John

Chapter 6

This chapter is considered by some to be one of the most difficult to understand. This is the chapter where Jesus talked about eating his flesh and drinking his blood. It was hard to hear then, and it is hard to hear now.

Please look at the frequency of words used in John chapter 6.  The word that is most frequently used is bread; it occurs 17 times in the King James. The Greek word for bread is also translated as loaves when it is found in the plural. The combination of bread and loaves is used 21 times. Is it a coincidence that Jesus is also found 21 times? Could there be a chiasm here?

A chiasm occurs when a word or phrase is repeated a number of times. The focal point of the chiasm is the middle instance of the word or phrase. The focal point of this chiasm, if you consider the instances of the Greek word which includes both bread and loaves, lands us on verse 33: For the bread of God is he which cometh down from heaven, and giveth life unto the world. It is not a mystery that Jesus is the one who came down from heaven. The question remains, however: what is going on here?

Observation: Jesus used parables to shed light on the kingdom of heaven. His parables generally take something familiar, something that we could all relate to, and use it as an example. The kingdom of heaven is like … Sometimes, however, there was nothing that could fill the bill; some things in the kingdom of heaven have no analog that Jesus could relate to. This chapter deals with one such case. 

Jesus fed the five thousand to manufacture an experience that he could use to shed light on the kingdom of heaven. I am confident of this because in John 6:32, Jesus talks about the true bread from heaven. The Greek word for truth is aletheia. This word starts with an alpha, a negative particle, which serves to negate the remainder of the word. Thus, you do not know what truth is until you know what it is not. The root of the remainder of the word is lanthano. When you see where lanthano is used in scripture, it is translated into English as hid, hidden, unawares, or ignorant. The opposite of truth is not false but hidden. Truth means to unhide or reveal something that was previously hidden. This bread is the true bread because it reveals the mystery that had been hidden for ages and generations. What had been hidden was present in the Old Testament, but only came to light with Jesus Christ, the true light that revealed everything to the world. He was the light of the world. Jesus was the truth because when you saw him, you saw the Father. And when you saw how he operated, you saw the kingdom of heaven.

John 6 ties the feeding of the five thousand to manna in the Old Testament. After they had witnessed the feeding of the five thousand, they were persistent that he should give them a repeat performance. In John 6:30, they ask him a question. Whenever Jesus perceived a question was designed to trap him, he would always answer with a question. In this case, however, his response to their question was not a question. He got right to it by tying the feeding of the five thousand to manna in the wilderness, which provided further insight into the kingdom of heaven.

What is the characteristic of the kingdom of heaven that had no equivalent in our natural experiences? In the kingdom of heaven, when it comes to grace, you can end up with way more than what you started with. Grace generates more grace. Although grace can be found in the Old Testament, it is difficult to understand what grace is without context from the New Testament.

Jesus said, As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you. Then he gave the New Commandment, As I have loved you, love one another. The bread that came down from heaven is the love that originated with the Father, was distributed to his Son, is passed to us, and then we are to forward pass it to one another. Each passing of the love is transacted by the Holy Spirit, and each time it is passed, it can be multiplied many times over; when he loves me once, I have the opportunity to love many others as he loved me, not just one another. Since the love is enacted by the Holy Spirit, it is divine love. This divine love is called grace. The thing about love is that when you give it away, your supply of love is not diminished.

When you look up the definition of grace, you find many definitions, depending on the context, but each definition offered is only an attribute of grace, not the entity. I am a father, a husband, an engineer, a friend, a Christian, etc., but none of these define me. I exist in many contexts, but I am the same person in all contexts. Grace is like that. Grace is divine love, and it is found in many contexts.

When you receive divine love, a law is written upon your heart (I will write my laws on your heart.) Laws come from commandments, and Jesus’ commandment was to love one another as I have loved you. The essential characteristic of this commandment is that there is no law until he loves you. When he loves you, a law is written on the tables of your heart, your account. Grace is at risk until it is secured by the fulfilling of that law.

When you love one another as you have been loved, the righteousness of the law is fulfilled in you. When you are loved, it is the Holy Spirit that does the work. If you love as you have been loved, you work together with the Holy Spirit to fulfill the law, just like when you were loved. It is His strength, your resources, His purpose, credited to your account. This love is grace, so we see that grace is the law written on your heart, it is also the righteousness of the law fulfilled in you. It is also recognized as fruit, and joy, it is forgiveness and mercy and more. In a word, grace is amazing. And the most amazing thing about grace is that even God considers it amazing. He works diligently so that none of it is lost.

The Old Testament gave no reason why the manna would only last one day, but this attribute of manna gives us insight into the kingdom of heaven. A deep dive on John 6 brings this to light, however, and this is where the New Testament offers context. When you put both New Testament and Old Testament together, you gain understanding that cannot be had without considering both.

So why did the manna spoil the next day? Collection of the manna corresponds to being loved by Jesus. As we gather grace, basking in the love of the Holy Spirit, laws accrue in the laws column on the table of our heart. Eating the manna corresponds to fulfilling the law, which corresponds to loving one another as you have been loved. At the end of the day, the manna that was found uneaten is spoiled. On judgment day, unfulfilled laws are consumed by the fire that is used to test them.

In the parable of the talents, the servant who failed to gain a talent forfeited that talent. Salvation is not the absence of sin, but the presence of righteousness. The Greek word for righteousness contains the Greek word for justification.

