Jesus therefore said to them, Verily, verily, I say unto you, Unless ye shall have eaten the flesh of the Son of man, and drunk his blood, ye have no life in yourselves.
Jesus warns the crowd that without eating His flesh and drinking His blood they have no life at all. Two questions follow: what does that eating and drinking mean, and is He describing a religious ceremony?
Jesus starts with a diagnosis. He names what they lack before He names what He gives:
There is a saying we repeat often: "There is an exception to every rule." In this beautiful verse of Scripture, spoken by the Lord Jesus Christ, we have a rule and an exception. The RULE is that as ordinary men and women, poor sinful mortals, we have no life in us. This rule includes each one of us. Every child born into the world starts out on life's journey without divine life. Here is the EXCEPTION: those who have eaten the flesh of the Son of Man and drunk His blood no longer stay in their hopeless state of moral and spiritual death, away from God, but have His life in them.
The two outcomes He names leave no middle ground, and that is the force of the argument:
But again, look at the alternatives: "you have no life in you"; "has eternal life." If eternal life is not really in you, then you could eat His flesh and drink His blood and still have no life in you! Otherwise there is no contrast, though a contrast is plainly intended: whether you eat or do not eat, it comes to the same thing! Who can credit the words with such a total lack of meaning?
Blood inside the body is life; blood spoken of separately is blood poured out. That is why the phrasing points to the cross and not to the manger:
He must be received in this character; and to receive Him in this character, in which alone is life, we cannot stop short of His death. We must eat His flesh and drink His blood. This is His death — the blood separate from the body. Incarnation is of no use for life unless death comes in: otherwise there is no atonement, sin is not put away. Eating the flesh comes first, because it stands for the first prominent point, the incarnation — Christ come in flesh for man, for the world. Drinking the blood is added, because this is available in a dead Christ — the blood out of the body.
So how is this eating done? Only one thing in a person can do it:
It is faith, and faith alone, which by the power of the Holy Spirit can and does eat His flesh and drink His blood. Flesh and blood separated means death. Feeding on the death of Christ by faith is what the poor sinner does when he realises he is guilty and condemned. The substitutionary death of Jesus, received in this way, brings him life.
Faith takes His death as its own. That has two effects at once:
In eating, I make what I eat my own. If I eat the flesh of Christ and drink His blood, I make His death mine, and I eat and drink death to everything I am in the flesh. So I part company with everything death applies to, and I live in His life in the power of the Spirit.
Many read the verse as a requirement to take communion. Commentators here reject that reading, while still valuing the Supper:
It is not His incarnation only but His death; it is communion by faith with that precious death. Again and again He shows that this is not a rite, but to believe on Him and have eternal life. It is not the Lord's Supper, but the infinite truth itself of which the Supper is the sign. Understood this way, and only this way, the words are absolutely true. Applied to eating and drinking in a ceremony, they become false at every point.
The order settles it. The eating comes before any life exists:
The Lord says that a person who has not eaten His flesh and drunk His blood has no life. That makes it completely impossible to apply His words to the Lord's Supper. The eating and drinking He speaks of is the first receiving of life: until they ate and drank, they had no life in them. Only dead souls can take part in this eating and so receive life. To talk of preserving or sustaining life runs straight against the plain terms of the passage.
- No life. Everyone is born without divine life; the verse states this as a rule with only one exception.
- His death. Flesh and blood named apart mean death. His birth as a man was not enough; without His death there is no atonement and no life.
- Your faith. The eating is not done with the mouth. Faith alone takes His death and makes it yours.
- Not a rite. The Supper is a sign of this truth, not the truth itself. The eating here is how life first begins, so it cannot mean a ceremony for people who are already alive.
- His life. Here is the exception to the rule: those who feed on His death by faith no longer stay in spiritual death. They have His life in them.
He that eats my flesh and drinks my blood has life eternal, and I will raise him up at the last day
Jesus has just told a shocked crowd that unless they eat His flesh and drink His blood they have no life in them (v. 53). Verse 54 turns that warning into a promise: life now, and resurrection later. But what does feeding on Him mean, and is this about the Lord's Supper?
Why does the Lord name His flesh and His blood separately?
"The flesh of the Son of man" and "His blood" can only refer to His death. The two things could not exist apart from each other except in death.
So the story could not stop at His birth among us.
But His birth into this world was not enough on its own to save us. He had to die, or He would have remained alone. The bread He gives is His flesh, which He had taken. He gives it for the life of the world. Here we have the cross.
Why did the Lord choose eating as the picture?
Eating and drinking are actions which one person cannot perform for another. The food, taken into the mouth, becomes one's own, and gives strength and nourishment to the body. So each person must make the death of Christ his own. The soul has to say, My Saviour, My Lord, My God.
Does He mean a physical meal?
In speaking of eating Him and drinking His blood, He means feeding on Christ spiritually, not any actual taking in of the Lord's body and blood. A person who eats in this sense lives by the life of Christ, has eternal life, remains in Him, and is raised up into glory.
The tense of the verb matters here.
