《Lange’s Commentary on the Holy Scriptures – John (Ch. 4~Ch. 8》(Johann P. Lange) 04 Chapter 4

DOCTRINAL AND ETHICAL

1. See the exegesis itself, particularly on John 6:31-32 ff.; and John 6:52 ff. [And the Excursus above.—P. S.]

2. Christ, the life of the world Isaiah, as the bread of life, the necessary means of life for the awakening, quickening, and strengthening of men to a personal eternal life. Salvation is not in outward enjoyment and outward things, but in the heavenly life of the Spirit (antithesis of the heavenly and earthly mind); the striving after heavenly things consists not in legal, perfunctory works, but in the inward, single, personal, divine work of faith (antithesis of the spiritual and the legal nature); life consists not in the doing of spiritual things as such, but in the person of Christ Himself (antithesis of personal and perfunctory Christianity). The personal life, however, manifests itself (1) in the total, undivided consciousness (Christ Himself), (2) in its giving of itself (His flesh), (3) in its impartation of life (flesh and blood).

The Spirit (chap3) brings the heavenly birth to life; the well

of life (chap4) gives the first thing in regeneration, the refreshment of the soul thirsting for life with the peace of God; the healing waters of life (chap5) give the restoration of the life from disease and death (spiritual and bodily); the bread of life, the heavenly manna (chap6), gives an eternal, substantial existence.

By the idea of the personal life of Christ all personal relations are glorified. (1) Calling becomes a laboring in the service of God. (2) Labor becomes a production of heavenly food. (3) Bread becomes the person of Christ, the flesh and blood of Christ; eating and drinking become a real corporeo-spiritual participation and receiving into one’s self of the highest life. Hearing is a hearing of the voice of God, which invites to this feast; seeing is the perfect knowledge of intuition.

This chapter thus contains the symbolism of bread, of industrial calling, of labor, of eating and drinking, of hearing and seeing; the symbolism of the whole life of sense in its central relation to the personal life and to the highest personality.

3. Laboring in manifold divided earthly works for earthly food in the service of the world has the perishing of the life itself, with the perishing of the meat, for its reward ( Galatians 6:8; 1 John 2:17); but the working of the one divine work in the service of God, faith in Christ, has the heavenly manna for its reward. He who is intent upon partaking of the supreme person, comes to the delight of personal, eternal existence in the kingdom of God.

4. The exaltation of the manna of the desert as a symbol of the real manna. Without this real manna the life of man is a breadless desert in the strictest sense. The marks of the bread of God: (1) It must come down (not fall down) from heaven: be Spirit-life, personal life, divine life. (2) It must give life to the world. Not merely give respite to physical life now and then, but first awaken, then sustain and renew, personal life forever.

5. Earthly interest in Christ and in Christianity in distinction from heavenly. The chiliastic spirit in opposition to the spirit of the kingdom.

6. It is remarkable how this discourse of Jesus not only kindled strife, among the Jews, but has also fed the controversy of different confessions [denominations] in the evangelical church. Controversies over the doctrine of predestination have hung upon the words of John 6:37; John 6:44; John 6:64-65; and upon the words of John 6:53 sqq, and68 sqq, controversies over the holy Supper. The middle age has transmitted to the evangelical church a far too meagre doctrine of spiritual personality; else would the doctrine of personality be found to yield the higher synthesis of the Reformed and the Lutheran doctrines both on predestination and the Lord’s Supper.

Without the personal drawing of the Father no coming to Christ is conceivable; but the Father, too, draws only in a personal way, i.e., under the form of freedom. Hence in John 6:44-45 divine determination and human freedom are linked together.

Without the appropriation of the entire historical personality of Christ, spirit and body, no full, saving partaking of the redemption purchased by Christ is conceivable; but in this partaking every medium of redemption is conditioned through the life and the Spirit of the Redeemer. Hence, on the one hand, we are required, with a fourfold emphasis, to eat and to drink the flesh and the blood of Christ, and on the other, we hear the strong condition: “It is the Spirit that quickeneth; the flesh profiteth nothing.”

7. Honest striving, the unconscious drawing of God to holy living.

8. Whispering and murmuring, the indication of narrow-minded offence at the word of truth.

9. The mark of those who are truly taught of God: They pass (1) from the old world [paganism] into the Old Testament, (2) from the Old Testament into the New, (3) through the New Testament into a new world.

