In verses 32 through 71 we find the food that abides to eternal life. If we read this portion carefully, we find that the Lord was incarnated, crucified, resurrected to indwell us, and ascended, and we see that He has become the life-giving Spirit who eventually is embodied in His living Word. Let us now consider each of these aspects.
Verses 35 through 51 reveal that the Lord has come to man by being incarnated that He might give life to man. By what way can we take the Lord as food, as the bread of life? This chapter reveals the way figuratively, but for many generations people have overlooked it. First of all, the Lord said that He “came down from heaven” (6:33, 38, 41, 42, 50, 51, 58). By what way did He come down from heaven? He came down by incarnation. He became a man by partaking of flesh and blood (Heb. 2:14). He came in the flesh and He came as a man. The devil and the evil spirits hate this. The only way to test whether or not a person has an evil spirit is to ask the demon or spirit if he would confess that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh (1 John 4:2). Incarnation is the first step that the Lord took in order to become our life.
Verse 35 says, “Jesus said to them, I am the bread of life; he who comes to Me shall by no means hunger, and he who believes in Me shall by no means ever thirst.” The bread of life is the life supply in the form of food, like the tree of life (Gen. 2:9), which is also the life supply “good for food.” He who comes to the Lord shall never hunger, and he who believes in Him shall never thirst. In the principle set forth in chapter two, this also is the changing of death into life. Death is of the source of the tree of knowledge, and life is of the source of the tree of life.
Verse 46 says, “Not that anyone has seen the Father, except Him who is from God, He has seen the Father.” The Greek preposition translated “from” means “by the side of.” The sense here is “from with.” The Lord is not only from God, but also with God. While He is from God, He is still with God (8:16, 29; 16:32).
In verse 47 the Lord says, “Truly, truly, I say to you, he who believes in Me has eternal life.” To believe into the Lord is not the same as to believe Him (v. 30). To believe Him means to believe that He is true and real, but to believe into Him means to receive Him and be united with Him as one. The eternal life mentioned in this verse is the divine life, the uncreated life of God, which is not only everlasting as far as time is concerned, but is eternal and divine in nature.
The Lord’s death was the second step that He took to make Himself available for us to partake of as our food. He died for us, not in an ordinary way, but in a very extraordinary way. He was slain by being crucified on the cross. This death separated His blood from His flesh. If you were a Jew living during that time, you would have been very familiar with this. I once read an article describing how the Jews slew the lamb during the Passover. The article said that the Jews put the lamb on a cross. Of course, we all know that the Roman Empire used the death penalty of the cross to crucify criminals, but the Jews used this method long before the Roman Empire to slay the lamb at their Passover. They took two wooden bars and formed a cross. They tied two legs at the foot of the cross and fastened the other outstretched legs to the crossbar. Then they slew the lamb so that all its blood was shed. They needed all of its blood to sprinkle on their door frames; therefore, the blood was completely separated from its flesh.
The Lord died in the same manner. In fact, His death occurred at the time of their Passover. We have seen that John 6 was placed in the setting of the Jewish Passover. Thus, the minds of the people were filled with thoughts about the Passover. With this as the background, the Lord told them that they must eat His flesh and drink His blood. Instead of taking the shed blood of the Passover lamb and eating its flesh, they were now to understand that the Lord is the real Lamb for God’s Passover. All of their former Passover lambs were a type of Christ. Now He is the real Lamb who will be slain for them. His blood will be shed for their sins, and His flesh will be eaten for their real life. On the one hand, His blood will redeem them from their sins; on the other hand, His flesh will supply them with life.
The Jews did not understand this and even neglected the Lord as the Lamb of God. But today we know that the Lord is the Lamb of God who died for us, shed His blood for the redemption of our sins, and offered His flesh for us to eat as our life. It is by faith that we take His blood, and it is by faith that we eat His flesh. Then we have Him as our life.
In order to be eaten by man, the Lord had to be slain. Nothing can be eaten unless it has first been killed. So, the kitchen is a place of slaughter. For example, it is impossible for us to eat a live cow or chicken. They must first be killed. Even an onion must first be killed before we can eat it. If it is not killed with a knife, it will be killed by our teeth. Likewise, the Lord had to be slain for us to eat Him.
In verse 51b the Lord says, “And the bread which I will give is My flesh, which I will give for the life of the world.” At this point, the bread becomes the flesh. We have seen that the bread is of the vegetable life and is only for feeding and that the flesh is of the animal life and is not only for feeding, but also for redeeming. Before the fall of man, the Lord was the tree of life (Gen. 2:9), only for feeding man. After man fell into sin, the Lord became the Lamb (John 1:29), not only for feeding man, but also for redeeming him (Exo. 12:4, 7-8). The Lord gave His body, that is, His flesh, to die for us that we might have life. The blood is added in verse 53, where the Lord says, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink His blood, you have no life in yourselves.” The blood is added here because it is necessary for redemption (John 19:34; Heb. 9:22; Matt. 26:28; 1 Pet. 1:18-19; Rom. 3:25).
In verse 54 the Lord says, “He who eats My flesh and drinks My blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up in the last day.” Here flesh and blood are mentioned separately. When blood is separate from flesh, it indicates death. Hence, here the Lord clearly indicated His death, that is, His being slain. He gave His body and shed His blood for us that we might have eternal life. To eat His flesh is to receive by faith all that He did by giving His body for us, and to drink His blood is to receive by faith all that He has accomplished by shedding His blood for us. This kind of eating of His flesh and drinking of His blood is to receive Him, in His redemption, as life and the life supply by believing in what He did for us on the cross. By comparing this verse with verse 47, we see that to eat the Lord’s flesh and drink His blood is equal to believing in Him, because to believe is to receive (1:12).