says the querist, was this miracle performed? We suppose that both the miracle of walking on the sea and moving the ship to land was performed, just as a writer moves his pen, by an act of will—of a will supernaturally, divinely powerful. Gravitation, so far as we can see, is the immediate effect of the divine volition holding the spheres in their places. That same volition could hold the water solid beneath the feet of Jesus, or cause his body to glide over the undisturbed surface.
Daniel D. Whedon (gen. ed.), Commentary on the Old and New Testaments (1874–1909) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges 1878 · Public Domain On vv17–25 17. toward Capernaum] S. Mark says ‘unto Bethsaida’ which…
17. toward Capernaum] S. Mark says ‘unto Bethsaida’ which was close to Capernaum. See notes and map at Mat_4:13 and Luk_5:1. For ‘went over the sea’ we should read were coming over the sea, i.e. were on their way home.
was not come] More accurately, was not yet come.
The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges (gen. ed. J. J. S. Perowne; Cambridge University Press, 1878–1918) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Ellicott's Commentary for English Readers 1878 · Public Domain On vv17–25 (17) For “a ship,” the received text has, with…
(17) For “a ship,” the received text has, with some of the best MSS., the ship—i.e., the ship in which they first crossed. For “went over the sea,” read were going over the sea. The voyage is described as still continuing.
Toward Capernaum.—St. Matthew speaks more generally of the other (i.e., the western) side. St. Mark of Bethsaida, which was distinct from Bethsaida Julias, which was on the east of the lake. (Comp. Note on Luk_9:10.) For an account of Capernaum, see Mat_4:13, and in this John Joh_6:59.
A Bible Commentary for English Readers, edited by Charles John Ellicott (1878–1897) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Pulpit Commentary 1880 · Public Domain On vv17, 19, 20, 21, 22, 24, 25 Vers. 17, 18. And darkness had already come on,…
Vers. 17, 18. And darkness had already come on, and Jesus had not yet come to them. This thrilling touch in John"s narrative makes it more than evident that the beloved disciple was on board. He had been expecting the Master to make his appearance in some form. He had looked long and eagerly to that point on the mountainside whither he knew that Jesus had retired. The dreary and disappointed expectation, the long and weary waiting, left an indelible impression. Their natural course towards Capernaum would have been almost parallel with the shore of the lake; but it was dark and tempestuous, they could not steer. And the sea was being roused from its slumber by reason of a high wind which was blowing. If the wind came from the north, it would drift them out into the darkness and the middle of the lake, which is there, at its widest, about five miles broad, i.e. forty stadia, or furlongs. The statement of the next verse comes then into undesigned coincidence with Mar_6:47, which shows that they were "in the midst of the sea," i.e. halfway from shore to shore. This would exactly correspond with the following statement.
The Pulpit Commentary (1880–1919), ed. H.D.M. Spence-Jones & Joseph S. Exell — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Biblical Illustrator 1887 · Public Domain On vv22, 24 The day following
Joh_6:22-40
The day following
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Jesus the Bread of Life
I.
OUR LORDS AVOWAL OF HIS DIVINE NATURE AND HIS HEAVENLY ERRAND. More than thirty times in this one discourse does He use the personal pronouns Me and I, in such connections as that it would be blasphemy if He were anything less than really God. The Jews saw this (Joh_6:41-42), the disciples also (Joh_6:66).
II. THE SPECIAL DOCTRINE OF THE GOSPEL WHICH ALWAYS SEARCHES THE HEARTS OF MEN. The sacrifice of Jesus on the cross is what universally tests pride the most severely. In this discourse our Lord intentionally sifts His hearers. He avows with startling suddenness the most extreme views of human helplessness without vicarious redemption. Then He puts the plaintive question, Will ye also go away?
III. THE PARAMOUNT NECESSITY OF AN ATONEMENT FOR HUMAN SINS. Without shedding of blood is no remission. So striking are these utterances of Christ, that there can be no mistaking them. They cannot possibly be discharged of their meaning by any notion of mere pattern-setting on His part. Bread is not example, and blood is not conduct, and eating is not imitation.
IV. LET US BE SATISFIED WITH THE EXPLANATION FURNISHED US HERE OF THAT SENSE OF CRAVING AND RESTLESSNESS WHICH MANY FEEL UNDER THE APPEALS OF THE GOSPEL. The soul hungers after Christ. The sound of feeding awakes deeper pangs. Every living thing must eat or die. (C. S.Robinson, D. D.)
Jesus the Bread of Life
I. THE SELFISHNESS OF MEN REGARDING JESUS CHRIST (Joh_6:22-24). The people before us, having come to Capernaum seeking Jesus, desired Him only for a temporal benefit. This is like many in our day. They go to church, pretend to be religious, make a show of piety, because it is fashionable, profitable for trade, or a convenient method of getting bread without toil. The pious fraud is a more dangerous enemy to Christianity than outspoken infidelity.
II. MENS SELFISHNESS IN RELIGION REBUKED (Joh_6:25-27).
1. By having the shallowness of their pretensions exposed (Joh_6:26). How keen-cutting these words are! And so it is everywhere in the Bible--hypocrisy is condemned with severity. Any one who would speak for Jesus must not be afraid to rebuke the pretender.
2. Presentation of the true motive (Joh_6:27). We must be sincere in seeking Christ as the Saviour of the soul--i.e., everlasting life must be with us a deeper consideration than the life of the body. To give this eternal life, or righteousness, unto the world was the purpose of Jesus coming here: For Him hath God the Father sealed--i.e., set apart and given authority to perform the high office of imparting to all believers the Bread of Life. To secure this, salvation must be our only motive.
III. BELIEF IN CHRIST MANS SUPREME WORK (Joh_6:28-29). It is in the human heart to think of salvation as a matter of works (Joh_6:28). The Scriptures everywhere declare that to be saved--i.e., to work the works of God, we must believe on the Son of God (Joh_6:29). Mans good works exclude this belief. But true belief or faith, includes good works Eph_2:8-10; Jam_2:26). Both Jesus and Paul declare that faith saves the soul. James explains the kind of faith that saves.
IV. MANS UNWILLINGNESS TO ACCEPT JESUS (verses 30, 31). From the miracle of the loaves, the multitude would gladly have received Him as a king; but, being informed that they must believe on Him as a Saviour, they demanded more evidence (verses 30, 31), intimating that Moses, in giving the manna for long years, was greater than Jesus, who only furnished one meal. So men are always willing to exalt Christ as a great personage, but are reluctant to receive Him as their Redeemer. Yet He must be this or nothing.
V. JESUS URGES THIS HIGH CLAIM (verses 32, 33). He admits of no comparison. Moses did not give the manna (verse 32); manna did not secure life (verse 49); Jesus was the Bread from heaven which conferred eternal life (verses 35, 41, 48, 50, 51). His atonement secured the Holy Spirit, who works regeneration, to experience which is to enter into life. This is what Christ means in verse 51.
VI. THE CONDITIONS OF OUR SECURING JESUS AS OUR LIFE (verses 34-36).
1. The Divine condition. The Holy Spirit must convict, enlighten, draw (verses 37, 45).
2. The human condition. Man must come of His own free will (verses 35, 36, 53).
VII. JESUS THE EXECUTOR OF THE FATHERS WILL (verses 37-40). This will was to secure eternal life to all believers. Those who do not take Jesus as the source of their life perish through unbelief. All who do are kept in perfect safety. This is Gods will, and Christ is able to execute it. (A. H. Moment.)
Jesus the Bread of Life
I. A TRUE MIRACLE MAY FAIL TO PRODUCE ANY RELIGION, in which case it fails of its chief purpose. This one simply stimulated an appetite for loaves and fishes, without stimulating gratitude for those already given.
II. THE PURPOSE OF GOD IN GREAT MANIFESTATIONS OF POWER IS TO TURN ATTENTION TO THE PERSON OF JESUS CHRIST (chap. 5:36). The works of God in creation and government have no greater end than this. We do not please God by admiring His work in nature, in being awed by miracles; but in being led by the gift of daily bread to faith in Him who is the Bread of Life.
III. A WONDERFUL PYRAMID OF PROMISES POINTS THE SINNER TO A PERSONAL SAVIOUR (Joh_6:35; Joh_6:37).
IV. THE PERSONAL FAITH IN CHRIST DETERMINES THE CHARACTER OF OUR PERSONAL RESURRECTION. Four times in this chapter Christ repeats this, or a similar refrain: I will raise him up at the last day. Whether we share the resurrection of shame and everlasting contempt spoken of by Daniel, or that which causes us to shine as the brightness of the firmament, will depend on our faith in Christ now. (Monday Club.)
.
The meat that endureth
I. CHRISTS KNOWLEDGE OF THE HUMAN HEART is seen in exposing the false motives of those who followed Him. So now He reads all secret thoughts (1Sa_16:7). The folly of hypocrisy is as great as its sinfulness. It is not hard to deceive the wisest of men; but it is impossible to deceive Christ (Rev_1:14; Joh_21:17).
II. WHAT CHRIST FORBIDS. Labour for the meat that perisheth.
1. Our Lord did not mean to encourage idleness. Labour was the lot of Adam in his innocence, and of Christ Himself.
2. Our Lord rebuked excessive attention to the body to the neglect of the soul. One thing is needful (Mat_6:33).
III. WHAT CHRIST ADVISES. Labour for this meat that endureth.
1. How are we to labour? In the use of the appointed means. Bible study, prayer, struggling against sin, etc.
2. Labour like this is uncommon. In prosecuting it we shall have little encouragement from men, but much from Christ (Mat_11:12).
IV. WHAT A PROMISE CHRIST HOLDS OUT (Joh_6:27). Whatever we need, Christ is willing to bestow. He has been sent for the very purpose. (Bishop Ryle.)
Tiberias--A city of Galilee, in the most beautiful part of it, on the western shore of the lake. It was named by Herod Antipas, in honour of the Emperor Tiberius. It was the capital of the province, from its origin until the reign of Herod Agrippa
II. Many of its inhabitants were Greeks and Romans, and hence foreign customs prevailed. Our Lord, who spent much of His time in Galilee, appears never to have visited this city--probably because Herod, the murderer of John the Baptist, chiefly resided in it. After the dissolution of the State, it was for several centuries the seat of a renowned Jewish school, and one of the four sacred cities, Here the Mishna was compiled (A.D. 190) by the Rabbi Judah Hakkodesh, and the Masorah originated in a great measure at Tiberius. Coins of the city are still extant of the times of Tiberius, Trajan, and Hadrian. The ancient name has survived in that of the modern Tubarieh, which occupies the original site. Near it are the warm baths, which the Roman writers reckoned among the greatest curiosities in the world. The population at present is between 8,000 and 4,000, and the town is the most mean and miserable in all Palestine--a picture of disgusting filth and frightful wretchedness. (W. H. Van Doren, D. D.)
The Biblical Illustrator, edited by Joseph S. Exell (c. 1880s–1900s) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
B. W. Johnson 1891 · Public Domain On vv22–25 22. The day following. The day after the miracle,…
22. The day following. The day after the miracle, when five thousand were fed, and after the night storm on the sea of Galilee. “The people who had stood on the other side and been fed,” remained awhile because there were no other vessels, and the more willingly, because they saw that Jesus had not gone with his disciples.
B. W. Johnson's The People's New Testament with Notes (1889–1891) — public domain. Electronic text from the Christian Classics Ethereal Library (CCEL) ThML edition.
The Preacher's Complete Homiletical Commentary 1892 · Public Domain On v22 Joh_6:22-24. None other boat, rather little ship (πλοιάριον).—The meaning…
EXPLANATORY AND CRITICAL NOTES
Joh_6:22-24. None other boat, rather little ship (πλοιάριον).—The meaning of this long and complicated sentence is plain. A number of the crowd who had been present when the bread was miraculously supplied had remained at or near the spot where the miracle was wrought. They wished to see more of Jesus, to get hold of Him for the carrying out of their purpose (Joh_6:15). They had seen the disciples depart, but not the Saviour. In the morning, however, when Jesus did not appear nor His disciples, surmising that somehow He had got to the western shore, the people took advantage of a number of boats that had come over from Tiberias. The owners of those boats heard, it may be, that the crowd on the opposite shore desired to be conveyed across the lake to Tiberias.
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Joh_6:27. The meat, etc., i.e. food (βρῶσις).—Material food which, even though given in a very direct way from the hand of God, is still perishable (Exo_16:20). The term may be widened so as to apply to all material treasures and possessions. For Him hath the Father sealed, even God.
Joh_6:33. The bread of God is that which cometh down from heaven.—Christ led His hearers first to think of the new spiritual manna; and then when they expressed the desire, “evermore give us this bread,” He said (Joh_6:35), “I am the bread of life,” etc.
Joh_6:34. Lord.—This title shows that the sense of Jesus’ greatness had begun to dawn upon the minds of some of His hearers (comp. Joh_6:25).
Joh_6:35. He that cometh to (πρός), etc.; he that believeth in (εἰς), etc.—“The first word presents faith in deed as active and outward; the second word presents faith in thought as resting and inward” (Westcott).
Joh_6:36. But I said unto you, etc.—They had already seen His signs, and yet here they were asking for another sign (see Joh_6:26).
Joh_6:37. “All that the Father giveth Me shall reach Me (attain onto Me); and him who is coming to Me I will in no wise cast out.”—These whom
(1) the Father gives shall
(2) attain to the Son, and
(3) shall be welcomed lovingly by Him.
Joh_6:40. The last day is a phrase peculiar to John’s writings (Joh_11:24; 1Jn_2:18).
Joh_6:41. The Jews.—It is not necessary to suppose an influx of new listeners. These discourses were uttered in the synagogue at Capernaum, and no doubt the rulers of the people in that locality were present. The Sanhedrin, and the authorities at Jerusalem, no doubt had their emissaries at Capernaum as elsewhere (Act_8:3-4; Act_9:1-2).
Joh_6:42. Is not this, etc.—The reception which the announcement of the birth of Christ met with at Jerusalem (Mat_2:16-18) would certainly lead those who knew of it “to keep these things and ponder them in their hearts.” The widespread knowledge of it before the Resurrection would have led, on the one hand, to more strenuous efforts on the part of some “to make Him a king”; and, on the other, would have, through the increased enmity of the rulers and suspicions of such men as Herod, prevented our Lord from prosecuting His mission. It cannot be inferred from this verse that Joseph was still alive. Whose father and mother we know may simply mean: Whose names we know, whom we know about, etc. Christ’s works, His signs, should have convinced them that He was more than a mere man.
Joh_6:44. No man can come, etc.—The word “draw” (ἑλκύω) is used here in the same sense as in Joh_12:32. It is not a drawing against but with man’s will (comp. Joh_5:40).
Joh_6:45. Taught.—See Isa_54:13, “Where hearing is there is obedience; for faith is not of necessity, but by persuasion. The truth of Christian doctrine teaches that the ἀυτεξούσιν καὶ αὐτὸ προαίρετον (independence and self-choice) of the human soul is preserved entire” (Cyril in Wordsworth’s Greek Testament).
Joh_6:46. He hath seen, etc.—The incarnate Son is the eternal Logos (Joh_1:1-2).
Joh_6:51. If any man, etc.—Tischendorf reads (with א) of My bread (ἐκ τοῦ ἐμοῦ ἄρτου). But the majority of MSS. and versions seem to confirm the received reading.
Joh_6:53. There is in this passage (Joh_6:51-59) no doubt a distinct reference to Christ’s sacrificial death as the true passover lamb. The distinct reference to “flesh” and “blood” points to the separation of them by death. First the whole life is spoken of as given for men, and then the body broken and the blood poured forth. “The Son of man lived for us, and died for us, and communicates to us the effects of His life and death as perfect man” (Westcott).
Joh_6:57. The chain of spiritual life is complete. The believer lives through and in Christ; whilst Christ lives in the living Father, the source of all life, who has given the Son to have life in Himself (Joh_5:26).
Joh_6:59. Capernaum.—On the western shore of the lake. About two hours from the point where the Jordan enters the Lake of Galilee the ruins of Tell Hûm are situated. These are most generally considered to occupy the site of Capernaum. And it is certainly most interesting to notice that Colonel Wilson, R.E., when exploring there the ruins of what must have been a well-built synagogue, discovered a stone on which was sculptured a pot of manna. “Captain Conder and Lieutenant Kitchener, however, agree, with Robinson, Renan, and many others, in placing this city at the ruin Minyeh—‘the town of Minim,’ or Christian heretics, who are called in the Talmud ‘sons of Capernaum’ ” (Twenty-one Years’ Work in the Holy Land). This site lies about an hour and a half farther south. Thus uncertainty still prevails as to the site of this city (Mat_11:23).
MAIN HOMILETICS OF THE PARAGRAPH.—Joh_6:22-65
Joh_6:27. “Man shall not live by bread alone.”—This is a subject frequently and urgently referred to by our Lord (Mat_6:25-34, etc.). And the reason why this is so is not far to seek. The spirit and tendency which He seeks to combat is that practical materialism which springs up especially where men are congregated in masses, and the struggle for existence is more keenly felt; and which also exerts its baleful influence wherever undue attention to earthly concerns is indulged in.
I. The material fails to satisfy men.—
1. What is material can satisfy only for the time. The material food that Jesus had miraculously provided for the hungry multitudes satisfied them for the moment. But on the following morning those same people were again surrounding Him seeking further material manifestations.
2. God alone, spiritual things alone, can fill up the needs of our higher nature. Our souls cry out for “God, the living God.” Scripture, and human history—the aggregate of human experience, testify to this.
3. What are the religions and rites of heathenism; what are those ruined shrines and temples of religions and peoples of the past—even of races forgotten and unknown—but an eloquent commentary on and testimony to the truth that man cannot in his complex nature be satisfied with material things alone?
