22 6:22On the next day the crowd that remained on the other side of the sea saw that there had been only one boat there, and that Jesus had not entered the boat with his disciples, but that his disciples had gone away alone. 23 6:23Other boats from Tiberias came near the place where they had eaten the bread after the Lord had given thanks. 24 6:24So when the crowd saw that Jesus was not there, nor his disciples, they themselves got into the boats and went to Capernaum, seeking Jesus.
25 6:25When they found him on the other side of the sea, they said to him, “Rabbi, when did you come here?” 26 6:26Jesus answered them, “Truly, truly, I say to you, you are seeking me, not because you saw signs, but because you ate your fill of the loaves. 27 6:27Do not work for the food that perishes, but for the food that endures to eternal life, which the Son of Man will give to you. For on him God the Father has set his seal.” 28 6:28Then they said to him, “What must we do, to be doing the works of God?” 29 6:29Jesus answered them, “This is the work of God, that you believe in him whom he has sent.” 30 6:30So they said to him, “Then what sign do you do, that we may see and believe you? What work do you perform? 31 6:31Our fathers ate the manna in the wilderness; as it is written, ‘He gave them bread from heaven to eat.’” 32 6:32Jesus then said to them, “Truly, truly, I say to you, it was not Moses who gave you the bread from heaven, but my Father gives you the true bread from heaven. 33 6:33For the bread of God is he who comes down from heaven and gives life to the world.” 34 6:34They said to him, “Sir, give us this bread always.”
35 6:35Jesus said to them, “I am the bread of life; whoever comes to me shall not hunger, and whoever believes in me shall never thirst. 36 6:36But I said to you that you have seen me and yet do not believe. 37 6:37All that the Father gives me will come to me, and whoever comes to me I will never cast out. 38 6:38For I have come down from heaven, not to do my own will but the will of him who sent me. 39 6:39And this is the will of him who sent me, that I should lose nothing of all that he has given me, but raise it up on the last day. 40 6:40For this is the will of my Father, that everyone who looks on the Son and believes in him should have eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day.”
6:25–29 You Ate Bread but Saw No Signs. The crowd does not know how Jesus got across the lake. They were not there to see him walk on the water, and, “When they found him on the other side of the sea, they said to him, ‘Rabbi, when did you come here?’” (v. 25).
Jesus does not answer their question but addresses their motivation for seeking him: “Truly, truly, I say to you, you are seeking me, not because you saw signs, but because you ate your fill of the loaves” (v. 26). The crowd had been following Jesus “because they saw the signs” (v. 2), and then they saw him feed the five thousand and responded by recognizing him as the Prophet and wanting to make him king (vv. 14–15). So at one level, the people have seen the signs Jesus has done. At another level, however, they are not seeing the signs for what they signify.
Jesus understands they are selfish and concerned with life in this world, so he tells them they seek him not because they saw signs but because they ate their fill. They are going to Jesus to get their needs met, but they are seeking him to meet the wrong needs. They have prioritized their bellies over God’s purposes in sending his Son. Yes, Jesus wants people to come to him to have their needs met. However, this passage shows that Jesus wants people to come to him to have the right needs met. Motives matter in those who seek Jesus. Jesus is not flattered by those who seek him without understanding who he is and why he has come.
The signs ought to show the crowds that Jesus is the fulfillment of the OT promises, that through him God will bring to pass his purposes. Instead of seeing what the signs communicate, however, the crowd sees only a way to get their bellies filled. Paul’s words in Philippians 3:19 are apt here as well: “Their end is destruction, their god is their belly, and they glory in their shame, with minds set on earthly things.”
Jesus, however, directs the people away from what will perish to what will last: “Do not work for the food that perishes, but for the food that endures to eternal life, which the Son of Man will give to you. For on him God the Father has set his seal” (John 6:27). The work in view pertains to their seeking of Jesus, their preoccupied thoughts, and their actions to attain what they desire. The food that perishes is the bread and fish Jesus provided to the five thousand. They saw that sign and thus wanted to seek Jesus for what he could do for them, but their hearts were not focused on what they really needed him to do: give them food that abides unto eternal life (v. 27). Jesus calls the crowd to lift its eyes from bodily needs of the immediate present to the greater need for someone to overcome death, conquer the curse, and give abiding provision by God’s authorization.