10. He that believeth on me hath (1) life, (2) eternal life.

11. Christ the bread of life in the three stages of the manifestation of His life: (1) In His person and history. (2) In His “flesh,” or “His giving Himself a sacrifice,” whereby He is transformed from the curse of the world and the burnt-offering and expiation of God into a pure and entire thank-offering of believing man. (3) Therefore is His “flesh and blood,” wherein He makes His historically finished life, by historical ordinances, the life of the world. The first stage represents the true bread itself; the second, the preparation of it for eating; the third, its being perfectly ready for believing participation: flesh and blood.

And then there are also three stages in the partaking of Christ: (1) The putting of confidence in Him as personally the source of life. (2) Firm faith in the life which is in His sacrificial death. (3) The ideal communion, which on the one hand receives the life of Christ in spirit and body through His historical ordinances, the summit of which is the Lord’s Supper, and which, on the other hand, ever refers the actual world more and more to Christ, and makes it, in labor and in enjoyment, the manifestation of Christ. The Christian must first of all eat the flesh and blood of Christ, in order at last to eat this flesh and blood in all things.

12. The four great words concerning the flesh and blood of Christ, confirmed with the “Verily, verily.” (1) John 6:53. The want of this eating and drinking of the flesh and blood of Christ is the want and loss of life (even of one’s own, personal life; “No life in you”). (2) John 6:54. The eating and drinking of the flesh and blood of Christ yield eternal life even now, and resurrection hereafter. (3) John 6:55. The first reason: His flesh and blood are the real staff of life (meat and drink). (4) John 6:56. The highest reason: The partaking of His flesh and blood is the condition of community of life with Him (“dwelleth in Me, and I in Him”). The transfiguration of the passover, of the paschal lamb, of the paschal feast of the Jews.

13. The living of Christ in God is not only the root, but also the type of the living of believers in Christ. So surely as God is the source of life, Christ, as the pure revelation of God, is the focus of the life in the world. But so surely as Christ is this focus, he who refers his life and his world to Christ, and Christ to his life and his world, stands in the kingdom of eternal life.

14. The most comforting and most glorious of all the words of Christ a hard saying to the Jewish mind.

15. The transfiguration of the humiliation of Christ and of its blessings by His exaltation. Christian morality, the union of spirit and nature in Christ. The organization of the Spirit (sacraments and church); the spiritualizing of the organization (the natural life of man), till God shall be all in all.

16. “It is the Spirit that quickeneth,” etc., hold true (1) in our natural life, (2) of the word of Christ, (3) of the historical manifestation of Christ, (4) of the sacraments, particularly of the Supper of the Lord. The revelation of the Spirit glorifies the Lord as the life of the world, which makes the new world the body of Christ, wherein everything is bread of life for all.

17. It is the problem of faith, and of theology, to carry out the synthesis of Spirit and flesh in the right way, (1) in regard to the relation between God and the world in general, taking the world not, indeed, as the body of God, yet doubtless as a revelation of Him; (2) in regard to the word’ of Holy Scripture; (3) in regard to the person of Christ; (4) in regard to the ordinances of Christ, the church, and especially the sacrament of the Supper. The first step in this process is the simple, direct recognition of the actual manifestation of Spirit and flesh in concrete unity. This simple recognition, under the symbolical primitive religion, sees God revealed in the world; under the religion of revelation in general, it sees the Spirit of God revealed in the theocracy and the Scriptures; in the apostolic Christianity, it sees the Son of God in the several miracles of His life; in the primitive church, the unity of the Spirit of Christ and His ordinances.

Yet the consciousness of a distinction and antithesis between the Spirit and the flesh is everywhere present. And because the earthly mind, along this whole line, is inclined to lose the sense of this opposition, and because, in the mass of men, it does actually lose it, the strong distinction becomes a necessity (“It is the Spirit that quickeneth; the flesh profiteth nothing”).

The Old Testament distinguishes between God and the world in opposition to heathenism. Christ distinguishes between the living revelation and outward theocracy and the letter of Scripture, in opposition to Judaism. The Antiochian criticism and the mediæval mysticism distinguish between the spiritual personality of Christ and its several relations and manifestations, against the traditional exegesis. The Reformation distinguishes between the spirit of the true church and its external form; and between the substance and the form of the sacrament.

