What does it mean to Eat the Bread of Life?

— John 6:32–63 — Andrew Fountain: Mar 16, 2014

John 6:32–63

32. Then Jesus told them, “I tell you the solemn truth, it is not Moses who has given you the bread from heaven, but my Father is giving you the true bread from heaven.
33. For the bread of God is the one who comes down from heaven and gives life to the world.”
     
34. So they said to him, “Sir, give us this bread all the time!”
35. Jesus said to them, “I am the bread of life. The one who comes to me will never go hungry, and the one who believes in me will never be thirsty.
36. But I told you that you have seen me and still do not believe.
37. Everyone whom the Father gives me will come to me, and the one who comes to me I will never send away.
38. For I have come down from heaven not to do my own will but the will of the one who sent me.
39. Now this is the will of the one who sent me—that I should not lose one person of every one he has given me, but raise them all up at the last day.
40. For this is the will of my Father—for everyone who looks on the Son and believes in him to have eternal life, and I will raise him up at the last day.”
     
41. Then the Jews who were hostile to Jesus began complaining about him because he said, “I am the bread that came down from heaven,”
42. and they said, “Isn’t this Jesus the son of Joseph, whose father and mother we know? How can he now say, ‘I have come down from heaven’?”
43. Jesus replied, “Do not complain about me to one another.
44. No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him, and I will raise him up at the last day.
45. It is written in the prophets, ‘And they will all be taught by God.’ Everyone who hears and learns from the Father comes to me.
46. (Not that anyone has seen the Father except the one who is from God—he has seen the Father.)
47. I tell you the solemn truth, the one who believes has eternal life.
48. I am the bread of life.
49. Your ancestors ate the manna in the wilderness, and they died.
50. This is the bread that has come down from heaven, so that a person may eat from it and not die.
51. I am the living bread that came down from heaven. If anyone eats from this bread he will live forever. The bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh.”
     
52. Then the Jews who were hostile to Jesus began to argue with one another, “How can this man give us his flesh to eat?”
53. Jesus said to them, “I tell you the solemn truth, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in yourselves.
54. The one who eats 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. The one who eats my flesh and drinks my blood resides in me, and I in him.
57. Just as the living Father sent me, and I live because of the Father, so the one who consumes me will live because of me.
58. This is the bread that came down from heaven; it is not like the bread your ancestors ate, but then later died. The one who eats this bread will live forever.”
     
59. Jesus said these things while he was teaching in the synagogue in Capernaum.
60. Then many of his disciples, when they heard these things, said, “This is a difficult saying! Who can understand it?”
61. When Jesus was aware that his disciples were complaining about this, he said to them, “Does this cause you to be offended?
62. Then what if you see the Son of Man ascending where he was before?
63. The Spirit is the one who gives life; the flesh is of no help at all! The words that I have spoken to you are spirit and are life.

Version: based on NET Bible

• I want to show you a verse that for me was the key to understanding the passage
• Jesus had been talking to the woman at the well
  • Living water (actually very similar idea to this)
  • Then the disciples came up

• There a pattern in these verses.
• Jesus describes our relationship with him in the same terms as his relationship with the Father.
• We must feed on him as he feeds on the Father.
• He does this by utter submission and dependence, just as we should submit to Christ and depend on him.
• In chapter 4, Jesus had been so busy serving his Father that he had not eaten.
• Doing the Father’s will, was his food, because his obedience was so complete that it amounted to a moment by moment dependence.

Pattern of relationship

Image source: amf

Jesus placed himself into a relationship with the Father which is a pattern for our relationship with him.

• TBS cook illust
• I am convinced that if we want to understand the Christian life and how to please God, we must study Jesus Christ and how he related to the Father. This is such a critical idea that I want to take a few moments to go through a few verses so that it might be Jesus’ words that convince you, not mine.
• It was crucial that he should live in a way that we could copy

Follow link to verses where Jesus tells us about his relationship with the Father

• When Christ came to earth his self-will was put aside.
  • His own agenda was put aside.
  • That is something we are called to do.
    • We have dreams, ambitions, desires, good things that we want to do, but Christ calls us to put those aside,
    • to have only one ambition and that is to please him,
    • only one dream and that is to serve him.
  • Can you imagine Jesus waking up one day and thinking,
    • “I am going to have a day for myself today... a “Jesus day” what shall I do?”
  • Jesus did do things that were pleasurable, things that relaxed him, but not on his own agenda.
  • Everyday he woke up and his mind was concentrated on how to serve the Father that day.
    • (I am not saying we should not have relaxation because in order to be efficient with our bodies, to serve him better, we need relaxation.
    • But the whole focus of his life was not in any way to please himself, but in every moment, every breath, to please the Father.)
• Here is a picture of every breath breathed being breathed for God.
• It is a picture of us looking at Christ and loving him and copying him.
  • A teenage boy might have a hero whose pictures he has up on his walls—he tries to find out everything he can about the hero and copies him as closely as he can.
• We are following hard after Christ when we try to copy everything he does and try to imitate him in every way.
  • We try to breathe every breath for his sake.
  • We are not motivated by law, but motivated by love and surrender to his will.
• This is a point where obedience and faith meet together.
  • It is very difficult sometimes to distinguish between obedience and faith.
  • Many years ago my young daughter used to play a game with me.
  • We would be walking along the street and she would say,
    “I want you to pretend that you are blind. Close your eyes and I’ll hold your hand and lead you. You must just trust me.”
  • That is very hard to do because you keep imagining you are about to walk into a lamppost.
  • It is quite a struggle to keep your eyes closed and you really have to have confidence in the person leading you.
• Sometimes it does not seem like the natural thing to do
  • This is what it is like if you are really going to follow Christ because sometimes the way seems wrong.
  • Obedience and faith are intertwined because to believe him is to obey him.
• We can only obey him if we believe him.
  • It is the walk of faith and obedience is the expression of faith.