Jesus told them not to “work for the food that perishes” but to seek “the food that endures to eternal life” (v. 27), prompting the crowd to respond, “What must we do, to be doing the works of God?” (v. 28). This is a natural question. Jesus told them what not to work for and told them what to work for, but his statement was abstract. How, exactly, does one work for food that endures to eternal life? So the crowd asks him to give them action steps. They ask, “What must we do that we might work the works of God?” (v. 28 AT).
Jesus answers that it is not about doing but about believing: “This is the work of God, that you believe in him whom he has sent” (v. 29). Jesus tells the crowd the same thing he told his opposition in Jerusalem in 5:24: believe. Rather than being interested in what they stand to gain (cf. 6:26), they should believe that God has at last sent the Savior. Rather than attempting to make him king by force (6:15), they should believe and trust that God will do what is right and best. Rather than seeking glory for themselves from one another (5:44), they should believe. Rather than drawing the false conclusion that Jesus has blasphemed and violated the Sabbath (5:18), they should believe.
6:30–35 The Bread of Life. John 6:30–31 would be humorous if it were not so tragic. The people have just seen a “sign” (v. 14), but Jesus told them they did not learn what the sign communicated (v. 26). Now that he has told them to believe (v. 29), they ask for a sign (v. 30) and then reference the manna from heaven (v. 31). Jesus told them to believe, and so they ask for proof that they should: “What sign do you do, that we may see and believe you? What work do you perform?” (v. 30). The day before, he had fed five thousand people from five barley loaves and two fish, and yet they still ask for a sign. Their next words show their obliviousness to the obvious, which is so common to us humans: “Our fathers ate the manna in the wilderness; as it is written, ‘He gave them bread from heaven to eat’” (v. 31). They seem to say this because they are looking for Jesus to provide this kind of evidence so that they may indeed believe him. They do not seem to remember that he had performed precisely this sort of sign the day before.
What was typified when Moses led the people through the sea, when manna was provided, and when Moses went up the mountain was fulfilled when Jesus fed the five thousand, went up the mountain, and walked on water. Just as those Moses led did not understand, forgot what the Lord had done for them, and grumbled against Moses (Ex. 16:2, 7–8), so also this crowd that Jesus fed has failed to understand, has forgotten what Jesus has done, and will grumble against him (John 6:41).
The crowd’s reference to the manna in the days of Moses shows they do not understand what Jesus said in verse 27. So in response Jesus teaches them about the bread that abides to life eternal: “Truly, truly, I say to you, it was not Moses who gave you the bread from heaven, but my Father gives you the true bread from heaven. For the bread of God is he who comes down from heaven and gives life to the world” (vv. 32–33). Jesus means to compare and contrast the life that resulted from manna and the life that results from the true bread from heaven. Moses gave manna that sustained life for a short period of time, until the next meal was needed. God has now provided bread from heaven that will sustain life forever.
Jesus identified “the bread of God” as “he who comes down from heaven,” but the crowd did not understand what he meant: “They said to him, ‘Sir, give us this bread always’” (v. 34). This response repeats the mistake made when Jesus said he would rebuild the temple in three days (2:19), when Jesus told Nicodemus he needed to be born again (3:3), and when Jesus offered living water to the Samaritan woman (4:10). In each case, Jesus used something material to teach a spiritual truth, and those who heard his words thought he was talking about the material, physical thing.
Jesus was obviously concerned about people’s real physical needs. He did, after all, feed the five thousand (6:1–13). Jesus knows, however, that there is a deeper hunger, a deeper thirst, than what we feel for food, and he cares about meeting that need. So, here Jesus refers to himself as “the bread of God . . . who comes down from heaven and gives life to the world” (v. 33). Jesus knows that our spiritual hunger, our spiritual thirst, is greater than our need for food and water. This crowd with which Jesus interacts has been so distracted by their physical needs that Jesus has had some difficulty getting them to understand what he is telling them about their spiritual need.
What is that spiritual need? That spiritual need is for God to introduce the long-awaited hero to the plot of the world’s story. Jesus is that hero. The spiritual need is for God to keep his promises about defeating evil and renewing creation and causing life to triumph over death, blessing to overwhelm cursing, justice to be done on evildoers, recompense given to those who knew their God, stood firm, and took action. Central to all this is the reality that people stand guilty before God, condemned for their evil deeds. Our spiritual need is such that if God’s wrath is not satisfied by a substitute, if God’s justice is not established through the death of a sufficient sacrifice, we will face the everlasting displeasure of the Almighty. Jesus meets that need. He has come down from heaven to give life to the world. We need him to live spiritually just as we need bread to live physically. Apart from Jesus we will die. Jesus has come to give life. He is the hero. He brings about the story’s resolution. He meets our spiritual needs so that those who come to him hunger and thirst no more, ever.