The verb "to eat" appears in two different tenses. Whoever has eaten has eternal life... But in verses 54 and 56 we have the character of the man, and his eating is a present thing. Two things follow from it. First, he has eternal life and will be raised up. Second, whoever feeds on this bread lives in Jesus, and Jesus in him. So the general blessing comes first, with salvation present and to come. Then comes communion.
Once a person has tasted this, he does not walk away from the table.
If someone has eaten His flesh and drunk His blood, he will not be content with taking Him once. He will keep on finding in Him that best food... To have partaken of Him in death is life eternal. But there is more. To make Him in death our habitual spiritual food is to secure the communion of His love to the fullest.
Many read this verse as a description of communion. One writer tests that reading by following it to its end.
Suppose we wrongly apply John 6:54 to the Lord's Supper. It would then follow that every person who takes part in it has eternal life. It would follow too that each of them will be raised in the blessed resurrection at the last day. That reading is clearly wrong.
That does not empty the Supper of value. So where does it stand?
We must not confuse the Lord's Supper with John 6... There we have the substance, of which the Supper is the shadow. It means truly knowing Christ as the One who has died. Then, in faith and in the love of your heart, you turn back to the cross where Jesus suffered.
The promise reaches past the soul.
The teaching about the Bread from heaven involves the truth of the resurrection of the body. The body of the believer, as well as the soul, is to share in everlasting life... In chapter 5 He had already separated the resurrection to life from the resurrection to judgment. Here in chapter 6 He announces who can share in the resurrection to life: those who now eat His flesh and drink His blood. That is, they feed spiritually on Him as dead.
What is "the last day"?
Many suppose the "last day" is a day of twenty-four hours right at the close of all things. It is not. It is the great closing period. In it God makes clear the character and results of what man and Satan have done, and of His own eternal purposes.
- Death — Flesh and blood named apart can only mean a Christ who has died. This verse sets the cross before us, not only His coming.
- Appropriation — Eating means taking something in and making it your own. No one can do it for you. Each soul must say "my Saviour" for itself.
- Continuation — The present tense marks a man who keeps feeding. The first eating gives life. The ongoing feeding gives communion.
- Substance — The Supper is the shadow of what this verse describes. Read the verse as the Supper, and every person at the table would have eternal life. That is not true.
- Resurrection — The one who feeds already has eternal life. The pledge to raise him up carries that life through to the body, at the closing period God has fixed.
for my flesh is truly food and my blood is truly drink.
Jesus has just told the crowd that they have no life unless they eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink His blood. Verse 55 gives the reason. Two questions follow. What does it mean to eat and drink a Person? And is this about a church ceremony?
Notice that Jesus names His flesh and His blood apart from each other.
Clearly, for the blood to be apart from the flesh, so that one is eaten and the other drunk, the blood must have been shed in death. So here, in the fullest way, we have the death of Christ and the shedding of His blood set before us. At the same time we have the most solemn testimony that it is absolutely necessary for each person, and that each must receive it individually… Life flows to us through His death. The soul whose hunger and thirst are met by what Scripture tells of Christ on the cross has not only eternal life, but a present fullness of nourishment and refreshing.
The law had its own sacrifices. The word "true" pushes them aside.
One feels at once that the Lord has left the realm of images and shadows behind. Shadow and substance could not stand together. The Man out of heaven alone could tell of heavenly things. He is here the living bread come down out of heaven, to be eaten if one is to live for ever… "My flesh is true food, and My blood is true drink." Could such language describe the sacrifices God appointed under the law? Food indeed, drink indeed!
Commentators agree that this chapter is not about the bread and cup of the Lord's Supper. One of them gives a test anyone can apply.
The verses in this chapter which speak of eating His flesh and drinking His blood do not speak at all of the Lord's supper, but of Christ. The supper speaks of what the chapter speaks of. But the chapter does not speak of the supper — the symbol — it speaks of the thing symbolised. If the application of it to the supper were correct, then not one of those who have taken it would be lost. And anyone who had not taken it would be lost, whatever he might be.
Another writer turns the reader from the ceremony back to the Person.
The Lord's supper does indeed refer to Christ's death, which this part of John 6 also refers to. But He speaks only of faith in Him who died for sin and for sinners, so that believing on Him they may have life. So the Lord's assurance of eternal life is not to the person who takes the supper as such, but to the believer. Turn away, then, from every substitute for Himself, the only Saviour, the one substitute for your sins.
Why speak of eating at all? Consider what happens to food when we eat it.
But the bread must be broken before it can be used. He must die, for it is His flesh He gives for the life of the world. … It is set before us that we may eat and live for ever. In eating I make what I eat my own. If I eat the flesh of Christ and drink His blood, I make His death mine, and I eat and drink death to all that I am in the flesh.
The picture runs one step further.
Our bodies absorb the food we take, and it becomes part of our very selves. This wonderful food has in it the true and eternal life. We are the dead and it is the living, so it works the opposite way to nature and makes us like itself. So we abide in Him and He in us: Christ makes us His own, and then lives in us as His own.
If Christ is truly food, then one meal was never the point.