• You may say “It is impossible to do this!”
  • How can I possibly live a life like this?”
  • You are right. It is not possible!
  • It is not possible for a human being to live this kind of life.
  • But if we are Christians, Jesus Christ is living in us through the Spirit, and his power is able to give us the victory.
  • Paul says in Gal 2:20...
• We are called to surrender our life to him, not in a passive but in an active way.
• What if you are not a Christian right now?
  • then the message is exactly the same. Complete surrender
  • We cannot serve him, we cannot live a Christian life, we cannot even believe in him without his power.
  • Most of those listening to Jesus in John 6 were not truly his followers.
• Before I was a Christian, I used to try to work up in myself enough strength to believe in him.
  • It didn’t work!
  • We have to cast ourselves on him in utter surrender and say,
  • “Lord, I am nothing. I cannot do anything. I surrender my life to you and my only hope is that you will be gracious to me and save me.”
• Before you pray for Christ to come and live in you, you have to understand the implications.
  • If Christ lives in us then we are going to live a life like he lived.
  • It was a life of sacrifice, poured out moment by moment for the Father.
  • Do you want to live that kind of life?
• This is the challenge, and it applies both to believers and to unbelievers.
  • Jesus says, “Feed on Me. Follow Me. Believe on Me. Abide in Me.
  • I will come and live in you so that you are able to do this.
  • He who feeds in me will live because of me.”

• When we try to live a life that seeks our own satisfaction, it will result in death.
  • It will result in a hunger that is never satisfied.
  • The woman of Samaria in John 4 was thirsting after satisfaction.
  • She had had four husbands and the man she was living with was not her husband.
  • Attempting to satisfy this thirst outside of Christ will result in eternal pain, eternal hunger, and eternal suffering.
• “He who does not take his cross and follow after me is not worthy of me” (Matt 10:38).
  • It can seem foolish to turn away from what will apparently bring us happiness and satisfaction,
    • to what will bring us suffering and difficulty,
    • but the reality is that bearing the cross of Christ is the road to life.
• Jesus said, “He who loves his life will lose it, and he who hates his life in this world will keep it for eternal life” (John 12:25).
  • I heard of a man who was in the process of sacrificing sparkling career prospects in order to have more time to devote to serving God.
  • A fellow worker came to him and told him in no uncertain terms that he thought he was a fool.
  • Could you be accused of being a fool for God?
  • What have you sacrificed for him?
    • “Whoever of you does not forsake all that he has cannot be my disciple” (Luke 14:33),
    • and “For whoever desires to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will save it” (Luke 9:24).
• But at the same time it is not a hard life.
  • His burden is easy if we cast ourselves on him and we will find life in him.
  • “Why do you spend money for what is not bread, and your wages for what does not satisfy? Listen diligently to me, and eat what is good, and let your soul delight itself in abundance. Incline your ear, and come to me. Hear, and your soul shall live” (Isaiah 55:2-3).

Pattern of relationship

Image source: amf

• To summarize:
  • these things all go together: coming to him, feeding on him, trusting him, following and obeying him.
    • We have to rest on him in obedience.
    • We have to abandon ourselves in an active way to him, just as when I played that game with my daughter.
  • When we walk this life, it sometimes feels as if obeying Christ is the way to pain, not to happiness.
    • We walk it only because we believe Christ’s words.
    • Everything else in our nature is telling us it is the wrong way.
    • The flesh is screaming to us and saying, “No! That is not the way you should live.”
  • We live that way only because we are following Christ and trusting in him.
• Christ is calling out to us and saying,
  • “Come to Me. Come and eat. Come and drink.
  • Come and have the choicest things in abundance.
  • Come and surrender your life, abandon your life, and have real life in me.”
  • It seems like the pathway of death, but in the end it is eternal life.
• What kind of Christian life are you living?
  • Where are you looking for satisfaction?
  • You have two choices:
    • feed on the things that your human nature tells you will satisfy
    • or feed on Christ by surrendering utterly to him and depending entirely on him, in the same way as he did with his Father.

Updated on 2014-03-18 by Andrew Fountain