Bible Commentaries
John 6

Verses 1-14

31 The usual rendering, "If I bear witness of Myself My witness is not true", is not true ! The Lord Himself insisted, on another occasion, that His testimony concerning Himself was true. "And if I should be testifying concerning Myself, true is My testimony. .." ( Joh_8:14 ). He was not like other men who need references from others to establish the truth of their own account of themselves. Though John the baptist had come for the very purpose of bearing witness to the Coming One, yet He is not dependent on any human testimony whatever. The credibility of Christ's account concerning Himself may be tested in two ways, by His acts and by His fulfillment of the Scriptures. John the baptist did no signs or miracles, but He did many, everyone of which was an attestation to His messianic claims. The sign under discussion is an example of this. The correspondence between the thirty-eight years of Israel's wanderings after the spying out of the land and the length of time the infirm man had suffered implies that the One Who can bring Israel into the kingdom is present. The very point to which they objected-healing on the Sabbath-should have spoken in His favor, for when Israel is healed it will be the great millennial sabbatism for them.

39 The Jews prided themselves greatly on being the depository of the oracles of God, and on knowing His will. Holy could they fail to see in Him the long promised Messiah? Does it not seem strange that He should ask them to search the Scriptures. They did search them to disprove His claims ( Joh_7:52 ), but their search was neither accurate nor honest. Instead of finding that Isaiah ( Joh_9:1-2 ) foretold His ministry in Galilee, they were offended at it and used it against Him. They searched and found that Christ should be born in Bethlehem, and inferred without reason that that should be His home as well. We, as well as they, need to search and believe accurately, honestly, whole-heartedly, if we are to enjoy the fullness there is in the Scriptures.

41 Who else could say this? The true servant of God may be known by this mark. Is he seeking to please men or God? Popularity is often a mark of apostasy.

1-13 Compare Mat_14:13-21 ; Mar_6:31:44 ; Luk_9:10-17 .

1 This is the fourth sign in this account. The first figured Israel's joy in the coming kingdom ( Joh_2:1 ) , the second the healing of the nations ( Joh_4:46 ). The third showed the source of its power ( Joh_5:2 ). The fourth deals with its sustenance. Christ is the Life of the world. He is the true Bread. Mankind is figured by the five thousand, hungry and far from food. The spiritual famine will become so acute that what might suffice for five is all there is for five thousand. Even the great literal famine of the end time does not approach this ( Rev_6:6 ). Then food will be eight times its normal price. Here the lack, is a thousand fold. What does this signify? We know that man shall not be living on bread alone, but on every declaration going out through God's mouth ( Mat_4:4 ). The coming eon will be a time of plenty ( Amo_9:13 ), but the life of the world is not sustained by the stomach, but by the head and heart. It comes from the knowledge of God. In the day when Jehovah shall acquire the remnant of His people, the earth shall be full of the knowledge of Jehovah, as the waters cover the sea ( Isa_11:9-11 ). Such was the spiritual dearth in the nation when our Lord came the first time that their spiritual sustenance was but a thousandth part of what it should be and what it will be when Messiah comes. The feeding of the multitude is a sign of His presence. A comparison of this sign with the feeding of the four thousand is startling and instructive ( Mat_15:32-38 ; Mar_8:1-9 ). God's provision comes in inverse ratio to human help. When seven loaves and some fishes were used to feed four thousand they gathered seven hampers full of fragments. Surely when only five loaves and two fishes are distributed among five thousand the remnants will be scarce! Not so! For, after feeding the larger number with the smaller provision, there is a larger surplus left. Seven loaves among four thousand left seven hampers. Twelve large panniers remained after the five thousand were fed with only five loaves. And, while the hampers were full, the panniers were packed, crammed to their utmost. It is evident that, the less there is of human help, the greater is His grace. This principle applies to His dealings with Israel and the world at the coming of Christ. The spiritual plenty of that day will not be approached gradually by natural development, by character building and education, but by a miraculous diffusion and multiplication of the knowledge of God. In its personal application, we may deduce that the possession of natural talents is not essential to God's operations. He prefers a famine, where He can furnish food, to a feast where His hand is not needed and His heart is unheeded. He can use the humblest means and mediums to accomplish His miracles.

Verses 15-33

15 Exactly a year later ( Joh_12:12-16 ) He presented Himself to them as their King. This effort to make Him King was premature and arose from the fact that they had not comprehended the significance of the sign. They had not been filled with the knowledge of God, the true sustenance, but with perishable provisions. His kingdom is not food and drink ( Rom_14:17 ). It will not be established by human hands, but by divine power. It will not be set up in man's day, but in Jehovah's day. Most significantly He retires into a mountain alone and His disciples descend to the sea. So He later ascended to His heavenly throne, while His followers were dispersed among the nations.