But the Lord means more. Anyone who has eaten His flesh and drunk His blood will not be content with taking Him once. He will keep on finding in Him that best food… To have taken Him in death is eternal life. But there is more: to make Him in death our regular spiritual food is to be sure of the fellowship of His love to the very fullest.
Neglecting this has visible results.
Is this not the secret of the weak and sickly character of our lives as Christians? We do not feed continually on Christ. What do we feed on? What sustains the life within us? What nourishes us? That is the question.
- Death — Jesus names His flesh and His blood separately because His blood was shed in death; the verse points to the cross.
- Food — His death gives us life, and then becomes the food God sets before us to live on.
- True — "true food" leaves shadows behind; the sacrifices under the law only pictured what God now really gives.
- Faith, not ceremony — the Lord's Supper points to this truth but is not this truth; the Lord assures life to the believer, not to the person who takes the supper.
- Daily — whoever eats once keeps eating, and the food changes the eater until Christ lives in him as His own.
He that eats my flesh and drinks my blood dwells in me and I in him.
In the synagogue at Capernaum, Jesus has just called His flesh true food and His blood true drink, and now He adds a promise to that eating. It raises the question every reader asks: is this eating a church ceremony, and what is it to live in Christ while He lives in you?
The words sound like the Lord's Supper. But commentators read it the other way round. The meal is a picture of this reality, and this reality does not depend on the meal.
Do not think that this means the communion — the Lord's Supper. No, no, this is the substance; the Lord's Supper is the shadow. This is the reality, the communion is the figure. A man might eat the Lord's Supper a thousand times, and yet spend eternity in hell. But no one could eat the flesh of the Son of Man and not have eternal life. In plain words He says to the believer, We are one.
The reason for that is simple, and you can test it. Notice what the verse promises the eater. Then ask whether that is true of everyone who takes bread and wine.
If John 6 applies to the supper itself, then everyone who takes it not only has eternal life now but is saved for ever. Jesus said, "Whoever feeds on my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day." Applying John 6 to "sacraments" is a delusion, though the sacraments may allude to the truths taught.
Everything here turns on what eating does to the thing eaten.
In eating I make what I eat my own. If I eat the flesh of Christ and drink His blood, I make His death mine, and I eat and drink death to all that I am in flesh. So I part company with everything that death applies to, and I live in His life in the power of the Spirit. If I make His death my death I am no longer in the flesh, I abide in Him, and He abides in me, for He is in me as my life.
The verbs change as the passage goes on, and that change matters.
There are two forms of expression here that we should tell apart: the act of having eaten His flesh and drunk His blood once, as in verse 53, and the continuous eating and drinking, as in verse 54. The believer has eternal life, but it is in the Son, not apart from Him. The believer eats His flesh and drinks His blood. He is not content that he ate once: if he were content with that, can such a person be supposed to have life in him? Certainly not. If his faith were real, he would always be eating His flesh and drinking His blood... if the heart has tasted that the Lord is so gracious, it perseveres, it can never tire, it feeds on Him again and again.
What this promise gives goes beyond being safe.
In John's Gospel, this abiding in Christ, and Christ in him, is one of the special privileges of the Christian. It is not merely security for the Christian, but Christ the home of the soul as it is of Christ. How unspeakable the nearness!
The two halves of the promise are not the same, and one moves with the other.
To abide in Christ is to live near Him. It is to depend on Him in communion, and to draw on the infinite resources in Him, where He now is in the Father's presence. He only abides in us in the measure that we abide in Him, and His abiding in us shows when we display His life. Christ dwells in our hearts by faith; as the eye and the heart are engaged with Him where He is, so He will have a dwelling place in our hearts.
Christ dwelling in a person is meant to show. The inward side turns outward.
The one who feeds on His death "abides in Me, and I in him". Before God, the believer is identified with Christ. Before other people, the believer represents the life of Christ.
- Feed — to eat His flesh and drink His blood is to receive His death by faith. The Lord's Supper only pictures it; it is never the thing itself.
- Keep feeding — the wording moves from a single act to a continuing one. A faith content with having eaten once is not real faith.
- Die — to make His death mine is to part company with all that I am in the flesh and live by His life instead.
- Dwell — the promise is more than safety. Christ becomes the home of the soul, and He abides in us as far as we abide in Him.
- Show — the believer whom God sees as one with Christ then shows Christ's life to other people.
As the living Father has sent me and I live on account of the Father, *he* also who eats me shall live also on account of me.
Jesus has been speaking about eating His flesh and drinking His blood. Now He points to His own life to explain the pattern behind it. The words turn on a small preposition — "because of" — and on a shift from eating His flesh and blood to eating Him.
The title Jesus gives His Father points to the source of His own life here.
Verse 51 has spoken of Christ as "the living Bread." Now we read of "the living Father" having sent Him (v. 57). In the Father, life in its pure and highest form is His own, from eternity to eternity. And Christ lived because of what the Father is. His essential, living unity with the Father is in view here. So the one who eats of Him, the living Bread, lives by Him. He gives this life and He keeps it going.
Older translations read "I live by the Father." That can sound as if the Father were only a source of power. The Greek says something else, as one writer explains in answer to a question.
