JEWELS FROM THE GOSPEL OF JOHN: JOHN 6:49-51 - The Living And Dead

The following is a series of short exhortations, brief commentary, and writings to convey thoughtful meditation on God's Word. I have chosen the Gospel of John as the subject. I pray that these will be a blessing and an edification for the saints.

JOHN 6:49-51
49 "Your fathers ate the manna in the wilderness and are dead. 50 "This is the bread which comes down from heaven, that one may eat of it and not die. 51 "I am the living bread which came down from heaven. If anyone eats of this bread, he will live forever; and the bread that I shall give is My flesh, which I shall give for the life of the world.

Everything born of this world, dies in this world. Nothing will live forever that has been made within this domain of creation that is under the curse of sin. The wages of sin is death (ROM 6:23a).

Yet our Creator stepped out of eternity and into our time domain, taking upon Himself the likeness (something similar to) of sinful flesh (ROM 8:3) and brought to us this precious Life that existed long before He ever spoke the words, “Let there be light”! This is by biblical definition, eternal life:

ROMANS 6:23b
…but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord. 

What a gift! Infinitely more costly than all of the gold, silver and precious stones, and crude oil and money in all the world combined, is this eternal life! The rulers of this world don’t have it (aside from those whose LORD is Jesus Christ, and these I can well imagine are a precious few!) and for all their wealth, couldn’t buy a ‘sliver’ of it!

Consider this remark an admonition to those who don’t know salvation in Christ yet: DON’T LEAVE EARTH WITHOUT HIM! Believe the Gospel and surrender to the LORDship of Jesus Christ!

The LORD Jesus defined what eternal life is in the Gospel of JOHN:

JOHN 17:3
And this is eternal life, that they may know You, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom You have sent.

That word “know” in the Greek is ginosko, and it means “to allow to be aware, to perceive, understand, to know absolutely”. This isn’t knowing through book learning or study; this is in one sense a Divinely inspired a priori sort of knowledge. We could say, a revelation, or enlightenment.

There is a difference between knowing about George Washington and knowing your spouse! You can learn about Washington through research, but you have first hand, personal knowledge of your spouse, and if you’ve known them long, you can understand them intuitively – it’s a living, breathing relationship that you have with them because both of you are alive. George Washington is dead. So, such a relationship with him is obviously not possible.

This knowledge goes even deeper though as expressed in 1 JOHN:

1 JOHN 5:13
These things I have written to you who believe in the name of the Son of God, that you may know that you have eternal life, and that you may continue to believe in the name of the Son of God.

The Greek word used here is eido and it means, “some [knowledge] that you cannot be told by another, be aware, perceive, to behold”. We know that we know Jesus on a personal level, and He knows us (JOHN 10:14; ginosko) – but there’s a very different situation for those who are “workers of iniquity”: The LORD Jesus declares:

MATTHEW 7:23
And then will I profess unto them, I never knew you: depart from me, ye that work iniquity.

And here He says that He never (“no, not ever, at any time” in the Greek) did He know (ginosko) them. This is interesting, because if one were to be saved, but then lost their salvation, it seems to me that there would be some passage where the LORD said, “I knew you once, but no longer”. Such a declaration is conspicuous in its absence!

There is no way we could possibly know GOD as our heavenly Father and Jesus as our LORD and Savior apart from the Holy Spirit indwelling us:

ROMANS 8:7-9 (Young’s Literal Translation; note vs. 9)
7 because the mind of the flesh is enmity to God, for to the law of God it does not subject itself, 8 for neither is it able; and those who are in the flesh are not able to please God. 9 And you are not in the flesh, but in the Spirit, if indeed the Spirit of God dwells in you; and if anyone has not the Spirit of Christ--this one is not His;

The children of Israel ate the manna in the wilderness, but because it was a physical, not a spiritual food, it only fed their bodies, and not their spirits. Hence, they died, because nothing physical can provide life everlasting: not food, vitamins, exercise, medicines, hypobaric chambers – these things may very well extend physical life, but they give no assurance of eternal life because these things are under the curse of sin.

Again, only One Who possesses the quality of eternal life can grant eternal life, just as those who are plagued with a corrupt (sin) nature can only produce that which is corrupt, polluted with sin. The Bread of Life Who is Christ Himself gives His eternal quality of life “for the life of the world”, whose own life is limited to a mere 60, 70, 80 years plus. The bread that was provided for the children of Israel while they traveled through the wilderness was provided by GOD to meet their physical needs. Likewise as we souls traverse through the wilderness of this life, the LORD provides that spiritual sustenance to sustain us, to satisfy us, and salvation begins for us when we eat this Bread of Life.

This bread is His flesh, the LORD said – and here many Roman Catholics misunderstand the meaning behind this: He wasn’t declaring that this bread would be transubstantiated into the literal flesh (and the wine into the literal blood) but rather, a spiritual application must be understood (read in context what He was saying in JOHN 6:53-63; for more on this, see this commentary that addresses this).

Just as with the sacrifice of animals in the Old Testament, the LORD indicated that He would be sacrificed as the LAMB of GOD; offering up His body, and shed His blood for the establishment of the New Testament, replacing the Old Testament Law (HEB 10:1-9), freely of His own holy and beautiful will (JOHN 10:17-18).

And as has been said already in many ways, it’s in this Bread that is Christ, that we the Body of Christ find unity: the bread was once individual and separate grains of wheat; likewise the wine was once individual clusters of grapes. Both grain and grapes were crushed and in so doing became united.

So too, we find ourselves united in the body, as we “eat” of this Bread of Life.

In the Jewish culture, who you ate dinner with was a very big deal; it was believed that by everyone eating the same food, they were becoming the same, or one. Likewise we saints are “one” in Christ.

1 CORINTHIANS 10:16-17
16 The cup of blessing which we bless, is it not the communion of the blood of Christ? The bread which we break, is it not the communion of the body of Christ? 17 For we, though many, are one bread and one body; for we all partake of that one bread.

We are ever grateful, as the saints of GOD, for the sacrifice of our LORD and Savior and King, Who humbled Himself far more lowly than any of us ever could, in that He bore Himself all the sins of all the world, and in so doing, allowed the judgment, wrath and condemnation of a Holy GOD to fall upon Himself, rather than on ourselves; all out of a heart of love and compassion!

ROMANS 8:3
For what the law could not do in that it was weak through the flesh, God did by sending His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, on account of sin: He condemned sin in the flesh,

(for more on this incredible blessing of salvation as expounded upon by the apostle Paul in this book of ROMANS, check out this TTUF study on ROMANS 8!