16-21 Compare Mat_14:22-33 ; Mar_6:45-52 .

16 The parallel is continued. Israel is now in darkness, tossed about by the raging sea of the nations, which has been stirred up by the spiritual forces of wickedness who rule the world during the absence of the Messiah. The Jews will be scattered among the nations and hated and persecuted with the utmost cruelty and injustice and inhumanity. It is evident to all who have studied their history that there must be some cause which cannot be seen. Just as the wind lashed the waves of Galilee into a fury and threatened to drown the fearful disciples' so malignant spirit forces are at work, stirring up hatred to the Jews, for they know God's purpose concerning the nation, and resent it, and would prevent it if they could. For this reason men persecute the Jews without reason, and both men and demons carry out the doom they decreed for themselves when they cried that His blood be on them and on their children ( Mat_27:25 ). But when Christ comes He will still the wind and the waves and bring them to their desired haven. He will bind Satan ( Rev_20:2 ) and judge the nations ( Mat_25:31-46 ), and establish the kingdom ( Rev_11:15 ). Then, and not till then, will His word be fully fulfilled, "It is I, be not afraid! " This is the fifth sign.

26 The miracle of feeding the five thousand brought the Lord to the highest pitch of His popularity. Up to this time He had not been despised and rejected. The turning point came when He filled them with food, and they were too blind to see its signiflcance. Now that He explains this to them, they stop following Him. He is not flattered by the large following which flocks after Him, and does not hesitate to offend them by disclosing their own hearts to them. They came to be filled with food and cared nothing for the spiritual sustenance for which it stood. They wanted food and needed faith. Instead of reading this sign and recognizing the Messiah, the Son of God, they actually as asked Him for a sign! He had just given them that. They further display their blindness by reminding Him or the manna which God gave their forefathers in the wilderness (Ex.16; Psa_78:23-25 ). The true Manna was with them and they ask Him for a sign such as Moses gave! He Himself was all that the manna signified.

28 After being fed gratuitously, and having heard that God would give them the true bread, we would expect them to see that God had not put a price on His presents. But, instead of this, like Jacob their forefather, they try to strike a bargain with God. Blind pride demands that they do something. Thus today, though man is taught in all spheres how dependent he is on what God does, the moment he gets into the presence of God, it is "what must I do?" Faith, not deeds, is what God demands.

Verses 34-56

34 Eating to supply the demands of physical hunger and thirst is but a symbol of the spiritual satisfaction apart from which life is debased to mere existence. Desires and aspirations for spiritual sustenance can never be finally filled apart from the One Who came down from heaven. It is only as we have every heart hunger satisfied in Him that we cease to feel the pangs of famine. It is only as we find all our spiritual aspirations realized in God's Son that our thirst is assuaged. How slow we are to learn that man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds out of God's mouth! It is because Christ is set forth as the Word in this evangel that so much is made of eating and drinking.

37 How marvelously serene and sure are God's operations! The Jews may murmur and misunderstand Him, but how could they do otherwise? There was nothing in Him to attract them to Him. He is not moved by their murmurs, but tells them plainly that God alone, in His sovereign pleasure, picks out those who come to Him. They are a gift from the Father to the Son. Such not only desire to come to Him, but cannot fail to reach Him, and when they find Him, He counts them as precious presents from His Father, prized much for themselves but most for the Giver. Nothing can possibly arise to estrange Him from them. They are not only His for life, but He will rob death itself to restore them to Him in the resurrection.

40 That the life here bestowed on the believer is not everlasting is clear from the context, for it is not continuous, but waits until the resurrection. Those who received this life died. Their life lasted only a few years. But they will be raised to live for the eons. The life is eonian, not everlasting.

41 The great truth which begins and pervades John's account, that the Lord was the Logos, the spiritual reality of which the manna was only a type. The manna in the wilderness could only satisfy their temporal, bodily hunger, whereas His words would bring them spiritual satisfaction at all times and all places.