In the Greek this is not dia with the genitive, which would mean "by means of" and might suggest sustaining power, as you put it. It is dia with the accusative, which has the force of "on account of." Notice carefully that it does not say the Father lived on account of the Son. It is the Son who lived on account of the Father. That is, the Father was the sole reason for the existence of the Son of God as come down here. We say that a mother lives for her child — she is so wrapped up in it. Or take Paul, writing by inspiration: "For to me to live is Christ." Christ had become the absorbing object of his life.
The verse sets two lives side by side and makes the first the template for the second.
Christ's own life as the Son of Man was a life of entire dependence on the Father. And ours is one of dependence on Christ Himself. But the one is the model for the other… Blessed Jesus, teach us to live like this, in hourly dependence on You!
Verse 57 does not simply repeat what came before. The object of the eating changes.
Now it is not eating the flesh and drinking the blood of Christ. It is feeding upon Christ Himself — upon Christ Himself in the place where He is, in His glorified state. Down here, as sent by the living Father, He lived "because of what the Father was and His living." Now the one who feeds upon Christ lives because of what Christ is. He is our life, and because He lives, we shall live also.
Eating Him is not one act you can finish and file away.
Verse 57 says the living Father had sent Him, and He lived because of the Father. So we live because of Him by eating Him. We have the two things: eating both to receive life and to maintain it. I remember a person once saying he ate Christ once for all, but it is not so here. In verses 54 and 56 the Greek has the present participle for "eating"; in the others it has the aorist tense. I come in by Christ's death, and eat His flesh and drink His blood — that is eating to have life. But I go on eating Him afterwards, though my life is the result of that eating.
Everyone lives by something. The verse exposes what happens when that something collapses.
Men live by this world, and when the world fails them they pine away and die. One has often seen it. But He is Bread for us… He is enough for us, and we need nothing else, and no other. The Father was enough for Him. He did not live by the power of the world. Things might turn out badly. In the eyes of men His circumstances might look most wretched. But He did not depend on them, for He lived because of the Father.
Feeding also leaves a mark on the one who feeds.
Eating is taking something in for our need. God would have our souls sustained by feeding upon Christ, and so making what Christ is our own. What we take in becomes part of ourselves. As we feed upon Him in our souls, we shall grow like Him… our lives will bear the stamp of those supremely beautiful features of the life of Jesus.
- Source. Life belongs to the Father in Himself, from eternity. The Son He sent lived here because of what the Father is.
- Reason. "Because of" is not "by means of." The Father was the sole reason for the Son's life here, and Christ is the sole reason for ours.
- Pattern. Christ's dependence is the model for ours. He lived because of the Father; we live because of Him.
- Reach. Verse 57 moves past eating His flesh and blood to eating Him. We receive life through His death, then keep feeding on Him — never a once-for-all meal.
- Result. What we feed on, we become. A life lived by Christ carries the marks of Christ, and stands when the world fails.
This is the bread which has come down out of heaven. Not as the fathers ate and died he that eats this bread shall live for ever.
These are the last words of Jesus in the synagogue at Capernaum. They close a long talk about bread from heaven with a contrast: the manna Israel ate in the desert, and Himself. Two questions follow. What is this "eating"? And why does manna, a gift God Himself sent, fall so far short?
This verse is not a fresh thought but a knot tying the two halves of the chapter together — the bread that came down from heaven, and the flesh and blood given in death.
After the rich testimony to His death as the object of faith, the Lord in verse 57 seems to me to shut out every excuse for missing what He meant. He meant Himself, not a symbolic act. The words "whoever feeds on me" should make that plain. He then joins the two parts of the talk together in the next verse. It closes the section about His flesh and His blood by going back to the picture of "the bread that came down from heaven," and "whoever feeds on this bread will live forever."
One detail rules out reading the verse as a description of the Eucharist — the shared bread and wine of the church service. Everyone described here is finally saved.
The Lord says, "If anyone eats of this bread, he will live forever." Again, "Whoever feeds on My flesh and drinks My blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day." This leaves no room for argument. He has everlasting life. Someone may say he could lose it. But the Lord shuts out that escape by adding, "I will raise him up on the last day." We all admit that not everyone who receives the Eucharist is finally saved. The people spoken of in John 6 are.
Manna kept a whole nation alive in the desert. Yet it could keep people alive without ever making them alive.
The manna sustained life, but it could not give life. It could not keep anyone from death. It could not guarantee resurrection to those who ate it. The Bread of Life, giving everlasting life to all who eat of it, secured resurrection at the last day.
The type carries further than most readers notice. Manna did not arrive on the table ready to eat.
The crowd had drawn attention to the manna. The Lord reminds them here that it sustained life, but never kept anyone from death. He, though, is the living bread, as He now presents Himself. He could give everlasting life to those who eat of it. But as with the manna of old, so with the living bread: something more had to happen before anyone could eat it. The people first pounded the manna in a mortar, or ground it in a mill, and then baked it in a pan. He who is the living bread had first to die.
The old bread had a fence around it. The living bread does not.
