22. THE day following, when the people which stood on the other side of the sea saw that there was none other boat there, save that one whereinto his disciples were entered, and that Jesus went not with his disciples into the boat, but that his disciples 23 were gone away alone (howbeit there came other boats from Tiberias nigh unto the 24 place where they did eat bread, after that the Lord had given thanks): when the people therefore saw that Jesus was not there, neither his disciples, they also took shipping, and came to Capernaum, seeking for Jesus. 25 And when they had found him on the other side of the sea, they said unto him, 26 Rabbi, when camest thou hither? Jesus answered them and said, Verily, verily, I say 27 unto you, Ye seek me, not because ye saw the miracles, but because ye did eat of the loaves, and were filled. Labour not for the meat which perisheth, but for that meat which endureth unto everlasting life, which the Son of man shall give unto you: for him hath God the Father sealed. 28 Then said they unto him, What shall we do, that we might work the works of God? 29 Jesus answered and said unto them, This is the work of God, that ye believe on him 30 whom he hath sent. They said therefore unto him, What sign showest thou then, that 31 we may see, and believe thee? What dost thou work? Our fathers did eat manna in 32 the desert; as it is written, He gave them bread from heaven to eat. Then Jesus said unto them, Verily, verily, I say unto you, Moses gave you not that bread from 33 heaven; but my Father giveth you the true bread from heaven. For the bread of God 34 is he which cometh down from heaven, and giveth life unto the world. Then said they unto him, Lord, evermore give us this bread. 35 And Jesus said unto them, I am the bread of life: he that cometh to me, shall never 36 hunger; and he that believeth on me, shall never thirst. But I said unto you, That ye 37 also have seen me, and believe not. All that the Father giveth me, shall come to me; 38 and him that cometh to me, I will in no wise cast out. For I came down from heaven, 39 not to do mine own will, but the will of him that sent me. And this is the Father’s will which hath sent me, that of all which he hath given me, I should lose nothing, 40 but should raise it up again at the last day. And this is the will of him that sent me, that every one which seeth the Son, and believeth on him, may have everlasting life: and I will raise him up at the last day.

CHRISTIANITY, let us remember, is from first to last a divine movement in our behalf. It is an offer, promise, compassion, help, redemption. Love for us was the motive, sacrifice for us the means, and an opportunity to pour out into receptive and willing hearts the same infinite and everlasting affection is the end. Christianity does not expect of us to be perfect people first, in order that we may be entitled to salvation, nor Christians first, in order that we may earn Christ for a Saviour; but quite the opposite thing—that we should believe we have a Saviour in order to be consciously saved; and that we should know the needful way to be already opened, that we may walk in it by the attraction of our Leader’s spirit. Every miracle the Saviour wrought on earth, every sentence he spoke, every pain he bore, is a new ground of assured comfort for every soul that has once come heartily to him confessing, “I believe; help thou mine unbelief;” or asking, “What shall I do that I might work the works of God?” Hear his explicit answer: “This is the work of God, that ye should believe on him whom he hath sent.” “Whosoever believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live.” “Him that cometh to me I will in no wise cast out.” “No man shall pluck them out of my hand.” F. D. H.

22-71. Never before had there appeared to be so great an interest in his teaching, or so large a measure of faith in his healing power. But behind this show of things Jesus saw that there was no readiness to receive him in his highest character and office. Some were prepared to acknowledge him as Elias, or one of the prophets; others, like the multitude on the lake-side, to take him by force and make him a king; but the notions of all alike concerning him and his mission were narrow, selfish, unspiritual. It is at this very culminating point of his apparent popularity, that Jesus begins to speak and act as if the hope were gone of other and higher notions of himself and of the kingdom of God being entertained by the nation at large. Hitherto he had spoken much about that kingdom, and but little about himself; leaving his place therein to be inferred from what he said and did. He had spoken much about the dispositions that were to be cultivated, the duties that were to be done, the trials that were to be borne, the blessedness that was to be enjoyed by those admitted into the kingdom, but he had said little or nothing of the one living spring of light and life within that kingdom, giving to it its being, character, and strength. He had never once hinted at his own approaching death as needful to its establishment—as laying, in fact, the foundation upon which it was to rest; nor had he spoken of the singular ties by which all its subjects were to be united personally to him. Now for the first time in public he alludes to his death, in a way that assigned to it its true place in our redemption. Now for the first time he speaks openly of what he is to all who are saved; proclaiming a supreme attachment to himself, an entire and exclusive dependence on himself, a vital union with himself, to be the essential characteristic of all true subjects of that kingdom which he came down from heaven to set up on earth. H.

