26 Jesus answered them, “Truly, truly, I say to you, you are seeking me, not because you saw signs, but because you ate your fill of the loaves. 27 Do not work for the food that perishes, but for the food that endures to eternal life, which the Son of Man will give to you. For on Him God the Father has set His seal.” 28 Then they said to Him, “What must we do, to be doing the works of God?” 29 Jesus answered them, “This is the work of God, that you believe in Him whom He has sent.” 30 So they said to Him, “Then what sign do you do, that we may see and believe you? What work do you perform? 31 Our fathers ate the manna in the wilderness; as it is written, ‘He gave them bread from heaven to eat.’ ” 32 Jesus then said to them, “Truly, truly, I say to you, it was not Moses who gave you the bread from heaven, but my Father gives you the true bread from heaven. 33 For the bread of God is He who comes down from heaven and gives life to the world.” 34 They said to Him, “Sir, give us this bread always.”
35 Jesus said to them, “I am the bread of life; whoever comes to me shall not hunger, and whoever believes in me shall never thirst. 36 But I said to you that you have seen me and yet do not believe. 37 All that the Father gives me will come to me, and whoever comes to me I will never cast out. 38 For I have come down from heaven, not to do my own will but the will of Him who sent me. 39 And this is the will of Him who sent me, that I should lose nothing of all that He has given me, but raise it up on the last day. 40 For this is the will of my Father, that everyone who looks on the Son and believes in Him should have eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day.”
41 So the Jews grumbled about Him, because He said, “I am the bread that came down from heaven.” 42 They said, “Is not this Jesus, the son of Joseph, whose father and mother we know? How does He now say, ‘I have come down from heaven’?” 43 Jesus answered them, “Do not grumble among yourselves. 44 No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him. And I will raise him up on the last day. 45 It is written in the Prophets, ‘And they will all be taught by God.’ Everyone who has heard and learned from the Father comes to me - 46 not that anyone has seen the Father except He who is from God; He has seen the Father. 47 Truly, truly, I say to you, whoever believes has eternal life. 48 I am the bread of life. 49 Your fathers ate the manna in the wilderness, and they died. 50 This is the bread that comes down from heaven, so that one may eat of it and not die. 51 I am the living bread that came down from heaven. If anyone eats of this bread, he will live forever. And the bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh.”
52 The Jews then disputed among themselves, saying, “How can this man give us His flesh to eat?” 53 So Jesus said to them, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink His blood, you have no life in you. 54 Whoever feeds on my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day. 55 For my flesh is true food, and my blood is true drink. 56 Whoever feeds on my flesh and drinks my blood abides in me, and I in him. 57 As the living Father sent me, and I live because of the Father, so whoever feeds on me, he also will live because of me. 58 This is the bread that came down from heaven, not like the bread the fathers ate, and died. Whoever feeds on this bread will live forever.” 59 Jesus said these things in the synagogue, as He taught at Capernaum.
You’ll remember that last Sunday we ended with the question asked by the crowd Jesus had fed the previous day. They had given up looking for Jesus on the eastern shore of the Sea of Galilee, and returning to Capernaum, they were surprised to see Him there - they had no idea that He had walked on the water, and joined His disciples in the boat. Verses 24-25: “When the crowd saw that Jesus was not there, nor His disciples, they themselves got into the boats and went to Capernaum, seeking Jesus. When they found Him on the other side of the sea, they said to Him, ‘Rabbi, when did you come here?’”
As He did with Nicodemus in chapter 3, Jesus answered a question they did not ask, as He goes into a lengthy teaching with the first of His seven “I am” statements in John’s Gospel - “I am the Bread of Life.” They asked Him when He came, but Jesus answered by telling them why He came.
The crowd, like so many people today, completely missed the point of Jesus coming into our world, and the signs He performed. They follow Jesus for what they can get out of Him. John though, wrote this Gospel for the purpose of pointing us to the cross. Next week as we conclude chapter 6, we’ll see the result of people following the Jesus they want, rather than the Jesus they need.
The people then asked Jesus a second question in verse 28. “What must we do, to be doing the works of God?” Jesus then taught them about salvation. They were devout Jews, and they wanted to please God. They wanted to know what works they should be doing in order to please Him. It seems like a legitimate question, but Jesus gave them a faith lesson instead, because their question was fundamentally flawed. They wanted to know what works they could do to receive God’s blessing.
James Montgomery Boice explains the problem like this: “The human mind is always flattered when it is conscious of doing something for God. What is more, for his doings man considers himself entitled to a reward. How pleased we should all be if we could only earn salvation! In that case we would have succeeded in bringing God into the humbling position of being in debt to us, and we would love it. But this is not the way of salvation.”