The manna was for Israel only. It was not for the Amalekites or the Moabites or any nation outside Israel. But Jesus says, "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 is My flesh, which I will give for the life of the world."
The verse promises life to "the one who feeds," singular. That grammar is the whole point, and it rules out inheriting the blessing secondhand.
The living Bread is for us all, but it is like your natural bread — no one can eat it for you; you must eat for yourself, or starve. You cannot take Christ for your neighbour. Your neighbour must take Christ for himself. You cannot blame me if I lay hold of Christ for my own individual salvation. I need Him, and God has brought Him within reach of all.
"Forever" is not left as a vague word. Four times in this chapter the Lord attaches a bodily promise to it.
Here we learn that the teaching about the Bread from heaven involves the truth of the resurrection of the body. For the body, as well as the soul of the believer, is to share in everlasting life... Here in chapter 6 He announces who will share in the resurrection to life. They are those who now eat His flesh and drink His blood — that is, they feed on Him in spirit as the One who died. Such people live forever. The whole person of the saint is to share in this blessing. With this the Lord's discourse in the synagogue at Capernaum comes to a close. In John's Gospel He never taught there again.
- The gift. The manna kept Israel alive in the desert; it could not give life, stop death, or promise resurrection.
- The cost. Israel pounded and baked the manna before eating it; the living bread had first to die before anyone could feed on Him.
- The reach. Manna belonged to Israel alone; Christ gives His flesh for the life of the world.
- The taking. Eating is personal. No one can eat for you, and no ceremony can stand in for it, since everyone who eats here is raised up at the last day.
- The result. "Forever" covers the whole person: life now in the soul, and the body raised at the last day.
These things he said in [the] synagogue, teaching in Capernaum.
John closes the long teaching about the bread of life by naming the place: a synagogue in the lakeside town of Capernaum. That small detail sets the scene for some of the most disputed words Jesus ever spoke.
Commentators note that John's great discourses grow out of a miracle. This one grows out of the meal on the hillside the day before.
As we have said, our Lord's discourses in John gather around some miracle or event. Here we have the feeding of the five thousand (verses 1-14) — the only miracle recorded by all four Gospel writers — and the walking on the water (verses 15-21). These events, and especially the first, frame our Lord's discourse in the synagogue at Capernaum.
The place named is Capernaum in Galilee, far from Jerusalem. Even there, His words tested the people who followed Him.
We are reminded that He spoke these things in Capernaum, in Galilee (not in Jerusalem), away from the headquarters of formalism. Yet even here many of those who had followed as disciples murmured against His words; they thought this too hard to accept (verse 60). But it was a test of whether they had faith in Him personally, or whether they followed for selfish reasons. True faith would say that, whether I understand or not, the Lord's wisdom is higher than mine.
Two subjects fill the address: His coming as a man, and His death.
The Lord had now finished His discourse in the synagogue at Capernaum. Its main subjects were His incarnation and atonement, as the food faith cannot do without — however much men might despise them. Let them praise the manna or anything else. It had neither such a divine and heavenly source nor such a lasting effect. It must leave men to die after all. For in Him, and in no one else, was life.
Each step of that message met fresh resistance. Yet the steps hold together.
Christ coming down from heaven and becoming man is what people cannot accept. Christ going into death offends their pride. Christ ascending into heaven is completely beyond their understanding. All these great truths are bound together. Refuse one, and all are lost; faith in one will prepare the soul to believe in all.
He taught this in public, not to a private circle. The openness did not soften what He said.
It may be argued that the Lord is speaking to men who were not believers. But it is plain all through the chapter that there were disciples among them too. In the open synagogue He is not hindered from speaking of such things, and in such a way as to test disciples themselves.
This verse fixes the words in a synagogue, before the Lord's Supper existed. So it touches a long debate about eating His flesh and drinking His blood. Commentators say the timing is not even the strongest point.
It is well known that many have worked hard to prove that eating the flesh and drinking the blood means His supper. The Lord insists on this eating and drinking as distinct from eating the bread. This is groundless. One reason is that the Lord's Supper was not even instituted until long afterwards. The far stronger reason is that what He says here about eating the flesh and drinking the blood cannot fit with taking part in the Lord's Supper.
The chapter describes the reality that the Supper later pictures.
Christ incarnate was the true bread come down from heaven. He was crucified, and so His flesh and blood become the way of life and the food of the believer's soul. As the bread was Christ incarnate, so the flesh and blood are Christ sacrificed on the cross. And so the chapter speaks of His going up where He was before, showing that it speaks of Christ personally, not of the Lord's Supper.
The scene ends with a split. The teaching in that room emptied it.
In the synagogue at Capernaum our blessed Lord unfolded truth that puts the poor human heart to the test. It withers up all man's pretensions in a very remarkable way. We cannot go into the subject of our Lord's discourse here. But Scripture records its effect like this: "After this many of his disciples turned back and no longer walked with him." They were not ready to receive such heavenly teaching. They were offended by it, and they turned their backs on that blessed One who alone was worthy of all the heart's affection.
- Place — Jesus spoke in a synagogue at Capernaum in Galilee, far from Jerusalem, the day after He fed the five thousand.