22. The people, on the other side.** Those who had remained on the east coast overnight. In the 25th verse, the “other side” is the west bank. A.—23. Our Lord does not appear to have entered Tiberias on any occasion. The reasons suggested for this are that it was full of foreigners, while he came “first to the lost sheep of the house of Israel;” and that Tiberias was built partly upon ground occupied by ancient sepulchres, and to enter this place would have made him ceremonially “unclean.” J. M.

26. “Rabbi, when didst thou get hither?” is the expression of their natural surprise; but it is met with perfect silence. The miracle of walking on the water was one of necessity and mercy; it in no way concerned them; it was not in any way intended for them; nor was it mainly or essentially as a worker of miracles that Christ wished to claim their allegiance or convince their minds. Therefore, reading their hearts, knowing that they were seeking him in the very spirit which he most disliked, he quietly drew aside the veil of perhaps half-unconscious hypocrisy which hid them from themselves, and reproached them for seeking him only for what they could get from him—“not because ye saw signs, but because ye ate of the loaves and were satisfied.” F.—If thus it was with them, how should the Lord have walked upon the sea before their eyes, or have now confided to them the way of his coming thither? Their mind was filled with the loaves in recollection of their meal the day before, and not with the sign. They had been filled—that was enough for them; they felt no hunger in their souls for that food whose sign they had eaten in the loaves, that true meat which endureth unto eternal life. R. B.

27. The miracle could produce no faith in those who were destitute of a spiritual mind; their enthusiasm, carnally excited, was soon to pass over into opposition. A process of sifting was to take place, and the discourse which Christ uttered was intended to bring it on. They questioned him; but, instead of replying, he entered at once upon a rebuke of their carnal temper: “Ye seek me, not because the sign of my divine working, which ye saw, has led you to me as the Son of God, who alone can supply your spiritual wants; but only because I have appeased your bodily appetite. Strive not for perishable, but eternal food, imparting eternal life, which the Son of man will bestow; God has sealed him to this by miracles wrought before your eyes, in attestation of his divine calling.” N.—It is, to be sure, a meat which is given thee: “which the Son of man shall give unto you;” but yet thou must strive after it, if thou wouldest possess it. Hungering and eating, coming and believing, that belongs to the laboring by which thou must procure this food for thyself. The Son of man can and will give this food, he alone, “for him hath God the Father sealed.” R. B.—This sealing is not to be understood merely of miracles, but of the stamp of divinity which was impressed upon his whole life and teaching. Stier.

28. Teach us what are “the works” of God. This was the spirit of their time and country. To them, as well as the Pharisees, their models, morality was composed of a greater or smaller number of practices and observances; and the difficulty was to know them all, in order not to neglect any, even in their slightest details. Work after work, nothing but works, namely, those external acts which the hand does and the eye sees. Such to them was the spirit of morality; such to the best of them was virtue. A. V.

29. They had asked after works: Jesus calls that through which the food of eternal life is labored for, a work, viz., faith in his name. It is God who works in us the work which we must do, namely, that we believe on him whom he hath sent to be our salvation and our life, and has sealed as his Christ. R. B.—First give glory to God by receiving him whom he hath sent. When you inquire as to honoring him by your works, do not begin to dishonor him by your unbelief. How can you do the works of God when you shut the doors of your hearts against him who speaks in his name? First open your eyes, believe in the Messenger of God, believe in God himself; this is the work which must be done first; the other you will not do before. A. V.—They expected him to prescribe new religious duties; but, instead of this, he led them back to the one work: “Believe on him whom God hath sent.” With this faith everything is given. N.

30. What dost thou work? The day previous these men had declared themselves fully satisfied respecting the divine mission of Jesus as the Messiah; and had he consented to become their king, and exerted his miraculous powers in accomplishing the work which they expected the Messiah to perform, they would have demanded no further evidence of his divine mission. J. B.

31. Our fathers did eat manna. The Jews first suggested the manna which their fathers ate in the desert—an illustration which Jesus subsequently resumed twice (49, 58). We may suppose the course of their thought to have been on this wise: He bids us work for bread that endures unto everlasting life, and speaks of giving it to us himself and of coming down from heaven, sealed of God. But our fathers had bread from heaven, and yet it did not endure unto everlasting life. Would he pretend to have anything better than that? So the woman of Samaria could not see how Jesus could have any better water than that of Jacob’s well. H. C.