II. Material things should therefore not exclusively engross us.—
1. “Work not,” etc.—seek not to obtain by your labour merely the food that perisheth; do not apply all your energies to this end. That seems to be the meaning of the Saviour’s words. He does not and cannot mean that men are not honestly to labour for daily bread, but that they are not to make this the first and supreme concern.
2. For by doing so they will stunt their nature, and by supreme attention to the things of earth they will become “of the earth earthy.” Are not socialism and secularism on the one hand, and the growth of colossal fortunes on the other, results of this undue attention to material things condemned by our Lord? And is not the widespread discontent of the world due to this cause?
“My heart is pained, nor can it be
At rest till it finds rest in Thee.”
3. The same truth meets us on a higher plane. Undue attention to scientific and intellectual pursuits, leading to neglect of our spiritual being, tends to poverty of the higher life. Witness the sad confession by Darwin, that he had lost in later life his taste for poetry, etc. That part of his mind had become, as it were, “atrophied” by disease. So our spiritual being becomes atrophied, dead, when the energies of life are wholly given to the material.
III. If we seek the spiritual, the material will in due measure be given.—
1. The spiritual life must come first. And if it is within our power, then there will be none of that over-anxious striving for material things that takes the true spring out of life, and often embitters it; and the angel of sweet content will smile upon our way.
“Content can soothe, where’er by fortune placed,
Can rear a garden in a desert waste.”—Kirke White.
2. God is the true summum bonum; and possessing Him, His children possess all things. This we can attain to through Christ alone. And for the true and heavenly food men must labour. Not as though they could gain it by their own exertions; for Christ gives it. But they must strive after it—seek for it earnestly.
3. And doing so it will be given, and with it every other gift. For Christ has been solemnly set apart and sent for this very purpose of bringing to men the bread of life; and the proof of His authority, the seal of it, is evident in His mighty works, etc. To those who enter His kingdom, to whom the Father has given the kingdom, all things needful will be added (Luk_12:32). “A kingdom—brave word! Then why not bread?” (Bengel.)
Joh_6:28-29. The work of God.—The Jews on this occasion, as on many others, missed the central idea in the words which Jesus had just spoken to them. The old legal concept, Do this and live, was evidently in their minds in this inquiry. They did not observe, or observing did not understand, the words, “Work for the meat that endureth, … which the Son of man shall give,” etc. (Joh_6:27). Hence their question, “What must we do?” etc. Had they duly weighed His words, and had they not been blinded to the truth, their question would have been, “How can we obtain from Thee this food that endureth?”
I. How shall men work the works of God?—
1. It is an inquiry of the utmost importance. For what are men sent into the world to do but just those very works?
2. And this inquiry on the part of those Jews who were sincere and earnest (not hypocrites like the Pharisee who thanked God he was not like other men) was a pathetic confession that they knew not how a right to do the work given them to do here. Every sincere man feels how imperfect, even when he is in earnest and struggling manfully, is the service he can render.
3. And when life has reached its middle course, or is hastening to its close, and we look back on the way that has been traversed, how little do we find to cause complacency? how much that is blameworthy? how much that remains undone? It is a question we should be ever asking, and it will be well for us if we are led to realise (and act accordingly) ever more clearly that—
II. There is a foundation work, which must precede and underlie all other works in the service of God.—
1. “This is the work of God, that ye should believe,” etc. For by nature we have no true desire to do God’s works. And it is only when we believe in Christ, become His, and are filled with His Spirit and our hearts with His love, that like Him we shall delight to do our Father’s will.
2. Faith is the spring of all true Christian activity. Without a living faith and the assured hope and peace that faith brings, all work would be but vanity, and every seeming gain only an adornment of the sepulchre of our hopes. This is the foundation work.
3. And believing will lead to our acting on our belief, and seeking in all our work to serve God after the example of Jesus—especially in those works of mercy, kindness, and love which were so conspicuous in His life.
4. And then, even though we come far short, and often err through the weakness of our nature, still the whole spirit of service will be Christlike; and there will be a constant endeavour after what is higher, “a pressing toward the mark.” The progress of Christendom shows that faith is the spring of a higher life and service.
III. Believe now!—
1. The human and the divine co-operate here. Men must agonise to enter in, etc. The higher life is one of progress, and the more assured and clear our faith, the more ardently will we labour.
2. But how many err as to the meaning of faith, forgetting that faith must work by love (Gal_5:6); and that the genuineness of faith must be shown by works (Jas_2:18). What shall be said of the “faith” of those who live in and for themselves and the things of time?
3. To all it is a call to purer faith and higher endeavour. “The night is far spent, the day is at hand,” etc. (Rom_13:12-14). What lies behind of wasted efforts, neglected opportunities, etc., patches of tares where good seed should have been sown, barren spots where should have waved harvest blessings? Redeem the time which remains. Believe, live, labour!
Joh_6:30-35. The manna and the true Bread from heaven.—In this incident the Jews showed themselves to be true descendants of their fathers who “tempted God in the desert,” and murmured at the provision given to them by Him. In order to a clear comprehension of this passage it will be necessary to recall the Old Testament type on which this conversation on Christ as the Bread of Life is founded.
I. The nature of the manna.—It was a divine gift to the Israelites during their desert wanderings, and is minutely described in the historical passages (Exodus 16; Num_11:7-9) which refer to it. Much minute research has been expended to trace the resemblance between the manna given to the Israelites and a mucilaginous exudation from a species of tamarisk shrub, and other plants of the Sinaitic peninsula. It was described by the Arab physician Avicenna as “a dew which falls on stones or bushes, becomes thick like honey, and can be hardened so as to be like grains of corn.” Similar testimony is borne by modern travellers (Burckhardt, Niebuhr, etc.). This production is used to-day by the Arabs of the peninsula and by the monks of Mount Sinai in the form of a syrup to be eaten with bread. Now, although it is quite possible that divine power may have made use of a natural product of the desert, miraculously multiplying it as Christ multiplied the loaves and fishes, still the constant supply of the manna for forty years, its cessation when the Israelites crossed the Jordan, its quality of keeping fresh on the Sabbath, whilst it would not keep overnight on other days—all point to a divinely and miraculously provided gift (hence the derivation מָנָה, Mânâh, Arab. דَהٌ = a part or portion; it is a portion, a gift, from מָנַה, to divide a portion), unknown before to the people (hence the other and it seems proper derivation מָן הוּא, Man-hu, “What is this?”—Exo_16:15), and taking the place of bread—the staff of life. It is to be remembered that the Israelites are not said to have lived on manna alone. They had their flocks and herds. Like the Arab tribes, during their forty years of wandering they might camp at certain places for more than a year at a time, and during that period cultivate the ground. But generally the manna was their staple food. Their desert fare lacked the variety and stimulus of the food they enjoyed in Egypt. Hence their murmuring at this divinely provided daily gift, although it was healthful, pleasant, and abundant.
II. The Jewish traditional ideas concerning the manna.—Although some of the people murmured in the wilderness, this miraculous provision made a great impression on all succeeding ages. It is one of the wonders recounted in the historical Psalms (Psa_78:24; Psa_105:40); and frequent reference was made to it in the rabbinical traditions of the Jews. There was one traditional saying that seems to have made a special and enduring impression: “The first Redeemer caused manna to descend for them; and so too will the second Redeemer cause manna to descend.” This idea is at the bottom of the question put to our Lord: “What sign are we to have that we may believe? Our fathers had the wonderful gift of manna: if Thou art indeed the promised Redeemer, where then is this promised meat that endureth unto eternal life?” (Joh_6:27). “A wonderful miracle was wrought but yesterday; when, however, shall we see that better and more enduring provision which will mark the inception and progress of Messiah’s reign?” This is but another instance of the people’s earthly conceptions—their desire for a material kingdom of God, in which material blessings then unheard of should descend upon them. Thus they misinterpreted the words of Jesus in reference to “the meat that endureth.”
III. Our Lord’s interpretation of the type.—He first pointed out that the popular idea that it was Moses who gave the manna was erroneous. It was God who did so. And then, that the manna after all was not veritably “bread out of heaven”—at least not in a primary sense—although, as provided by God, it was a heavenly gift. It was not the true bread, but only a fading type and shadow of the true, unfailing, heavenly bread. “For although it was not prepared by earthly hands, the manna did not descend from heaven itself, which is the throne of God. Therefore there is not given to you in the manna, which your fathers ate in the wilderness, what could nourish you to life eternal” (Besser). “But now My Father gives you the true bread out of heaven—for you and for the life of the world.” Not with the dews of night from the firmamental heavens alone does this true “bread of God” descend; but from God Himself. Not only does it nourish for a time a single people; but it gives life to the world, eternal life for all mankind, of every tribe and nation, of every age and period. Our Lord’s hearers were evidently impressed by His words; for they addressed Him as Lord, and uttered the request, “Evermore give us this bread” (Joh_6:34). But it was evident, too, that they were still immeshed in merely material ideas—conceptions of some heavenly and splendid provision for their earthly needs. Therefore our Lord pointed to Himself as the interpretation of this type, and the teaching they had just listened to: “I am the bread of life,” etc.
Joh_6:30-35; Joh_6:48-59. Jesus the bread of life.—After the miracle of feeding the five thousand at Bethsaida, many of the people were convinced that Jesus was the prophet promised of old. They even determined “to take Him by force and make Him a king,” and thus to lead Him to declare Himself openly as a Messiah after their own heart. And even when He withdrew Himself, and again came to Capernaum, they followed Him, seeking a further “sign” to assure themselves, after their material conceptions, of His Messiahship. Here is the sign which He gave them; and had they not been blinded by prejudice and tradition, they must have been convinced. None but One sent from God could with sincerity have uttered such words as these. Their import has simply to be considered to show that none but the eternal Son could make such a declaration as this. In the mouth of any other but God Himself such words would be blasphemous, if not meaningless. Consider the meaning of this wonderful figure—Jesus, the true bread from heaven, the bread of God, the bread of life. Christ is the bread of life because—
I. He is the ordinary and universal provision for the spiritual life.—
1. On a journey the travellers require food and drink to sustain and refresh them on their way. So, too, on their pilgrimage through time to eternity men need spiritual food for the soul. “What food and drink are to the body, so,” Christ says, “am I to the soul.” And by this He does not mean simply His teaching, His gospel. It is Himself. “The bread which I will give is My flesh, for the life of the world” (Joh_6:51).
2. He used this metaphor therefore to signify that just as bread is the most simple and universal means of subsistence, so is He to the soul. There are few places on earth where bread is not a staple of existence. Those places where it is practically unknown are low in the scale of civilisation, e.g. Greenland, etc. And so too where this spiritual bread is not found, spiritual life is stunted and low. There are many things men could well spare. Not so bread. So there are many things we could spare from our moral and intellectual, and even our spiritual life; but not Christ.
3. Bread is prepared in many forms; and Christ also comes to us in spiritual blessing manifoldly—in His word, His Church, His ordinances. In all these ways and forms we may receive spiritual nourishment. There are those who, like the Israelites, murmur against this spiritual food. It is too common, too insipid for them. The Israelites longed for the more stimulating food of Egypt. “This is the perverted nature of man, which cannot continue in the quiet enjoyment of what is clean and unmixed, but from its own inward discord desires a stimulating admixture of what is sharp and sour” (Baumgarten). Such are those who find their enjoyment in the draff of the world’s pleasures, the intoxicating cup of sinful enjoyment, and the specious banquets of earthly wisdom. To such the word of God, the day of God, and spiritual goods generally bring no delight.
4. But bread is not only a common and simple, it is a universal food. From childhood to age it is enjoyed by all. It is found and is welcomed in the palace as well as in the humblest cot. Follow the course of the sun round the world, and almost everywhere you will find bread in some form or other; thus it is well named a staff of life. So Christ is the universal spiritual food for humanity. From His fulness alone can we all receive “grace for grace.” Prince and peasant, man and child, whoever would live spiritually, must eat of this universal spiritual bread—Jesus Christ, “the same yesterday, to-day, and for ever.”
II. He is the most indispensable food of the soul.—
1. The want of bread cannot be properly compensated for by the supply of anything else. Nothing else can really take its place. With regard to other foods our taste changes during the course of the years. We never lose our taste for bread when in our normal condition.
2. Now so is it with the “bread of life.” Earthly pleasures and enjoyments lose their power after a time; they pall upon the taste. Men change from the pursuit of one to the pursuit of another, in order to find satisfaction. Earthly things change their aspect with time and fashion. What delighted yesterday is counted of little worth to-day; what fascinates to-day will have lost its glamour to-morrow. Youth goes forth to seek pleasure; manhood, honours and rewards. And if the things of earth are pursued in and for themselves alone, when the last page is turned the man is compelled to write as a finis to the book, “Vanity of vanities, all is vanity.”
3. Not so is it with Christ and the treasures He brings into the life. In Him are unfailing sources of satisfaction—joys that never fade, but become ever more satisfying to the end. It is related of Gellert, Professor of Moral Philosophy at Leipzig, Christian poet and fabulist, that when at the point of death, and when, according to the custom of the Lutheran Church, the sacrament of communion had been administered, he said, “I cannot now remember much; but continue to utter the name of my Redeemer, for when I hear it I feel in me new strength and joyfulness.” This is but one uttered testimony of the myriads unuttered of the indispensableness of Christ to the spiritual life. As bread cannot be replaced by the richest and rarest of viands, so were man to gain the whole world—its riches, honours, rewards—without this indispensable gift, these would be but dust and ashes in the end.—After Fried. Arndt.
“Rather poor—than without Jesus rich in glory and in power;
Rather sick—than without Jesus fresh and full life’s every hour;
Yes, far better ne’er to have been born than from this Friend apart;
Though a world be lost for Him, who know Him have the better part.”
Translated from Lavater.
III. He sustains and builds up our spiritual life.—
1. As the body craves for nourishment, and must be sustained by food in due measure, that it may be maintained and grow, so does the spiritual being. Christ alone can truly sustain, is the true bread of the soul.
2. Manifold are the attempts that have been made by men themselves to invent some satisfying food for their moral and spiritual being. The religions and philosophies of the past are the monuments of their ineffective toil. And at the present day, among those who reject the gospel, how many futile attempts do we find in the same direction? Whilst others, who see how vain all this effort has been and is, and who cannot in their pride of intellect and heart stood to accept the divine substitute, simply ignore the spiritual being in man or deny its existence, declaring that intellect and soul are—
“Magnetic mockeries, wholly brain.”—Tennyson.
Thus they oppose themselves to the continuous and universal consciousness of the race; to the myriads who by life or word have confessed Christ as the sustainer of their spiritual life, the giver of spiritual health, peace, joy; and also to the crowd of great men of intellect, learning, heart, who have borne the same testimony.
3. And Christ not only sustains, He builds up our spiritual life. The child becomes a youth, the youth grows to manhood, when fitly nourished. So is it in the spiritual life. But here, as in many particulars, the earthly analogy, even the heavenly provided manna, fails to show forth the antitype in all its fulness. The food of earth (even the manna) cannot prevent age stealing on us with stealthy step, so that in spite of daily bread the body grows weaker and finally decays. But there is a marked difference in the effect of the bread of God on the soul. With increasing age comes increasing spiritual strength and progress; so that not only is “the inward man renewed day by day” whilst the “outward man perishes,” but when the latter dies the germ of the former unfolds and blossoms eternally.
4. Those who spiritually feed on this living bread must and will display a continual growth in grace and knowledge and every spiritual gift. If this does not show itself, then, depend upon it, there must be either want of faith in appropriating the heavenly nourishment, or some spiritual obstruction preventing its assimilation. It is a false humility which would lead men to conceal or deny growth in the Christian life. And there are too many who fail to appropriate to themselves fully this true bread of life, so that they are stunted and dwarfed in their spiritual growth.
Joh_6:35-47. A willing people in the way of Christ’s power.—Christ’s kingdom was not to be a kingdom according to this world (Joh_6:15). He had already repulsed at the very beginning of His ministry those temptations, which were the germ of future importunities, to proclaim Himself a temporal Messiah in accordance with Jewish ideas and expectations (Mat_4:5-10). He was to unsheath no glittering material sword; no pomp or pride was to herald the advent of His conquering might, and of that kingdom which was to be universal.
I. The rule which Christ has established.—
1. It is not to be compared with or likened to the empires or kingdoms of earth, which are but for a brief space. It was to be set high above them all, though at the beginning apparently feeble. It was to come without ostentation, but yet from its beginning it would be dependent on His appearing (Dan_2:34-36; Dan_2:44-45; Dan_7:13-14; Luk_17:20-21).
2. This is so because His rule is a spiritual one (Mat_20:25-28). It is set up in the hearts of men. It exerts its dominion over moral wastes of humanity, and where it is established the desert rejoices and blossoms as the rose.
3. Mere external union with it is not possible; for the citizens of it become numbers in virtue of a great spiritual change which has taken place within them (Joh_3:3), which unites them in oneness of spirit and aim with the King and with their fellow-subjects.
4. And whilst it is a present it is also an eternal rule. The blessings of that rule are present (Joh_6:35; Joh_6:37), but in their fulness they will be realised hereafter (Joh_6:39-40; Joh_6:44). This is the rule set up by Jesus. His kingdom is one of life and light. He is its centre. It is by union with Him, by eating of Him, the living bread (Joh_6:35), that men become spiritually alive and fitted for this kingdom of life and light.
II. The way in which subjects of the kingdom are led to subject themselves to Christ’s rule.—
1. It is through the drawing of the Father. The willing Son receives those whom the Father gives Him (Joh_6:37). But the Father’s giving is not restricted; in this also He works in unison with the Son: “Ask of Me, and I will give thee the nations for thine inheritance,” etc. (Psa_2:8). And the Son said, “As Thou hast given Him power,” etc. (Joh_17:2). Christ has set up this kingdom of grace and salvation, but He is at one with the Father as to the chosen ones—the elect—who shall inherit it, and who alone come to Him.