The only “work” we can do which pleases God is to believe in Jesus Christ. Verse 29: “This is the work of God, that you believe in Him whom He has sent,” and here Jesus teaches the Gospel truth of salvation through faith in Him alone. God in His grace has provided a Saviour, who accomplished for us what we could never do. Jesus perfectly fulfilled the law on behalf of those who trust in Him, He died on the cross to pay for our sins, and He rose from the dead to grant eternal life to those who believe in Him.
But they still didn’t get it, so they continued to question Jesus. “Then what sign do you do, that we may see and believe you? What work do you perform? Our fathers ate the manna in the wilderness; as it is written, ‘He gave them bread from heaven to eat.’” (John 6:30-31) The “he” they are referring to here is not God, but Moses.
This was the same crowd of people that Jesus had miraculously fed just the previous day, so it’s incredible that they would even ask such a question. It seems their logic was that Jesus’ miraculous feeding was a small miracle compared to what Moses did. In their minds, Jesus provided them a once-off meal, whereas Moses had fed the entire nation every day for 40 years. If they were going to believe in Jesus, they wanted Him to outperform Moses. Moses called down food from heaven, while Jesus only multiplied existing food.
So Jesus answered them in verse 32-33. “Truly, truly, I say to you, it was not Moses who gave you the bread from heaven, but my Father gives you the true bread from heaven. For the bread of God is He who comes down from heaven and gives life to the world.”
There are at least three important points here. Firstly, it was not Moses who gave them the manna, but God. Secondly, manna was not the true spiritual bread from heaven. Manna was physical food, designed for the physical body, but it had no value beyond this life. Jesus was speaking about the true bread which God provides from heaven. It is bread for the soul and not for the body. And thirdly, notice that Jesus says, “The bread of God is He who comes down from heaven and gives life to the world,” - not that which comes down from heaven. He is making a very personal link to the bread which God provides, and this is the introduction to the profound teaching He is about to give them, as we come to the first of His “I am” statements.
In verses 35 and 48 He says, “I am the bread of life.” In verse 41, “I am the bread that came down from heaven,” and verse 51, “I am the living bread.” In the original Greek text, each time Jesus says ‘I am’ the words are “Ego eimi.” There is a double emphasis here, because ego (which is where we get the English word ego from), means I. It is used when we refer to ourselves. Eimi means ‘I am.’ So a more precise translation of Jesus’ words from the original Greek would be, “I, I am the Bread of Life.”
In order to grasp the significance of what Jesus was saying here, we need to go to Exodus 3. God had just appeared to Moses in the burning bush, and told Moses that he was to lead the Israelites out of bondage in Egypt. Moses then asks in verse 13, “If I come to the people of Israel and say to them, ‘The God of your fathers has sent me to you,’ and they ask me, ‘What is His name?’ what shall I say to them?” God replies in the next verse, “I am who I am. Say this to the people of Israel: ‘I am has sent me to you.’”
The Old Testament was written in Hebrew. I am who I am in Hebrew is “ehyeh aser ehyeh.” In the 3rd century, the Old Testament was translated from Hebrew into Greek. This translation is called the Septuagint, and “ehyeh aser ehyeh” in the Septuagint is translated as “Ego eimi.”
Jesus makes seven I AM claims in John’s Gospel. “I AM the Bread of Life, the Light of the world, the Door of the sheep, the Good Shepherd, the Resurrection and the Life, the Way, the Truth, and the Life, and the true Vine.” And each time He claims the Divine name for Himself - “Ego eimi.”
So having established His authority, Jesus now speaks to the people about salvation, as He teaches that whoever comes to Him in faith will never be spiritually hungry or thirsty again. To the people, belief meant acceptance of Jesus on the basis of miracles, but to Jesus belief is based not on His miracles, but on who He is - the Saviour of those who put their faith in Him.
This is a personal invitation to salvation. Christians “eat the bread of life” by acknowledging that the death of Jesus was on their behalf. Those who eat will never be hungry, and those who drink will never be thirsty, but the faith that provides this eternal satisfaction is not just faith in miracles but a genuine commitment to the person of the miracle worker - Jesus Himself.
He says something of crucial importance in verse 37. “All that the Father gives me will come to me, and whoever comes to me I will never cast out.” The doctrines of election or predestination and free will are both in this verse.
God the Father gives His elect to Jesus, but they must respond to Him. The Calvinist doctrine of election, one which we hold to in the Reformed Church, has been a theological hot potato for centuries. There have been and there continues to be many debates over predestination. There are differing views as to how, who, and when God draws people. Exactly how or why it works is a mystery, but it is Biblical.