32. The Lord’s king-like: “Verily, verily, I say unto you,” is the answer to the appeal which the Jews made to Scripture: “As it is written.” In the manna which your fathers ate in the wilderness, nothing has been given you, which could feed you unto everlasting life. But now the true bread from heaven is at hand, which my Father gives you—gives you, for he gives it to be the life of the whole world. R. B.—Moses gave you. They have not mentioned Moses, nor was the giving of the manna a miracle performed by Moses; but he knew that the comparison between Moses and himself was in their minds, and answers by exposing the error which represented Moses as the giver of the manna. Neither again was that the true bread from heaven. It was in one sense bread from heaven; but not in this sense. It was a type and shadow of the true bread from heaven. Our Lord does not here deny but asserts the miraculous character of the manna. 33. Is he. It should be is that. Not till verse 35 does Jesus first say “I am the bread of life.” The manna is still kept in view. A.—Giveth life. That the life of the incarnate Son of God is our life, and the means whereby it becomes so; that the being who has forever life in himself, gives life to the world, and the means whereby he does so—this is what the Lord proclaims to us in this gracious discourse on the bread of life. R. B.

34. Give us this bread. The Jews understand this bread, as the Samaritan woman understood the water, to be some miraculous kind of sustenance which would bestow life everlasting. A.—35. I am. Every time that these deaf hearers of his words of love and life interrupt him, he reveals with a brighter light his glory as our Jesus, and draws nearer and nearer to their hearts. Where else wouldst thou find this diligence of love, this unwearied patience, this condescending forbearance, except with the Shepherd whose delight it is to seek those who are lost? From this point onward, the Lord uses the first person; he speaks of I, My, Me. More and more urgently does he seek to lay hold on them, if perchance they would acknowledge him and come to him. Coming and believing: on that the Lord’s discourse now immediately dwells. R. B.

The bread of life. This bread, like the water described to the woman of Samaria, forever satisfies; it meets the great moral want in man’s soul, perfectly and forever. “He that cometh to” Jesus does in that act eat this life-giving bread; just as “believing” on him is equivalent to drinking the waters of life. H. C.—36. Ye have seen the true bread from heaven, the sign greater than the manna, even me myself: and yet have not believed. A.—I am myself the sign which ye were desiring to see (verse 30); but ye hunger not after the bread of life, and therefore ye believe not that I am the bread of life. R. B.

37. The language of the two clauses should be carefully noticed. They who “shall come to Christ” are “that whole thing” which the Father gives. But it is “each individual man” that comes, of whom Jesus says, “I will in no wise cast him out.” To “cast out of the synagogue,” to “cut off from the congregation of Israel,” to “shut out of the camp,” were ideas with which all Jews were familiar. J. C. R.—I will in no wise cast out. Let no one be deterred by the fear that he is not one of those who are “given to Jesus” by the Father. Let him settle that question in his own favor by coming to Jesus at once, with all his heart, not as worthy, but as one invited and made welcome. This assurance—the coming one never cast out—was put by the Master in the very best place possible. H. C.

Whatever changes may take place in us, whatever sins and backslidings and fearful imaginings of unpardonable guilt, there, written in the Rock of Ages forever, stand the words, “Him that cometh unto me, I will in no wise cast out.” Ker.—For this word have innumerable Christians already on bended knees given thanks to their Lord and Saviour; they have pleaded it to him when they have come laden with guilt, and with many unperformed vows—void of heavenly goods—full of earthly burdens—destitute of all fervor of spirit—feeble and lame of wing—bringing with them nothing, nothing but sin—nothing but this corrupt, cowering, backsliding heart! Thou hast said, O Lord, Him that cometh to me I will in no wise cast out. I cannot understand how thou canst love and receive such an one as I am, but I throw myself upon thy word—I come as only I can come; my Jesus receives sinners! Luther.

39. All the Father giveth. Let fearful and faint-hearted believers remember that if they come to Christ by faith, they have been “given” to Christ by the Father; and if given, it is the Father’s will that they should never be cast away. J. C. R.—39, 40. The class referred to is described in one verse as given to Jesus by the Father; in the other, as seeing the Son and believing on him. The first puts into the foreground the agency of God; the second, the agency of man. That the class is in each case identically the same cannot be doubted. They may be described in either of these two ways—either as given by the Father to the Son; or as seeing the Son and believing in him. The certainty of ultimate salvation for all who fall within these descriptive terms is the main point specially affirmed here. H. C.—Though he does speak of it as a sublime certainty which men’s refusals cannot frustrate, he speaks of that certainty as taking effect only by men’s voluntary advances to him and acceptance of him—“Him that cometh to me.” B.

