John 6 - The NIV Application Commentary on the Bible: One-Volume Edition

The Feeding of the Five Thousand (6:1–15). We need to pause and underscore some of the motifs that were well-known in the Passover story. Among Moses’s many miracles in Egypt, two stand out as particularly remarkable:

1. his departure through the sea (Exod 14), and

2. his miraculous feeding of the people with manna for forty years in the desert.

In John 6, Jesus appears at Passover, repeating many of these themes. The people are a multitude not unlike those in the desert; Jesus feeds them with heavenly bread; and following the feeding, when the disciples are on the sea, Jesus comes to them walking on water.

These parallels offer some intriguing conclusions. This Passover story of Jesus makes direct connections with prominent Old Testament motifs that tumble over one another in rapid succession. They provide a growing impression that in some fashion the hero of Passover, Moses, has now been superseded by Jesus, who not only provides “bread from heaven” (6:32) but is himself “the bread of life” (6:35).

This feeding miracle must have had widespread fame and was locked into the collective memory of early Christianity as a key event in Jesus’s life. John provides insights no other Gospel possesses. Jesus not only wants to provide food, but he wishes to test the developing faith of Philip. Philip’s response indicates that he does not yet grasp Jesus’s miraculous ability.

But Andrew, Peter’s brother, locates a young boy carrying five barley loaves and two salted fish. Only John mentions that the bread is barley, which is a signal of the poverty of this crowd. These details are important because in 2 Kings 4:42–44 is another Old Testament miracle, where Elisha feeds a hundred men with twenty barley loaves and is assisted by a young servant. As with the twelve baskets left after Jesus’s miracle, Elisha had baskets of food left over.

What is happening here? These images and motifs from the Old Testament suggest that Jesus is fulfilling and re-creating images from Israel’s sacred past. John’s point is to underscore that Jesus is the provider of food, the source of life for these people (as thus far we have seen him be the source of rebirth, living water, and healing).

The crowd interprets Jesus’s miracle as messianic. He has just re-created the miracle of Moses! For many, Moses had become the image of the ideal Messiah, unifying images of king and prophet. Most disturbing is what happens next. “Jesus, knowing that they intended to come and make him king by force, withdrew again to a mountain by himself” (v. 15, emphasis added). This reflects a crass misunderstanding by the crowd. The crowd wants to force Jesus to define his mission and work politically, to become a king who will rival the Herodians or the Romans. Jesus wants no part of such a kingship. Thus he must flee and must push his disciples out to sea in order to preserve himself and his work from the political ambitions of the crowd.

Jesus Walks on the Water (6:16–24). While Jesus leaves for the mountains of upper Galilee (near Mount Meron?), the disciples set sail, heading for the lake’s northeast shore. East/west winds are common on this sea, and fishermen watched for them carefully. Their fear of the rough water, however, was surpassed by their terror at seeing Jesus walking to them on the water. Again, we have another motif that reminds us of the moment when Moses led Israel through the water. Psalm 77 describes this moment in Israel’s life and explains that it was in fact God who led them.

When Jesus arrives at the boat, he identifies himself with a term that was sure to evoke further images of the exodus story: “It is I” (egō eimi, v. 20). The verb “to be” (eimi) possesses no predicate here and thus reflects God’s divine name given to Moses on Mount Sinai (Exod 3:14). Even Jesus’s call not to fear echoes Moses’s fearful response on the mountain when he learned God’s name and saw the burning bush (Exod 3:6). Jesus approaches, and even though he is now providing an awesome and overwhelming presentation of his power, the disciples need not fear.

While the Gospel of Mark says that Jesus stilled the storm when he entered the boat, John 6:21 almost implies that the disciples barely were able to get him into the boat when they reached their destination. Many interpreters suspect that here we have yet another miracle, as Jesus leads his disciples to their port. Again, Jesus is fulfilling the role of God—feeding, protecting, rescuing, and guiding his followers despite the natural calamities that surround them.

Questions surface the next day when the crowd discovers that although Jesus did not accompany the men on the boat, he nevertheless arrived with them at their destination. More boats arrive at the site of the feeding, and when Jesus is not found the people, charged with excitement, travel to Capernaum to see if he can be located. Their arrival in the village of Capernaum introduces Jesus’s major “bread of life” discourse (6:25–58), in which he defines carefully his relation to the miracle and its deeper meaning.

Bread from Heaven (6:25–34). As Jesus teaches in the synagogue, he desires to lift his hearers above a material understanding of his miracle. He argues that their efforts should be focused not on the loaves and fish but on the greater food that lasts forever. But the synagogue audience offers a challenge. If it is true that in the days of Moses the treasury of manna was opened, and if it is true that Jesus is making some messianic claim, then what sort of sign can Jesus give to validate his word? Is he claiming that he has re-created the messianic miracle of Moses?

Jesus’s interpretation of the manna follows rabbinic lines perfectly. First, the true source of the manna was not Moses but God. If God is truly the source of true heavenly bread and if Jesus has been sent by God, the shocking turn in verse 33 should come as no surprise. The bread of God is a person who gives life to the world. With a stroke of genius, Jesus has done precisely what he has done throughout the Gospel: he exploits some feature of Jewish belief and ritual and reinterprets it to refer to himself.