In Paul’s opening greeting in Ephesians he writes, “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places, even as He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before Him. In love He predestined us for adoption to Himself as sons through Jesus Christ, according to the purpose of His will,” (Ephesians 1:3-5) and in verse 11, “In Him we have obtained an inheritance, having been predestined according to the purpose of Him who works all things according to the counsel of His will.”
Jesus is very clear in verse 37. “All that the Father gives me will come to me, and whoever comes to me I will never cast out.” We can argue against election all we like, and many do, but the point is that if you want to, you can come. And if you do come to Christ, He will never cast you out.
One of the common objections to the doctrine of election is, “If I’m not the elect can I still come?” The simple answer is this: If you come to Him, you will be the elect.
We need to spend a bit of time looking at the question of predestination, as it is such a controversial subject.
The most common objection to the doctrine of predestination is that it is unfair. Why would God choose certain people and not others? The important thing to remember is that no one deserves to be saved. We have all sinned, so we are all worthy of eternal punishment. Because of this, God would be perfectly just in allowing all of us to spend eternity in hell.
However, God chooses to save some of us. He is not being unfair to those who are not chosen, because they are receiving what they deserve. God’s choosing to be gracious to some is not unfair to the others. No one deserves anything from God, so no one can object if He does not receive anything from God.
A simple illustration would be a man randomly handing out money to five people in a crowd of twenty. Would the fifteen people who did not receive money be upset? Probably. But do they have a right to be upset? No, because the man did not owe anyone money. He simply decided to be gracious to some.
God has chosen, from before the foundation of the world, those whom He will give to the Son.
But in order to be saved, we need to come to Jesus and accept Him by faith. If anyone is saved, it is because of the free grace and sovereign will of God. We easily forget that if everyone was condemned to hell, we would only be receiving what we deserve.
But in His grace, God reaches down and saves those He has chosen for Himself. Does He have the right to do this? Yes. God is sovereign, and He can do whatever He likes. Not only that, but He is not obliged to explain His purposes to us. What we do know is that because of His perfect holiness, God will never do anything that is wrong or unjust.
On the other hand, while the Bible teaches that God has elected certain people for salvation, it also teaches that we are responsible to accept the Gospel. God makes a universal offer in that anyone who believes in Christ will be saved. But God does not save anyone against their will. We need to come to Jesus Christ in repentance and faith, God will then save us, and we will never be cast out.
The human mind cannot fully understand all this, but it is a Biblical truth, clearly implied and stated in the Word of God. John MacArthur writes, “Intellectually harmonising the sovereignty of God and the responsibility of man is impossible humanly, but perfectly resolved in the infinite mind of God.”
When we think of election, as Christians we tend to think of ourselves as the recipients, but Jesus teaches in John 6 that He is the primary recipient.
The 19th century theologian J C Ryle wrote, “The Father from all eternity has given to the Son a people to be His own peculiar people. The saints are given to Christ by the Father as a flock, which Christ undertakes to save completely, and to present complete at the last day.”
Jesus says in verses 38-40, “I have come down from heaven, not to do my own will but the will of Him who sent me. And this is the will of Him who sent me, that I should lose nothing of all that He has given me, but raise it up on the last day. For this is the will of my Father, that everyone who looks on the Son and believes in Him should have eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day.”
He does the Father’s will by securely holding on to all who put their faith in Him. It’s a rhetorical question I know, but do you ever feel that your faith is weak, and you are holding onto your faith by your fingernails? When you do feel that way, remember this: Christ is holding onto you! It’s not so much about our faith than it is about the faithfulness and the will of God.
Those who have been given to Him are saved and they will be raised up at the last day. Why? Because that is the Father’s will. Everyone who looks to the Son and believes in Him will have eternal life.
Jesus’ words in verse 44 gives us another insight into the sovereign will of God, in particular when it comes to trying to grasp the doctrine of election, or predestination. “No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him. And I will raise him up on the last day.” The truth is that if we were left to our own desires, caught in our own sin, we would never come to Him at all.
Because of the total depravity of the human heart, we are born with a moral inability to receive the Gospel by faith, so this inability needs to be overcome by the Holy Spirit in order for us to be saved. Ever since the fall in the Garden of Eden, we have rebelled against God, and in and of ourselves, we have no desire whatsoever to be reconciled to Him.
Genesis 6:5 says, “The Lord saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every intention of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually.” This was just before God destroyed the earth with the great flood, and the state of our hearts have not changed.
