John 6:41Meaning & Commentary from the Church Fathers

If they had truly been indignant at those words, they should have asked and learned how He is the bread of life and how He came down from heaven. Instead they do not do this, but murmur.

That this was not what offended them is clear from what follows. When He said, "My Father gives you the bread," they did not say, "Entreat Him to give it." What did they say? "Give us this bread."

Although He did not say, "I give," but, "My Father gives," yet through their desire for food they acknowledged that He too could give it. How then, after acknowledging that He could give food, could they be offended when they heard that He gives it?

What, then, is the reason? They heard that they would no longer receive food, and for this reason they again began not to believe. To justify their unbelief, they present the claim that His word is too lofty.

Therefore He says, "You have seen Me, and yet you do not believe." On the one hand He points to the miracles, and on the other to the testimonies of the Scriptures. "They," He says, "bear witness to Me" (Jn 5:39).

Again: "I have come in My Father's name, and you do not receive Me" (Jn 5:43). Again: "How can you believe, who receive glory from one another?" (Jn 5:44).

"Their god is their belly, and their glory is in their shame" (Phil 3:19), Paul said of certain men in the Epistle to the Philippians (Phil 3:19).

That the Jews were the same is clear both from what had happened before and from what they said when they came to Christ. When He gave them bread and filled their belly, they called Him a prophet and wanted to set Him up as king.

But when He taught them about spiritual food and eternal life, when He spoke of the resurrection and lifted up their thought, then they murmured and withdrew from Him. Yet precisely then they ought especially to have marveled at Him.

If He is a prophet, as they had said before, and indeed He is the One of whom Moses said, "The Lord your God will raise up for you a Prophet like me from among your brethren; Him you shall hear" (Deut 18:15), then they ought to have heard Him.

They ought to have heard Him when He said, "I have come down from heaven." But they did not hear. Instead they murmured.

They still respected Him because of the recent miracle of the loaves. Therefore they did not contradict Him openly. Yet by murmuring they expressed their vexation that He did not give them the meal they wanted.

In the midst of their murmuring they said, "Is this not Jesus, the son of Joseph?"

Could Christ be speaking falsely when He called Himself "bread," and bread "come down from heaven"? Or was He speaking the truth, and should He not have appeared to them precisely as such?

By judging rightly, one could have learned well how to find what is profitable. But without examining anything, they grow angry. Yet Christ had already shown Himself to be the real and true bread of life.

He set Himself against the manna, which had been given to their fathers in the wilderness as a type and shadow. For He says, "He who comes to Me shall never thirst" (Jn 6:35).

Those who ate that manna received a certain brief and exceedingly fleeting pleasure of the flesh. But those who come to Him through faith will not attain the same benefit as those earlier men. They will taste the abiding grace of the blessing.

Thus the mind of the Jews goes astray, looking only at earthly things. Therefore it was precisely of them that this was sung: "Let their eyes be darkened, that they may not see, and bow down their back forever" (Ps 68:24).

Thus, being guided from nowhere toward the knowledge of the divine mysteries, "the wicked will miserably perish" (Mt 21:41). This happens through their madness and their extreme lack of restraint in unbelief.

If we recall certain things in the writings of Moses, we shall find that murmuring against the best and good men was, as it were, an ancestral inheritance belonging to the Jews.

Yet both the experience of those men then and of these men now showed that this leads to a bitter end. Those in the wilderness murmured and raised an ungrateful cry against God, but "they perished by serpents" (Num 21:6), as wise Paul also testified in one place (1 Cor 10:9).

These also murmur against Christ. By such long-standing unbelief they insult the Lawgiver and Redeemer. But He will command "the dragon, and it shall bite them" (Amos 9:3), as it is written.

They will be given as food to the all-devouring beast. For unbelief always necessarily leads to a most dreadful end.

That bread, of course, sought the hunger of the inner man. Therefore He says elsewhere, "Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be filled" (cf. Mt 5:6).

The Apostle Paul says that Christ Himself is righteousness for us (cf. 1 Cor 1:30). Therefore whoever hungers for that bread hungers for righteousness.

But he hungers for the righteousness that comes down from heaven, the righteousness that God gives, not the righteousness that man creates for himself.

For if man created no righteousness for himself, the same Apostle would not have said of the Jews: "Being ignorant of God's righteousness and seeking to establish their own righteousness, they did not submit to the righteousness of God" (Rom 10:3).

Thus they were the ones who did not understand the bread that came down from heaven. Being filled with their own righteousness, they did not hunger for the righteousness of God.