2. And they come because the Father draws them. He must do so, else men of themselves would never come; for men naturally have no desire to subject themselves to Christ’s rule.
3. But they are drawn not by force, although powerfully. They are not treated as mere machines. The Father seeks to influence them as rational, accountable beings. He (Joh_6:45) presents the truth of His word to their understandings; makes it sharp to pierce their consciences; touches their hearts with the power of His love. He does not, as Luther says, drag them to Him “as a thief is dragged to the gallows”; but draws and entices them lovingly as a Father seeks to bring back a disobedient son to his allegiance (Jer_31:3; Hos_11:3-4). For God “wills not the death of a sinner,” etc. But there are those who do and can resist (Joh_6:40; Joh_6:60; Joh_6:66), who can grieve the Spirit (Eph_4:30), resist the Holy Ghost (Act_7:51), and the power of the truth (2Ti_3:8). Their hearts are estranged quite from God, and they desire not to serve Him. Here the mystery of human free-will and divine sovereignty meets us. The two ends of the chain are seen here. The joining curve is beyond our present ken.
4. But let no man entertain the materialist or heathenish idea (which is simply an echo of a voice in the heart, seeking to justify him for a godless life) that he is not drawn, and therefore cannot be of those given by Christ to the Father. Let him desire to come, and lo! the way is open.
5. In many ways does the Father draw men—in joy and sorrow, etc.
III. Those drawn by the Father and given to Jesus come to Him.—
1. Here the action of the human agent in working out personal salvation (Php_2:12-13) is shown. There is a willing coming to the Saviour of those given and drawn by the Father. Here will men find the proof of their being of the number of the elect. Let them come to Christ.
2. This coming does not mean any mere external approach, as many came to Jesus in the days of His flesh. It does not mean mere outward fellowship in the Church. It is a coming into spiritual unity and fellowship.
3. The soul is attracted to Christ by the beauty of His character, the divinity of His message, the conviction that He is the truth, and that He is able to satisfy the needs of man’s nature, to become all his salvation and all his desire.
4. And in order to come to Him men need not descend into the deeps of a dead past to bring Christ thence; for He is now present, ever present by His word and Spirit, in His Church and kingdom. Nor need they ascend into heaven to bring Him down; for the kingdom of heaven is here and now, is in every believing heart; and its great King is not afar; for He is with His people, who even here are fellow-citizens of the saints, etc. (Eph_2:19), even to the end of the world (Mat_28:20).
5. And those who come find eternal satisfaction and blessedness (Joh_6:35). For they come not like the multitude at Capernaum, seeking the meat that perisheth—that must perish; but the meat that endureth. True, material things will be given them according to the measure of their need; for to whom the bread of life is given what is needful will also be supplied (Rom_8:32). Men seek many things—wealth, honour, freedom, etc., etc. But they who gain salvation have everlasting wealth, honour, freedom.
IV. Those who come to Jesus abide eternally.—
1. They have the blessed promise, “Him that cometh to Me I will in no wise cast out.” Imperfect, feeble, erring, weak in faith, and feeling their unworthiness because they do not in all things live as citizens of His kingdom, yet His people know that they through faith do participate in His life. And this is shown by their desire after the higher life—the new obedience through faith. They seek earnestly to rise to the Saviour’s example of perfect obedience (Joh_6:38). They seek ever to be loyal to the Head and government of the kingdom, to honour and obey the heavenly laws.
2. Nor do they ever desire for one moment to leave Him. If He will graciously not cast them out, in spite of failure and fall, the longer they taste the blessedness of His rule the more they desire closer fellowship with their King, the more fully do they seek to honour and serve Him. For in His ways and in doing His will they find that higher harmony and balance of all the powers of their being which is expressed in the word peace. Just as Jesus Himself in the midst of disappointment, and when He was grieved at the rejection of His gospel by those to whom He came, found peace in the Father’s will (Mat_11:25-27), so His disciples who come to Him learn to say joyfully, “In His will is our peace” (Dante).
3. But does not this promise of Jesus contain less than some other promises: e.g. “Come unto Me,” etc. (Mat_11:28); “Peace I leave with you” (Joh_14:27)? No, verily. It means more than all others and contains all others. For if He does not cast us out in time or in eternity, then surely all things are ours (1Co_3:22). Consider what the promise includes. It implies that He will be with us to the end of our journey here—not only in holy service specially so called, the worship of His house, the sacred season of communion at His table or in the hour of prayer, but in all our work and labour when we seek to do it unto Him. It implies that He will be near us in that hour “when heart and flesh faint and fail”—that “He will not leave us in the dust” (Joh_6:39-40); and when the hour of judgment strikes, that He will confess us before the Father, etc. (Mat_10:32). It implies, therefore, also all the blessedness of the heavenly state—the day that knows no night, the tree of life, etc., etc. Thus is consummated the blessedness of Christ’s willing people: they go no more out from His presence (Rev_3:12), and rejoice eternally, serving Him day and night in His temple (Rev_7:14-17).
Joh_6:38. He took upon Him the form of a servant.—No words more fully and beautifully describe the perfect obedience of the Son to the Father in carrying out to completion the work of man’s redemption than those striking words of the prophet, “The Lord hath given me the tongue of them that are taught,” etc. (Isa_50:4-10). Christ is the servant of Jehovah in an especial sense, of whom it was written that He came to do the Father’s will. What better and truer description of the Redeemer could be given than that which tells how the Lord gave Him the tongue of them that are taught, so that He should know at the right time and with comforting words to sustain and refresh the weary? As we read there falls on the ear of memory those blessed words of comfort and consolation which the Redeemer spoke to weary, troubled men, “Come unto Me, all ye that labour,” etc. (Mat_11:28); “Let not your heart be troubled,” etc. (Joh_14:1); “Be of good cheer,” etc. (Joh_16:33). And what more striking result of the coming of the Life and Light of men to earth could be given than, “He that walketh in darkness and hath no light, let him trust in the name of the Lord”? And do not the intermediate verses of the prophetic word indicate clearly the lowly humiliation and suffering affliction which the Son endured, becoming obedient unto death, that He might do the Father’s will and finish His work? Consider then the willing obedience of Christ as our example. Christ’s obedience to His Father’s will as the incarnate Son and Servant of Jehovah is evidenced in His—
I. Hearing the Father’s word.—
1. All true obedience and service begins in readiness to listen to the voice of God. Unwillingness to hear that voice naturally results in turning a deaf ear to Him who speaks from heaven, and finally to disobedience.
2. Our Lord’s obedience to the Father’s voice was unmistakable. Well might the prophet’s words be applied to Him: “He wakeneth me morning by morning. He wakeneth mine ear to hear as those that are taught. The Lord God hath opened mine ear, and I was not rebellious, neither turned away backward” (Isa_50:4-5). “As I hear I judge,” said Jesus. “All that I have heard of My Father I have made known unto you” (Joh_15:15). His ear was ever open to hear the Father’s voice; and with Him to hear was to obey.
II. His obedience was further shown in speech and action.—
1. The obedient child and servant will not oppose his wise and loving Father and Master either in word or deed.
2. Thus we find the perfect Son ever speaking those words which are well pleasing to the Father, and doing those works which the Father gave Him to do. “I speak that which I have seen with My Father” (Joh_8:38); “The word which ye hear is not Mine, but the Father’s which sent Me” (Joh_14:24). For all His teaching, therefore, our Lord claims divine authority. His word and the Father’s word are ever the same; between them there is perfect assonance, without suspicion of discordance.
3. And it was equally so with the Son’s activity. “My Father worketh hitherto, and I work” (Joh_5:17); “The works which I do in My Father’s name, these bear witness of Me” (Joh_10:25); “If I do not the works of My Father, believe Me not” (Joh_10:37); “The works which the Father hath given Me to finish,” etc. (Joh_6:36).
4. Nothing could be more plain than the claim Jesus makes to be in accord in all things with His heavenly Father in word and work. Even in His state of humiliation, when He appeared in the form of a servant, as the willing and obedient Son, there was complete unity and concord with the eternal Father. And this is still more strikingly displayed in His—
III. Trustfulness in enduring.—
1. The way of sorrow and the cross of shame were surely a wonderful test of our Lord’s obedience, of His determination not to seek His own will, but that of His Father! He was despised and rejected even of those whom He came to redeem. He permitted Himself to be betrayed, by one who had companied with Him, into the hands of wicked men. “He gave His back to the smiters”; “hid not His face from shame and spitting”; and when He died on the cross, a voluntary sufferer, He endured for an awful moment the sense of loneliness as the bearer of the world’s sin.
2. Yet not for one moment did He “turn backward.” “I have a baptism to be baptised with,” etc. (Luk_12:50); “The cup which My Father hath given Me,” etc. (Joh_18:1-8).
3. And in all those sufferings, in which “He was obedient unto death,” did His trust in the Father’s love for one moment waver? “I know that Thou hearest Me always” (Joh_11:42). Often all night in prayer He strengthened Himself by communion for His arduous work, and came forth to conquer and declare: “I know that I shall not be ashamed”; “He is near that justifieth Me”; “Behold, the Lord God will help Me.”
Joh_6:51-59; Joh_6:63. The manner in which we must receive the bread of life.—There are certain conditions which must be observed ere this bread of heaven can become to us a means of nourishment and growth in the spiritual life.
I. We must eat of it daily.—Of what avail would it be to have bread placed on our table daily, did we not partake of it? The mere looking at or consideration of it will not nourish us. We must eat it (Joh_6:54). So, too, we must eat of the bread of life. And the means by which we can do so is expressed in the words, “He that believeth in Me hath eternal life” (Joh_6:47). We must receive Him with all that He brings of grace and truth and spiritual power; we must open heart and soul to take Him as our all in all.
II. We must assimilate this divine nourishment.—The food we take must be assimilated, converted into the substance of the body, or it will be useless for the purpose intended. Now it is evident that our Lord means that there should be such a close spiritual union between Himself and His people that they may be regarded as one (see Joh_7:37-40). They partake of His life, which flows into their souls, nourishing and building up. Christ is in His people. They are members of His body, partaking of His Spirit, branches of the living vine, nourished and made fruitful by His life in them.
III. We must avoid all extraneous and poisonous admixtures.—What is good food may be rendered injurious to health by mixing up with it what is corrupt or poisonous. Such things would prevent the best of food from fulfilling its functions. Thus too the gospel may be so mixed up with human additions and errors as to lose in great measure its power to nourish and build up. Let us then prayerfully obey the apostle’s exhortation: “As therefore ye have received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk in Him. Beware lest ye be led captive by philosophy or vain deceit, according to the traditions of men or the rudiments of the world, and not according to Christ” (Col_2:6 et seq.).
Joh_6:58. The bread which we break, is it not the communion of the body of Christ?—Although our Lord was not, in the synagogue at Capernaum, in this great discourse on the living bread, referring to the Lord’s Supper, which was not yet instituted, still there is no doubt He was referring to the great truth which that ordinance commemorates, symbolises, and shows forth. He spoke of the giving of Himself for the salvation, the life of the world. It was nigh to the passover season, and He had just fed the multitude with the miraculously multiplied bread on the eastern shore of the lake of Galilee; and no doubt, in speaking to these people, He had in view the hour when He, our passover, should be sacrificed for us, and when the heavenly types of the manna and the bleeding lamb should be seen fulfilled in the great Antitype—when the rites commemorative of God’s goodness and favour to Israel of old should give place to rites commemorative of a more glorious redemption for the whole human race. This discourse leads to a fuller understanding of—
I. The Lord’s Supper as a memorial of eternal, divine love.—
1. Jesus was even now looking forward to the time when His great atoning work should be completed. The cross lay plainly in view. Was it not even then casting its shadow across His path in His recognition of the traitor among the twelve? And yet, in view of all He knew was to come, there was no attempt on His part to recede from His purpose. Rather we have here a full and wonderful statement of all that His incarnation with its humiliation, His vicarious suffering, His atoning death, were to bring to His people.
2. The divine love in the Father and the Son is seen working for this great purpose of redemption for the whole human race. The will of the Father and the will of the incarnate Son are seen to be in perfect unison. It is the Father who sends down the true bread from heaven; and the Son, who is the true bread, gives His flesh, His incarnate life, for the life of the world (Joh_6:32-51).
3. And added to all this are the drawings of eternal love (Joh_6:44), the divine teaching so patient through centuries of stubborn resistance, “here a little and there a little,” etc. (Isa_28:10), and the divine promises and invitations, “Him that cometh unto Me I will in no wise cast out” (Joh_6:37).
4. It is this unspeakable love that the supper commemorates,—that love of the Father “who spared not His own Son, but delivered Him up for us all” (Rom_8:32); that love of the Son “which many waters could not quench, nor floods drown” (Son_8:7)—waters and floods of contumely, humiliation, affliction, and death. Think of what it all means, this wonderful love of God to fallen man, and then say should not the memorial feast, that tells of the completion at such a cost of those divine purposes of mercy and grace, quicken in our hearts more warmly the glow of answering love and resolves after a more consecrated service?
II. The Lord’s Supper is a symbol of salvation through participation in Christ’s life and death.—
1. It is this great truth that the Supper is chiefly a memorial of, we may say: “Do this in remembrance of Me” (Luk_22:19). For Christ, we may truly say, is the centre of all that concerns our salvation. It is of Him, through Him, to Him (Rom_11:36).
2. And here we are reminded of what is taught symbolically in the supper: that Christ’s flesh and blood, in the spiritual sense in which the terms are here used, are for the nourishment of our spiritual life and our complete salvation.
3. It was to redeem sinful men that He became incarnate, that He might “magnify the law and make it honourable” (Isa_42:21) by His holy, blameless life, and that He might bear for man the penalty of the world’s sin on the “tree of shame.” The cross of Christ is the deepest and fullest revelation of God’s love to His fallen creatures—that “He sent His Son into the world, not to condemn the world, but that the world through Him might be saved.” Christ gave His life for the life of the world, and it is by participation in that life that salvation is brought to it.
4. There are two worlds—a world that is lost and a world that is saved. And we are not to suppose that God’s purpose in creation will be so marred that the lost world shall be greater in extent than the saved. His gracious purpose in redemption will not fail. The world of the lost will continue to use the gift of freedom to enslave itself to sin and oppose itself to God. But Christ’s mighty work shall not be in vain. “He shall see of the travail of His soul, and shall be satisfied” (Isa_53:11). He shall yet have the heathen (Gentiles) for His inheritance, etc. (Psa_2:8). To His kingdom, in the end, the glory and honour of the nations shall come (Rev_21:26). “A great multitude, which no man could number, out of all nations, and kindreds, and peoples, and tongues” (Rev_7:9), shall be gathered into the kingdom of His glory.
5. And all this is achieved through that completed work symbolically showed forth in the sacrament. And it is through lively faith in that work, and in Him who is its author, that salvation comes to the individual.
III. This sacrament is a blessed means of communion with the divine Source of spiritual life.—
1. It is faith that unites believers to the Saviour; and thus there is secured to them the benefits which flow from His death as showed forth in the supper—pardon and peace.
2. But there is a further advance beyond this position. One might be pardoned for offence given and yet remain unchanged. In the Christian life there must be renewal after the pattern of Christ, and this renewal must extend to all our being. Not only is the soul quickened, but the body is to be quickened as well—that body which is the tenement and partner of the soul, and without which our life would be incomplete.
3. But said Jesus: “Whoso eateth My flesh, and drinketh My blood, hath eternal life; and I will raise him up at the last day” (Joh_6:54). All this implies far more than a mere intellectual conception—a mere participation in thought and idea of Christ and His life. It implies an actual union with Him—a real and positive assimilation of His life by believers, as real as the assimilation by the living branch of the life of the living vine. Believers become truly members of His body. This is the mystery of Christ and His Church. The divine life of the incarnate Son, in all its aspects, is given to believers for the cleansing, the quickening, the nourishing of their life in all its aspects unto life eternal.
4. All this is brought before the eye of faith in the ordinance of the supper, which is not a mere commemorative act, but a fruitful means of grace. When observed faithfully, it brings us into close personal communion with Christ, and becomes a channel through which His divine life is given to us for “our spiritual nourishment and growth in grace.”
Joh_6:54-57. The blessedness of spiritually feeding on Christ.—Those who communicate in an unworthy manner, says the apostle, “eat and drink judgment,” etc. (1Co_11:29). And unworthily communicating was the reason why, among the Corinthians, “many were weak and sickly, and many slept.” On the other hand, to those who approach the Lord’s table in unfeigned faith, and with earnest desire to have fellowship with the Saviour, there are given the communion blessings of comfort, strength, joy.
I. To those who come penitent and humble for past transgression there is given divine comfort.—
1. There are many, alas! who never seem to feel the need of repentance. Their moral sense has become blunted, their moral vision obscured, so that iniquity has no terror for them, etc.
2. Others do feel that sin is terrible, awful, so that remorse gnaws at their hearts. But this will not of itself make them worthy communicants, and lead to their receiving the blessing of comfort. Remorse must lead to penitence.
“Remorse is as the heart in which it grows:
If that be gentle, it drops balmy dews
Of true repentance; but if proud and gloomy,
It is a poison-tree that, pierced to th’ inmost,
Weeps only tears of blood.”—S. T. Coleridge.
3. But those who are truly repentant find divine comfort in the great fact this communion brings vividly before them: that the blood of Jesus Christ cleanseth, etc. And in the observance of the ordinance they are led with quickened faith to seek for their souls “that blood of sprinkling which speaketh better things,” etc. (Heb_12:24).
II. To those who come with resolves after new obedience strength is given.—
1. Many are the spiritual foes with whom we have to contend; still the impulses of the old sinful nature assert themselves and must be kept in check; still the spiritual life, so long as we are here, needs to be maintained and builded up.