45 See Isa_54:13 ; Jer_31:34 .

47 This passage should be studied carefully in order to correct the erroneous impression that believers have "eternal" or "everlasting" life. Eternal may be applied only to that which had no beginning and will have no end. No one but God has eternal life. Everlasting should be used only of that which continues without intermission endlessly. Not a single one of the Lord's personal followers is alive today. None of them received "everlasting" life. They are dead. If everlasting life permits of interruption by death now, why not in the resurrection also? All of these expressions denote definite periods of time, measured by eons, or ages. Eonian life begins in the next eon. Now it is evident that the Lord had no thought of a life lasting for ever. In that case how could He be raising him in the last day? The life here spoken of was to be bestowed in resurrection. There could be no resurrection apart from a previous death. In short, our Lord spoke in such away that we are sure that "everlasting" life, so-called, does not commence until He calls His own from the grave. As this life has a definite beginning, it also has an end. But as the end does not come until death is abolished, it changes from "eonian" life into actual never-ending life. This will be the portion of all. It is not the special privilege of the believer. The peculiar kind of life promised to faith begins at Christ's presence, when those who are His will be vivified, and continues through the last two eons, embracing the millennium and the succeeding eon in the new earth, until the eons end, and the last enemy, death, is abolished. Hence the life received in vivification is actually "everlasting," though never so called in the Word of God.

5. The term "masticate" is not the usual word for "eat", and presents some difficulty in translation, for English usage prefers the broader term "eat" in such passages as this. It means to chew, gnaw, hence suggests the only process in digestion which is voluntary. It represents the actual appropriation of the life of Christ as our own.

Verses 57-71

56 Just as Nicodemus failed to see the figure when our Lord spoke to him about the new birth, so now His followers fail to understand when He speaks of feeding on His flesh and blood. There is a subtle irony here, for their religion was primarily a fleshly one. Their title to blessing from Messiah was based entirely on their blood relationship to Him. In that case, if He is to give Himself to them, He must give His physical flesh and actual blood. They can see how preposterous such an idea is, but do not discern how it cuts from beneath them the whole foundation of blessing through a physical channel. They should have seen that life divine is not transmitted by flesh but by spirit. Not material forms, but spiritual realities count with a God Who is spirit. His thoughts, as conveyed to them by the Lord's declarations, are the vital principle from which all life and felicity flow. .

70 Peter and the rest of the apostles probably had the impression that they had chosen Christ, and in this crisis, they seem to be confirming their choice of Him. With this background, how strange to hear Him reverse their thoughts and emphatically affirm His choice of them! On another occasion He asserted that they had not chosen Him. He reserves the right to choose His own. A realization of this principle gives strength and stability to vacillating mortals, who look within and find no soundness, and look without on turmoil and strife, and fear for the future of which they know nothing. To be chosen by One Who has power to keep and knows all gives satisfaction and rest. It is infinitely more precious to be His choice than to have the questionable satisfaction of feeling that we were free to choose Him. If we were, we would have chosen another. There is none that seeketh after God.

70 Judas was one of "the elect". The Lord "elected" or chose him while fully aware of his future. It was not Judas who chose Christ and then went back on Him. Indeed, he greatly regretted his action and publicly repudiated it. This Peter did not do. He did not betray his

Lord until Satan entered into him.

2 There were seven sacred festivals in Israel: the Passover, First fruits, Pentecost, Blowing of Trumpets, Day of Propitiation, Tabernacles, and Ingathering. The latter two were both held on the fifteenth day of the seventh month, so that both are referred to here as "Tabernacles". These festivals were typical of God's great dealings with His beloved people Israel. The Passover sets before us the death of God's Lamb. Hence Christ could not be killed at the festival of Tabernacles, for it was not the proper time. Firstfruits typifies His resurrection. Pentecost, fifty days afterward, foreshadowed the world so called in the book of Acts. Blowing of Trumpets and the Day of Propitiation will have their antitypes in the dread judgment period before the thousand years. Tabernacles and Ingathering are the happy harvest festivals, picturing their fullness of blessing in the millennial kingdom.

See Lev.23; Num_28:16 ; Num_28:29 ; Deut.16; Neh_8:13-18 ; Zec_14:16-19 .

This was one of the three times in each year that all the males in Israel were required to appear in the temple in Jerusalem. They were to bring a gift on each occasion. This suggests the three great gifts of God for Israel. At the festival of unleavened bread He gave Himself as the Passover Lamb. At the festival of Pentecost He gave the holy Spirit. At the future festival of Tabernacles He will give them the bountiful harvest of His millennial reign.

See Deu_16:15-16 .

6 With the foregoing in view, the action of our Lord is full of meaning. It was not the Passover, hence He could not go up openly and invite death. The time for that had not yet been fulfilled. Still, in obedience to the law, and as a private Israelite, He must go, for in Him must both the letter and the spirit of the law be fulfilled. It is significant that, while we often read of the Passover, only this once is the festival of Tabernacles brought before us, and now He refuses to go. There is no true Tabernacle festival for Israel until after the true Passover has been slain and all the other feasts have had their fulfillment. In all His acts He was consciously in line with God's revelation.