But these distinctions look to the restoration of the true union. Christ exhibits the true union of God and the world both in His person and in His consciousness (the incarnation of God); Christian theology works out the known synthesis between revelation and Scripture (the word of God in its organic life); sacred criticism aims at a view of the gospel history whose heart and pulse is the personal Christ (religious history is not documentary); evangelical dogmatics seizes the kernel of the true church in the visible church (ideal tradition is not external tradition), and in place of the mediaeval identification of grace and the external sacramental performance it puts, in the Lutheran view which is more fervent for the union, the organic synthesis, and in the Reformed [Calvinistic] view which is more careful of the distinction, the symbolical synthesis (inseparableness of word and sacrament).

Hence it follows that the dangers of the Lutheran view lie in the direction of confusion, and the dangers of the Reformed view in the direction of separation; and that therefore the two views themselves can have their safest operation only in living synthesis. And the true union, the third and highest step, consists in the recognition of the Spirit as in relation to the flesh, (1) the sole power, (2) a transforming, renewing power, (3) a glorifying power, taking on itself the flesh as its transparent crystal-like organ. Hence, also, Christ here points on to exaltation.

18. Jesus, the heart-searcher in reference, above all, to the faint germs of faith and unbelief.

HOMILETICAL AND PRACTICAL

See the Doctrinal and Ethical reflections.

The flight of Jesus over the sea, and His discourse in the synagogue at Capernaum, a continuation of His victory over the tempter in the wilderness, Matthew 4—The decisive and divisive discourse of the Lord concerning salvation in personal life-union with Himself.—Those who seek salvation in impersonal Christian things with an impersonal conduct, cannot find salvation in the person of the Lord with personal faith.—The hoping of the mere mind in Christ is vain: 1. Vain both in ifs naked form of earthly-mindedness and selfishness and in its sanctimonious dress of chiliastic enthusiasm2. Vain both in its standing and lingering (on the eastern side of the sea), and in its haste and running (to the western shore). 3. Vain whether in its effort to magnify Christianity in secular style (to make Christ king of bread), or in its effort to belittle it according to a worldly standard (to deny its heavenly descent and its heavenly nucleus, the atonement). 4. Vain in its desire to alter Christianity, instead of itself becoming altered by it. Conclusion: Vain, i.e., ruinous.—The true servants and workmen of God, and the true work of God.—The demand of the sensuous and legalistic way of thinking, that Christ should in an Old Testament manner go beyond the Old Testament: Christ should surpass Moses: 1. In miracles of outward benefit (“What dost thou work?”). 2. In requirements of eternal law (“What shall we do?”). 3. In terror of external judgment (as king of the Jews ruling over the heathen).

Verily, verily, not Moses, but the Father in heaven, gives the bread of God.—Christ is the bread of God in His personal divine life, John 6:32-40 : (1) The typical and the true bread of God, John 6:32-33. (2) The false and the true appetite for this bread, John 6:34-38. (3) The liberating and quickening operation of this bread, John 6:39-40.—Christ gives the bread of life in His giving up of His flesh in His atoning death, John 6:41-51 : (1) He gives it not to the murmurers, but to them that are drawn and taught of the Father, John 6:41-47. (2) He gives with it the full partaking of eternal life, John 6:48-50. (3) He gives it in giving Himself, John 6:51. (4) He gives it in giving His flesh for the life of the world, John 6:51.—Christ institutes the meal of life in making His flesh and blood a feast of thank-offering to the world, John 6:52-59 : (1) The offence at the words concerning the flesh of Christ; John 6:52. (2) The heightening of the offence by the fourfold assertion concerning the flesh and blood of Christ, John 6:53-56. (3) The ground of this assertion: the life of Christ in the Father, John 6:57. (4) The conclusion of this assertion, John 6:58-59.—Christ transfigures the meal of life into a meal of the Spirit, John 6:60-65 : (1) By His exaltation, John 6:62. (2) By the sending of the Spirit, John 6:63. (3) By His word, John 6:63. (4) By the excision of unbelievers, John 6:64.