2. And where shall we find strength and grace, enabling us to overcome, but through closer union with Christ—through becoming more and more partakers of His nature, so that as He overcame we also may overcome?
3. This is vividly realised (by faith) in His holy ordinance, etc.
III. To those who come desiring to rise to a higher life there is given spiritual joy.—
1. Nothing is more sad to behold than the case of one who began life with high ideals, but who has sunk down and become sordid and material, etc.
2. How often does it happen that Christians have begun their Christian life with resolves after better things, who by carelessness and conformity to the world have permitted the flame of heavenly love in their hearts to grow feeble, till it flickers almost to extinction!
3. In the sacred ordinance of the supper, approached in a truly humble and longing spirit, our Lord has provided a means by which this love in our hearts may be reawakened, and the oil of grace renewed to feed the heavenly flame.
4. And to those who come to the Lord’s table desiring to love more and serve more there will be given communion joy. Their great Example will be there revealed in all His beauty as the goal toward which they are to strive; and in the symbols of communion they will see vividly represented those spiritual blessings which are implied in spiritually participating by faith in Christ’s life and death—His body and blood; so that to them will be given the joy of realisation, of assurance as they remember Christ’s promise: “As the living Father hath sent Me, and I live by the Father; so he that eateth Me, even he shall live by Me” (Joh_6:57).
Joh_6:60-65. A hard saying justified.—There were apparently a number of people who had attached themselves to Jesus at this period of His ministry who ranked themselves as His disciples, but whose faith in Him was weak, and their conception of His mission not only imperfect but erroneous. The stupendous claim He made, not only that He was the promised Messiah, whose gifts would be greater than the heavenly gift of the manna to their fathers, but that He Himself was the bread of life which came down from heaven to give life to the world, and that those who would live eternally must eat of His flesh and drink of His blood, staggered those half-attached disciples, so that they murmured at it. In answer to their murmuring Jesus corrects their misunderstanding of His words by pointing—
I. To His ascension.—
1. He had claimed to be the Messiah promised to the fathers (Joh_6:30-32), the giver of bread from heaven—nay, that He was the bread which came down from heaven (Joh_6:58), and that they must eat His flesh and drink His blood in order to eternal salvation.
2. And the proof that His words were true would be given in His ascension into heaven. That would show whence He had come, and that His words were with authority. For He would not ascend like a servant, caught up like Elijah, or rapt from earth like Enoch. He would ascend as a Son, as the divine Son, by His own power into heaven, whence He came to earth. Moreover, this fact would remove such cause of offence as they had found in His words when those words were interpreted in the light of it.
3. And though in appealing to this event He appealed to their faith in Him as to its certainty, yet surely that faith might be looked for after the events which had occurred within a brief period (Joh_6:1-13; Joh_6:16-21), and which had led to this discourse at which they were offended. Moreover—
II. The ascension would explain His claim to be the bread of life.—
1. It would show at once in what sense He intended His words about “eating His flesh and drinking His blood” to be taken. “The words that I speak unto you, they are spirit,” etc. (Joh_6:63). When the flesh disappears, when at the resurrection I assume My spiritual body and ascend therewith into heaven, then you will understand that My words have a spiritual meaning.
2. The people at Capernaum thought of flesh which is born of the will of the flesh (Joh_1:13). If I spoke of flesh in this sense, My words would profit nothing.
3. Our Lord did not mean that His flesh profits nothing. It is indeed because He became incarnate that we have hope for eternity; and it was as the incarnate Son that He offered Himself for our sin (Joh_6:51). But His humanity—His flesh itself—was spiritually conceived. Without this His humanity would not have been fitted for His high emprise. And through the same Spirit we must partake of Him, be united with Him, have His life in us, if we would have life eternal. Thus to those who receive Him He gives power to become the sons of God—makes them “partakers of the divine nature” (Joh_1:12; 2Pe_1:4).
4. It is the Spirit that quickeneth; it is by the Spirit we are new born into the higher life; it is by the Spirit that this higher life is nourished and sustained within us—by our union with Jesus and through all the means and channels of grace; whereby His life flows into our souls—His life as the risen, ascended Saviour, divine-human—building up our spiritual being and “changing the body of our humiliation, that it may be conformed unto the body of His glory” (Php_3:21).
III. The new birth is necessary in order to spiritual understanding of and trust in Christ.—
1. Well did the Lord say to Nicodemus, “If I have told you earthly things,” etc. (Joh_3:12); and the apostle, “The natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God” (1Co_2:11-14).
2. The moral teaching of our Lord those disciples understood and were attracted by; but some of them could go no further. When faith demanded their adhesion to such deep spiritual truths as the giving of Christ for the life of the world, the necessity of feeding upon Him in order to their spiritual life, then Jesus became to them “a stone of stumbling and a rock of offence,” etc. (1Pe_2:8).
3. From the moment those followers began to gather round Him, He recognised who among them would become true disciples and believers, and who would not. And, too, in connection with this reference to our Lord’s passion and ascension the first mention is made of His betrayal. But why was the traitor numbered among the twelve? The answer is that “His Father willed it.” And if we might suggest a purpose it may have been this—that one who had companied with Him, and who vilely betrayed Him, was led in bitter remorse to confess, “I have sinned in that I have betrayed the innocent blood”; and thus with our Lord’s enemies Judas was forced to declare that there was no fault in Him.
4. The deep reason lying at the basis of the unbelief of those who did not really come to Christ in living faith is their inability to do so, because not drawn to Him by the Father (Joh_6:44). Some of those following Him had been drawn by the hope of having their material wants supplied—others as to a heavenly teacher, others as to One who might be hoped to fulfil the national expectations. Few came because they felt the need of a higher life, and were convinced that Jesus could bring them that life. These alone were drawn by the Father, had opened their minds to receive His truth, and their hearts to the impulses of His Spirit. These will not be offended. They may not and will not fully understand the truth of God—not all at once, but slowly, will spiritual things become plain to them. They, however, will not stumble at what they do not understand thoroughly, but will seek ever more for that spiritual revelation which God gives His children (1Co_2:10).
5. Our Lord here returns again to the mystery whence all spiritual life flows—the originating impulse of the divine will, and the blending in unison with it of the human will. The soil must be prepared, or the good seed will fall on it in vain; the heart must be made good, or it will be spiritually barren. The will must be submissive to respond to the drawing of the Father. But who is it that makes the heart evil, hardens it, opposes the will to the divine law? It is men themselves, of their own free choice. They are driven by no fate, impelled by no necessity; they feel themselves responsible for what they are. Therefore the giving to the Son by the Father of redeemed men is no arbitrary act ignoring human freedom and responsibility, but the exercise of the divine will in accordance with the laws of man’s being.
IV. Men should learn on a consideration of these things a lesson of earnest purpose in seeking salvation.—
1. In reference to the action of the divine will in relation to human redemption, we stand before what is here a mystery. But it is clear that men are not merely passive participators in this. They cannot save themselves; but without their willing co-working they are not saved.
2. Men by nature are on one level as sinners. All travel with more or less haste in the way of sin. But in every man’s life there comes a period when another way diverging from that of nature is reached—a way that is narrow, and the entrance to it strait; and each must choose which he will henceforth walk in. Many with scarce a thought pursue the way of destruction.
3. But others pause in their course, listen to warning voices telling them of their danger. Can they then enter the way of safety? No. But if they see their danger and desire to escape from it and to enter in the way of life, then the barriers which seem to oppose fall away, and a new force is given them fitting them for the arduous journey. They cannot transform their moral being, change their hearts. But if through the shining of the divine light upon them they see evil in its true light, and desire to have their moral nature new created, then God gives them to His Son to be made new creations. But all is of God! Even the desire itself is awakened by the strivings of His gracious Spirit; and apart from Jesus men can do nothing (Joh_15:4). Therefore to Father, Son, and Spirit we ascribe all the honour and praise of our redemption. God is all—we are nothing in carrying out this mighty work.
HOMILETIC NOTES
Joh_6:1-15.
I. Our fellowship with Jesus Christ, who is the bread of life.—
1. Our neediness should lead us to Christ, who helps those who are in need.
2. By Christ the wants of our hearts are in wonderful fashion supplied.
3. Therefore should we trust in Him alone (Joh_6:13-15).
II. Jesus Christ is the bread of life.—
1. No one but He Himself can satisfy all our needs.
2. None but He can promise and accord full satisfaction.
3. He disposes everything for the reception of the true heavenly food.
4. He satisfies our needs through the agency of His disciples. As the people received the bread from Jesus, but by the hands of the disciples, so even heavenly gifts come to us through human agency oftentimes. But we must not forget the invisible Giver in regarding the visible “hand”—parents, teachers, etc., etc.
5. He enjoins on us a proper estimation of the value of the heavenly gift.
6. We should recognise and acknowledge Him as the only Friend and Helper and Lord of our souls.—F. G. Lisco.
Joh_6:25-65. The general idea running through the paragraph.—“Though the idea of life prevailing in this series of discourses appears to be identical with that of chap. 5., there is a difference between the teaching of the two chapters, corresponding with that which exists between the miracles of which they respectively furnish the application” (Godet).
1. In the cure of the impotent man Jesus does all; hence all through chap. 5. He dwells on His authority and prerogatives, His relation to His Father in nature and purpose.
2. In the miracle of feeding, the five thousand Jesus works through His disciples, makes use of them as agents, and offers the miraculously provided food to the people for their acceptance. Hence, as Godet rightly says, “in the discourses in the sixth chapter the ruling idea is that of faith, by which the heavenly food is to be appropriated.” Or as we might say, the main theme is the communication of Christ’s life and work to humanity, and the manner in which this spiritual, heavenly food is to be received. In chap. 6 the relation of the Father and Son to humanity is prominent.
Joh_6:48-63. The connection of this discourse with the Lord’s Supper.—In reference to one view of this great discourse there has been much controversy. Many of the early fathers have understood it of the Lord’s Supper,—the view entertained by the Romish interpreters generally. And it was no doubt this last fact that influenced, to some extent at least, some of the reformed theologians to deny any reference to the Lord’s Supper in the passage, a contention that may in a measure be conceded, as the supper had not then been instituted. But any dispute on this point is unnecessary; for—
1. There could be no actual direct reference to the Lord’s Supper so far as the audience who listened to this discourse was concerned.—That holy ordinance was not yet; but we must believe that the truths Jesus uttered were as applicable to those who heard them, and the promises as sure to them, as to those who should afterward be privileged to observe the ordinance of the supper. We cannot suppose that Jesus would have invited His hearers to participate in the blessedness to which He called them, had they required to wait till in the sacred rite it would be assured to them. Some might die ere then! We may be sure our Lord intended that those who believed in Him there and then might eat of Him and have eternal life.
2. But whilst this is so neither can there be any doubt that the ideas and truths which are brought forward in this discourse are those which underlie the ordinance of the supper.—For what are the great truths which meet us in those words? Are they not those of the incarnation of the Son, and His atoning work as the foundation of redemption for man? Jesus is “the living bread which came down from heaven” (Joh_6:51); “And the bread which I shall give is My flesh,” etc.; “Except ye eat the flesh of the Son of man and drink His blood,” etc: in such words the incarnation of Jesus and the purpose for which He became incarnate are shadowed forth. Christ Himself showed that His words are not to be interpreted in a gross material sense, when He said to these disciples who erroneously understood them in this sense and were offended, “The words that I speak unto you,” etc. (Joh_6:63). The words crede et manducasti, “believe and thou hast eaten” (Augustine), sum up the central thoughts of the passage (Westcott). Coming to Christ and believing in Him evidently involves the idea of an assimilation into the nature of those who believe of what is here spoken of as flesh (σάρξ) and blood. It is an acceptance of Him in His humanity as the eternal Son incarnate—the Word made flesh as the foundation of our hope of salvation, the example we are to follow, the pattern to which we are to be conformed. It is, further, participation in His atoning work, the acceptance of it as done for us in order to pardon, peace, life.
3. But in meaning this believing, etc., means more also. Eating and drinking of Christ implies a close personal union of ourselves with Him and participation in His life and death.—We are to become partakers of the divine nature through Christ in the whole of our being. The life of the body as well as of the soul is to be quickened through Him, as is evident by the numerous references to the Resurrection in this discourse. When believers are spiritually united to the Second Adam they become spiritually quickened in Him to a new eternal life (1Co_15:45), whilst His blood received brings cleansing and pardon. Our life depends on our acceptance of Christ as the incarnate suffering Redeemer. And the terms “eating” and “drinking” which describe this acceptance are not mere metaphors. They describe a real assimilation, otherwise our Lord would not have used them. And they mean that believers really participate in the life of the incarnate Son; for the same Spirit through whom He became incarnate moves in the life of believers, transforming them more and more into His image. “If the Spirit of Him that raised up Jesus,” etc. (Rom_8:11); “Your bodies are members of Christ,” “He that is joined unto the Lord is one Spirit” (1Co_6:15; 1Co_6:17); “We are members of His body,” etc. (Eph_5:30). This same Spirit, then, working in believers makes them truly and really participators in “the life and death of Jesus” (Lücke), of the “flesh” and “blood” of their incarnate, exalted Lord.
4. This great mystery of our dependence on and union with Christ’s person which Jesus “expressed in this address in words is precisely that which Jesus designed to express by an action when He instituted the Lord’s Supper” (Godet).—This union is sustained and nourished by the Spirit through the means of grace, which are channels by which Christ’s spiritual life flows unto us. And the Lord’s Supper is one of these means. Thus it may be truly said: “Jesus wittingly so shaped His words that at once and for ever they should properly treat of the spiritual enjoyment of Him, but after this that the same should naturally fit also the most august mystery of the Holy Supper when it should be instituted” (Bengel). “Although this discourse has nothing to do with the Sacrament of the Supper, the Sacrament has everything to do with it as the visible embodiment of these figures, and, to the believing partaker, a real, yea, and the most lively and affecting, participation of His flesh and blood, and nourishment thereby of the spiritual and eternal life here below” (David Brown, D.D.). “We must not say that in this discourse Jesus alludes to the Lord’s Supper, but that the Lord’s Supper and this discourse refer to one and the same divine fact, expressed here by a metaphor and there by an emblem. From this point of view the delicate question why Jesus here made use of the word flesh, and in the institution of the Lord’s Supper of the word body, is easily solved. When He instituted the emblem He took bread and brake it. Now it is His body, as an organism (σῶμα) broken, which corresponds to this broken bread. In the address at Capernaum, where only nourishment was in question, it was agreeable to the analysis of the multiplication of the loaves that Jesus should rather present His body as substance (σάρξ) than as an organism. The perfect propriety of terms shows the genuineness and authenticity of both forms” (Godet). “As Jesus in the conversation with Nicodemus in the third chapter does not speak of Christian baptism, but of that influence of the Spirit which forms the presupposition of the institution of baptism, so here in the sixth chapter He does not speak of the Lord’s Supper, but of that personal communion with the incarnate One in belief, which communion forms the presupposition of the Lord’s Supper. Thus, therefore, the evangelist could dispense with an account of the institution of baptism and of the Lord’s Supper, just as He dispenses with telling about Gethsemane by giving the scene in Joh_12:27 ff.” (Luthardt). See also Joh_13:8; Joh_13:14.
Joh_6:54.
1. The use of σῶμα rather than σάρξ, in every account of the institution of the supper, is not without special meaning: σάρξ and αἷμα meaning the whole of His humanity, and the entire fulness of the sacrifice for the world; while αῶμα καὶ αἷμα suggest that organised personal life in which the Incarnation culminated, and the blood which was shed for the remission of sins. The αῶμα is not without reference to the new “body” in which the Spirit would be ultimately enshrined.
2. The phrase “drinking of the blood” is peculiar to these verses. In the Eucharist we “drink of the cup which is the new covenant in the blood of Christ.” “The hand of history,” says Edersheim, “has drawn out the telescope; and, as we gaze through it, every sentence and word sheds light upon the cross, and light from the cross carrying to us the twofold meaning, His death and its celebration in the great Christian Sacrament.”—Dr. H. R. Reynolds.
ILLUSTRATIONS
Joh_6:31. Manna.—The manna, according to the Jewish tradition of Josephus, and the belief of the Arab tribes, and of the Greek Church of the present day, is still found in the droppings from the tamarisk bushes which abound in this part of the desert (i.e. of Sinai). The more critical spirit of modern times has been led to dwell on the distinction between the existing manna and that described in the Book of Numbers; and the identification is further rendered precarious by the insufficiency of the present supply in the desert of Sinai. It became afterwards a favourite figure in Christian writings, to express the heavenly sustenance of the soul, either in the Eucharist or in our spiritual life generally. Of all the typical scenes represented in the celebrated Ammergau Mystery, none is more natural or touching than that in which the whole multitude of the Israelites, in every variety of age, sex, and character, appear looking up with one ardent expectation to the downward flight of the celestial food, fluttering over the hundreds of upturned heads, according to that fanciful and child like but beautiful conception of the descent of the manna. The historical origin of this sacred figure was always carried back beyond Palestine to the desert; a portion of it was laid up as a relic by the ark for this very purpose, “that they might see the bread wherewith their fathers were fed in the wilderness.” And a Christian poet has well caught, in The Song of the Manna-gatherers, the freshness, the monotony, and the transitional character of the whole passage through the desert, and at the same time has blended together the natural and supernatural in that union which is at once most Biblical and most philosophical.—A. P. Stanley.
Joh_6:31. Manna-gatherers.
Comrades, haste! the tent’s tall shading
Lies along the level sand,
Far and faint: the stars are fading
O’er the gleaming western strand,
Airs of morning
Freshen the bleak burning land.
Haste, or e’er the third hour glowing
With its eáger thirst prevail,
O’er the moist pearls, now bestrowing
Thymy slope and rushy vale.