“I Am the Bread of Life” (6:35–50). Jesus here presses the logic of his case to the next level. Jesus is “living bread,” as once before he offered “living water.” This famous saying (“I am the bread of life”) heads the list of what we call the “I-am sayings” in John (v. 35). In each of these sayings, Jesus is taking a motif from Judaism and reinterpreting it for himself. He now supplies that which Judaism sought in its activities and stories.

With remarkable candor, Jesus announces his disappointment with the crowd. The crowd is either twisting Jesus’s mission or demanding more evidence, but they are unwilling to come to Jesus and confess their hunger and thirst. Jesus says that their first step must be belief, but they refuse to take it. Such belief is not a leap into the darkness, for they have had the opportunity to see. Hence their decision is a willful refusal to act on what God has set before them.

Throughout verses 37–40, Jesus speaks confidently about the success of his work and the fulfillment of his mission. The determinism of these verses is sometimes softened by verse 37b: “Whoever comes to me I will never drive away.” The idea is about Jesus’s keeping people whom the Father has given into his care. Jesus will not lose a single one of those who have come to him.

The sayings that began at verse 35 serve the larger program of the “bread of life” discourse because they place in abstract what Jesus has been saying parabolically all along. God is the supplier of divine bread, and whoever eats of it will live forever. The identity of this “bread of life” is actually Jesus, just as the object of faith now should be Jesus.

But this is the great turning point that the synagogue audience cannot bear. It is one thing to say that we should have faith in God and be fed by him, but it is quite another for Jesus to say that he is the source of that meal, the object of believing vision. The “grumbling” described in 6:41, 43 (and 61) is reminiscent of the “grumbling” or “murmuring” of the Israelites against Moses in the desert (e.g., Exod 15:24; 16:2, 7–8), and it completes yet one more Passover theme. But this time there is a Johannine literary twist. The crowd misunderstands Jesus just as people and crowds have misunderstood him in most of the discourses since chapter 2.

After Jesus’s firm exhortation to stop grumbling, it is interesting that he does not defend himself against their complaint but instead returns to the problem of their spiritual receptivity. The idea of Jesus’s divine origin and descent is impossible for the crowd unless God in some fashion illumines them. God must move the inner heart of a person before he or she can see the things of God. And this takes place on God’s initiative.

The Flesh and Blood of the Son of Man (6:51–58). The first two thoughts of verse 51 repeat what we have already seen: Jesus is the living bread that came down, referring to his incarnation, and one must eat this bread, referring to the decisive moment when one believes. But it is in the third sentence of the verse where Jesus makes a pivotal statement, “This bread is my flesh, which I will give for the life of the world.” When Jesus refers to his “flesh” (sarx), we are at once reminded of 1:14, where sarx was used to describe the comprehensive life of the Son.

But sarx is a surprising, even graphic word that runs deeper than 1:14, and it will become the unifying thread of this portion of the discourse. Jesus is flesh offered in sacrifice. The gift of Jesus is nothing other than a sacrifice, a blood sacrifice, a temple sacrifice, that will benefit the world.

If Jesus’s audience was amazed that he miraculously fed the multitudes, they were startled when he described himself as the heavenly bread from God. Now they are aghast as he makes the next step. Earthly bread—heavenly bread—Jesus as bread —Jesus as bread to eat—Jesus as sacrifice. It is all too much. Of course, Jesus is not proposing religious cannibalism. Earthly symbols must be converted into spiritual truths. How, then, are we to understand this life-giving meal? What deeper spiritual truth needs to be uncovered?

Jesus’s answer in verses 53–58 has proven difficult for almost every commentator. The only Judeo-Christian setting where such words make good sense is the Christian Eucharist. It is significant that John does not record the words of institution later in Jesus’s upper-room discourse. When we look at his language here, it echoes Luke’s language at the supper: “This is my body given for you” (Luke 22:19).

Certainly, as Jesus speaks these words, their graphic and shocking character stuns the audience. Regardless of their theological meaning, they are graphic, compelling, and confusing. This eating and drinking gives eternal life and forms the basis of the interior, intimate experience one may have with Christ.

Some Disciples Fall Away (6:59–71). If Jesus’s revelation that he himself was bread made the crowds grumble, this new revelation offends Jesus’s own disciples. This difficult teaching sifts Jesus’s followers: some of them fall away and refuse to follow him any longer, while one other disciple likely finds in this a catalyst for his own personal rebellion and betrayal.

These are the deeper things of Jesus, and only with divine help can anyone comprehend them. Therefore, Jesus points to yet one more feature of this coming hour. If his death brings offense, what of his ascension? If the first idea of death was scandalous, this further idea will be even harder. Not only will he die, but he will return to heaven. It is through this complete work of Christ that life can be given to the world.

There is an important gift, however, a vital endowment, that will be a part of this life-giving work. The “flesh” that is of no avail in verse 63 recalls the literal flesh of verse 53. Jesus clarifies that taking his words literally is not the point. If eucharistic symbolism is at work, it is not a mechanical sacramentalism that Jesus has in mind, for the life-giving gift is the Holy Spirit.

With some of his following now collapsing, Jesus turns to the Twelve to inquire if they wish to depart as well. This is clearly a turning point for Jesus. The mystery of his person and work has now been laid out in full. For Peter this difficult exchange provides an opportunity to give a courageous confession: “Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life. We have come to believe and know that you are the Holy One of God” (vv. 68–69).

Jesus recognizes the confession not simply as a tribute to Peter’s courage but also as evidence of God’s supernatural movement in his life. These deeper things cannot be embraced by just anyone, but only by those whom God has enabled.