On single sentences: John 6:25. To these Jews the second miracle of Jesus (the walking on the sea) remains a close secret, because they do not recognize the divine sign in the first (the breaking of bread).

John 6:26. “Verily, verily, ye seek Me,” etc. They have seen not the miraculous sign in the feeding, but only the feeding in the miraculous sign.—Thus they are a type of all false friends of religion, who seek not the kingdom of heaven in earthly advantages, but only earthly advantages in the kingdom of heaven.

John 6:27. Christ, who has not where to lay His head, intrusted by God with the official seal which makes Him steward for the whole world.

John 6:28-29. The legalistic Christian thinks he can do works which earn for him the blessing of God; whereas the gospel requires a work in which God is the agent: faith.—Faith is a work of man from God, with God, for God; and for this very reason as much the work of God as it is the highest, freest work of man. The miraculous feeding the seal and sealing of the divine steward.

John 6:30. Ingratitude towards the Lord: how it always forgets the past sign from God, and demands a new one.

John 6:31. How an earthly mind can pervert even the Scripture.—The true bread from heaven can be given to us not by Prayer of Manasseh, but by God alone (the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ).

John 6:33. Marks of the bread of God: 1. It comes down from heaven2. It gives life to the world.

John 6:34. “Lord, evermore give us,” etc.: the vain prayer, to the very face of the Lord: 1. Because it recognizes not the Giver in the bread2. Because it recognizes not the bread of life in the Giver.

John 6:35. The answer of Jesus aims to disclose their spirit (1) by insisting on the figure, the representation of the bread in His person; (2) by enlarging the figure: bread for hunger and thirst; (3) by explaining the figure: Come to me, believe on me.—Christianity the truth and the true sanctification of eating: 1. Making faith an eating2. Making eating faith.

John 6:36. The incapacity of the earthly-minded man to see into the mystery of the divine life. One can see Jesus, the church, her reformers, her great spirits, with the eye, without seeing the spirit, or the glory of the personal life.—They will see and believe things, but they have not seen nor believed His person.

John 6:37. It needs a stirring of the personal life of love descending from God, to see the glory of the personal life in Christ.—Christ draws all divinely chosen and kindred ones into His kingdom, since (1) all that the Father gives Him, come to Him, and (2) none who come to Him, does He cast out.

John 6:38. Him that cometh, etc. He casts out none, because He judges men not by the perfection of their life, but by the dispositions, affinities, and beginnings of it.—As the Spirit attaches Himself everywhere to the work of the Son ( John 14:26; John 16:13), so the Son everywhere to the work of the Father,—Christ aspires not, according to His own will, to an ideal position of life for Himself, but enters, according to the will of His Father, into the historical duty of life. His will is of heavenly purity, and yet His life is a continual sacrifice of His will.

John 6:38-40. The gracious will of the Father: 1. In regard to the Redeemer2. In regard to those to be redeemed and those redeemed3. In regard to the way of redemption.—The purpose of the Father in Christ: 1. What it forbids ( John 6:39 : “lose nothing”). 2. What it enjoins ( John 6:40).—Thus He is in both views the bread of life: 1. Redeeming from death2. Imparting eternal life.—The unfolding of personal life in redemption: 1. In the first phase of redemption (in John 6:39) personality is but feebly developed; the needy life is spoken of (in the neuter), which is in danger of being lost; in the next phase (in John 6:40), we have no longer the mere rescue from destruction, but the conferring of the highest life; and here personality comes clearly to view2. In the first case redemption has to do with lost men in the mass; in the second, with individuals3. There the redeemed one is comparatively passive; here he is an active person, turned to the Redeemer, finding life in the beholding of His life4. There redemption bears chiefly the impress of divine predestination; here it takes that of human freedom.—The gracious operations of Christ go on to glorious completion in the last day.—The greatness of the promise of a new, infinite fulness and freshness of life at the end of the world.—How often the Lord points forward to the completion of His work at the last day.

John 6:41. “The Jews then murmured:” The characteristics of the illiberal partisan spirit: 1. They murmured2. They murmured to one another3. They murmured against the Lord and His word.