40. For our strong consolation against the last enemy, the Lord repeats over and over again (four times in this chapter) with the clear note of triumph, “I will raise him up at the last day.” This is his promise, who, as a conqueror, was to bring his own body forth out of death, which he did in his joyful resurrection. R. B.

Section 69.—Eternal Life by feeding on Christ. Defection.

Capernaum.

41. THE Jews then murmured at him, because he said, I am the bread which came down from heaven. And they said, Is not this Jesus the son of Joseph, whose father and mother we know? how is it then that he saith, I came down from heaven? Jesus therefore answered and said unto them, Murmur not among yourselves. No man can come to me, except the Father which hath sent me draw him: and I will raise him up at the last day. It is written in the prophets. And they shall be all taught of God. Every man therefore that hath heard, and hath learned of the Father, cometh unto me.

46. Not that any man hath seen the Father, save he which is of God, he hath seen the 47 Father. Verily, verily, I say unto you, He that believeth on me hath everlasting life. 48, 49 I am that bread of life. Your fathers did eat manna in the wilderness, and are dead. 50 This is the bread which cometh down from heaven, that a man may eat thereof, and 51 not die. I am the living bread which came down from heaven: if any man eat of this bread, he shall live for ever. And the bread that I will give is my flesh, which I will give for the life of the world. 52 The Jews therefore strove among themselves, saying, How can this man give us his 53 flesh to eat? Then Jesus said unto them, Verily, verily, I say unto you, Except ye eat 54 the flesh of the Son of man, and drink his blood, ye have no life in you. Whoso eat- eth my flesh, and drinketh my blood, hath eternal life; and I will raise him up at the 55, 56 last day. For my flesh is meat indeed, and my blood is drink indeed. He that eateth 57 my flesh, and drinketh my blood, dwelleth in me, and I in him. As the living Father hath sent me, and I live by the Father: so he that eateth me, even he shall live by me. 58 This is that bread which came down from heaven: not as your fathers did eat manna, and are dead: he that eateth of this bread shall live for ever. 59, 60 These things said he in the synagogue, as he taught in Capernaum. Many therefore of his disciples, when they had heard this, said, This is an hard saying; who can hear 61 it? When Jesus knew in himself that his disciples murmured at it, he said unto them, 62 Doth this offend you? What and if ye shall see the Son of man ascend up where he 63 was before? It is the spirit that quickeneth; the flesh profiteth nothing: the words 64 that I speak unto you, they are spirit, and they are life. But there are some of you that believe not. For Jesus knew from the beginning who they were that believed not, 65 and who should betray him. And he said, Therefore said I unto you, that no man can come unto me, except it were given unto him of my Father. 66 From that time many of his disciples went back, and walked no more with him. 67, 68 Then said Jesus unto the twelve, Will ye also go away? Then Simon Peter answered 69 him, Lord, to whom shall we go? thou hast the words of eternal life. And we believe, 70 and are sure that thou art that Christ, the Son of the living God. Jesus answered 71 them, Have not I chosen you twelve, and one of you is a devil? He spake of Judas Iscariot the son of Simon: for he it was that should betray him, being one of the twelve. 1 After these things Jesus walked in Galilee: for he would not walk in Jewry, because the Jews sought to kill him.

THE true sacrament is in the doctrine of Christ. The visible sacraments are forms whose inner substance and life is the truth which they set forth to the eye. When Christ spoke of eating his flesh and drinking his blood, he did not refer to the form of partaking of the Lord’s Supper. His words were spirit and life. Whoever shall penetrate to the deep meaning of that saying, “He that eateth me shall live by me,” shall find in these words a quickening spiritual power which is the earnest of eternal life. It was his death that he was speaking of, which should be followed by his ascending up where he was before. It was his death, as an offering for the life of the world; and when the poor, famishing, condemned soul seizes upon Christ as its Saviour, it wins from his cross that spiritual power which is life from the dead. . . . Yet, now as then, this very doctrine of the cross sifts and tests mankind, and even the followers of Christ. How many will not believe upon Christ crucified! But, if we turn away from Jesus, whither shall we go? Where is the philosophy, the learning, the science, that can speak to us such words of eternal life, or that possess this quickening, renovating power to transform the soul, and lift it up to God? J. P. T.

