John 6:48

6:47-51 The advantage of the manna was small, it only referred to this life; but the living Bread is so excellent, that the man who feedeth on it shall never die. This bread is Christ's human nature, which he took to present to the Father, as a sacrifice for the sins of the world; to purchase all things pertaining to life and godliness, for sinners of every nation, who repent and believe in him.

John 6:48-50 . I am the bread of life — Jesus, having explained the nature of the dignity which he had claimed in the foregoing part of his discourse, ( John 6:33-40 ,) and demonstrated that it really belonged to him, here repeats what he had said John 6:35 , and then runs a comparison between himself, considered as the bread from heaven, and the manna which Moses provided for their fathers in the desert, and which they admired so greatly, saying, Your fathers did eat manna, and are dead — The manna did not preserve them, either from spiritual, or temporal, or eternal death. This is the bread — That of which I now speak is the true bread; which cometh down from heaven — And is of such a nature, that a man may eat of it and not die — Not spiritually, not eternally. His soul, being quickened and made alive to God by partaking of it, shall, by continuing to feed on it, be preserved in spiritual life, and nourished to life eternal; and the death of his body will be only a short sleep, which will soon terminate in a resurrection to immortal glory.

(48) I am that bread of life. —Better, I am the bread of life. The words, which seem to them so hard to fathom ( John 6:41 ), are only an expression of this truth in the form of their own demand ( John 6:31 ). The essence of life is unseen; bread is the visible form which contains and imparts it. The invisible God is the source of eternal life; the human nature of the Son of God is the visible form which contains and imparts this to the souls of men.

John THE MANNAJohn 6:48 - John 6:50 . ‘This is of a truth that Prophet,’ said the Jews, when Christ had fed the five thousand on the five barley loaves and the two small fishes. That was the kind of Teacher for them; they were quite unaffected by the wisdom of His words and the beauty of His deeds, but a miracle that found food precisely met their wants, and so there was excited an impure enthusiasm, very unwelcome to Jesus. Therefore He withdrew Himself from it, and when the people followed Him, all full of expectation, to get some more loaves and see some more miracles, He met them with a douche of cold water that cooled their enthusiasm and flung them back into a critical, questioning mood. They pointed to the miracle of the manna, and hinted that, if He expected them to accept Him, He must do as Moses had done, or something like it. Probably there was a Jewish tradition in existence then to the effect that the Messiah was to repeat the miracle of the manna. But, at all events, Christ lays hold of the reference that they put into His hands, and He said in effect, ‘Manna? Yes; I give, and am, the true Manna.’ So this is the third of the instances in this Gospel in which our Lord pointed to Old Testament incidents and institutions as symbolising Himself. In the first of them, when He likened Himself to the ladder that Jacob saw, He claimed to be the Medium of communication between heaven and earth.

In the second of them, when He likened Himself to the brazen serpent lifted in the camp, He claimed to be the Healer of a sin-stricken and poisoned world. And now, with an allusion both to the miracle and to the Jewish demand for the repetition of the manna sign, He claims to be the true Food for a starving world. So there are three things in my text: Christ’s claim, His requirements, and His promise; the bread, the eating, the issues. I. Here is a claim of Christ’s. As I have already said, in the whole wonderful conversation of which I have selected a portion for my text, there is a double reference to the miracle of the loaves and of the manna. What our Lord means to assert for Himself is that which is common to both of these-viz. that He supplies the great primal wants of humanity, the hunger of the heart. There may be another reference also, which I just notice without dwelling upon it. Barley loaves were the coarsest and least valuable form of bread. They were not only of little worth, but altogether inadequate to feeding the five thousand. The palates, unaccustomed to the stinging savours of the garlic and the leeks of Egypt, loathed the light bread. And so Jesus Christ comes into the world in lowly form, like the barley loaf or the light bread from which men whose tastes have been vitiated by the piquant savours of more earthly nourishment turn away as insipid.