John 6:42. The old and ever new offence at the words of Christ respecting His heavenly origin: 1. Because He is from Nazareth, He cannot be from heaven2. Because He is the Son of Prayer of Manasseh, He cannot be the Son of God.—The sinful world’s condemnation of itself in its sundering of the divine and human natures in Christ.—The deceptions of vulgar conceit in matters of the Spirit1. The people think they know Him, because they know His parents2. They think they know His origin, because they know His foster-father3. They think they know His mother, because they know her poverty and lowliness. Comp. John 7:27; Matthew 13:55.

John 6:43-44. “Murmur not among yourselves:” the drawing of partisan spirit a drawing of the earth, against the drawing of the Father from heaven.—The drawing of the Father to the Son.

John 6:45. As one must first be a believer, to become a true disciple of God, so must one, in another view, be first taught of God, in order to become a believer.

John 6:46. The revealing of God, as it was the peculiar property of Christ, is above every experience of God in sinful men. Comp. John 1:18.—We begin the new life by hearing an obscure word (see Genesis 12:1); He has seen from eternity the face of the Father.

John 6:47. “He that believeth on me, hath,” etc.

John 6:48. Christ the bread of life: (1) The bread as life. (2) The life as bread: (a) the true manna; therefore (b) the bread of God, bread of heaven, bread of life.—The true bread to be known especially by the fact that it gives itself.—It is the nature of a loving personality, to give itself.—He gives Himself, as the Father has given Him.—He gives His only life to death, to awaken the world out of death to life. While He was dead, the life of the world hung on the single seed and glowing spark of His life, which broke forth for the resurrection and Revelation -animation of the world.

John 6:52. They wonder that they should eat His flesh; then Ho speaks of eating His flesh and blood.—Christ the true paschal lamb ( 1 Corinthians 5:7).

John 6:53-56. The four great asseverations of the Lord concerning the eating of His flesh and the drinking of His blood. See above.—The appropriation of the historical personality of Christ in its vital, heavenly operation by means of Christ’s historical ordinance.—How Christ still gives Himself even now in His flesh and blood, in His full human form and His entire heavenly nature, to be eaten by men.—How the eating of the flesh and blood of Christ is effected: 1. Through His word, particularly His history2. Through His sacraments, particularly the sacrament of His body and blood.—In ourselves also Christianity must in a holy sense, become flesh and blood.—How Christ does away the opposition between the spiritual and the bodily in His kingdom: 1. Corporealizing the spiritual (word in sacrament, gospel in church). 2. Spiritualizing the bodily (members into instruments of righteousness, the world into His Father’s house).

John 6:57. As Christ lives by the Father, we should live by Him.—He who lives in Christ, stands at the focus of eternal rejuvenation.

John 6:58. All who have lived only under the law and in symbols, have eaten manna and are dead. Most have died under heavy judgments, Hebrews 3:17. Comp. the history of the mediæval church (Corpus Christi, festivals, battle-fields, the plague).

John 6:59. The wonderful sermon of Christ on the bread of life delivered in the synagogue of the Jews at Capernaum.

John 6:60. The grandest living word of Christ, a hard saying to the Jewish mind.

John 6:61. Offence at the word of salvation.

John 6:62. How that which is dark and enigmatical in the humiliation of Christ is cleared up by His exaltation.

John 6:63. “It is the Spirit,” etc.

John 6:64. The words of Christ as spirit and life, and as a type of His whole administration. The spirit and life hidden from unbelievers, even when they gush with spirituality and vitality.—Christ knows the beginnings of unbelief as well as of faith.

Starke. John 6:26. Hedinger: Self-interest may lurk under the holiest works.—Zeisius: O how subtle a poison is selfishness!

John 6:29. Quesnel: The great work of God in us is the work of a living faith which works by love.

John 6:32. Majus: Christ the most precious gift of God, in which and with which are given to us all things. Romans 8:32.

John 6:33. Quesnel: O Bread of God, thou art life indeed, true life, eternal life, life of body and of soul, life not of one people only, but of all nations!

John 6:35. Canstein: Not only in His person is Christ the life, but from Him life goes forth to all men; natural life, since He is the Word of the Father, Genesis 1:3; Acts 17:28; the life of righteousness in His believing ones before the judgment seat of God, Romans 8:10; spiritual life in regeneration, 1 Peter 1:23; and eternal life, inasmuch as all the glory of believers not only comes from Him, but also consists in their partaking of Him and in His being all in all to them.—Osiander: No temporal possessions and bodily pleasure can truly satisfy and quicken the heart; nothing but Christ.