CHRIST now drops all reserve as to his own position, character, services, and claims. And his manner of speaking to the people is here as unprecedented as the way of speaking about himself. Instead of avoiding what he knew would repel, he seems rather to have obtruded it: answering no questions, giving no explanations, modifying no statements; unsparingly exposing the selfishness, ungodliness, unbelief of his auditors. The strong impression is created that by bringing forth the most hidden mysteries of the kingdom, and clothing these in forms liable to give offence, it was his purpose to test and sift, not the rude mass of his Galilean hearers only, but the circle of his own discipleship. Such at least was its effect. H.

41,42. Then the old angry murmurs burst out again—not this time from the multitude, but from his old opponents the leading Jews—“How could he say that he came down from heaven? How could he call himself the bread of life? Was he not Jesus, the son of Joseph, the carpenter of Nazareth?” F.—Jesus does not answer these questions, any more than he had answered the question as to how he got to Capernaum. He sees and accepts the offence that had been taken, the prejudice that had been created, and he does nothing to remove it. He enters into no explanation of the saying that he had come down from heaven. H.—But he met the murmurers, as he always did, by a stronger, fuller, clearer declaration of the very truth which they rejected. F.

44. Except the Father draw him.** A drawing this, however, that if sought will never be withheld; if imparted, will prevail, for “it is written in the prophets, And they shall be all taught of God. Every man, therefore, that hath heard and learned of the Father cometh unto me.” H.—Anew he points their attention to the fact that the main point, faith, is God’s work in them, and repeats his word, “All that the Father giveth me shall come to me,” more nearly describing the manner of this giving by terming it a drawing; a beautiful expression this is, to denote the secret work of divine love in men laden with guilt, sunk in earthly things, and estranged from heaven. To the last sinner who shall sigh after a Redeemer, this drawing of the Father to the Son whom he has sent, will continue. Love sends, and love draws. To note with a delicate ear, when the gentle and yet powerful drawing of God’s love in our inmost soul is laying hold of us, and in the very same hour that we perceive it to follow it without delay: this is what we have to do in the work of conversion [and as well, of our increasing sanctification]. R. B.

None, indeed, come to Christ except the Father draw them; but how many does the Father draw, by the operation of the Holy Spirit upon the mind, who yet refuse to come! The will is an agent of such fearful, such stubborn power, that it may even resist the Holy Ghost, resist the drawing of the Father, as it does resist the invitations of the Son. Hence while it is true that all who come to Christ are drawn of the Father, it is still true that others perish, not because they are hindered or neglected of God, nor because they are not solicited by the gospel and wrought upon by the Holy Ghost, but because they WILL NOT come. J. P. T.—If a man cannot come without being drawn, and the drawing consists in being taught of God, we come to the root of the difficulty when we raise the question—Why cannot men be “taught of God?” Why do they not receive his instruction, and why do they not obey it? Plainly, not for want of mental capacity; not by reason of any cannot which takes away blameworthiness; not for any incapacity which lies beyond the range of their voluntary control. “Ye will not come to me that ye may have life,” tells the simple and the whole truth in the case. H. C.

45. “All thy children shall be taught of the Lord, and great shall be the peace of thy children” (Isaiah 54:13). God’s drawing then is a teaching; it is not an uncertain excitement of feeling, but it is the divine voice clearly penetrating into the heart of man, which teaches, and which indeed imparts great peace, since it reveals these two things: sin and grace. All shall be taught of God; but it is only he who hears and learns what the Father teaches, only the sinner thirsting for salvation and grace, that comes to the Son. R. B.—46, 47. It is in seeing me that you see the Father. It is in hearing me that you hear the Father. It is through me that the drawing of the Father cometh. Open eye and ear then, look unto me, hear, and your soul shall live. “Verily, verily, I say unto you, He that believeth on me hath everlasting life.” He hath it now, he hath it in me. “I am that bread of life.” H.

51. I am.** Understand, it is of myself I now speak as the bread from heaven: of me if a man eat he shall live forever; and “the bread which I will give is my flesh which I will give for the life of the world.” Here, for the first time in this high discourse, our Lord explicitly introduces his sacrificial death, not only as that which constitutes him the bread of life to men, but as that very element in him which possesses the life-giving virtue. B.—This bread was to be the self-sacrifice of his bodily life for the salvation of mankind. The life-giving power, as such, was his divine-human existence; the life-giving power, in its special act, was his self-sacrifice. The two are inseparable; the latter being the essential means of realizing the former; only by his self-sacrifice could his divine-human life become the bread of life for men. N.