Jesus speaks of “whoever comes to me” and “whoever believes in me” (v. 35). This does not mean that people have to attain some standard in order to be satisfied. He is not teaching that people must arrive at their goals for growth in personal holiness to be saved. Jesus is everything anyone will ever need. Jesus is altogether adequate, satisfying, nourishing, life-giving. Those who go to Jesus and believe in him need nothing else. He is enough.
6:36–40 The Will of the Father. When Jesus says, “I said to you that you have seen me and yet do not believe” (v. 36), he seems to be referring back to the way he had said to them, “You are seeking me, not because you saw signs, but because you ate your fill of the loaves” (v. 26). This seems to illustrate what John wrote in 2:23–24, that people believed in Jesus when they saw the signs, but Jesus did not entrust himself to them. This kind of belief seems to be the kind of belief that Nicodemus shared: an understanding that God was at work, but as of yet no faith that Jesus was fulfilling and would fulfill what God had promised in the OT.
This crowd in chapter 6 has come to Jesus because they believe he can meet their physical needs, but the signs they have seen have not taught them that Jesus meets their more important spiritual needs. They have seen Jesus, they have seen the signs, but they have not seen the signs the way they need to see them. The signs have not signified for them that in Christ the Father is keeping and fulfilling his promises about the Prophet, the King, the new exodus, and the atonement that makes reconciliation possible.
Jesus explains why some see and do not believe. Jesus will say in verse 44, “No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him” (cf. v. 65). Those who come to Jesus believe in Jesus and will neither hunger nor thirst (v. 35). Who will come to Jesus? Jesus asserts, “All that the Father gives me will come to me, and whoever comes to me I will never cast out” (v. 37). This statement indicates that the Father has given people to Jesus, that those whom the Father has given to Jesus will go to Jesus and believe, and that Jesus will not reject any of them. Jesus had spoken of how he does not his own will but the will of him who sent him (5:30), and now he says again, “I have come down from heaven, not to do my own will but the will of him who sent me” (6:38). Following the statement about those whom the Father has given to Jesus (v. 37), the words about doing the Father’s will (v. 38) indicate that Jesus means to carry out the Father’s plan.
The Father has planned to give certain people to Jesus, and Jesus says that he does the Father’s will by coming to save those people. Thus Jesus explains his understanding, articulated in verse 36, that not everyone will see and believe. In keeping with this, Jesus says, “This is the will of him who sent me, that I should lose nothing of all that he has given me, but raise it up on the last day” (v. 39). The Father gives people to Jesus, Jesus does the Father’s will and comes to save those people, and the Father also wills that none of those whom he has given to Jesus will be lost. If the Father has given someone to Jesus, that person is eternally secure. Those whom the Father has given to Jesus will, in accordance with what Jesus said in 5:28–29, be raised from death to life.
Notice the strong emphasis on the Father’s will, with Jesus referring to it in 6:37, 38, 39, and again in verse 40: “This is the will of my Father, that everyone who looks on the Son and believes in him should have eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day.” Consider the contrast between verse 36, “You have seen me and yet do not believe,” and verse 40, “. . . everyone who looks on the Son and believes in him.” What does Jesus mean by this? Jesus told Nicodemus, “As Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up” (3:14). There we observed that the word “lifted up” is the same term used in Isaiah 52:13. Jesus then said, “. . . that whoever believes in him may have eternal life” (John 3:15). Right before saying that he would be the typological fulfillment of the bronze serpent, Jesus had said, “No one has ascended into heaven except he who descended from heaven, the Son of Man” (3:13).
In 6:38 Jesus again says, “I have come down from heaven” (cf. 6:33; 3:13), and the statement concerning eternal life for “everyone who looks on the Son and believes” (6:40) calls to mind the words concerning the bronze serpent in 3:14–15. In Numbers 21:8–9, “The Lord said to Moses, ‘Make a fiery serpent and set it on a pole, and everyone who is bitten, when he sees it, shall live.’ So Moses made a bronze serpent and set it on a pole. And if a serpent bit anyone, he would look at the bronze serpent and live.” Jesus will be lifted up like the serpent (John 3:14) so that everyone who looks on Jesus will live, just as those who looked on the serpent lived (3:15; 6:40; Num. 21:8–9).