John 6:37. Quesnel: Pastors after the example of the chief Shepherd, should receive all whom God sends to them, and labor for their salvation.—So surely as Christ did not suffer in vain, so surely shall no penitent be cast out.—Jesus not only does not cast out a penitent sinner, but will also lead him into His inmost sanctuary.

John 6:39. Romans 8:31. What belongs to Christ, though esteemed lost in the eye of the world, is not therefore lost in truth; in the resurrection of the dead all shall come together again in universal joy.

John 6:41. Here we find the counterpart of the murmuring of the Israelites in the wilderness, where they were fed with manna. Here the Jews murmur against the true manna.—Hedinger: Reason stumbles at divine teaching, 1 Corinthians 1:18; 1 Corinthians 1:23-24.

John 6:42. Jesus, subjected to great contempt. If thou, dear Christian, art now thought meanly of, thou art like the Saviour, and thou shalt be honored for it forever.

John 6:44. The drawing of God is not a drawing by force, yet it is a drawing with power. Augustine: “Ramum ostendis ovi et trahis illam. Nuces puero demonstrantur, et trahitur, etc. Trahit sua quemque voluptas. Quomodo non traheret revelatus Christus a patre. Ergo tractio illa non fit violenter sed mediate.” Philippians 2:13.

John 6:45. Zeisius: Every one who comes to Christ by faith is taught of God.—Hearing, learning of the Father, and coming, are intimately joined together.—The Holy Ghost teaches in experience as in His own school.

John 6:47. The spiritual life of faith is a beginning of the eternal life which consists in vision.

John 6:48. If thou art full of the most costly dainties, and hast not eaten of the bread of life, thou wilt soon be hungry enough, and must be hungry forever.

John 6:49. John 6:31 has “our Father;” here the our is changed with design into “your.”—He means by it not all the fathers; for the believing received a spiritual food ( 1 Corinthians 10:3); but the unbelieving whose footsteps they were following, Matthew 23:32 : 1 Corinthians 10:5.—If we do not rightly use the riches of God’s goodness, we incur the heavier judgment.

John 6:57. Lampe: The power which gives heavenly food to the inward Prayer of Manasseh, must be applied to walking in the way of the Lord, and earnestly carrying forward His work.—Gossner: The weightiest and highest truths, which most quicken and comfort the faithful, confound the ungodly.

Braune: The sacrament, which did not exist till after the institution, is not intended here; but, as in the conversation with Nicodemus we have the idea of baptism, so here we have the idea of the Lord’s Supper.—Before His resurrection His Spirit was hidden under the flesh; but since the resurrection the Spirit so pervades and advances the flesh that it now can make good everything He here says of it. So may it be said of our eye: What is hidden in the little bit of flesh? (Then follows a contrast between the living eye and the dead.)—Lisco: 1. Jesus enjoins laboring for the imperishable meat, John 6:25-31. (a) He rebukes the earthly mind, John 6:25-26; (b) He exhorts to labor for the imperishable food, John 6:27; (c) He points out that the labor is faith, John 6:28-29. 2. Jesus Himself is the true bread of life ( John 6:30-31), John 6:32-40, etc.—Gerlach: All earthly food only nourishes here below the perishable life, and perishes with it; but as the man whom it is given to nourish, does not perish, it points to and produces hunger for an imperishable food for his immortal spirit.—The manna was primarily only an earthly food, etc.; though it was certainly an emblem of the nourishing, fostering faithfulness of God, a pledge of grace, a sacrament in a certain sense, 1 Corinthians 10:3. However since it primarily nourished only the body, while in virtue of the nature of this nourishing it gave food to the spirit, etc., Christ could contrast it with the true bread of heaven.—On John 6:37 (Luther): This is spoken after the manner of the Scriptures, which, where they deny, do in the very strongest manner assert; when Christ says: “I will in nowise cast out,” it is as if He said: I will receive with joy; and this depicts as well His willing and hearty obedience to the Father, as His most precious love.—The word flesh in the New Testament is never equivalent to the word body. The former signifies primarily the mass, the substance, of which the earthly body distinctively consists; the latter, the skilfully constructed whole.—This discourse also explains the double form of the Holy Supper, and shows how those who withhold the cup from the laity, deprive them of their free personal communion with Christ (the spiritual priesthood, 1 Peter 2:5; 1 Peter 2:9; Revelation 1:6), and so far as in them lies, reduce the laity to a general mass of Christian people governed by a few full members of the Lord.