53. Our Lord’s sayings about eating his flesh and drinking his blood, so far from being hard and mysterious, were as natural as they were forcible. He was dealing with men who were carnal in their feelings and desires; who followed him for the excitement of seeing his miracles and for the present benefit they hoped to receive from these. It was in vain to talk to such men about the superiority of spiritual ideas and aims to carnal desires, or of the spiritual design of his mission; the thing must be put before them boldly at their own level; and the spiritual conveyed to them in the form of bodily figures. And so Jesus said to them, You must eat the true bread; it is not enough that you see what I do and hear what I say; you are to be saved by receiving Me; you must eat Me. J. P. T.—It must be remembered that, if the Lord’s Supper has, for us, thrown a clearer light upon the meaning of this discourse, on the other hand the metaphors which Jesus used had not, to an educated Jew, one-hundredth part of the strangeness which they have to us. Jewish literature was exceedingly familiar with the symbolism which represented by “eating” an entire acceptance of and incorporation with the truth, and by “bread” a spiritual doctrine. His saying was hard, as Augustine remarks, only to the hard; and incredible only to the incredulous. For if bread be the type of all earthly sustenance, then the “bread of heaven” may well express all spiritual sustenance, all that involves and supports eternal life. Now the lesson which he wished to teach them was this—that eternal life is in the Son of God. They, therefore, that would have eternal life must partake of the bread of heaven, or—to use the other and deeper image—must eat the flesh and drink the blood of the Son of man. They must feed on him in their hearts by faith. They might accept or reject the truth which he was revealing to their consciences, but there could be no possible excuse for their pretended incapacity to understand its meaning. F.—When he speaks of his flesh being given for the life of the world; when he speaks of the drinking of his blood as well as of the eating of his flesh; pronounces them to be the source at first and the support afterward of a life that cannot die, and that shall draw after it the resurrection of the body, it is impossible to put any rational construction upon phrases like these other than a reference to our Lord’s atoning death as the spring and fountain of the new spiritual life to which through him all true believers are begotten. H.

54. And I will raise him up at the last day.** For the fourth time this is repeated, showing most clearly that the “eternal life” which such a man “hath” cannot be the same with the future resurrection-life, from which it is carefully distinguished each time, but a life communicated here below immediately on believing; and giving prominence to the resurrection of the body, as that which consummates the redemption of the entire man. B.—Here is a reiteration of the intimate connection between the present gift of eternal life and the future resurrection to glory. You cannot separate these things. That which is spiritual is in its very nature eternal. Death is but as the episode of a sleep; it has no power to touch the heart of that life which is “hid with Christ in God.” That life given here in the body imparts to the body a share in its triumph over death, is the seal and pledge, that even though the body fall into dust, it shall be raised again from the dust, incorruptible. So essential, indeed, is this connection between the life eternal and the resurrection of the body, that it is almost the only view of the resurrection which is presented to us in Scripture. Perowne.

56. In words whose very singularity and reiteration should make them sink deep into our hearts, our Saviour tells us that until by faith we realize, appropriate, confide in him, as having given himself for us, dying that we might live, until in this manner we eat his flesh and drink his blood, we have no life in us. Our true life lies in union with and likeness unto God, in peace with him, fellowship with him, harmony of mind and heart with him, in the doing of his will, the enjoyment of his favor. H.—Although this discourse has nothing to do with the sacrament of the Supper, the sacrament has everything to do with it, as the visible embodiment of these figures, and, to the believing partaker, a real, yea, and the most lively and affecting participation of his flesh and blood, and nourishment thereby of the spiritual and eternal life, here below. B.—These words do not primarily relate to this sacrament, not instituted as yet, but they do relate to that great truth which underlies it and on which it is founded. For we are not to suppose that the Lord’s Supper is an arbitrary ordinance, or that one emblem would have answered as well as another for a commemorative sign. On the contrary, the ordinance has its essence, vivifying form, or idea, which is the resemblance between the taking of food and drink for bodily sustenance, and the receiving of Christ by faith. J. W. A.

Dwellet in me, and I in him. This involves and expresses the most intimate relationship; a perfect communion and fellowship. These words must rule out the whole realm of matter. They must exclude all reference to flesh and body, in the material sense, as to be eaten literally. H. C.—Closer than the closest of all earthly bonds is the vital union of the believer with Christ. He opens himself to us as the hiding-place, the resting-place, the dwelling-place for our spirit. We flee unto him, and he hides us in the secret of his presence, and keeps us secretly in that pavilion. 57. To a still higher conception of the intimacy of the union between himself and his own does Jesus carry us. It would seem as if all the earthly imagery elsewhere employed—that of the union of the branches with the vine, of the members with the head, of the building with the foundation-stone—however apt, were yet defective; as if for the only fit, full emblem Jesus had to rise up to the heavens to find it in the closest and most mysterious union in the universe, the eternal, inconceivable, ineffable union between the Father and himself. H.

