(REFLECTIONS ON John 6:22-59)

In the Gospel of John, Jesus frequently challenges those He is speaking with by taking the physical and material things of this world and speaking spiritual truth into them. Yes, we live in the world, and so we are familiar with the things of this world. Yet, it is for the kingdom that we have been chosen, called, and live as sons and daughters of God.

Earlier in the Gospel of John, we see Jesus challenging Nicodemus with being born again, and later the Samaritan woman by the well, with living water. In today’s Scripture, just after Jesus fed the five thousand, He challenges the people that are hungry for more food, to turn from their need for physical bread and nourishment, to spiritual bread and life.

35 “I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never go hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty.”

Jesus is the bread of life. No, not just to feed our physical needs, and our physical hunger, but to feed our spiritual depravity and sustain our spiritual lives in Him. The hunger and thirst that Jesus refers to in today’s Scripture, isn’t the hunger and thirst that those that were recently fed by Jesus were feeling the next day. This hunger and thirst is the hunger and thirst of the soul, for meaning, for purpose, for eternal life.

47 Very truly I tell you, the one who believes has eternal life.

In the Gospel of John, eternal life isn’t life after this life, but it is life after we believe in Jesus Christ. We that believe in Jesus Christ, have eternal life now, and we are to be full and fulfilled spiritually, inasmuch as physical food temporarily satisfies our bodies.

48 I am the bread of life. 49 Your ancestors ate the manna in the wilderness, yet they died. 50 But here is the bread that comes down from heaven, which anyone may eat and not die. 51 I am the living bread that came down from heaven. Whoever eats this bread will live forever. This bread is my flesh, which I will give for the life of the world.”

Food for the body is temporary, and no matter how many meals we eat each day, our physical bodies and physical life on earth is also temporary. However, what Jesus offers isn’t temporary. Jesus is offering eternal satisfaction, peace, and joy, not based on our circumstances in the world, but despite our circumstances in the world.

Those that could only understand the physical, but could not grasp the spiritual, could not accept Jesus’ message of eating His flesh and drinking His blood. However, Jesus is speaking to us this morning through His words.

For we know that it is in His flesh and blood, that is His sacrifice for the world on the cross, that we who believe in the bread of life, can through Him have eternal life as God’s sons and daughters.

Let us take what we know of this world, of relationships, of birth and death, of hunger and satisfaction, and turn our eyes upon Jesus, the bread of life, eternal life, and let us live in this relationship forever. Comes to Jesus, believe in the power of His death on the cross, and never go hungry and never be thirsty again.

Pastor Michael Lu
Enduring Word Bible Commentary: John 6