Heubner: False love to Jesus may be (1) sensuous, sentimental; (2) selfish; (3) hypocritical; (4) ostentatious, ambitious.—The earthly mind and love to Jesus are absolutely incompatible.—Contrast between Moses and Christ.—Moses could not communicate inward spiritual life.

John 6:36. O, to think of the theologians who have been occupied for years with the New Testament, yet have no love to Jesus,—what ossified hack souls^[FN84] they must be!—The nearer Christ comes to the heart, the more life, love, light.

John 6:37. The gospel of Christ is a message of salvation to all.

John 6:43. Unbelief has infectious power.

John 6:45. A more particular explanation of the drawing. Being taught of God. The phrase eating and drinking frequent among the Jews for spiritual enjoyment (see Lightfoot, etc.)—Besser, John 6:30 : They degrade the “believe on him,” to a “believe thee.”

John 6:38-40. Chemnitz calls attention to the terms in this discourse, seeing ( John 6:36), beholding [the “seeing” of John 6:40], believing, and eating and drinking,—as denoting so many steps of faith: 1. Historical knowledge (notitia). 2. Hearty assent (assensus) 3. Trusting (fiducia). 4. Personal appropriation (applcatio). Schleiermacher: They were quite mistaken in looking upon the manna miracle of Moses as one which had been to their fathers a ground of faith in the mission of Moses. The first thing with which the Lord consoles Himself, (over their unbelief), is His great, indomitable long-suffering.—The Lord’s invitation to vital union with Him.

[Christ the source of spiritual and eternal life1. Natural life in the plant, the animal, and in man; its character, pleasures, miseries, vanity and death; 2. Spiritual life, its origin, character, development, and final consummation in the resurrection to glory everlasting. Augustine [Tract. in Joh. xxvi13. Tom. iii499): O sacramentum pietatis, o signum unitatis, o vinculum caritatis! Qui vult vivere, habet ubi vivat, habet unde vivat. Accedat, credat, incorporetur ut vivificetur.—Ibid. (iii501): Hoc est ergo manducare illam escam, et illum bibere potum, in Christo manere, et illum manentem in se habere. ( John 6:57.)—Burkitt ( John 6:51-59). Carnal persons put a carnal sense upon Christ’s spiritual words, and so occasion their own stumbling.—Learn, 1. That the Lord Jesus Christ is the true spiritual food for all believers; 2. That those and those only who feed upon Him by faith, shall obtain a life of grace and glory from Him.—Ibid. If the passage be understood of the sacramental eating and drinking (which Burkitt rejects), then woe to the Church of Rome for denying the cup to the laity.—As meat is turned into the eater’s substance, so believers and Christ become one; and by feeding on Him, i.e., by believing on Him, there follows a mutual inhabitation; Christ dwells in them, and they in Him.—P. S.]

Verses 66-71

III

Apostacy Of Many Disciples. Incipient Treason In The Circle Of The Twelve. Confession Of Peter

John 6:66-71

66From that time [upon this]^[FN85] many of His disciples went back, and walked no 67 more with him. Then [Therefore] said Jesus unto the twelve, Will ye also [do ye 68 also wish to] go away? Then [omit Then]^[FN86] Simon Peter answered him, Lord, to whom shall we go [go away, ὰπελευσόμεθα]? thou hast the [omit the] words of eternal life 69 And we believe and are sure [we have believed and have known] that thou art that Christ [the Christ],^[FN87] the Son of the living God [the Holy One of God].^[FN88] 70Jesus answered them, Have not I chosen you twelve, [Did I not choose 71 you the twelve?] and one of you is a devil? [!] He spake of Judas Iscariot the son of Simon [Judas, the son of Simon Iscariot]John ^[FN89]: for he it was [it was he] that should [was about to] betray him, being^[FN90] one of the twelve.