John 6:26Meaning & Commentary from the Church Fathers

What, then, does He say? “Truly, truly, I say to you,” definitively and affirmatively, “you seek Me not because you saw miracles, but because you ate the bread and were filled.” He strikes with His word and exposes them, but not harshly or violently. He does so with great condescension.

He did not say, “O pleasure-loving gluttons! I have worked so many miracles, yet you never followed Me or marveled at what was done.” Rather, with a certain meekness and calm He says, “You seek Me not because you saw miracles, but because you ate the bread and were filled.”

He points not only to former miracles, but also to the present miracle. It is as though He says, thereby exposing them: it was not the miracle concerning the loaves that struck you, but the fact that you were filled.

That He did not speak of them by conjecture, they themselves immediately showed. They had indeed come again in order to enjoy the same food. Therefore they said, “Our fathers ate manna in the wilderness” (v. 31), drawing Him again toward bodily food. This deserved accusation and the greatest condemnation.

Indeed, what can be more insignificant than daily food, and cheap food at that? Therefore it is fitting for us to have reverence and love for Christ, not in order to seek anything bodily, but to acquire salvation through Him.

Let us not speak flattering words to Him, like that "Rabbi." Otherwise we shall turn verbal confession of Christ into a means of income and the accumulation of wealth.

Whoever strives for this must finally learn that he will meet Christ, who will bitterly expose him and reveal the hidden evil within him.

Again one must marvel at the meaning of the divine economy here. When He saw them seized by the above-mentioned disease, He devised for them a twofold medicine, like a skilled and experienced physician. He joined a profitable rebuke to a remarkable miracle.

We shall find the miracle in His knowledge of their inner disposition. In His words, that they diligently seek the Wonderworker not truly for the sake of piety, you may perceive the rebuke.

He benefits them in two ways. On the one hand, by clear perception and exact knowledge of their intentions, He shows them to be senseless. They think that they can hide from the divine eye.

Their heart is filled with wickedness, while their tongue uses sweet speech. By this He was already urging them to withdraw from such a disease and to cease from so great a sin. For the man who thinks this way about God is truly an offender and transgressor.

On the other hand, by a profitable rebuke of those who sin, He in some way turns them back from the further path of evil. Evil spreads and increases when there is no obstacle. But when caught, as it were, in the act, it is ashamed and draws back into itself like a rope.

Thus the Lord benefits even when He rebukes. Through what may seem to someone a blow, He is found to be doing him good.

From this we must conclude the following. When someone flatters and praises the heads of the churches with fair words, but does not walk rightly in the faith, they should not be carried away by these caresses.

Nor should they repay those who need correction, as though with a reward for their praises, by silence about what they do wrong. Rather, they should rebuke with boldness and persuade them to pass over to what is better.

Through this they also benefit others, according to what Paul said: "Those who sin, rebuke before all, that the rest also may fear," 1 Tim 5:20.

Such is the separate meaning of the cited saying. But I think its meaning must also be shown in connection and sequence with the contemplations already given by us.

We said that the descent of our Savior from the mountain depicts His second and future coming to us from heaven. In the summary of the whole contemplation we also added that He appears to His disciples while they are still keeping watch and laboring.

He immediately frees them from fear and brings the vessel to land. We explained in that discussion what is painted for us here, as in images.

Now also notice that after Jesus' descent from the mountain, some lag behind in following Him and come to Him last. For they come "on the next day," which the Evangelist added not without purpose.

Then, after meeting Christ, they try to flatter Him with fair words. But Christ strikes them with a fervent and forceful rebuke. This is so that we may also reflect upon what follows.

After the Lord's coming to us from heaven, the search for blessings will be wholly vain and useless for men. The desire to follow Him will then already be untimely.

If some approach, thinking to soften Him with flattering words, they will no longer find Him indulgent and gentle. They will find Him a Judge who rebukes and strikes.

You may see this flattery of those rebuked, and the rebuke itself, in the Savior's words when He says: "Many will say to Me in that day," clearly the day of judgment, "Lord, Lord, did we not cast out demons in Thy name?"

"Then," He says, "I will declare to them, Truly I say to you, I never knew you," Mt 7:22-23.

You did not seek Me, He says, with a pure aim. You did not love to be adorned also with holiness. Through this I would have known you. But since, for the sake of gain, you practiced only visible and apparent piety, I shall justly declare that I did not know you.

We think that the cry "Lord, Lord" has there the same meaning as "Rabbi" has here.

Therefore, let the one for whom punishment is bitter not fall into weakness, nor faint amid varied transgressions while relying on the goodness of God. Rather, let him prepare "his works for his departure," as it is written, "and make ready in the field," Prov 24:27.

This means while he is in this world, since the Savior called the world a field, Mt 13:38.

Let him therefore prepare to show holiness and righteousness before the divine tribunal. The one who ought to have obeyed without delay Him who called him to salvation will not find the Judge untimely compassionate.

