John 6:48-51 48I am the bread of life. 49Your fathers ate the manna in the wilderness, and they died. 50This one is the bread that comes down from heaven, so that anyone may eat of it and not die. 51I am the living bread that came down from heaven. If anyone eats this bread, he will live forever. And the bread that I will give is my flesh for the life of the world.”
Jesus repeats the key metaphor of this section using another “I am” statement (see verse 35). By repeating this image again, he drives home the idea that he is the source of life, and this life is special and spiritual because it is eternal. In case the people had a hard time understanding the deep theology he just spoke, he once again unpacks the metaphor of bread. There are two types of bread and two types of death.
The people were thinking about the manna God gave to Israel during the forty-year desert wandering. Feeding the multiple thousands of people for that long was an unbelievable miracle of history, yet it happened according to the Torah and memories passed down through countless stories of the exodus from Egyptian slavery. The point for those Jews listening to Jesus in Capernaum is that the desert generation all died. The miraculous bread was only able to sustain their physical life; it did nothing for their spiritual life. The only spiritual salvation the people had was in faith and obedience to God, which they struggled with significantly during those years of wandering.
The bread Jesus offers is of a different quality and essence. It is more than physical. Physical strength and health are important to everyone because we all eat and sleep to keep our lives going. But there is a different type of “health” even more important. Jesus repeats the idea of eating and feeding numerous times in verses 49, 50, 51, 52, 53, 54, 56, 57, 58. The type of bread Jesus offers comes from heaven, so it is spiritual in quality and nourishes for eternal life. No one can avoid physical death, but there is the option to avoid spiritual death.
As the bread of life, Jesus is himself life (14:6), has created life (1:3), and provides life to all who look to him. The Living Bread gives life to all who look to him in faith. The addition of the word living in verse 51 is a foreshadowing of Jesus’ resurrection in chapter 20. By overcoming death, Jesus can help those who look to him overcome death as well. The rest of verse 51 also foreshadows the events to come later with Jesus’ death on the cross. He gave his flesh (sarx), referring to his physical body, so that we might have eternal life.
The image of bread and Jesus giving of his flesh also prepares for the Last Supper. John does not record the ceremonial words of the Passover and new covenant that are found in the Synoptic Gospels, particularly Luke 22:14-23. John has his own version of the Eucharist seen in the shadow of this passage. He does not make a direct reference to the Last Supper, like Matthew, Mark, and Luke. Later Christians would be able to see the connection between Jesus’ words to the Capernaum Jews and his death on the cross. Jesus predicted his death multiple times. Verse 51 is one of those predictions. He gave his life in the flesh so that we might have eternal life with him. His gift of life is for the whole world. The invitation is to all, but sadly, many people follow the pattern of the Jews in Capernaum and the ancient Israelites in the Sinai desert of refusing to believe in the life God promises through bread.
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