In the Gospel of John, the author attributes the following statement to Jesus, “I am the living bread that came down from heaven. Whoever eats this bread will live forever. This bread is my flesh, which I will give for the life of the world.” (John 6:51 NIV11)
Did Jesus himself ever utter these words? Unfortunately we’ll never know for sure whether he did or didn’t. It’s the view of the Jesus Seminar, a group of New Testament scholars formed in 1985 who attempted to identify the authentic sayings of Jesus, that Jesus DIDN’T actually make this statement which is recorded in the Gospel of John. In actual fact, it is their belief that NONE of the words attributed to Jesus in that particular gospel were authentic sayings of Jesus, rather they were all the creative work of the gospel writer. I’m not saying this view is necessarily correct, however I do believe there is a strong argument to support it.
The Gospel of John was written in the tenth decade of the first century, some 60 to 70 years after the death of Jesus. The author of this gospel would most certainly have been familiar with the existence and content of the Synoptic Gospels (Mark, Matthew and Luke), and more than likely had access to copies of them as he was writing his own gospel. Some of the same stories recorded in the Synoptic Gospels can be found in the Gospel of John, but John’s account is usually very different.
The majority of John’s Gospel though is unique to John. For example, only in this gospel does the death of Jesus occur on the night before Passover. In the synoptic tradition, Jesus shares his final meal with his disciples (what we now know as ‘the Last Supper’) on the night before Passover. He is arrested later that evening and is crucified the next day. But John tells us that Jesus dies on the night before Passover, which is traditionally the time when the Passover lambs were slaughtered in preparation for the Passover meal.
This is why John refers to Jesus as the “Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world.” Just as the people of Israel were rescued from slavery in Egypt on the very first Passover, John is now saying that all people are rescued from slavery to sin through the sacrifice of Jesus as the new Passover lamb.
In the same way, John has Jesus claim that he is the living bread that came down from heaven. John has just finished telling the story of Jesus feeding the five thousand, which he compares to the story of God providing manna from heaven for Moses and the Israelites as they wandered through the desert after leaving Egypt. Manna was bread from heaven, provided by God, and it satisfied the hunger of the Israelites when they had nothing else to eat. However, they eventually became hungry again, so the effect of the manna was only temporary.
John then compares Jesus with the manna. John describes Jesus as the ‘living bread that came down from heaven.’ This too suggests that Jesus is from God, and that he came to satisfy the hunger of humankind, not its physical hunger, but its spiritual hunger. John’s Jesus says, “Whoever eats this bread will live forever. This bread is my flesh, which I will give for the life of the world.”
John is saying that people’s spiritual hunger will be satisfied forever if they become followers of Jesus. Also implied is the notion of eternal life beyond the mortal life. Those who eat the flesh of Jesus, which is the living bread, will live forever. This is not meant to be taken literally, although the church has come to understand that we eat the flesh of Jesus when we take the bread or wafer in Holy Communion during the Eucharist, but rather it is a metaphor for living in Jesus.
The author is suggesting that when one eats to satisfy physical hunger, the satisfaction is never permanent. One is always hungry again. Only the bread of God, that we experience in the person of Jesus and which gives life to the world, will ultimately satisfy the deepest human hunger. The author is saying to his readers that they must take Jesus’ life into their life.
We are being encouraged to fully embrace the life and teaching of Jesus, and to reflect both in the lives that we live in the world today.