We are saved by the righteousness of Christ. The work of the Spirit of Christ in us is Christ’s righteousness credited to our account. On that day we will be judged according to what was done in the body. By the way, the Greek word for sin also begins with a negative particle and can only be understood by knowing what it is not. Sin is what we do apart from God, whether it looks good or not. It has its roots in the tree of the knowledge of good AND evil.

Considering Jesus’ controversial statement about eating his flesh and drinking his blood, I suggest that salvation involves a multistep process (Romans 4:12.)  The first step is to have your account purged of sin. That involves a blood sacrifice (Hebrews 9:22), hence drinking his blood. When you accept Jesus’ death to purge your account of sin, your account is cleared of sins of the past (Romans 3:25.) The next step is to get out from under the law so that sins will no longer be credited to your account. Death is required for this step (Romans 7:1) – I recommend baptism which prepackages death and resurrection. Baptism is not necessary for salvation, but death is necessary to get out from under the law. 

At this point you have a clean account that is sustainable; sins have been cleared and new sins will not be remembered; sins will no longer credited to your account. Salvation is not complete at this point, however, as justification is not the absence of sin but the presence of righteousness. Just compare the Greek for the two words: justify and righteousness: one contains the other. If salvation was secured at this point, none of the servants in the parable of the talents would have been cast into outer darkness; none of the individuals that showed up at the wedding without wedding garments would have been evicted.

There are two steps left They deal with the New Commandment: love one another as I have loved you. The next step is to receive his love, and the final step is to love one another as you have been loved. This final step, I would say, is the eating of the flesh, the bread of life. 

When Jesus was loved by the Father, it was enacted by the Holy Spirit. When Jesus loves you, it is enacted by the Holy Spirit. When you love one another as you have been loved, it is enacted by the Holy Spirit. One example of this divine love originating with the Father is the conception of his Son in the womb of Mary; that was the Father’s first act of love toward the Son that brought him to earth. Clearly this act was done by the Holy Spirit. Jesus extended that love to you, he conceived you, which we call being born again, by the Holy Spirit. You are to extend that love to one another by sharing the gospel, and that conception is also enacted by the Holy Spirit. This is only one example of divine love, there are many others.

Back to the parable of the talents: the servants were not justified by receiving the talents. They were justified when they gained their first talent. This is called the first fruit and that is why it is significant; your talent is secured by the first fruit derived from that talent. Though you receive grace as a servant of God, you are not justified until you continue in that love by loving one another. The thief on the cross received divine revelation that Jesus was the Son of God, and only had moments to pass on that revelation to others. He received that one talent, but it was multiplied many times over, and continues to this day as his testimony was recorded and continues to be read in the scriptures.

^{Philippians 1:6}Being confident of this very thing, that he which hath begun a good work in you will perform [it] until the day of Jesus Christ:

That thief continues to accrue talents for his one statement, as the Holy Spirit continues to touch peoples lives until the day of Jesus Christ. This illustrates the power of a legacy. You have limited time on earth to accrue grace while you are alive, but your legacy can continue until the day of the Lord.

Back to the chiasm. The focal point of the chiasm is verse 33 where Jesus is the bread who came down from heaven. That is the point of John 6. The context for understanding John 6 is derived partly from the Old Testament and partly from the New.

Jesus used parables to describe to us something about the kingdom of God. In the instant of the feeding of the five thousand, it illustrated the divine love that originated from the Father, was passed to the Son, then to his disciples, and finally to one another. The Father used a boy to give Jesus five loaves; that was the love of the Father. Jesus distributed the loaves to his disciples: as the Father has loved me, so have I loved you. Jesus instructed the disciples to distribute the bread to the masses; as I have loved you, love one another. The thing about love is that when you give it away, your supply is not diminished.

Each loaf fed a thousand, yet there were twelve baskets full of bread that had remained uneaten. That illustrated the love that had been received but not passed on to one another. The bread that was collected at the end was the uneaten manna that would be spoiled the next day. In the analogy of the parable of the talents, the uneaten bread represented the talents that were given but not gained, the talents that would be forfeited, the works that would be consumed by fire when they were tested.

In the parable of the talents, the talent forfeited by the one-talent servant was not destroyed, but given to the servant that had gained five talents. I believe this talent was not given to another servant at random, but returned to the servant who had given it. In the feeding of the five thousand, bread was given to each of the disciples to be distributed. Bread that was not eaten was collected by each of the twelve disciples; it was returned to the disciple from which it came. When you are loved by the Lord and love someone with that love, if that person fails to pass the love forward, it is returned to you. The love you receive is a talent from the Lord. You gain a talent by continuing in that love, passing it to another. If that person fails to gain a talent, that talent is returned to you as your inheritance.

^{Ephesians 1:10}That in the dispensation of the fulness of times he might gather together in one all things in Christ, both which are in heaven, and which are on earth; [even] in him:

The dispensation is the administrative duties performed by the Holy Spirit, recording all things in the hearts of the Lord’s servants. This is done so that, in the end, all things can be gathered together and sorted out. Grace is dispensed by the Holy Spirit. We think of dispensations as periods of time. The Greek word means administration of house duties.

^{2 Corinthians 5:10}For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ; that every one may receive the things [done] in [his] body, according to that he hath done, whether [it be] good or bad.

On that day we will receive our inheritance, the things done in the body.