The Passover in verse 4 signifies Christ as the redeeming Lamb of God who shed His blood for our redemption and gave His flesh for our feeding (1 Cor. 5:7). At the Passover, people slay the redeeming lamb, strike its blood, and eat its flesh (Exo. 12:3-11). This typifies Christ as the redeeming Lamb of God who was slain that we might eat His flesh and drink His blood, thus taking Him in as the life supply for us to live by.
In Genesis 2:9, Christ was typified by the tree of life. The tree of life, belonging to the vegetable life, is good for producing and generating, but has no blood for redeeming. At the time of Genesis 2, man was not yet involved with sin and thus had no need for redemption. However, in Genesis 3 man fell. Immediately after man’s fall, God came in to deal with that fall by slaying sacrificial lambs to redeem Adam and Eve and to make coats of skins to cover their nakedness (Gen. 3:21). Thus, the vegetable life itself is no longer adequate for fallen man; there is the need of the animal life. We need life not only for feeding, but also for redeeming. So, in chapter six of John we firstly have the barley loaf, which belongs to the vegetable life and is good for feeding. As we shall see, since man has fallen and needs redeeming as well as feeding, the Lord Jesus turned the bread into flesh (6:51b). The bread is made from barley, while the flesh contains blood. Barley bread is of the vegetable life, but the flesh with the blood is of the animal life. Eventually, in John 6 Christ is shown not only as the tree of life signified by the bread, but also as the Lamb of God signified by the flesh and blood. In the Lamb of God there are two elements: the blood for redeeming and the meat, the flesh, for feeding. At the Passover, the people struck the blood and ate the meat. It is the same with us today. We accept Christ in the way of redeeming as well as in the way of feeding. He is both the vegetable life and the animal life, the feeding life and the redeeming life.
The loaves are of the vegetable life, signifying the generating aspect of Christ’s life. As the generating life, Christ grows in the land, the God-created earth. In order to regenerate us, He grew on the God-created earth for reproducing.
Barley signifies Christ resurrected. According to the Scriptures, barley represents the firstfruit of resurrection. The Lord told His people in Leviticus 23 to offer the firstfruits of their harvest each year. In the land of Palestine, barley ripens earlier than any other crop and is the first of the harvest. Hence, it typifies the resurrected Christ (Lev. 23:10). Therefore, barley signifies the resurrected Christ, who is our life supply. As the firstfruit, He can become our bread of life. So, barley loaves represent Christ in resurrection as food to us. The feeding Christ is the resurrected Christ.
Perhaps someone will ask how Christ could have been resurrected in John 6 when He had not yet been crucified. Even before His crucifixion, Christ was the resurrection. In John 11:25 He said, “I am the resurrection and the life.” He did not say, “I shall be the resurrection,” for He was the resurrection already. When the Lord told Martha that her brother would rise again, she, through her poor expounding of the Scriptures, postponed the resurrection for two thousand years to the coming age. When she did that, the Lord seemed to say, “I am the resurrection now. With Me, the eternal One, there is no time element. The past, present, and future are all the same to Me.” Eternal means to have no time element. Both before and after His crucifixion, He is the resurrected Christ. It is the resurrected Christ who can be life to us and can be bread to feed us. We are feeding on the resurrected Christ.