Nor will he find Him attentive to words that incline toward mercy, when He had granted time and mercy to ask forgiveness for sins already committed and to seek love for mankind from God the Savior.

For He offers Himself as this food, as becomes clear later. “The food which the Son of Man will give you.”

And you, I think, expected that you would again eat bread, again recline at table, and again be filled. But He said, “Not the food that perishes, but that which endures unto eternal life.”

“You seek Me according to the flesh, and not according to the spirit.” How many seek Jesus only so that He may give temporal goods. One is engaged in trade and seeks the mediation of clerics. Another is oppressed by someone more powerful and runs to the church. Another wants to gain influence over someone with whom he has little influence.

One seeks one thing, another another. Thus the Church is filled daily with people of this sort. Scarcely anyone seeks Jesus for Jesus’ sake.

The miraculous feeding of five thousand people with a few loaves and fish did indeed make a strong impression on the people. But the Jews contemporary with Christ thought that the Messiah had to be endowed with the gift of miracles precisely for the easier and greater satisfaction of men’s fleshly needs.

Jesus Christ now says: “You seek Me not because you were witnesses of a miracle in general. I performed many miracles before, but they did not draw you to Me so strongly. You seek Me because this was the kind of miracle by which a bodily need was satisfied, and therefore it stirred your hopes and aspirations.

“But care not for bodily food, but for the food that endures unto eternal life, which the Son of Man gives you. Only God can communicate eternal life. But He has sealed the Son of Man. He has borne witness to Him before all through miracles as the One to Whom He has given all things into His hands, the distributor and communicator of the gifts and blessings of life.”

As in the conversation with the Samaritan woman (Jn 4:9-10), here Jesus Christ leads the spiritual gaze of His hearers away from the sensible to the spiritual. The former becomes an image of the latter.

On these boats, many, if not all, went to Capernaum. When they arrived there, they began to seek Jesus there also. They found Him and were so astonished that they asked, “Rabbi, when did You come here?”

In this question another is heard: how did You come here? They suspected that He could not have reached Capernaum by ordinary means of travel. By this question they were drawing Jesus toward openness, but He left their question unanswered.

Knowing perfectly the disposition of the crowd that sought Him, Jesus said: “You seek Me not because you saw miracles, but because you ate the bread and were filled. I have performed many miracles among you. Why, then, did only the last one strike you? Is it not because you think only of earthly things, of the goods of this brief life?

“You are seeking Me now only so that you may be filled again. Do not labor for this perishable food, which nourishes only the body, but for that which nourishes the soul and brings it into eternal life. The Son of Man will give you this food. That He will truly give it is confirmed for you by His Father, God, Who has revealed Himself to you in Him and in the works He does.”

Drawn away by these words from the thought of perishable food, the Jews asked Jesus, “What must we do, to do the works of God and have eternal life?”

To believe in Him Whom He has sent: this is what is required first of all for entrance into the Kingdom of Heaven and eternal life.

But the multitude present at the miraculous multiplication of the loaves in the wilderness understood it otherwise. Instead of seeing the bread as a sign, they saw in the sign only bread.

They wished to make the Wonderworker king by force, in the sense of an ordinary worldly king. This means that they saw only the external miracle.

As is also evident from what follows, they considered this miracle only the beginning of a whole series of similar miracles from the Messiah. They saw it as the opening of a new era of dazzling, sensibly understood miracles in a sensibly understood messianic kingdom.

As a result of this false understanding, their very seeking of Jesus the Wonderworker had, or acquired, a sensual, earthly, false character (Jn 6:63). The Savior points out this falsehood with a clear and somewhat hard word: “because you ate the bread and were filled.”

“It was not the miracle over the loaves that struck you, but the fact that you were filled,” says Chrysostom.

What a difference there is between this fleshly mass of the people and that people which stood before the Lord’s spiritual eyes: the spiritual Israel. Understanding His words and works, they should have constantly surrounded Him, not to make Him king of this world in satisfaction of their false dreams, but to say to Him, “We hunger spiritually. Do the same for our souls as You have done for our flesh.”

The Lord’s heart must have been filled with sorrow at such a comparison. And so from the mouth of the most meek One comes a hard word.

Ergazesthai means to labor over something, to acquire, Prov 21:6; Lk 16:16. When compared with the word "seek" in verse 26, it requires the meaning of striving to acquire.

Perishable food shows by itself that it is not worth the soul being full of cares over it. "Food is for the belly, and the belly for food; but God will destroy both one and the other," 1 Cor 6:13.

Food that remains in the soul unto all eternity also shows by itself that one must care for its acquisition with a sincere soul and constantly.

The Savior does not say that one must be careless about the needs of temporal life. This is not in His spirit, 1 Thess 4:10; 2 Thess 3:12; Eph 4:28; 1 Cor 9:18.

He teaches us to seek first of all spiritual food, Mt 6:25, 33; Lk 10:41. He speaks specifically against utilitarians, who value the spiritual so low and the conveniences of earthly life so high.