Comrades—what our sires have told us,
Watch and wait, for it will come.
Not by manna showers at morning
Shall our board be then supplied,
But a strange pale gold, adorning
Many a tufted mountain’s side,
Yearly feed us,
Year by year our murmurings chide.
There, no prophet’s touch awaiting,
From each cool deep cavern start
Bills, that since their first creating
Ne’er have ceased to sing their part;
Oft we hear them
In our dreams, with thirsty heart.
Keble.
Joh_6:35. Spiritual hunger and thirst satisfied in Christ.—These words should be written in letters of gold, nay, with living letters (which were better) in the heart, so that each might know whereon to rest his soul; whither he may go when he departs from this world, or when he retires to rest, or rises at morningtide, or whatever he does, that he may know this golden art: here with Christ my soul abides, so that I shall neither hunger nor thrist. This Man will not deceive me. These are excellent, sacred, and precious words, which we ought not simply to know, but make use of and say: Thereupon will I go to sleep at night and rise again in the morning; upon these words will I confide, sleep, awake, labour, and cross the bridge. For although everything should go to ruin, and father and mother, emperor and pope, monk and priest, prince and lord, should forsake me, and even Moses could not help me, let me but run to Christ and He will help me. For these words are sure; and He further says: Rest on Me; come to Me, and ye shall live. And the meaning of these words is this—that all that believe on this Man, who is called Jesus Christ, are satisfied, and will not suffer hunger or thirst.—Translated from Luther.
Joh_6:37. True coming to Jesus.—Those who come to church to sanctify the Sabbath according to custom, to take part in a beautiful service, to observe the good and honoured custom of engaging in the communion, will reap what they have sown, quiet Sundays and the name of being diligent frequenters of the worship of God’s house. But those who go no further, who do not come to Jesus, will truly find here the door of the church, and beyond it the door of the churchyard open to a quiet place, but they will not find the door of eternal life, of the place of John on the Saviour’s breast, open. In the end they will be cast out in spite of their churchliness and decorum, for they did not come to Jesus. They who come to Holy Writ and delight themselves with the noble strains of the psalms, the beauty of the parables, the correctness of the proverbs, the remarkable nature of the narrations, will perhaps arrive at the honour of being considered learned in the Scriptures, and in this will attain to the experience of pious excitations. But when they go no further, even though they receive the whole catechism as true, they have not thereby come to Jesus. The Scripture witnesses of Jesus and points to Him. The Scripture does not seek to attract men to itself, but to Jesus. Well then! they who come to Jesus Himself, drawn like iron by the magnet, as the earth is towards the sun, who come to Jesus as the greatest, although He appeared in the form of a servant, as to the fairest among the sons, although His bleeding head was crowned with thorns, as to the most merciful, despite His yoke, His cross, and self-renunciation, as to the wisest, in spite of the “offence” and “foolishness” of the word; they who come to Jesus as the sick to a physician, as children to a mother, as the erring to one who knows the way; they who come to Him not to put idle enigmatic questions, not to speak highly of Jesus merely and avow their admiration for Him, not to bow incidentally before the cross and then to pass by; they who come as sinners, as guilty, as condemned, in order to be made whole, redeemed, saved—such, though they came groping like the man born blind, infirm as the man at Bethesda, carried by others like the paralytic, though they should come creeping in place of walking, and even at the latest hour—they shall find Jesus, and not be lost!—Translated from Dr. R. Kögel.
Joh_6:38. The mystery of the Master-servant.—The mystery of the Master-servant, unapproachable as it is, has yet an imitable side; and in that most pathetic and wonderful instance Jesus sets forth the law for all His followers. That law is that dignity binds to service. If we are Christ’s we must stoop to serve, and serve to cleanse. The noblest form of help is to help men to get rid of their sins. The highest glory of powers and gifts is to humble oneself for the lowest, and to be ready to be a slave, if we may wash any stained soul or bind any bleeding feet. The example of Christ includes what He has done for us. Some of us are willing to look to the cross as the foundation of our hope who are not willing to take it for the law of our lives. But the benefits of the gospel are meant to impel us to corresponding action. How little any of us have caught the whole sweep of the meaning of that imperative example, that “ye should do as I have done to you”! What have we received from Him? What have we given to men? Are we not too much like some sullen, land-locked lake, which receives many streams and gives forth none? If our acts to others are not widened to correspond to Christ’s to and for us, the reverse process will set in, and Christ’s acts and gifts to us will shrink to the narrowness of ours to others. We all know that He is our example, and that even in the supreme and unapproachable gift of His death we ought to find the model for our lives. But the gulf between knowledge and practice is all too wide, and so our Lord adds one more to the beatitudes, pronouncing those blessed who add doing to knowing. Only they really know who translate all their knowledge into performance. Only they are truly blessed who have no principles which do not regulate conduct, and no conduct which is not regulated by principle. The one principle which can shape all life into blessedness is, Do as Jesus has done for you. Stoop that you may serve, and let your service be cleansing.—Dr. Alex. Maclaren.
Joh_6:38. Following the Master-servant.—Let us then walk with Him daily, having our “ear open like a disciple” to hear His word, and our hearts obedient to His command, so that we may faithfully serve Him. Then in days of joy and prosperity life shall become more bright and happy in the light of His love and favour. Then in days of darkness, when His disciples have to walk in the gloom and see no light (Isa_50:10), let them still “trust in the name of the Lord, and stay upon their God,” and they shall not be ashamed. For He will make light to rise for them in the darkness (Psa_112:4), and their life shall be crowned with the glory of a consecrated service. For Christ hath said of His true disciples and servants, “The glory which Thou hast given Me I have given them” (Joh_17:22).
Joh_6:39. The present blessedness of believers in Joh_6:39 is regarded as being safekeeping, in Joh_6:40 as being everlasting life. But the two types merge in the final issue, though even there the one reads “it” and the other “him.” The resurrection of the body is the necessary crown of that safe keeping and communicated life which are the believer’s privilege here. That glorious issue, without which the present experiences of the believer would be futile, and the whole of his earthly life a confounding riddle, is wrought by Jesus Himself, as is emphatically claimed by the majestic “I” which the original underscores, so to speak, by its position in the fortieth verse. He who feeds on the bread of life here cannot die. The resurrection to life must come as the cope-stone of redemption. Without it the building stands, would stand, a ruin, and the taunt would be justified, This Jesus began to build and was not able to finish.—Dr. A. Maclaren.
Joh_6:47-48. Life the quest of humanity.—All the world seeks after life, whether it be the day labourer, who is in indigence and cries out perplexed, What shall we eat? what shall we drink? or the rich man, who wishes to spend his days sumptuously and in pleasure; or the physician, who dissects the corpse in order to make plain the cause why life has fled; or the philosopher, who struggles to discover the universal secret, and cries out, Where shall I be able to grasp thee, infinite nature? or the artist, who deludes himself with the appearance of life, because he cannot produce the essence itself; or the Pharisee, who is foolish enough to attempt to satisfy his life-hunger with artificial food, in his self-chosen way of sanctity. Enough! All the world seeks after life, and our age not in the lowest degree. Here we find some claiming, like spoilt children, to have the manna gathered for them without toil; there, the complaint that the golden spring of life is spent so speedily, that so soon the pitcher is shattered at the fountain and the wheel broken. Here there is the accumulation, and raking together of gold and silver, as if men could thereby purchase life: there, foolish dissipation, as if men could best keep fast hold of life by dissipating it. Here again we find a strange mixture of loathing of life and horror of death; there, the consecution of licentious enjoyment and cowardly self-murder. The living spring, the word of the living God, they forsake, and make for themselves after their desires and dreams “broken fountains,” which in the hour of need contain no water. You may continue to seek what you long for, the fountain of life, strength and enjoyment. But there where many seek it—among the husks of the world, in the puddle of sin, in the intoxicating cup of lust, in shifting opinions and conjectures of human wisdom—it is not to be found. Do not say in scornful tones: The word of Jesus is a hard saying, the manna from heaven is a spare repast; the Bible has so many difficult passages. The burden of Jesus is light; your poverty is great. The dark portions that you complain of are not centred in the Sun, but in your own eyes—not in the word of God, but in your hearts. David knew better where the true wealth of life is to be found, as he shows in his evening prayer: “Thou rejoicest my heart, although these may have much com and wine” (Psa_4:7). And Asaph knew it better still, as he shows in Psa_73:23 : “Nevertheless I am continually with Thee!” And Jesus Christ knew it best of all. He understands your desires and needs, and declares, “I am the bread of life: he that cometh to Me shall not hunger.” Here is a food that never consumes away, whilst still it nourishes; here is a food that satisfies our desires after eternity, which God has placed in the hearts of men; here is the power of God which overcomes all prejudices, resolves all doubts, annihilates all lies. Blessed are they who eat Christ, i.e. who receive Him with set purpose, obey Him with unswerving faithfulness, serve Him with all their powers. Jesus, the bread of life—they who receive and eat this shall not only not hunger, they shall not die, but shall live eternally. Israel’s fathers perished in the wilderness, notwithstanding the manna; they were struck down because of the disobedience of unbelief. Christians, on the contrary, who meet the Lord’s communication of Himself with the answering self-submission of faith—Christians who attach themselves to the Lord, and so become one in spirit with Him—Christians who receive the flesh and blood of the Son of man, not frivolously and thoughtlessly, not outwardly, but in truth, they shall live, live as long as their living Head lives. The earthly vessel will be broken, but the treasure of life remains. The outward man perishes, but the inward man is renewed day by day by the power of this heavenly food. The same apostle who before his martyr death said, “I die daily,” also said, “Nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me.” Death did not to him portend destruction for the buds of the spiritual life, but unfolding. Death was not to him an overturning and clearing away of the table, but the invitation to the wedding sapper of the Lamb.
“No, no, it is not dying,
Thou Saviour of us all;
From founts of joy forthgoing
Love’s endless streams are flowing—
Here only droplets fall.”
Translated from Dr. R Kögel.
Joh_6:50-51. Christ satisfies the human soul.—Christ nourishes the soul into life eternal, and through His divine power sustains the germ of life that lies hidden there. It is the greatest of miseries when the soul hangers and thirsts after righteousness, and fails to find what can satisfy her hunger; when a cry ascends to heaven, and heaven seems to be deaf, like a cold wall; when the soul calls out in the wilderness of life, and no voice is heard from the howling waste except the echo of her own voice; when she sees across the flood all that she needs, and cannot cross over to obtain it. Yes, such is a truly miserable existence! On the other hand there is gladness indescribable when the soul can say, “I know whom I have believed, and am persuaded.” There truly is satiation where Christ comes with His word and Spirit! Then the soul feels that this is life, real life, such as she has never before experienced, which comes from heaven, for it leads heavenward. The thought which He awakens in the soul, the feelings He animates, the anticipations of a greater future which He enkindles, the endeavours and activities to which He inspires, the elevation and divine dignity which He inbreathes—no, these are not from beneath, but mast have their origin beyond the clouds, for they bear the seal of eternal life. The clamouring hunger is silenced, and a feeling of satisfaction pervades the soul, such as men experience when victorious after a hotly contested fight, or when, after a long and toilsome journey, the wished-for end is reached. The soul now possesses what she needs, and in the possession and enjoyment thereof is blest exceedingly.—Translated from F. Arndt.
Joh_6:53. The meaning of eating Christ’s flesh, etc.—Some have been inclined to lower the meaning of such expressions as those in the text, because they think that they may encourage extravagance and fanaticism. But we should all bear in mind that man, it is true, is apt to abuse even the best things; but there are two ways of abusing them, one by over-using them, and the other by not using them enough. Many persons, it is likely, have attached some fanciful notion to the words “eating the flesh of Christ and drinking His blood,” and have let their thoughts and their tongues run wild, without bringing their hearts and lives to a sober and faithful obedience. But many, and perhaps more, by forgetting the force and peculiar meaning of the command to make Christ our food, and by putting always in the place of such lively expressions the mere injunction to obey Christ’s law, hare in fact grown cold in their feelings toward Him, have lost the sense of their close relationship to Him, have not held fast to Him as their head, nor have sought of Him daily their spiritual nourishment and strength. They have not then eaten the flesh of the Son of man, nor drunk His blood; they have lived much in the world without Him; and their life, therefore, has not been that life of faith in the Son of God which it ought to be. It is unwise in us now to use the same sort of figurative language in religious subjects, unless we merely borrow and quote Christ’s own words; because it is not natural to our national character or habits, and therefore appears to be affectation, even if it really is not so. But we must not lose our relish for it when we meet with it in the Scriptures: there it is in its place, natural and proper; and more powerful and edifying than anything we can put in its room. In fact, the more fondly we love the words of Christ, so much the better hope is there that we shall practise them. There was an especial promise given, that the Holy Ghost should bring them faithfully to the remembrance of His apostles, in order that they might record them without the possibility of corrupting them; and the more we study and feed upon them, the more reason shall we see to bless the goodness of God for preserving them to us so surely, and it is a further blessing that they are their own best interpreter; so that he who has the Scriptures only, and reads them humbly, sincerely, and with the exercise of his thoughts and understanding, will find for the most part that they are clear enough for any practical improvement, and become clearer and more effective for that purpose every time they are read with an honest heart and an humble spirit.—Dr. T. Arnold.
The Preacher's Complete Homiletical Commentary (gen. ed. Joseph S. Exell; Funk & Wagnalls, c. 1892) — public domain (pre-1929). A full-Bible homiletical/sermon-outline anthology covering 65 of 66 books (2 John is absent from the source module). Text from a community e-Sword module.
William B. Godbey 1900 · Public Domain On v22 Joh 6:22-71. “On the following day the multitude, standing…
CHAPTER 33
PUZZLE OF THE MULTITUDE
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Joh 6:22-71. “On the following day the multitude, standing beyond the sea, saw that there was no other ship except one, and that Jesus did not go along with His disciples into the ship, but that His disciples departed alone. Other ships came from Tiberias, near the place where they ate the bread, our Lord giving thanks.” Tiberias is on the west coast, Bethsaida on the northwest, and Capernaum due north. The mountain park where He fed the multitudes is off the coast, in full view of the sea, and about equidistant from Bethsaida and Tiberias. Hence our ships soon set out from Tiberias to Capernaum, carrying many of the multitudes on the track of the disciples, as this was the best they could do, because Jesus having disappeared the preceding evening after sending away His disciples and dismissing the multitude, they knew not His whereabouts. “And when the multitude saw that Jesus is not there, nor His disciples, they embarked in ships, and came to Capernaum, seeking Jesus. And finding Him beyond the sea, they said to Him, Master, when did You come hither? Jesus responded to them, and said, Truly, truly, I say unto you, You seek Me, not because you saw the miracles, but because you ate of the loaves and were filled.” The multitudes did not know that Jesus, after spending a few hours in prayer alone in the mountain, had walked out on the stormy sea in the midnight darkness, and joined His tempest-tossed disciples, saving them and the ship from a watery sepulcher, consequently they were seriously puzzled when they find Him beyond the sea. You observe here He makes no answer to the question propounded by idle curiosity — a profitable example for us all. His time was precious, and so is ours. Good Lord, help us to economize it! But He proceeds at once to preach to them the solid gospel truth they so much needed, reading the superficial and carnal motives which actuated them by thousands to follow Him for the loaves and fishes, as we see this day verified on all sides; e.g., immigrants into a city or village depositing their membership in the Church which presents the most capacious opening for the patronage of their business, thus going for the loaves and fishes instead of the Living Bread. “Labor not for the food that perisheth, but the food that endureth unto eternal life, which the Son of man doth give to you; for this the Father, God, hath sealed.” The reason why our bodies are mortal is because they receive their constituency from mortal food, consisting of many different elements, segregated by vital affinity, the chemical forces incessantly counteracting till they predominate over the vital, when death and disintegration ensue, this mortal returning to the dust whence it came; meanwhile, the human spirit, being a unit, is unsusceptible of this disintegration, as leaving no component parts, it is impregnable by the laws of chemical affinity. Therefore it is immortal, and can never die. This immortality, having been conferred by the Almighty, is forever perpetuated by our identity with Him.
THE WORKS NECESSARY TO SALVATION
“What must we do that we may work the works of God?” i.e., do the works which God requires in order to our salvation. To this important question, propounded by the multitude, our Savior’s answer is clear, explicit, and unequivocal “Jesus responded and said unto them, This is the work of God, that you may believe on Him whom He has sent.” This answer dumbfounds all the ritualists and legalists of all ages and nations, illustrating the utter falsity of the great dogma of salvation by works, which enslaves Pagans, Moslems, Papists, and Protestants, deluding them with the silly infatuation that God needs something which we can give or do, oblivious to the grandeur, sublimity, and glory of His omniscience, omnipotence, and omnipresence, possessing millions of worlds, and ready to speak into existence millions more.
HEAVENLY MANNA
“And they said unto Him, Then what miracle do You perform that we may see and believe? Do what You may do? Our fathers ate manna in the desert; as has been written, He gave unto them bread from heaven to eat.” (Psa 78:24.) The Jews always look back to the manna, which they ate forty years in the desert of Arabia, as the greatest miracle in their history. Now that Jesus is performing stupendous miracles, the recent multiplication of the loaves and fishes actually reminding them of the copious quantities of bread which so long fell nightly from heaven, sufficient to feed three millions of people, they now cut the matter short by asking Him to feed them incessantly, as Moses, His great predecessor, had done. “Then Jesus said to them, Truly, truly, I say unto you, Moses did not give you the bread from heaven, but My Father giveth to you the true bread from heaven. For the bread of God is He that cometh down from
‘heaven, and giveth life to the world. Then they said to Him, Lord, always give unto us this bread. Then Jesus said to them, I am the Bread of Life; he that cometh unto Me may never hunger, and he that believeth on Me shall never thirst.” The manna, with which God kept them from starving to death forty years, while following the pillar of cloud by day and fire by night through the vast burning deserts of Arabia, is the magnitudinous type of Christ, who, by His omnipotent grace, momentarily administered by the Holy Spirit, perpetuates our spiritual life, while we roam through this desert-waste of sin and sorrow, verifying our probation till duly tested and tried, when the Master will say, “Come up higher.” Hence we have here the significant affirmation, “I am the Bread of Life.”