- Substance — His themes were His coming as man and His death: the food faith cannot live without. Refuse one truth and all are lost.
- Openness — He held nothing back for a private circle. The same public teaching tested those already following Him.
- Sign — The Supper did not yet exist, and its terms do not fit here. The chapter speaks of Christ Himself, whose death the Supper later pictures.
- Sifting — The room that heard the fullest teaching emptied fastest: many walked with Him no more.
Many therefore of his disciples having heard [it] said, This word is hard; who can hear it?
Jesus had been teaching that He is the bread that came down from heaven, and that people must eat His flesh and drink His blood. Now His own followers, not just the crowd, call the teaching unbearable — which raises two questions: what was so hard about it, and why did He answer with something harder still?
The difficulty was not that the teaching was obscure. It was that it stripped away something they were counting on.
These remarkable teachings of our Lord tested and sifted His disciples, and many took offence. His saying was "hard" to them. But where did its hardness lie? It cut at the roots of their national religious pride. They could not bear to be told, "You have no life in you" unless there is this eating and drinking. They took it for granted that life was theirs as the nation owned by God. They had not given up that idea, even though they thought they had found the promised Messiah in Jesus.
Commentators differ on the exact sticking point. One reading separates the earlier objection of the Jews from this later one by the disciples.
Note this. The Jews murmured, saying, "How can this man give us his flesh to eat?" But that is not what made the disciples say, "This is a hard saying; who can listen to it?" They said it because He was the bread that came down from heaven. So our Lord's answer is, "Then what if you were to see the Son of Man ascending to where he was before?"
Others tie the offence to His death, and see the same refusal in every generation.
It was a hard saying to these Jews who gathered around Him and to some who professed to be His disciples. It is a hard saying today — it was never a harder saying than it is today... They don't like the death of Christ as the way of life and blessing. They would like Christ without a cross. They would like a gospel without blood. They will not admit that death lies on them because they are sinners. Only the death of the One who never sinned can lift it.
He did not soften the message. He pointed them to His ascension — and that offended them even more than His humiliation had.
If they found His coming down from heaven or His dying hard, what if they saw the Son of Man going up where He was before?... But the Jews had long set their will on Israel's hopes in their own land. They did not like a higher outlook any more than a lower one. The cross and heaven were both outside their field of vision... So when disciples murmured at His words of humiliation, He told them of His exaltation — and, sad to say, that offended them even more.
The thinning of the crowd showed the difference between two kinds of following.
It is one thing to profess to be a disciple of Christ. It is another thing altogether to stand with firm purpose of heart, publicly witnessing to His name, fully identified with a rejected Lord. It is one thing for people to flock to Christ because of the benefits He gives. It is quite another to hold to Him in the face of the world's scorn and contempt. Teaching the doctrine of the cross very quickly thins the ranks of those who merely profess.
The saying tested what these followers were really after.
But it was a test: did they have faith in Him Himself, or were they following for selfish reasons? True faith would say that, whether I understand or not, the Lord's wisdom is higher than mine.
Peter, who stayed, was no better informed than those who left. What held him was a Person, not a solved problem.
It is not that Peter understood the Lord's position much better than those who left. Much in His teaching puzzled him and disappointed his own expectations. But he at least recognised the good Shepherd's voice, and so he clung to Him through it all. He felt there was no one else in the whole universe of God to whom his heart could rightly turn.
- Hard, not unclear — they could not bear being told they had no life in themselves. It cut at the root of their religious pride.
- Hard, then harder — He did not soften His words. He pointed to the Son of Man going up where He was before, and both the cross and heaven were outside their view.
- Hard for the cross — they wanted Christ without a cross and a gospel without blood. That demand has never gone away.
- Hard sayings sift — teaching about the cross quickly thins the ranks. It divides those who follow for the benefits from those who stay with a rejected Lord.
- Hard, yet held — faith does not wait until it understands. Peter was as puzzled as the rest, but he knew the Shepherd's voice and had nowhere else to go.
But Jesus, knowing in himself that his disciples murmur concerning this, said to them, Does this offend you?
Jesus has just finished teaching in the synagogue at Capernaum, and His words have cut deep. Even people who had been following Him are grumbling under their breath — and He hears what no one said out loud.
Their complaint was not about hard words. It was about what those words took away.
These remarkable teachings of our Lord tested and sifted His disciples, and many took offence. His saying was "hard" to them; but where did its hardness lie? In this — it cut at the roots of their national religious pride. To be told, "You have no life in you" unless there is this eating and drinking, was intolerable to them. They took it for granted that life was theirs, since they were the nation owned by God. They had not given up that idea, even though they thought they had found the promised Messiah in Jesus. Now He knew "in Himself" that these disciples were objecting under their breath, since He knew all things. So He set before them an even greater test.
The same offence outlives the synagogue.
It was a hard saying to these Jews who gathered around Him, and to some who professed to be His disciples. It is a hard saying today — it was never a harder saying than it is today. Many who profess to be His disciples still find it a hard saying. They don't like the death of Christ as the way of life and blessing. They would like Christ without a cross. They would like a gospel without blood.
