Jesus is God and Savior. Jesus can claim that the disciple who comes to/believes in Him will no longer “go hungry” or “be thirsty”, for they have fully embraced Christ as the source and sustenance of life.² Jesus further elaborates the exclusivity of those that will be satisfied by the bread of life in John 6:46-47, “ No one has seen the Father except the one who is from God; only He has seen the Father. Very truly I tell you, the one who believes has eternal life.” The Father draws people who will be satisfied by the person and work of Jesus Christ.

Jesus is a brilliant teacher. He takes everyday objects and makes poignant and profound claims that get to the heart of the issue. This is the case when Jesus says that He is the bread of life. What does Jesus mean when He says that He is the bread of life? Jesus cannot mean that He is an actual bread because He has never been described in this manner in the entire Bible. Jesus has been described as both God (Jn. 1:1-5) and man (Phil. 2:6-11). Therefore, Jesus is obviously using a metaphor to describe a particular characteristic about Himself that can be derived from similarities drawn from bread.

John 20:31 states the purpose of John writing his book. He says, “³⁰ Jesus performed many other signs in the presence of his disciples, which are not recorded in this book. ³¹ But these are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name.” The purpose of John provides some insight into Jesus’ meaning in John 6:35. John has accomplished this purpose by clearly articulating how Jesus’ miracles and actions clearly point to Him as the Lord and the promised Messiah. In John 6:1-15 Jesus feeds the 5000 and in John 6:16-24 Jesus walks on water. The common denominator in both incidents is that Jesus is a miracle worker and therefore His claims of being the Messiah are true. These miracles were clearly signs pointing to Jesus as the Messiah.

The teachings of Jesus in John 6:25-59 are so difficult to swallow, that several people who enjoyed the physical bread provided by Jesus could not digest His life-giving words. Therefore, John 6:60-71 records many so-called disciples or followers of Jesus who abandon Jesus because they did not like what Jesus said. The only people who remained after Jesus’ hard teaching were the twelve disciples. What is it that Jesus said that caused this kind of consternation?

Five observations can be made about this statement in John 6:35.

1. Jesus is indeed the Son of God.
The words “I am” are a translation of one Greek word. Typically, these words don’t have any significance beyond pointing to a subject. However, if these words are understood considering the entire corpus of John, these words significantly point out a particular quality about Jesus.

Read More