ELECTION
“But I said unto you, That you have seen and you do not believe;” i.e., they had seen the wonderful miracle of feeding the multitudes, so vividly illustrating the mysterious sustenance of the human spirit by the Holy Spirit. “Every one which the Father giveth unto Me, shall come unto Me; and him that cometh unto Me, I will in nowise cast out, because I have come down from heaven; not that I may do My own will, but the will of Him that sent Me. But this is the will of Him that sent Me, that everything which the Father bath given unto Me, I shall lose nothing of the same, but I will raise it up in the last day. For this is the will of My Father, that every one seeing the Son and believeth on Him, may have eternal life, and I will raise him up in the last day.” Here our Savior goes down into the deep and incomprehensible truth of election, so prominently revealed in many Scriptures. There are really two sides to the atonement. While Christ died for all objectively — i.e., evolving the gracious possibility of universal salvation; subjectively, the atonement only reaches the elect, whom the Father has given Him, and whom He draws to Him by His Spirit. There is no confliction between this election and human free agency, though finite minds may not be able to reconcile these two distinct cardinal truths of Revelation.
“Will the men of Keilah deliver me up into his hand? Will Saul come down as Thy servant bath beard? O Lord God of Israel, I beseech Thee, tell Thy servant. And the Lord said, He will come down. Then said David, Will the men of Keilah deliver me and my men into the hand of Saul? And the Lord said, They will deliver thee up.” (1Sa 23:11-12.)
This notable item in the history of David’s flight from Saul throws light on the apparent irreconcilability of the Divine sovereignty and human agency. David, with his six hundred braves, takes refuge in the city of Keilasi, the men receiving him with fulsome flattery, and promising to stand by him under every emergency. David enjoyed that gift so important to us all, “discernment of spies” (1Co 12:10), which enabled him to read men like books. Suspicious of their fidelity, he falls on his knees, and talks to the Lord about the matter, as you see in the above Scripture. Do you not observe the answer God gives him in reference to the coming of Saul and the perfidy of the Keilites — “He will come down;” “They will deliver thee up.” David understood the Word of the Lord, and knew that, while no conditions were expressed, they were implied. So he, that moment, blows his bugle, rallies his men, and gives marching orders for a “double quick,” assuring them that they are among traitors, and the enemy is close on their track. Consequently, Saul, constantly posted as to the movements of David, hearing that he had left Keilah, never came, but took a shorter route on his track; while, of course, the Keilites did not deliver him up, as he was not there, and Saul did not come to receive him. Thus we see that even the Divine decrees are not incompatible with human agency. The thing for us to do is to heed the warning, “Make your calling and election sure.” We can all enjoy the blessed consolation of identity with God’s elect, and that is certainly enough for us. Let us do our utmost to prevail on all of the non-elect to become candidates for life, salvation, sanctification, and heaven, assuring them that God will, in mercy, elect them. This deep and mysterious truth, evolved by our Lord in that memorable sermon in the synagogue of Capernaum, not only puzzled and appalled the multitude, but, with other profound and immutable realities, deep-seated in the Divine economy, actually deflected many of His disciples. “Therefore the Jews continued to murmur concerning Him, because He said, I am the Bread having come down from heaven; and they said, Is not this Jesus, the son of Joseph, whose father and mother we know? How now does He say, That I have come down from heaven?” You see, the great difficulty on the part of the people was to comprehend the Divine hemisphere of His Christhood, prone, in their carnal cogitations, to turn incessantly to the human. “Jesus responded and said to them, Do not murmur with one another. No one is able to come unto Me unless the Father who sent Me may draw him, and I will raise him up in the last day.” The Holy Spirit has been in the world from the beginning, drawing to the Son all whom the Father has given Him; so that, in a mysterious way, the elect of all nations, heathen, Mohammedan, Greek, Latin, and Anglican, will all get there, and stand on the right hand of the Judge, acquitted in that great day. God forbid that we should stumble over the deep truths of His kingdom! Like little children at the feet of Jesus, taught by the Holy Ghost, let us receive them by simple faith, having time and eternity in which to explore and comprehend them.
“It has been written in the prophets, They shall all be taught of God; every one hearing from the Father, and learning, cometh unto Me.” Millions who have never heard the gospel, taught by the Holy Ghost, will, in some mysterious way, reach the kingdom. We must not depreciate human agency, nor lay too much emphasis on it. “Not that any one has seen the Father, but Him who is with God, the same bath seen God.” The present tense here reveals the fact that Jesus was with God while on earth. We must not lean unduly to the human side of the Messiahship, thus obscuring the grand fact of His omnipresence, simultaneously in heaven, earth, and all other worlds. “Truly, truly, I say unto you, That he that believeth bath eternal life.” Wonderful simplicity of the redemptive scheme, faith being the isolated and only condition of receiving eternal life! N.B. This saving faith is neither intellectual nor creedistic, but spiritual. (Rom 10:10.) “I am the bread of life. Your fathers ate manna in the wilderness, and are dead; He is the bread who cometh down from heaven, in order that whosoever may eat of Him, indeed, may not die.” Here He is leading their minds away from the temporal side of salvation, illustrated by the manna, which their ancestors had eaten and died, to the spiritual, involving the grand, fundamental truth of soul-life, maintained and perpetuated by the Omnipotent Creator and Mediator. “I am the living bread, having come down from heaven; if any one may eat of Me, the bread, he shall never die; but the bread which I will give for the life of the world is My flesh.” Beginning with the exceedingly familiar history of the manna, which they, in their carnal diagnosis, apprehended in a simple material sense, but which was really the greatest type of Christ in Old Testament symbolism, He now endeavors to lead them on from the type to the Antitype. Here they stumble, and many of His disciples fall.
EATING HIS FLESH & DRINKING HIS BLOOD
“Therefore the Jews continued to contend with one another, saying, How is this Man able to give unto us His flesh to eat? Then Jesus said to them, Truly, truly, I say unto you, Unless you may eat the flesh of the Son of man, and may drink His blood, you have no life in yourselves. He that eateth My flesh, and drinketh My blood, bath eternal life, and I will raise him up in the last day. For My flesh is the true nutriment, and My blood the true drink.
He that eateth My flesh, and drinketh My blood, abideth in Me, and I in him. As the living Father sent Me, and I live through the Father, truly, he that feedeth on Me shall also live through Me. He is the bread who came down from heaven; not as the fathers ate, and are dead; he that eateth this bread shall live forever. He spoke these things, teaching in the synagogue in Capernaum.” Our Savior is just now winding up the second year of His ministry, which has been a sweeping revival from the beginning, starting out from that greatest revival the world had seen, under the preaching of John the Baptist, but soon far transcending it, not only shaking all Israel with the tread of a spiritual earthquake, but with the meager news facilities of that day, so far as the heathen nations heard the paradoxical and joyful news, they actually came from the ends of the earth, to see His mighty works, and hear His inimitable preaching. As a rule, in a great, spreading revival, the majority evanesce, and only the faithful minority hold on. The time has come in our Lord’s ministry when bottomrock truth must be preached, though it will sift His following like the hurricane, weeding out of the forest every dead and fragile tree, and only leaving the tough and thrifty, to receive new impetus in their enlarged capacity, and grow into gianthood. They now hear from His lips this profoundest truth that has ever rung in their ears; i.e., eating His flesh and drinking His blood. Now what is meant by drinking His blood? N.B. Faith is the spiritual organ receiving everything from God. We read that the blood redeems, cleanses, and sanctifies. Therefore we conclude that drinking His blood is spiritually, through faith, involving entire consecration, so apprehending and appropriating the infallible promises of God, to thoroughly and radically expurgate our spirits by the cleansing blood, as to sanctify us wholly, keep us under the blood, clean, pure, and spotless, amid all the contaminations of this dark, wicked, God-forgetting world, robed and ready to meet our Heavenly Bridegroom when He shall descend and call His saints. What do we understand by eating His flesh? In a similar manner, spiritually, through faith, we are so to receive the great truths of God’s Word, appertaining to the glorification of our Lord’s body, when He flew away to heaven, that we not only have faith for entire sanctification in the blood, but for the glorification of our bodies similitudinously to the glorious body of our ascended Lord, culminating in our translation, when He comes for His saints, or our felicitous participation of the first resurrection. (Rev 10:6.) And thus our transformation, soul and body, into the blessed similitude of the risen and glorified Jesus, our only Paragon, Exemplar, and glorious Prototype. Thus, by faith, we are to live momentarily in the spiritual and faithful diagnosis, apprehension, and appropriation of these transcendent realities, whose normal effect is to make us unselfish, unworldly, angelic, and Christ-like in our meditations, conversation, and deportment, always abounding in the work of the Lord, daily and hourly watching and waiting for His return.
THE GREAT APOSTASY
“Therefore many of His disciples, having heard, said, This is a hard speech; who is able to hear it? And Jesus, knowing in Himself that His disciples are murmuring concerning this, said to them, Does this offend you? Therefore, if you may see the Son of man ascending up where He was formerly — [Here is an ellipsis: “What would you do?”] It is the Spirit that createth life; the flesh profiteth nothing. The words which I have spoken unto you are spirit and life.” Popular religion is pre-eminently materialistic, and to that extent utterly worthless, illusory, and fatal to its deluded votaries, who look at fine houses, eloquent preachers, robed clergy, pipe-organs, fantastical choirs, pompous ceremonies, and all sorts of Church machinery, and thus lose sight of the meek and lowly Jesus, who had not a place to lay His head, but went about doing good. Here you see, from the plain words of Jesus, the pure spirituality of His religion..
He positively affirms that it is the Spirit who creates in us spiritual life, and that “the flesh profiteth nothing,” thus utterly abnegating the essentially of water baptism, Eucharist, Church ordinances, edifices, and everything else appertaining to the body, and constituting ecclesiastical rights, ceremonies, and ruachinery. Do not understand us to depreciate any of these temporal institutions. They are all right in their place, a miniature survival of the symbolic dispensation, having their place in the educational department of the gospel. They are like clothes on the man, which are no essential part of the human organism. When these temporalities monopolize our affections, and become substitutes for saving grace, Satan always transforms them into idols, and turns them into greased planks, on which he slides their poor deluded followers into hell. The deliverances of the Savior at this point are so decisive and explicit as forever to sweep all controversy from the field. The Jewish Church at that time, ministry and membership, were spiritually dead, and utterly bewildered in the fogs of ritualism, locked tight in dead formality and hollow hypocrisy, with a noble exception here and there. Consequently this deep, spiritual teaching threw bombshells in all directions.
“But there are certain ones of you who do not believe.” For Jesus, from the beginning, knew that “there are some who do not believe, and there is one who is about to betray Him.” This is the first insinuation against Judas Iscariot, one of the Twelve. “And He said, On this account, I have said to you, That no one is able to come unto Me unless it had been given unto him from the Father.” We see from this statement that there was no bogus about Judas. God, who is no respecter of persons, had given unto him the grace to come to Jesus, and we see that he was one of those who “had been given of the Father.” N.B. This date of our Lord’s ministry is at the expiration of two years, during which the enemy had been pulling on Judas, through the office of apostolical treasurer, to corrupt the simplicity of his heart with the love of money. The visitation of the Spirit to Judas, his call to the discipleship, and even to the apostleship, did not vitiate his spiritual freedom, nor discontinue his probation. “Therefore from that, many of His disciples went back, and walked no more with Him.” The revelation at this point favors the conclusion that the apostasy was really enormous, actually bringing the problem face to face with the inspired Twelve. You see the reason why this great apostasy took place, cutting down the ranks of discipleship to the faithful few. It was because our Lord evolved those deep and magnitudinous truths of entire sanctification and coming glorification, at the same time elucidating the pure spirituality of His kingdom. A modern critic, in a parallel case — i.e., a preacher offending and alienating the majority of his members by proclaiming, expounding, elucidating, and enforcing the great doctrine and precious experience of entire sanctification — would say, “He made a great mistake.” If so, he is in good company, as, you see, Jesus made the same, alienating the multitude of His disciples, so they “went back, and walked no more with Him.” Thus you see this was a finality with those disciples. John, our inspired author, lived to be a hundred and one years old, thus surviving nearly all of those apostatizing disciples. He, with the inspiration of the Holy Ghost, tells us that this was a finale with them, and “they walked no more with Him.” Let this incident be duplicated in any of our Churches, and tempests of censure will be poured on the preacher from pulpits and pews, and, in all probability, ecclesiastical decapitation supervene. Yet the man is faithfully walking in the footprints of Jesus. I would have been run away from almost every Church to which I ever went to preach, if God had not vindicated His truth with earthquakes and volcanoes of convicting power, thus, in the majority of cases, revealing hell and the devil so awfully to the people that, affrighted and appalled, they fell and cried for mercy, even the magnates of the Church piling down at the mourners-bench. I am happy to say that this obtained in the majority of cases in my ministry of forty-six years; the minority, running me off, and in one instance actually hauling me out of my circuit for a crazy man. This is a notable, exemplary case, which every preacher would do well to consider. The Preacher of all preachers actually upset the multitude of His members by preaching the deep truths of entire sanctification, so “they turned back, and walked no more with Him.” The man who does the same at the present day is denounced for making an awful mistake. Who will dare say that Jesus made a mistake? Not one. He knew all about those people. They had followed Him two years in a superficial, slipshod way. He told them nothing but the truth, which they all had to see and experience if they ever got to heaven. He had waited on them two years to get ready for this profound and telling sermon on entire sanctification. He knew they would never get to heaven on that shallow- water religion. When we were in the harbor at Athens, Greece, and getting ready to land, my comrade exclaimed, “Brother Godbey, they are going away as fast as they can.” It was a Russian ship on which we had. sailed from Asia in our homeward bound voyage, and we could not speak their language. So we were in quite a dilemma till a man, in broken English, notified us that a storm was coming, and they were making for deep water, and would land us after the storm passed by. As in time of storm all ships go for deep water, so should the Christian voyager on time’s stormy ocean make for deep water all the time, forever avoiding shoals and quicksands. Jesus knew that those people would never reach the kingdom, and it was not worth while to carry them any longer as dead weights on the gospel- wheel, so He went down to bottom-rock truth, and alienated a host of them. Do you not know that the very same results would follow the same preaching throughout Christendom today? Yet you know it is the very thing that ought to be done, as the people who will not receive these deep, spiritual truths are sure to make shipwreck this side the pearly gate.
“Then Jesus said to the twelve, Do you also wish to go back? Simon Peter said to Him, Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life. We have believed, and we know that Thou art the Holy One of God.” Peter was a great, big, club-fisted, Herculean rustic, illiterate, having been brought up amid the rough-and-tumble life of those hardy fishermen, who, like a hippopotamus, could live in water or on land, and hardly know the difference, never having gone to school a day in his life, and utterly destitute of what the world calls culture and refinement; but he had a great, big head, full of good, natural, common sense. Therefore he was a suitable speaker for the apostolical cohort. When a dying infidel, surrounded by the cultured members of the club, was exhorted to “hold on,” he replied,
“Why, I have nothing to hold to!” How significantly true! If infidelity is true, we need not bother ourselves about it, because we are just as safe as those who spend their lives in the study and advocacy of their skeptical dogmatism. The same we may say of Universalism. A Universalist preacher met his appointment in a strange community, showing up (in his own estimation) no hell for any and heaven for all; winding up, asked his audience if he should make another appointment. After a moment of profound silence, an old man, rising, said, “If you have preached the truth, we do not need any more of it; if lies, we do not want any more of them.” So, in either case, his work was done. Peter abundantly vindicates his own good, solid, common sense when he answers, “Lord, to whom shall we go?” “There is none to whom we can go, if we give You up, except hell and the devil, and we do not want them; so we will stay with You, and abide our destiny.” O that all the preachers and members of the present generation would emulate the practical intelligence of the fisherman! What a stampede this deep, spiritual preaching now makes in the Churches, the people literally stullifying themselves, and becoming laughing-stocks for devils! If they can’t stand Scriptural holiness on earth, what will they do in heaven? If they can not stand a heart-searching holiness preacher, how will they stand before the Judge of quick and dead?
“Jesus said to them, Have I not chosen you twelve? And one of you is devilish. And He was speaking of Judas Iscariot, the son of Simon; for he was about to betray Him, being one of the twelve.” We see here what Jesus had chosen Judas as well as all the balance, and (verse 65) He had actually been given to Him by the Father. This is a delicate and controverted point, on which we merely give you the revealed Word as we have it, and forbear an elaborate exegesis. N.B. Two years of our Lord’s ministry have rolled away before we hear a solitary word impeaching the Christian character of Judas. Jesus had actually sent him out, with his apostolical comrades, to preach the gospel of the kingdom throughout all Israel. He had been honored of God in casting out devils and healing of the sick. Diabolos, which reads “devil,” E.V., is primarily an adjective, meaning “devilish,” as I here translate it. We have no date of his apostasy, which culminated in betrayal and suicide. The presumption is that Jesus exposed his guilt very soon after his lapse. It is certain that at this date — i.e., the end of two years’ ministry — Satan has so pulled on him that he is leaning off in that way, and has become “devilish.” This warning should have convicted and restored him; but unfortunately for him, he continued to lean more and more to worldliness, and especially the love of money, during the ensuing year of our Lord’s ministry, till he finally so yielded, at the Last Supper, that “Satan entered into him,” precipitating him away to perpetrate the dark crimes of betrayal and murder.