He requires that spiritual food be first in our attention, the food that only He can give. People give the name spiritual food to many things, such as the sciences and enjoyments of refined objects. But these are works of men, not of the Son of God.

Mill, in his defense of his beloved utilitarianism, did place it above an Epicurean life. Yet he did not raise it above the eudaimonism of human earthly existence. Is even such utilitarianism worth the concerns of an immortal spirit?

It is painful to see that some insist on regarding themselves as animals rather than men. According to Renan, man was first an animal, then religious, and later becomes thinking.

But since the last state, the thinking state in Renan, thinks only about the conveniences of bodily life, and since his religiosity is an unaccountable feeling, it turns out again to be the same as the animal state.

This theory is both anti-philosophical and anti-historical. It is anti-philosophical because, while involuntarily recognizing the baseness of the animal before man, it nevertheless leaves man in the animal state.

It does not explain how an animal can pass into the state of religiosity or rationality. It even dishonors the Creator by supposing that man could not come from the Creator's hands as man, but only becomes man by himself.

This theory is also anti-historical. Contrary not only to revealed history, but to the histories of all peoples and all religions, it says that religion is not contemporary with man's existence.

Yet daily experience shows that man descends from the state of man to the state of an animal, for example, a drunkard, or Mr. Renan with his Sadducean theory, so shameful for man.

Thus true philosophy is the philosophy of the Son of God. He shows man both his high dignity in his immortal spirit and his humble earthly lot.

He, and He alone, gives man the means to attain his high calling. The food that gives life to the soul for a whole blessed eternity is given only by Him, the Son of God.

"For on Him the Father has set His seal." The miracles and the insights into the distance unseen by men, known in His activity, assure us like a royal seal that He is the Messenger beloved by God, such as the world had never yet seen, Chrysostom.

They also assure us that He is able to give the most nourishing, the very best, and in no way deceptive food, Augustine.

This miracle did not awaken in those who sought the Lord a spiritual hunger. In this respect the Samaritan woman is incomparably higher than they. She felt spiritual thirst, and holy faith flamed up within her.

It did not awaken in them the holy feeling of seeking the Word of life and spiritual food from Him who ruled over the powers of nature. They ate the loaves and were filled when they were hungry, and they felt an animal joy, and nothing more.

This is precisely what the Lord reproaches them for with the word "you were filled," echortasthete. It has the special meaning of eating one's fill like an irrational animal. Chortazo means to fatten in an enclosed place. The Vulgate and Biblia Sacra have saturati estis.

But the Lord says: "Labor not for the food that perishes, but for the food that endures unto eternal life." The word "labor," according to its inner meaning, is beautifully rendered in the Russian Gospel text as "strive for."

The text has ergazesthe, from ergazomai, to labor in order to accomplish a work. The Vulgate and Biblia Sacra have operamini. That is, work in order to attain the food of eternal life.

Or at least work to awaken within yourselves the desire for spiritual and eternal food, despising the quickly passing earthly needs.

This food, says the Lord, the Son of Man will give you, in the double meaning of God and man, Savior and sacrifice, Judge and your brother man. On Him, on this man, lies the seal or sign of God.

The Russian text translates the word esphragisen, the aorist of sphragizo, from sphragis, "seal," with complete accuracy and clarity: "God the Father has set His seal on Him." The Vulgate and Biblia Sacra have: hunc enim Pater obsignavit, id est Deus.

What does the application of a seal to a human document mean? It is an attestation that the completed act is the genuine expression of the thoughts and desires of the one who performs the act and applies his seal.

In a similar sense these great words must be understood. The Lord Jesus, having assumed human form and body, knew that He was God and man.

But for men, "that they may believe and be saved," God the Father marked the Son by the descent of the Holy Spirit at the baptism, by great miracles, and by words of grace issuing from the mouth of the God-man.

The Lord points to these signs, given so that men might know Him. He recalls these signs so that those in the crowd who had been chosen by God might receive the Lord's subsequent teaching.

This is the teaching concerning the food of eternal life, concerning the most pure Blood and most pure Body of the Lord, offered in sacrifice for us.

Basil the Great speaks beautifully: "The Gospel teaches that God the Father has marked this One. And the Apostle says, Col 1:15, 'Who is the image of the invisible God.'"

"He is not a soulless image, not made by hands, not the work of art or invention, but a living image. Better to say, He is self-existent life."

"He is an image, not in likeness of outline, but preserving indistinguishability in the very essence. For I affirm that the expression 'to be in the form of God,' Phil 2:6, is equivalent to being in the essence of God."

"For just as the words, 'taking the form of a servant,' Phil 2:7, mean that our Lord was born in the essence of human nature, so also the words 'to be in the form of God' show the property of the divine essence."

"For the Lord says: 'He who has seen Me has seen the Father,' Jn 14:9." Such is the meaning of the words: "For God the Father has marked this One."