No one told Him what was being said. The phrase "in Himself" points to the kind of knowledge at work.
His insight into people's hearts and motives is shown again and again — as it was said, "He heard men thinking." … In certain cases His knowledge is especially extraordinary. For example, when someone touched the fringe of His garment, He knew at once "in Himself" that power had gone out of Him (Mark 5:30). In the same way Mark 2:8 and John 6:61 prove that His knowledge was of no human order but divine. Scripture also says that He "knew from the beginning who those were who did not believe, and who it was who would betray Him" (John 6:64).
He does not take back a word. He answers with a question instead.
Again His divine omniscience is clear in His answering this hidden murmuring. Did they not see His greatness and wisdom shown in this very thing? But spiritual blindness is unreasonable. He speaks firmly, "Do you take offense at this?" Surely only unbelief could stumble at the word of the Son of God.
The next verse does not lower the demand. It points them to the Son of Man going up where He was before.
If they found His coming down from heaven hard, or His dying, what if they saw the Son of Man going up where He was before? … Jewish will had long turned only to Israel's hopes in their land, and did not like a higher view any more than a lower one. The cross and heaven were equally outside their field of vision. So the Lord here confronts them with His own ascension as a most unwelcome truth. … But when disciples grumbled at His words of humiliation, He told them of His exaltation. Sadly, that offended them even more. Had they been true, had they known and loved the truth, it would have been their joy. But they valued the first man more than the Second, and were more and more offended.
Three things run through the chapter: He came down, He died, He goes up.
All these great truths are bound together. Refuse one, and all are lost. Faith in one will prepare the soul to believe in all.
The stumbling came from inside the circle of followers.
Such is the flesh even in disciples. It profits nothing. It is the Spirit who gives life, and this by and in Christ, never apart from Him. … Not to believe is fatal to anyone, and utterly inconsistent in a disciple. Christ must be all or nothing. If He is all, His words are no reproach to the believer but a delight. They have power all through — more and more, as He is better known. Jesus knew their unbelief, not by watching or by experience, but from the first. He is God, and no less God because He became man.
- Hard, not obscure. The saying was not confusing; it stripped them of a life they assumed they already had by birth and religion.
- Heard, not reported. He knew the murmuring "in Himself." That knowledge was divine, not human — the same knowledge that saw the unbeliever and the betrayer from the start.
- Exposed, not excused. "Do you take offense at this?" is not a concession. Only unbelief takes offence at the word of the Son of God.
- Raised, not lowered. They stumbled at His coming down and His dying, so He spoke of His going up. Refuse one truth and all are lost; believe one and the soul is ready for the rest.
- Spirit, not flesh. The flesh profits nothing, even in a disciple. The Spirit gives life, and to faith His words are no reproach but a delight.
If then ye see the Son of man ascending up where he was before?
The Lord has just called Himself the bread that came down from heaven. Now His own followers, not the crowd, call His words unbearable. He does not explain. He asks another question: if what He has said already offends them, what will they make of the Son of Man going back up?
One writer separates the two complaints. The crowd stumbled over the eating; the disciples stumbled over where He came from.
Note this. Though the Jews murmured, saying, "How can this Man give us His flesh to eat?" that was not what made the disciples say, "This is a hard saying; who can hear it?" What they stumbled at was that He was "the bread that came down from heaven." So our Lord's answer is, "Then what if you were to see the Son of Man ascending to where He was before?"
They could not accept that He had come down. So He points to the journey back. The ascent proves the descent.
The chapter has moved from His becoming man, to His death, to His going up. These are not three separate claims to sort through and accept in part.
Do they find it hard to believe that Christ became a man, and that He died? Then how much more will it offend them if the One who is going into death ascends into glory? The natural man, and even the flesh in disciples, cannot rise above earth and material blessings. Man cannot accept Christ coming down from heaven and becoming a man. Christ going into death offends his pride. Christ ascending into heaven is completely beyond what he can grasp. All these great truths hold together. Refuse one, and you lose them all. Faith in one will prepare the soul to believe them all.
Two details matter. It is the Son of Man who ascends. And He ascends to where He was before.
If they stumbled at the thought of the Son of God coming down, what would they say to the Son of Man going up?… Note that He ascends as Son of MAN. It was a wonder that God should descend to earth: it was no less a wonder that Man should ascend to heaven. Jesus of Nazareth is in heaven. And He is "where He was before." This is a striking witness that His Person is one and cannot be divided.
He goes back to a place He knew. But He does not go back as He came.
The Lord had said He was the "bread come down from heaven to give life to the world." Then He tells us, "Unless you eat the flesh and drink the blood of the Son of Man, you have no life in you." This makes the realisation of His death essential to having life, for the blood separate from the flesh is the state of death. To this He adds, "Then what if you were to see the Son of Man ascending to where He was before?" … Here He presents Himself as the Object of faith — come as man, dead, and going back to heaven, only the last in a new state in which man never was before.
Their hopes were fixed on their own land. A cross below them and a heaven above them were both outside the frame.