We have now followed our Lord through two years of His ministry; which normally began at the Passover, April 14, A. D. 30; after which, returning to Galilee, His native land, He preached till the next Passover, which He visited, soon afterward coming back to Galilee. Now, as we have already seen, the multitude, being determined to take Him with them to Jerusalem, and there crown Him King, He evaded them, going alone into the mountain at nightfall, and walking over the sea, joining His disciples in the ship at midnight. So this Passover He declines to attend, spending the time in the North; this being the third Passover of His ministry, having begun at one; returned to Jerusalem, and attended the second; and now intermits the third, remaining in Galilee; finally at the fourth, winding up His ministry on the cross. So we now start out at the beginning of the third and last year of our Savior’s ministry.
William B. Godbey, Commentary on the New Testament (1896–1900) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Alexander MacLaren 1905 · Public Domain On v19 Joh 6:19 - Joh 6:20.
John
THE FIFTH MIRACLE IN JOHN’S GOSPEL
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Joh 6:19 - Joh 6:20.
There are none of our Lord’s parables recorded in this Gospel, but all the miracles which it narrates are parables. Moral and religious truth is communicated by the outward event, as in the parable it is communicated by the story. The mere visible fact becomes more than semi-transparent. The analogy between the spiritual and the natural world which men instinctively apprehend, of which the poet and the orator and the religious teacher have always made abundant use, and which it has sometimes been attempted, unsuccessfully as I think, to elevate to the rank of a scientific truth, underlies the whole series of these miracles. It is the principal if not the only key to the meaning of this one before us.
The symbolism which regards life under the guise of a voyage, and its troubles and difficulties under the metaphor of storm and tempest, is especially natural to nations that take kindly to the water, like us Englishmen. I do not know that there is any instance, either in the Old or in the New Testament, of the use of that to us very familiar metaphor; but the emblem of the sea as the symbol of trouble, unrest, rebellious power, is very familiar to the writers of the Old Testament. And the picture of the divine path as in the waters, and of the divine prerogative as being to ‘tread upon the heights of the sea,’ as Job has it, is by no means unknown. So the natural symbolism, and the Old Testament use of the expressions, blend together, as I think, in suggesting the one point of view from which this miracle is to be regarded.
It is found in two of the other Evangelists, and the condensed account of it which we have in this Gospel, by its omission of Peter’s walking on the water, and of some other smaller but graphic details that the other Evangelists give us, serves to sharpen the symbolical meaning of the whole story, and to bring that as its great purpose and signification into prominence.
We shall, I think, then, best gain the lessons intended to be drawn if we simply follow the points of the narrative in their order as they stand here.
I. We have here, first of all, then, the struggling toilers.
The other Evangelists tell us that after the feeding of the five thousand our Lord ‘constrained’ His disciples to get into the ship, and to pass over to the other side. The language implies unwillingness, to some extent, on their part, and the exercise of authority upon His. Our Evangelist, who does not mention the constraint, supplies us with the reason for it. The preceding miracle had worked up the excitement of the mob to a very dangerous point. Crowds are always the same, and this crowd thought, as any other crowd anywhere and in any age would have done, that the prophet that could make bread at will was the kind of prophet whom they wanted. So they determined to take Him by force, and make Him a king; and Christ, seeing the danger, and not desiring that His Kingdom should be furthered by such unclean hands and gross motives, determined to withdraw Himself into the loneliness of the bordering hills. It was wise to divide the little group; it would distract attention; it might lead some of the people, as we know it did lead them, to follow the boat when they found it was gone. It would save the Apostles from being affected by the coarse, smoky enthusiasm of the crowd. It would save them from revealing the place of His retirement. It might enable Him to steal away more securely unobserved; so they are sent across to the other side of the lake, some five or six miles. An hour or two might have done it, but for some unknown reason they seem to have lingered. Perhaps they had no special call for haste. The Paschal moon, nearly full, would be shining down upon the waters; their hearts and minds would be busy with the miracle which they had just seen. And so they may have drifted along, not caring much when they reached their destination. But suddenly one of the gusts of wind which are frequently found upon mountain lakes, especially towards nightfall, rose and soon became a gale with which they could not battle. Our Evangelist does not tell us how long it lasted, but we get a note of time from St. Mark, who says it was ‘about the fourth watch of the night’; that is between the hours of three and six in the morning of the subsequent day. So that for some seven or eight hours at least they had been tugging at the useless oars, or sitting shivering, wet and weary, in the boat.
Is it not the history of the Church in a nutshell? Is it not the symbol of life for us all? The solemn law under which we live demands persistent effort, and imposes continual antagonism upon us; there is no reason why we should regard that as evil, or think ourselves hardly used, because we are not fair-weather sailors. The end of life is to make men; the meaning of all events is to mould character. Anything that makes me stronger is a blessing, anything that develops my morale is the highest good that can come to me. If therefore antagonism mould in me
‘The wrestling thews that throw the world,’
and give me good, strong muscles, and put tan and colour into my cheek, I need not mind the cold and the wet, nor care for the whistling of the wind in my face, nor the dash of the spray over the bows. Summer sailing in fair weather, amidst land-locked bays, in blue seas, and under calm skies, may be all very well for triflers, but
‘Blown seas and storming showers’
are better if the purpose of the voyage be to brace us and call out our powers.
And so be thankful if, when the boat is crossing the mouth of some glen that opens upon the lake, a sudden gust smites the sheets and sends you to the helm, and takes all your effort to keep you from sinking. Do not murmur, or think that God’s Providence is strange, because many and many a time when ‘it is dark, and Jesus is not yet come to us,’ the storm of wind comes down upon the lake and threatens to drive us from our course. Let us rather recognise Him as the Lord who, in love and kindness, sends all the different kinds of weather which, according to the old proverb, make up the full-summed year.
And then notice how, in this first picture of our text, the symbolism so naturally lends itself to spiritual meanings, not only in regard to the tempest that caught the unthinking voyagers, but also in regard to other points; such as the darkness amidst which they had to fight the tempest, and the absence of the Master. Once before, they had been caught in a similar storm on the lake, but it was daylight then, and Jesus was with them, and that made all the difference. This time it was night, and they looked up in vain to the green Eastern hills, and wondered where in their folds He was lurking, so far from their help. Mark gives us one sweet touch when he tells us that Christ on the hillside there saw them toiling in rowing, but they did not see Him. No doubt they felt themselves deserted, and sent many a wistful glance of longing towards the shore where He was. Hard thoughts of Him may have been in some of their minds. ‘Master, carest Thou not?’ would be springing to some of their lips with more apparent reason than in the other storm on the lake. But His calm and loving gaze looked down pitying on all their fear and toil. The darkness did not hide from Him, nor His own security on the steadfast land make Him forget, nor his communion with the Father so absorb Him as to exclude thoughts of them.
It is a parable and a prophecy of the perpetual relation between the absent Lord and the toiling Church. He is on the mountain while we are on the sea. The stable eternity of the Heavens holds Him; we are tossed on the restless mutability of time, over which we toil at His command. He is there interceding for us. Whilst He prays He beholds, and He beholds that He may help us by His prayer. The solitary crew were not so solitary as they thought. That little dancing speck on the waters, which held so much blind love and so much fear and trouble, was in His sight, as on the calm mountain-top He communed with God. No wonder that weary hearts and lonely ones, groping amidst the darkness, and fighting with the tempests and the sorrows of lift, have ever found in our story a symbol that comes to them with a prophecy of hope and an assurance of help, and have rejoiced to know that they on the sea are beheld of the Christ in the sky, and that ‘the darkness hideth not from’ His loving eye.
II. And now turn to the next stage of the story before us. We have the approaching Christ.
‘When they had rowed about five-and-twenty or thirty furlongs,’ and so were just about the middle of the lake, ‘they see Jesus walking on the sea and drawing nigh unto the ship.’ They were about half-way across the lake. We do not know at what hour in the fourth watch the Master came. But probably it was towards daybreak. Toiling had endured for a night. It would be in accordance with the symbolism that joy and help should come with the morning.
If we look for a moment at the miraculous fact, apart from the symbolism, we have a revelation here of Christ as the Lord of the material universe, a kingdom wider in its range and profounder in its authority than that which that shouting crowd had sought to force upon Him. His will consolidated the yielding wave, or sustained His material body on the tossing surges. Whether we suppose the miracle as wrought on the one or the other, makes no difference to its value as a manifestation of the glory of Christ, and of His power over the physical order of things. In the latter case there would, perhaps, be a hint of a power residing in His material frame, of which we possibly have other phases, as in the Transfiguration, which may be a prophecy of what lordship over nature is possible to a sinless manhood. However that may be, we have here a wonderful picture which is true for all ages of the mighty Christ, to whose gentle footfall the unquiet surges are as a marble pavement; and who draws near in the purposes of His love, unhindered by antagonism, and using even opposing forces as the path for His triumphant progress. Two lessons may be drawn from this. One is that in His marvellous providence Christ uses all the tumults and unrest, the opposition and tempests which surround the ship that bears His followers, as the means of achieving His purposes. We stand before a mystery to which we have no key when we think of these two certain facts; first, the Omnipotent redeeming will of God in Christ; and, second, the human antagonism which is able to rear itself against that. And we stand in the presence of another mystery, most blessed, and yet which we cannot unthread, when we think, as we most assuredly may, that in some mysterious fashion He works His purposes by the very antagonism to His purposes, making even head-winds fill the sails, and planting His foot on the white crests of the angry and changeful billows. How often in the world’s history has this scene repeated itself, and by a divine irony the enemies have become the helpers of Christ’s cause, and what they plotted for destruction has turned out rather to the furtherance of the Gospel! ‘He maketh the wrath of man to praise Him, and with the residue thereof He girdeth Himself.’
Another lesson for our individual lives is this, that Christ, in His sweetness and His gentle sustaining help, comes near to us all across the sea of sorrow and trouble. A more tender, a more gracious sense of His nearness to us is ever granted to us in the time of our darkness and our grief than is possible to us in the sunny hours of joy. It is always the stormy sea that Christ comes across, to draw near to us; and they who have never experienced the tempest have yet to learn the inmost sweetness of His presence. When it is night, and it is dark, at the hour which is the keystone of night’s black arch, Christ comes to us, striding across the stormy waters. Sorrow brings Him near to us. Do you see that sorrow does not drive you away from Him!
III. Then, still further, we note in the story before us the terror and the recognition.
St. John does not tell us why they were afraid. There is no need to tell us. They see, possibly in the chill uncertain light of the grey dawn breaking over the Eastern hills, a Thing coming to them across the water there. They had fought gallantly with the storm, but this questionable shape freezes their heart’s blood, and a cry, that is audible above even the howling of the wind and the dash of the waves, gives sign of the superstitious terror that crept round the hearts of those commonplace, rude men.
I do not dwell upon the fact that the average man, if he fancies that anything from out of the Unseen is near him, shrinks in fear. I do not ask you whether that is not a sign and indication of the deep conviction that lies in men’s souls, of a discord between themselves and the unseen world; but I ask you if we do not often mistake the coming Master, and tremble before Him when we ought to be glad?
We are often so absorbed with our work, so busy tugging at the oar, so anxiously watching the set of current, so engaged in keeping the helm right, that we have no time and no eyes to look across the ocean and see who it is that is coming to us through all the hurly-burly. Our tears fill our eyes, and weave a veil between us and the Master. And when we do see that there is Something there, we are often afraid of it, and shrink from it. And sometimes when a gentle whisper of consolation, or some light air, as it were, of consciousness of His presence, breathes through our souls, we think that it is only a phantasm of our own making, and that the coming Christ is nothing more than the play of our thoughts and imaginations.
Oh, brethren, let no absorption in cares and duties, let no unchildlike murmurings, let no selfish abandonment to sorrow, blind you to the Lord who always comes near troubled hearts, if they will only look and see! Let no reluctance to entertain religious ideas, no fear of contact with the Unseen, no shrinking from the thought of Christ as a Kill-joy keep you from seeing Him as He draws near to you in your troubles. And let no sly, mocking Mephistopheles of doubt, nor any poisonous air, blowing off the foul and stagnant marshes of present materialism, make you fancy that the living Reality, treading on the flood there, is a dream or a fancy or the projection of your own imagination on to the void of space. He is real, whatever may be phenomenal and surface. The storm is not so real as the Christ, the waves not so substantial as He who stands upon them. They will pass and quieten, He will abide for ever. Lift up your hearts and be glad, because the Lord comes to you across the waters, and hearken to His voice: ‘It is I! Be not afraid.’
The encouragement not to fear follows the proclamation, ‘It is I!’ What a thrill of glad confidence must have poured itself into their hearts, when once they rose to the height of that wondrous fact!
‘Well roars the storm to those who hear A deeper voice across the storm.’
There is no fear in the consciousness of His presence. It is His old word: ‘Be not afraid!’ And He breathes it whithersoever He comes; for His coming is the banishment of danger and the exorcism of dread. So that if only you and I, in the midst of all storm and terror, can say ‘It is the Lord,’ then we may catch up the grand triumphant chorus of the old psalm, and say: ‘Though the waters thereof roar and be troubled, and the mountains be carried into the midst of the sea, yet I will not fear.’ The Lord is with us; the everlasting Christ is our Helper, our Refuge, and our Strength.
IV. So, lastly, we have here in this story the end of the tempest and of the voyage.
Our Evangelist does not record, as the others do, that the storm ceased upon Christ’s being welcomed into the little boat. The other Evangelists do not record, as he does, the completion of the voyage. ‘Immediately the ship was at the land whither they went.’ The two things are cause and effect. I do not suppose, as many do, that a subordinate miracle is to be seen in that last clause of our text, or that the ‘immediately’ is to be taken as if it meant that without one moment’s delay, or interval, the voyage was completed; but only, which I think is all that is needful, that the falling of the tempest and the calming of the waters which followed upon the Master’s entrance into the vessel made the remainder of the voyage comparatively brief and swift.
It is not always true, it is very seldom true, that when Christ comes on board opposition ends, and the haven is reached. But it is always true that when Christ comes on board a new spirit enters into the men who have Him for their companion, and are conscious that they have. It makes their work easy, and makes them ‘more than conquerors’ over what yet remains. With what a different spirit the weary men would bend their backs to the oars once more when they had the Master on board, and with what a different spirit you and I will set ourselves to our work if we are sure of His presence. The worst of trouble is gone when Christ shares it with us. There is a wonderful charm to stay His rough wind in the assurance that in all our affliction He is afflicted. If we feel that we are following in His footsteps, we feel that He stands between us and the blast, a refuge from the storm and a covert from the tempest. And if still, as no doubt will be the case, we have our share of trouble and storm and sorrow and difficulty, yet the worst of the gale will be passed, and though a long swell may still heave, the terror and the danger will have gone with the night, and hope and courage and gladness revive as the morning’s sun breaks over the still unquiet waves, and shows us our Master with us and the white walls of the port glinting in the level beams.
Friends, life is a voyage, anyhow, with plenty of storm and danger and difficulty and weariness and exposure and anxiety and dread and sorrow, for every soul of man. But if you will take Christ on board, it will be a very different thing from what it will be if you cross the wan waters alone. Without Him you will make shipwreck of yourselves; with Him your voyage may seem perilous and be tempestuous, but He will ‘make the storm a calm,’ and will bring you to the haven of your desire.
Alexander MacLaren, Expositions of Holy Scripture (1904–1910) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
J. W. McGarvey 1914 · Public Domain On v22 J. W. McGarvey's The Fourfold Gospel [LXIV. Discourse on…
J. W. McGarvey's The Fourfold Gospel [LXIV. Discourse on Spiritual Food].
LXIV. DISCOURSE ON SPIRITUAL FOOD AND TRUE DISCIPLESHIP. PETER'S CONFESSION. (At the synagogue in Capernaum.) dJOHN VI. 22-71.
