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.