Eateth me. The practical benefit of the sacrifice can be had only by accepting it as a sacrifice in our stead, by appropriating it with a full heart as the means of life; and this it is to eat Christ, so that his life becomes ours. “He that eateth Me shall live by Me.” Hence the virtue of the sacrament is found only in feeding upon Christ. It is not “he that eateth this material bread,” but “he that eateth Me;” not eateth me in the bread, but who in the act of eating the bread brings Me home to his soul as his food, his life, his salvation. If in coming to this sacrament we realize through it the nearness and fulness of Christ, if we thereby receive afresh into our hearts his living truth and grace, then do we feed upon him. J. P. T.—We lay our feeble hand on this almighty promise of our Lord, and we rest therein with assurance: We shall live by him! R. B.—We have three living ones spoken of here: the living Father, the living Son, and the living believer. The three lives are linked together. Rollock.

58. Our Lord sums up the whole discourse. All these expressions have been used frequently, and now all are grouped together, and presented in one view. J. C. R.—One peculiarity of the sayings of Christ is the sense of fulness they carry with them, and of this fulness as proceeding from himself. His words flow as from a fountain; and not only so, but the truth he imparts becomes in those who receive it “a well of living water, springing up into everlasting life.” In listening to him, one feels that he knows all truth, and contains it within himself. For truth as spoken by Christ carries with it the conviction that what he utters is part of himself. It is not truth that he has studied and developed; it is not a doctrine that he has derived from another, and teaches with his own methods and illustrations; but the truth he speaks is in and of himself. J. P. T.—Truth perfectly expressed, and perfectly understood, convinces at once; as the light streaming in reveals all objects, so Christ’s words require no illumination; it is their entrance which giveth light. It is not merely that our understanding is satisfied, our conscience roused, our affections engaged—it is all this and more; it is our inmost being, that in us which is eternal, that Christ grasps and addresses, so that we feel he has come into contact with the very centre of our being. A. S.

60. Some who had previously been regarded as his disciples stumbled at these teachings and murmured. What he said of “eating his flesh” was one of the hard sayings over which the Jews strove among themselves, as appears in verse 52. And this seems to have been the head and front of the offence. It involved a Messiah suffering and dying—not as they construed it, conquering, reigning; and therefore it ran counter to all their cherished notions of their nation’s deliverer. His work as thus set forth made no account of the worldly greatness they aspired to, but utmost account of that spiritual life, in purity and love, for which they had no aspirations. Hence they said in their hearts, We are disappointed in this man; he meets none of our cherished hopes; why should we follow him longer? H. C.—This was too much, even for some who had been brought to the door of belief. The service of the synagogue ended, the elders came down from the platform, the chazzan put away the sacred vessels, the congregation came out into the sun, angry in word and mocking in spirit. They wanted facts; he had given them truth. They hungered for miraculous bread, for a new shower of manna; he had offered them symbolically his flesh and blood. They had set their hearts on finding a captain who would march against the Romans, who would cause Judas of Gamala to be forgotten, who would put the glories of Herod the Great to shame. They had asked him for earth, and he had answered them with heaven. W. H. D.

61. The people came in multitudes around him, and you can trace no sign of extravagant expectation. The tide of popular favor ebbs away from him, and you see no token of his giving up his enterprise in despair. No wavering of purpose, no change of plan, no altering of his course to suit new and obviously unforeseen emergencies. There is progress: a steady advance onward to the final consummation of the cross and the burial, the resurrection and ascension; but all is consistent, all is harmonious. H.

62. The Son of man.** Himself as Messiah. The Jews, as appears from J. 12 : 34, expected that the Messiah was to “abide forever,” remain permanently among them. Our Lord intimates here, that instead of remaining on earth, to establish the worldly kingdom they were anticipating, he was, after having given his flesh for the life of the world, to return to heaven, whence he had come down. The preëxistence of our Lord, in heaven, previously to his appearing among men is as plainly stated as words can state it. J. B.