What is the righteousness of God, and what is human righteousness? Here the righteousness of God does not mean that by which God is righteous, but that which God gives to man, so that man may become righteous through God.

But what was the righteousness of the Jews? It was that by which they relied on their own strength. Therefore they were, as it were, saying that by their own virtue they were fulfillers of the Law by themselves.

Yet only the one whom grace supports fulfills the Law. That grace is the bread that came down from heaven. For, as the Apostle says briefly, "love is the fulfillment of the law" (cf. Rom 13:10).

This is not love of money, but love of God. It is not love of earth or of heaven, but of Him Who created heaven and earth.

From where does man have this love? Let us hear the Apostle: "The love of God has been poured out in your hearts by the Holy Spirit Who has been given to us" (Rom 5:5).

Therefore the Lord, intending to give the Holy Spirit, said that He is the bread which came down from heaven, urging us to believe in Him. For to believe in Him is the same as to eat the living bread.

Whoever believes eats. He is filled invisibly, because he is invisibly born again. The infant is within. The new man is within. Where he has been renewed, there he is filled.

Jesus Christ did not say, "I am not the son of Joseph." Nor did He reveal anything at all about His origin. He knew that they were not yet able to hear of His wondrous birth, much less of His pre-eternal generation.

Therefore, according to His all-wise designs, He passed over this matter. He did so lest, while removing one stumbling block, He should create another.

Jesus Christ saw the hardness of their hearts. He now shows why they so stubbornly refuse to believe in Him. No one, He says, can come to Me unless the Father Who sent Me draws him, as had already been foretold in the Old Testament.

Therefore, because of the hardheartedness and unworthiness of the Jews who heard Jesus Christ, the gracious action of the Father had not yet touched their hearts. This action calls to salvation.

Without it, man, blinded by sin, cannot see the light of truth. But lest anyone misunderstand Isaiah's prophecy (54:13) about direct instruction from God, Jesus Christ speaks further.

This prophecy must not be understood as though any man could ever see God, speak directly with Him, or know the divine essence through immediate sight and contemplation.

God acts upon men invisibly by His grace. The immediate vision of the divine essence belongs only to His Son.

Therefore only through the Son can men receive the full light of the knowledge of God needed for salvation, and through this receive eternal life (17:3).

Therefore: "Amen, amen, I say to you: he who believes in Me has eternal life."

Moreover, according to the testimony of the first Evangelists, Pharisees from Jerusalem followed the Lord even in Galilee, with the deceitful purpose of opposing Him.

Perhaps they were also at this time in the synagogue of Capernaum. They may have been stirring up the people against the Lord, inciting them to dispute and murmur against Him.

"Because He said," and so forth: see Jn 6:33, 35, 38.

Yet it had been foretold by the prophets: "Behold, the Virgin shall conceive" (Isa 7:14; Mt 1:23), and Isa 9:6: "A Child is born to us; a Son is given to us."

The Lord Jesus did not wish to draw the souls of His hearers to Himself by earthly glory, but by "the words of grace which proceeded from His mouth" (Lk 4:22).

The Jews murmur because He said to them, "I am the bread which came down from heaven." They do not understand that by their murmuring they repeat their perpetual rebellion against the Spirit of God.

This is not forgiven to man, because it proceeds from an evil will and a hardened soul, which maliciously refuses to bow before the words of grace and truth.

In the crowd surrounding the Lord, these Jews stand out sharply and vividly, that is, the scribes and Pharisees. Their heart is envious and unclean.

Their thoughts do not rise above the earthly Jewish kingdom. Their concepts are narrow. With the confidence and dullness of half-learned men and rationalists, they do not see the spiritual side of the teaching.

This teaching develops the human soul and raises it to heaven. But they do not understand the Spirit of God, and they measure the teaching they hear by their own small measure.

How, they say, can Jesus call Himself bread from heaven when we know His parents?

Earlier they had pointed to Moses and the manna, in order to set the prophet against the Lord Who had worked the miracle of the multiplication of the loaves.

They were silenced by the indication that God, not Moses, gave the manna. They were also silenced by the truth that manna is not eternal food, while the Word of God is eternal, spiritual food that gives eternal life.

Now the Jews raise another question about the origin of the One Who speaks to them the words of life. In the following verses the Lord again raises them from what is earthly and passing to what is heavenly and eternal.

The Lord's teaching saves only good souls. Hardened men condemn themselves to destruction, for the Lord's words are "the power of God to those who are being saved" (cf. 1 Cor 1:18), not to those who are perishing.