We cannot and will not accept the Gospel message unless God first changes our hearts. We do have free will when it comes to deciding which job offer to take or which colour shoes to wear each morning, but there is no free will in our sinful nature. It is only God who gives lost sinners the ability to believe, and He does that only for His elect.
Because of our sinful natures, we are utterly hopeless and helpless. We do not have the strength or the will to come to Jesus by ourselves. Unless the Father first begins to work in our hearts, we will never realise our guilt and our need of a Saviour. Many people have difficulty with John 6:44, as they mistakenly believe that it teaches that someone might want to believe and be saved but they are somehow prevented from doing so.
What verse 44 does teach is that it is God who first acted in our lives and draws us to Himself. We have the choice of accepting Christ or refusing Him, but we never would have had the desire in the first place if God had not spoken to our hearts.
Jesus said in verse 36, “I said to you that you have seen me and yet do not believe.” Here is another example of the total depravity of the human heart. We are so gripped by our love for sin that without God’s intervention, we will not turn to Jesus in repentance and faith.
Reformed theologians speak about God’s irresistible grace. What this means is that we are not saved by “deciding for Jesus,” - although we must respond in faith to be saved. Rather, we are saved by God deciding for us. It is the sovereign act of God, who chose us not because of anything good in us but by His own grace, and in accordance with His sovereign will.
Jesus then said something which shocked His listeners from verse 51. “I am the living bread that came down from heaven. If anyone eats of this bread, he will live forever. And the bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh. The Jews then disputed among themselves, saying, ‘How can this man give us His flesh to eat?’ So Jesus said to them, ‘Truly, truly, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink His blood, you have no life in you. Whoever feeds on my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day. For my flesh is true food, and my blood is true drink. Whoever feeds on my flesh and drinks my blood abides in me, and I in him.’”
Firstly, this is not a picture of Holy Communion, as Jesus had yet to institute the sacrament. Also, participating in any religious ritual does not produce eternal life. Only faith in Jesus’ death on the cross and His resurrection can accomplish that.
The Jews would’ve been horrified by Jesus’ words here, as cannibalism and the drinking of blood was strictly forbidden in the Old Testament law, so what did He mean? Jesus is speaking about the spiritual union that believers have with Him. Later on, in chapter 15 He uses the analogy of the vine and the branches. We need to abide in Him. Paul writes in Galatians 2:20, “I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself for me.”
This spiritual union is sometimes called the mystical union. To eat of His flesh means to believe in Him. When we trust Christ as our Saviour, we appropriate Him by faith, but the people just couldn’t see it. How can this man give us His flesh to eat?
They literally thought Jesus was talking about cannibalism, but without spiritual perception, spiritual truth makes no sense whatsoever. Nicodemus could not understand the new birth, because he had no spiritual understanding, but in John 6:53, Jesus was talking about the cross, and the spiritual act of accepting His death as our substitute, which seals His offer of eternal life. So in a spiritual sense, that is the real food and the real drink - to believe in Him, and to believe that as He offered His flesh and blood on the cross for us, we are saved.
Jesus was teaching here that it takes spiritual appropriation to bring us life. In other words, we eat by trusting Him for regeneration. We abide in Him and His truth by feeding on Him on a regular basis through worship, prayer and reading His Word. Eating in this sense is a metaphor for faith.
Physical food and drink is necessary for us to maintain physical health and life. As we eat and drink, those things become part of the body. We appropriate the food, and the same is true spiritually. When we receive the Word of God, the living word, we are appropriating Christ and He becomes part of us.
This spiritual appropriation of Jesus is what provides eternal life. The real bread that came down from heaven was not manna but the life of God’s Son given for us. Eating the physical bread of the Old Testament ultimately led to death. But eating the spiritual bread of the New Testament, the Bread of Life, and participating in Christ’s death at Calvary, provides eternal life.
Homegroup Study Notes
Read John 6:26-29
Bearing in mind what happened the previous day (see verses 1-15), discuss how Jesus refused to answer the question they asked, but instead led the people into a teaching about salvation.
These are the same people Jesus had fed the day before, so why do you think they still demanded better signs than Moses performed (v 30)?
Discuss the clear connection between Jesus’ words in John 6:35, 41, 48 and 51 and the Divine name that God used in Exodus 3:14. What was Jesus really saying?
Read John 6:51-58
We have the benefit of knowing that Jesus was talking about eternal life and faith in Himself, but the people just could not see it.
Why do you think unbelievers today still do not grasp the simplicity of the Gospel message?
How can we explain it to them?
Read John 6:44 and Ephesians 1:3-14
What is your understanding of the Biblical doctrine of election (also known as predestination)?
Is it fair? Why, or why not?