63. The words are spirit and life.** Words, inwardly digested, feed the soul, as bread, properly digested, feeds the body. The spiritual power of the ordinance of the Supper is altogether of the same sort—not the bread eaten feeding the body, but the truth suggested and illustrated feeding the soul. H. C.—The dead letter, the outward material flesh, he told them, profited nothing. The form, the dogma, the institution, however venerable in itself—even his own flesh, as the symbol of mere material life, had no magic virtue. Only the inward essence, the truth embodied, the living principle, the quickening Spirit received into the heart, availed with God, or sustained the heavenly life in the soul. G.—These very words about eating his flesh, etc., are “spirit and life” when one takes them rightly. They teach that the Lord Jesus gave his flesh as the means of life and salvation. But this sacrifice does not take effect for any individual from the mere fact of its having been offered; but it gives life to him who eats and drinks it; that is, to him who appropriates it to his own case as the provision upon which the life of his soul depends—just as the life of the body depends on food and drink. He who so receives the death of Christ—makes this application of that death as the necessary means of his soul’s life—will find that Christ becomes to him as his very flesh and blood. J. P. T.

64,65. The enthusiasm of Christ for his divine work was combined with a discretion which fully comprehended the opposition he must encounter from the prevailing opinions and feelings of the times. He readily distinguished, with that searching glance that pierced the depths of men’s hearts, the few who came to him, drawn of the Father and following an inward consciousness of God, from those who sought him with carnal feelings, to obtain that which he came not to bestow. There was no extravagance in his demands upon men; nothing exaggerated in his hopes of the future. Everywhere we see not only a conscious possession of the divine power to overcome the world, which he was to impart to humanity, but also of the obstacles it should meet with from the old nature in which the principle of sin was yet active. N.—

66. Many disciples walked no more with him.** When “the carpenter’s son” in his mysterious language spoke of his descent, his commission from his Father, his reascension to his former intimate communion with the Deity; still more, when he seemed to confine the hope of everlasting life to those only who were fitted to receive it, no word fell in with their excited, their passionate hopes. His allusions discountenanced the immediate and the remote accomplishment of their visions of the Messiah’s earthly power and glory. The disappointment was universal; his adherents, baffled and sinking at once from their exalted hopes, cast off their unambitious, their inexplicable Leader. H. M.—It was the first vivid instance of “the offence of the cross”—henceforth to become the special stumbling-block of the nation. The Messiah of popular conception would use force to establish his kingdom, but Jesus, while claiming the Messiahship, spoke only of self-sacrifice. Outward glory and material wealth were the national dream. He spoke only of inward purity. If he would not head them with Almighty power, to get Judea for the Jews, they would not have him. G.

67,68. Will ye also go away?** It was Simon Peter whose warm heart spoke out impetuously for all the rest. He at least had rightly apprehended that strange discourse at which so many had stumbled. “Lord,” he exclaims, “to whom shall we go? Thou hast the words of eternal life.” F.—Christ is himself the very truth which he teaches, the eternal and subsisting, the living and quickening truth; he is life itself, and life eternal, who teaches both truth and life, inspiring them into our understanding by his light, and into our heart by his love. To whom then shall we go but Jesus, that we may learn to live, and live eternally on the truth? He well deserves to find nothing but delusion and death, who seeks for truth and life from any but Christ alone. Q.

70. He had chosen Judas. This we cannot understand. Incomprehensible to us is the love which created the angel, knowing that it would become a devil to that love. Just as incomprehensible was the love which strove to redeem Judas, while it knew, nevertheless, that he would work upon it the devil’s will, all the while, however, doing nothing but what was ordained in God’s purposes of salvation. “This man should betray him,” because he would not be saved by him. R. B.—The choosing here spoken of means no more than selection for office. Our Lord in another place carefully draws the distinction between the true disciples and the false: “I speak not of you all: I know whom I have chosen.” Of that “choosing” (unto salvation) Judas was not a partaker. Of the other choosing (unto office) he was. Is a devil. Even now, long before our Lord’s betrayal, Judas is called a “devil.” This helps to show that he never was a faithful disciple, even from the first. J. C. R.—The choice of the disciples was an act that gave them no guaranty of salvation, and no exemption from the usual trial that attends every human being from the beginning to the end of life. Everything turned on the use which Judas would make of the signal opportunities for good that lay in his path, and on the energy with which he would resist temptation. G. P. F.

THES the public life of Jesus closed its second year. His influence at one moment was apparently most extensive, at the next was confined to a small circle. Still, however, it held the public mind in unallayed suspense; and the ardent attachment of the few, and the animosity of the many, bore testimony to the commanding character and the surprising works of Jesus of Nazareth. H. M.

Section 70.—Pharisaic Traditions. Need of Inward Purity.

Capernaum.