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d22 On the morrow [the morrow after Jesus fed the five thousand] the multitude that stood on the other side of the sea [on the east side, opposite Capernaum] saw that there was no other boat there, save one, and that Jesus went not with his disciples into the boat, but i that his disciples went away alone 23 (howbeit there came boats from Tiberias nigh unto the place where they ate the bread after that the Lord had given thanks): 24 when [382] the multitude therefore saw that Jesus was not there, neither his disciples, they themselves got into the boats, and came to Capernaum, seeking Jesus. [This sentence is a complicated one, because it contains much in a condensed form. On the evening of the miracle the multitude had seen that there was but one boat, and that the disciples had gone away in it, leaving Jesus in the mountain. Jesus had dispersed the multitude, but many of them had not gone very far. On the morrow they came again to the scene of the miracle, and were perplexed at not finding Jesus. After some time they became convinced that he was not there, because if he had been, his disciples would have returned to seek him. In the meantime the keen-eyed boatmen about Tiberias, then the largest city on the lake, seeing the multitude on the farther shore, saw in their presence there an opportunity to earn a ferry fee, so they soon crossed the lake to accommodate the people. As Capernaum was the well-known headquarters of Jesus, the boatmen were directed to proceed thither that the multitude might find him.] 25 And when they had found him on the other side of the sea, they said unto him, Rabbi, when camest thou hither? [They found him at Capernaum in the synagogue, having but lately arrived from the land of Gennesaret. Though their question relates only to the time when Jesus crossed, it implies and includes a desire to know the manner also.] 26 Jesus answered them and said, Verily, verily [his answer was as serious as their question was flippant], I say unto you, Ye seek me, not because ye saw signs [Jesus includes the healing of the sick as well as the feeding of the multitude], but because ye ate of the loaves, and were filled. [They did not seek Jesus because they saw in him a divine Friend who could satisfy the deep needs of the soul, but as a wonder-worker who could fill their bodies with food when occasion required.] 27 Work not for the food which perisheth [bodily food], but for the food which abideth unto eternal life [spiritual food], which the Son of man shall give unto you: for him the Father, i even God, hath sealed. [In our land [383] a man consents to and makes a written instrument his own--an expression of his will--by signing it; but in the East he did this by affixing his seal to it ( 1Ki_21:8, Est_3:12, Est_8:10, Jer_32:10). The meaning of Jesus' words, therefore, is that God the Father had commissioned him as Messiah, and had authenticated his mission as such by the works which he had given him to do-- Joh_5:36.] 28 They said therefore unto him, What must we do, that we may work the works of God? [They wished to know what to do in order to earn the abiding food; that is, by what works they might so please God as to obtain it. Humanity, in seeking to answer this question, has invented pilgrimages, penances, fasts, mutilations and many other methods of self-punishment; not heeding the plain and decisive answer of Jesus.] 29 Jesus answered and said unto them, This is the work of God, that ye believe on him whom he hath sent. [Belief in Jesus as the Son of God is the one all-comprehensive work which pleases God ( Heb_11:6). Jesus reiterates this important truth several times in this discourse; see Joh_6:35, Joh_6:36, Joh_6:40, Joh_6:47, etc., and the doctrine contained in it is elaborated in the epistles of Paul.] 30 They said therefore unto him, What then doest thou for a sign, that we may see, and believe thee? what workest thou? 31 Our fathers ate the manna in the wilderness; as it is written, He gave them bread out of heaven to eat. [The trend of questions and answers in this discourse forms a close parallel to that at Joh_4:1-42., but with a different conclusion. There Jesus discoursed of life under the figure of water, and here under the figure of bread. There the woman vacillated between her good and evil impulses until her better nature triumphed. Here there was a like vacillation, terminating in opposite result. There the woman compared Jesus with Jacob, the well-digger ( Joh_4:12); here the people compare him with Moses, the manna-giver--each comparing him unfavorably.] 32 Jesus therefore said unto them, Verily, verily, I say unto you, It was not Moses that gave you the bread out of heaven; but [384] my Father giveth you the true bread out of heaven. 33 For the bread of God is that which cometh down from heaven, and giveth life unto the world. [In testing the claims of Jesus the Jews proceeded upon the hypothesis that the Messiah must be greater than all the prophets, and that this greatness must be authenticated or sealed by greater signs than those wrought by others. Proceeding under this method, they compared the miracle just wrought by Jesus with the fall of manna in the days of Moses and drew conclusions unfavorable to Jesus. They reason thus: "Moses fed many millions for forty years with bread from heaven, but Moses was less than Messiah. This man fed but five thousand for only one day and gave them barley bread. This man is even less than Moses, and consequently far less than the Messiah."] 34 Then said they unto him, Lord, evermore give us this bread. [They readily recognized the insufficiency of manna and the possibility of God sending a better bread, and in a vague, wondering, half-credulous mood they asked for it just as the woman asked for water ( Joh_4:15). In answer to each set of questions Jesus proceeded to reveal himself, and to show that the blessings sought were not external to himself, but were in himself and were obtained by belief in him. When Jesus stood thus self-revealed, the Samaritan woman believed in him and was satisfied; but these Jews at Capernaum disbelieved and murmured.] 35 And Jesus said unto them, I am the bread of life: he that cometh to me shall not hunger, and he that believeth on me shall never thirst. [Compare Joh_4:10, Joh_4:13, Joh_4:14.] 36 But I said unto you, that ye have seen me, and yet believe not. [The personality of Jesus was the great proof of his divinity, but the Jews, though familiar with that personality, refused to consider it, and kept clamoring for a sign. Hence Jesus states the hopelessness of the situation. If one refuses to believe in the sun when he sees its light, feels its heat and witnesses its life-giving power, by what sign will you demonstrate to him the existence of the sun?] 37 All that which the Father giveth me shall come unto me; [385] and him that cometh to me I will in no wise cast out. [These words of Christ arise naturally out of the situation. The Jews, having wavered between belief and disbelief, had settled in a proud disbelief which was about to be expressed in murmuring and scorn. They were complacently self-satisfied, and felt that they had displayed great wisdom in arriving at this decision. But Jesus strikes at their pride by informing them that they are not his because God has rejected them as unworthy to be given to him. There is no suggestion or hint that the Father acts arbitrarily in selecting whom he shall give to Christ. The Son of God followed a prescribed course in the winning of men. If this did not win them, it was the Father's decree that they were not his. If this course did win them, Jesus in nowise rejected them, no matter how lowly their station, or how vile their past record.] 38 For I am come down from heaven, not to do mine own will, but the will of him that sent me. 39 And this 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. 40 For this is the will of my Father, that every one that beholdeth the Son, and believeth on him, should have eternal life; and I will raise him up at the last day. [It was the purpose of God the Father to offer to the sons of men an eternal life through the life-giving power of Jesus Christ. The power which was to work in men a fitness for this exalted honor was a belief in the Son. How could signs and wonders be wrought contrary to the Father's will? They ought to have believed for the signs and wonders he had already wrought, instead of pretending that he had wrought none that were conclusive of his claims.] 41 The Jews therefore murmured concerning him, because he said, I am the bread which came down oiut of heaven. 42 And they said, Is not this Jesus, the son of Joseph, whose father and mother we know? How doth he now say, I am come down out of heaven? [The Jews had entered with Christ upon a discussion as to whether he was a greater prophet than Moses, and as [386] they denied even this fact, it is not to be wondered that they murmured at the turn which the discussion had taken. In asserting that he came down from heaven, etc., he ascribed to himself a participation in the divine glory which entitled him to an absolute superiority over all men, prophets or others. This claim was to them insufferable, and they thought they had a sufficient answer to it in that they supposed themselves to be acquainted with his birth and parentage.] 43 Jesus answered and said unto them, Murmur not among yourselves. 44 No man can come to me, except the Father that sent me draw him. And I will raise him up in the last day. 45 It is written in the prophets [ Isa_54:13, Jer_31:33, Jer_31:34, Joe_3:16, Joe_3:17], And they shall all be taught of God. Every one that hath heard from the Father, and hath learned, cometh unto me. [Jesus rebukes their murmuring as out of place. They thought themselves offended by what they believed to be an intolerable assumption on his part. But they were really offended in him for an entirely different cause, viz.: because they were not drawn by the Father. The Father had given the law as a tutor to draw to Christ ( Gal_3:24), and he had also sent forth his prophets for the same purpose. Those who had availed themselves of this instruction, and had learned the Father's lessons, were ready to come to Christ. The sense of misery and desire of redemption begotten by the law drove one to Christ, and all the yearnings and aspirations inspired by the prophets attracted him thither. The Father had taught, but the people had not learned, just as their fathers had not learned; and Jesus accuses them in language kindred to the accusation of Moses when he says, "But Jehovah hath not given you a heart to know, and eyes to see, and ears to hear, unto this day" ( Deu_29:4). In each case the people were to blame.] 46 Not that any man hath seen the Father, save he that is from God, he hath seen the Father. [The Jews might have construed the words of Jesus as indicating an immediate relation to the Father and of obtaining instruction directly from him. Such a doctrine would strike [387] at the mediation of Christ. Jesus therefore guards against this false apprehension by denying humanity's direct access to God the Father, and claiming it as his own exclusive right. The teaching of the Father which he spoke of was obtained through the Scriptures and (in earlier times) the prophets, who were the authors of the Scriptures.] 47 Verily, verily, I say unto you, He that believeth on me hath everlasting life. 48 I am the bread of life. [Jesus here reasserts the proposition to which the Jews had objected. Having paused to speak of the cause of their objections, he now asserts the main propositions, that he may enlarge upon them.] 49 Your fathers ate the manna in the wilderness, and they died. [Manna did not stay death. During the forty years' sojourn in the wilderness all the grown men who started from Egypt died save two.] 50 This is the bread which cometh down out of heaven, that a man may eat thereof, and not die. [He quietly condescends to contrast the two breads. Manna simply sustained the body like any other natural food; it did no more. Jesus is supernatural food; he sustains the spirit unto eternal life.] 51 I am the living bread which came down out of heaven: if any man eat of this bread, he shall live for ever: and the bread which I will give is my flesh, for the life of the world. [He had declared himself to be the bread of life, but bread must be assimilated. The assimilation of natural bread requires eating, but Jesus, the spiritual bread, is assimilated by believing on him. But he was not then perfected as the bread of life. It was necessary that he should sacrifice himself for our sins before sins could be forgiven, and it was necessary for sins to be forgiven before men could have life with God. By his sacrifice on the cross he opened the fountain of forgiveness. By raising his humanity from the dead and by taking it with him in his ascension into heaven, he showed the results which men may expect to accrue to them by his death upon the cross.] 52 The Jews therefore strove one with another, saying, How can this man give us his flesh to eat? [They were not all of one mind with regard to Christ, and they [388] discussed from opposite sides the problem raised by these mysterious words.] 53 Jesus therefore said unto them, Verily, verily, I say unto you, Except ye eat the flesh of the Son of man and drink his blood, ye have not life in yourselves. [He here expressed in words what he afterward expressed in symbols, when he gave the Lord's supper. The vital force of a disciple is proportioned to his belief in, remembrance of, and desire to assimilate the Christ.] 54 He that eateth my flesh and drinketh my blood hath eternal life. And I will raise him up at the last day. 55 For my flesh is meat indeed, and my blood is drink indeed. [The flesh to be eaten must be broken, and the blood, if it is to be drunk, must be poured out. Christ speaks of himself as the sacrifice given for the saving of the world, and one must appropriate to himself by faith this expiation and find in it reconciliation with God if he would live; but the Joh_6:56 enlarges the thought and shows that it includes more than the idea of expiation.] 56 He that eateth my flesh and drinketh my blood abideth in me, and I in him. [The thought of drinking blood was startling to the Jew, for he was forbidden to taste even the blood of animals, and the reason assigned was very pertinent--because the blood was the life of the animal ( Gen_9:4, Lev_17:10-14). By insisting, therefore, on the drinking of his blood, Jesus has insisted that his very life be absorbed and assimilated. To be disciples of other teachers it is only necessary that we accept and follow their doctrine. But to be a disciple of Christ is to do more than this. His divinity permits us to have a spiritual communion and fellowship with him, an abiding in his presence, an indwelling of his Spirit, and a veritable assimilation of life from him. Were it otherwise he could not be food for the spirit--bread of life. He had started to show to the Jews that he was to the spirit what bread was to the body. It was difficult to bring home to their carnal minds so spiritual a thought, and therefore Jesus clothed it in carnal metaphors and made it as plain as possible. Christians to-day, being more spiritually minded, and more used to spiritual [389] language, are somewhat confused by the carnal dress in which Jesus clothed his thought.] 57 As the living Father sent me, and I live necause of the Father; so he that eateth me, he also shall live because of me. [The result of our union or abiding with Christ is a perfect life. The life of the Father enters the soul of the disciple through the mediatorship of the Son. The Father, who is the fountain of life, sent forth the Son that he might bestow it upon all who believe in him and abide in him.] 58 This is that bread which came out of heaven: not as the fathers ate and died; he that eateth this bread shall live for ever. [Thus Jesus sums up the comparison which the Jews had thrust upon him between himself and the manna.] 59 These things said he in the synagogue, as he taught in Capernaum. [It was in the synagogue built by the centurion, which we have before mentioned. Pots of manna appear to have been engraved upon its walls, possibly upon the frieze, for Colonel Wilson says of it: "It was not without a certain strange feeling that, on turning over one of the blocks (in the ruins), we found the pot of manna engraved on its face, and remembered the words, 'I am that bread of life. Your fathers did eat manna in the wilderness, and are dead.'"] 60 Many therefore of his disciples, when they had heard i this, said, This is an hard saying; who can hear it? 61 But Jesus knowing in himself that his disciples murmured at this, said unto them, Doth this cause you to stumble? 62 What then if ye should behold the Son of man ascending where he was before? [If the prophecy of his sacrifice disturbed their dreams of a temporal kingdom, what would be the effect of his ascension on those dreams? The Book of Acts answers our Lord's question. In the very hour of the ascension the very apostles were still expecting the revival of the kingdom of David, with Jerusalem for its capital. But ten days later, at Pentecost, they had abandoned the earthly idea and looked upon Jesus as enthroned at the right hand of God-- Act_1:6, Act_2:32-36.] 63 It is the spirit that giveth life; the flesh profiteth nothing: the words that I [390] have spoken unto you are spirit, are are life. [Jesus here tells them plainly that his words relate to the spiritual realm, and to life in that realm. It is his Spirit in our spirit which gives eternal life. His flesh in our flesh would profit nothing, even were a priest able, by his blessing, to perform the miracle of transubstantiation. The life-principle of Jesus lay in his divinity, and his divinity lay in his Spirit, and not in his flesh. We would not come in contact with his divinity by eating that which represented his humanity.] 64 But there are some of you that believe not. For Jesus knew from the beginning who they were that believed not, and who should betray him. 65 And he said, For this cause have I said unto you, that no man can come unto me, except it be given unto him of my Father. [Jesus here distinguishes between those who were drawn to him by divine influences, and who were therefore ready to follow him as he really was, and those who were drawn to him by mistaken notions concerning him, and who would desert him as soon as they discovered that their conceptions of him were incorrect. He knew the reason which prompted each to become his disciple.] 66 Upon this many of his disciples went back, and walked no more with him. [He had sifted them, for their false following could be of no benefit either to them or to his kingdom.] 67 Jesus said therefore unto the twelve, Would ye also go away? [Jesus had sifted the outer circle of his disciples, and the loss, though prophetically anticipated, was not without its pang. In this sixty-seventh verse he proceeds to sift the innermost circle, and his words are full of pathos. By giving them an opportunity to depart he called forth from them an expression of loyalty which bound them more closely to him.] 68 Simon Peter answered him, Lord, to whom shall we go? thou hast the words of eternal life. 69 And we have believed and know that thou art the Holy One of God. 70 Jesus answered them, Did not I choose you the twelve, and one of you is a devil? 71 Now he spake of Judas i the son of Simon Iscariot, [391] for he it was that should betray him, i being one of the twelve. [We have seen from Joh_6:64 that Jesus has already had the betrayer in his mind. Here he speaks of him openly. In a discourse which forecasted his passion it was natural that he should allude to his betrayer, especially, when his presence enforced remembrance. But there was another reason to mention him at this time. He was an illustration of the truth that no man could be a real follower of Jesus unless he became such by the drawing of the Father.]
NOTE.--On the following page will be found a foot-note indicating a disagreement as to chronology. In the preparation of this work the senior editor preferred to let the junior editor be responsible for the harmonistic and chronological features of it, and hence his corrections as to these particulars are obliged to appear as foot-notes, since it is now impossible to readjust the work to suit them.--P. Y. P. [392]
[FFG 382-392]
J. W. McGarvey (with Philip Y. Pendleton), Commentaries on the New Testament (The Fourfold Gospel, 1914; Acts; and the epistles) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
Paul E. Kretzmann 1924 · Public Domain On v22 Christ the Bread of Life.
Christ the Bread of Life.
The surprise of the people:
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v. 22. The day following, when the people which stood on the other side of the sea saw that there was none other boat there, save that one whereinto His disciples were entered, and that Jesus went not with His disciples into the boat, but that His disciples were gone away alone;
v. 23. (howbeit there came other boats from Tiberius nigh unto the place where they did eat bread after that the Lord had given thanks;)
v. 24. when the people therefore saw that Jesus was not there, neither His disciples, they also took shipping, and came to Capernaum, seeking for Jesus.
v. 25. And when they had found Him on the other side of the sea, they said unto Him, Rabbi, when camest Thou hither?
On the morning after the miracle of the loaves there was great excitement and astonishment on the northeastern shore of the lake. The people that had remained in that neighborhood overnight, expecting to take hold of Jesus in the morning, were deeply perplexed. Only one boat had been at the place of the miraculous feeding, and that was the one into which the disciples had gone. This boat had not had Jesus as a passenger, and it had not returned. The question therefore was: How had Jesus gotten away? They were at a loss to explain His absence. But meanwhile other boats from Tiberius landed in the neighborhood of the place where the miracle had been performed. So the people took advantage of the opportunity thus offered. They were determined to find Jesus at all costs, and therefore they took some of the boats and crossed the lake to Capernaum. When they had finally located the object of their quest on the other side of the lake, they opened on Him with the question as to His manner of getting there, for the when includes the how. They were always scenting the abnormal, the miraculous, in connection with this man; it was the only thing which made their quest worthwhile, in their estimation. But the purposes of Jesus do not agree with their curiosity, and therefore He did not give them a direct answer. His telling of the walking on the water would have precipitated a crisis then and there.
Paul E. Kretzmann, Popular Commentary of the Bible (1921–1924) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
unfoldingWord translationNotes 2017 · CC BY-SA 4.0 On vv19, 22, 24 they had rowed
they had rowed
Boats usually had two, four, or six people rowing with rowers on each side working together. Your culture may have different ways of making a boat go across a large body of water.
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about twenty-five or thirty stadia
A "stadium" is 185 meters. AT: "about five or six kilometers" (See: Biblical Distance)
Do not be afraid
"Stop being afraid!"
they were willing to receive him into the boat
It is implied that Jesus gets into the boat. AT: "they gladly received him into the boat" (See: Assumed Knowledge and Implicit Information)
translationWords
receive
Sea of Galilee
unfoldingWord translationNotes — © Distant Shores Media and the Door43 World Missions Community, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Source: git.door43.org/Door43/en_tn.
Tyndale Open Study Notes 2022 · CC BY-SA 4.0 On vv18, 19, 20, 21, 24 6:18 East-west winds blowing down over the eastern cliffs…
6:18 East-west winds blowing down over the eastern cliffs of the Sea of Galilee late in the day commonly caused very rough waters and turbulent storms.
Tyndale Open Study Notes — © Tyndale Open Resources, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Text via the HelloAO Bible API.