Jewish hearts had long turned only to Israel's hopes in their land. They had no more taste for a higher view than for a lower one. The cross and heaven were equally out of their field of vision. So the Lord here confronts them with His own ascension as a most unwelcome truth. Yet it is a truth that rightly follows His death, and it fits with His coming down to be a man… It all hangs together here. In fact, it is while He is ascended on high that faith feeds on Him in life and death here below.
He asked it as a question. It has since happened.
What He only hints at to His disciples in our chapter has since become fact. It is one of the great foundation-facts of Christianity. Christ has gone up on high. The Son of Man has ascended to where He was before… Nor would He be there alone. "Father, I desire that they also, whom you have given me, may be with me where I am, to see my glory that you have given me because you loved me before the foundation of the world." Heaven is now the revealed home and sphere of that eternal life.
- Down. The disciples stumbled at His coming down from heaven, not at the eating — so He answers the objection at its root.
- Death. His coming as man, His cross and His ascension form one chain. Drop one link and the rest go with it. Believe one, and the soul is ready to believe all.
- Up. He returns as Son of Man to where He was before — Man in heaven, in a state no man had ever been in.
- One. Coming down and going up, He is one undivided Person — God who came to earth, Man who went to heaven.
- Ours. He is not there alone; heaven is now the home of the life He gives, and faith feeds here below on the One who is up there.
It is the Spirit which quickens, the flesh profits nothing the words which I have spoken unto you are spirit and are life.
Jesus has just spoken of eating His flesh and drinking His blood, and many of His followers call it a hard saying. This verse is His own key to it: it tells us what "flesh" cannot do, who gives life, and how His words reach a person.
The word does not point first to gross sin. Commentators take it to mean all of natural human life, weighed against eternity.
The flesh, as the Lord speaks of it here, would involve the whole of man's existence in present things apart from God. Man's life naturally consists of the things that occupy him in this world. They profit him nothing, because death finishes them forever. His life is a life of flesh, a life of natural desires in which he seeks to gratify the nature into which sin has entered. The question here is not the evil of man's flesh. It is the whole course of human life that busies itself with present things instead of eternal things.
If flesh only meant the coarse and immoral, education might improve it. The verdict falls on the cultivated as much as the crude.
The unbelief of the flesh only proves that it profits nothing. It may be highly cultivated, as with Nicodemus or a Saul of Tarsus. Even so, it is completely unable to take in the things of God. It is the Spirit that quickens, through Christ and His words, which partake of the character of the Spirit. They are spiritual, and where the Spirit works they are life.
Nicodemus was a respected teacher who came to Jesus by night. Saul of Tarsus was a strict Pharisee before he became the apostle Paul.
This verse tells us how to read His earlier words about eating His flesh.
Verse 63 says, "The words that I have spoken to you are spirit and life." That makes it clear: we must not take the Lord's words you ask about in a material sense. The eating and the drinking He speaks of is not done with the mouth. It also has nothing at all to do with the Lord's Supper, where we eat bread and drink wine. Yet when we eat and drink these, we declare that we are among those who have eaten the Saviour's flesh and drunk His blood.
The same reasoning is set out at length elsewhere: the chapter speaks of One who came down from heaven, gave Himself for the life of the world, and would ascend up where He was before — none of which can be squeezed into an ordinance.
We take the words spiritually, as Christ in the chapter itself tells us to do (v. 63).
The older wording is "quickens." That word has one fixed sense.
In the New Testament the Greek word is zōopoieō. It always means making alive those who are in the state, or under the power, of death. So it is sometimes used to mean resurrection, but it is never used of the wicked dead. It is God's work: the term is used in connection with the Father (John 5:21), with the Son (John 5:21), and with the Spirit (John 6:63). The term itself carries the principle of divine sovereignty. God makes alive according to His will.
His words are the channel; the Spirit is the power.
Spiritual things were communicated by the word. Then, by the power and action of the Spirit, they become realities in the soul — living realities, a real part of our being.
Taken up by natural ability alone, the same words do the opposite work.
The bare letter of God's truth, apart from the Spirit's work in us, does not give us life. The word of God does not take root in our old fallen nature. Instead, that word only condemns our old and fallen nature, and teaches us the truth about ourselves. Apart from the Spirit of God, the letter kills. What more could it do? For the word tells us that we are in our sins and need life, and shows us that life is the gift of God.
If the life is in the words and the Spirit, the one who passes them on can stop leaning on technique.
If you are teaching passages of Scripture, you are like a person planting acorns. The manner of planting is not the chief thing, but whether there is a germ of life in the seed or not. The Lord said, "The words that I have spoken to you are spirit and life." So you may be sure that in teaching Scripture you are teaching words of life.
- Sentence. "The flesh is no help at all" is God's verdict on natural life taken up with present things. Death ends it.
- Source. Life is not self-produced. To quicken means to make alive those under the power of death, and it is God's work, done according to His will.
- Channel. The Spirit gives that life through Christ's words. By His action they become living realities in the soul, not just text.
- Safeguard. Christ tells us to take His words spiritually. The eating He speaks of is not done with the mouth.
- Confidence. The life is in His words. So teaching Scripture is planting seed that already holds life.