WHAT DOES IT MEAN TO YOU THAT JESUS IS THE BREAD OF LIFE?

By Robb Brunansky, Op-ed contributor Saturday, January 13, 2024, Unsplash/Stephanie Harvey

In John's Gospel account, each of Jesus' seven "I am" statements reveals something about his person and work, allowing John's readers to get to know him more closely, clearly, and personally. These statements are designed to bring us back to the foundation of our faith, which is the Lord Jesus Christ.

This first statement appears in John 6, where Jesus says, "I am the bread of life" twice. The message here can be considered the worst sermon that Jesus ever preached, by human standards. The party began with Jesus, followed by more than 20,000 people. In the end, he had twelve followers, one of whom Jesus referred to as the devil.

In the contemporary church, a teacher is considered a failure if he loses 99.94% of his audience. That is why, although the world norm considers this message that Jesus gives in John 6 to be really bad, the norm of Jesus considers it an ongoing success.

The refusal of the crowd to understand and accept the true meaning of Jesus when he calls himself the "bread of life" creates tension in this passage. The members of the crowd who followed Jesus were hungry, and they asked our Lord to give them food. Jesus, who had the ability to perform miracles in an earthly way, had a spiritual focus in his statements. He realized that their eternal destiny was exponentially more important than the state of their empty stomachs.

Although more than two centuries have passed since Jesus spoke to this crowd, the same tension and truth still remain with us today.

At the beginning of this chapter, John includes two scenes to provide context for the upcoming discussion and to show that Jesus is the Lord. Only God can change the normal function of water and density so that he can walk on water, and only he can make enough bread to feed 20,000 people from five biscuits. John includes these stories to force us to ask, "Who is Jesus?" Is he a human baker who is ready to satisfy our earthly needs and submit to our desires? Is He God in the flesh, Lord of all?

After Jesus' miraculous journey through stormy seas, the Savior showed people that they were looking for him for earthly reasons. They do not want spiritual truth or eternal life, but only physical food. It shows how many people around the world are looking for Jesus. In fact, the entire seeker-sensitive movement in the church is based on the idea that they want to attract public attention by appealing to their sexual desires.

Not only did Jesus know that the crowd wanted only the resolution of their earthly problems, but he also knew that they mistakenly thought they had a vested interest (or work) in things that only God could do. Many of these people only want to join Jesus if they want him to do what they want and submit to their authority. Jesus told his followers that he came down to do the Father's will, not theirs. He challenges them to abandon their perceived autonomy, submit to him, and come to him on his terms.

Jesus emphatically asked these people to accept his identity as God in human flesh as the bread of life. Although the crowds repeatedly indicated that they would not believe that Jesus was who he claimed to be, Jesus did not respond by lowering his teachings, lowering his standards, or making them more in line with the desires of the wicked. Instead, Jesus struck those around him with the hammer of truth, asserting that no one could come to him unless the father drew him. One of the clearest statements in the Holy Scriptures is about the fact that a sinner cannot completely save himself. Not that the sinner will not come to the child, as many believe. Instead, people can only come to Jesus if the Father draws them.

While the crowd cannot understand these concepts, we know Jesus meant that we only need to rely on Christ as our provision for salvation. This happened when the people in the crowd continued to understand that Jesus would not give them actual physical bread to eat.

As a result of this conviction, we must renounce all our demands, sovereignty, and autonomy. We come to Christ thirsty and hungry, but we discover that he has everything; nothing can save our faith. Like those who were around Jesus, there is always a reason to refuse to come to Christ. However, unless they eat his flesh and drink his blood, they will not have life in themselves because believing in Christ is the only way to live.

The most important question is the reaction of those who heard Jesus say these words. In conclusion, there are three different types of people based on how they respond to Jesus' message. Those who leave work are the first group. They rejected what Jesus said because they could not understand it. They also don't really want what he gives—they want lunch.

Because our sin and flesh overwhelm us in our natural state, we cannot come to Christ unless the Father gives it to us as a free gift of grace. Salvation is given by the father and accomplished by the son through his actions and words, and the spirit applies it to those whom the father gives to his son. People don't like this message. They are not happy with this complete and full gospel of grace. We see that almost everyone in this story abandoned Jesus because of what he preached recently; this is a common reaction to the righteousness of Christ as the bread of life.

Students are the second group. As the typical spokesman for the Twelve Apostles, Peter told Jesus that they believed he had the words of eternal life and had nowhere else to go. This is the essence of a true disciple: there is no Savior, God, religion, source of life, or God for them if we do not sin. Jesus is the only one who deserves to be followed.

Fraudsters are the last group. Most people pretend to leave when a message like John 6 is delivered, but not always all of them. Judas is free. He pretended to believe, but he did not believe in what Jesus taught. However, he went to great lengths to gain worldly benefits from following Jesus. He was willing to make every effort to deceive everyone and become a true disciple of Jesus for earthly gain. Fraudsters always show who they really are, although it takes time. People can only cheat for so long before their true character emerges because time and truth go hand in hand.

One of the most convincing and revealing messages of Jesus in the Gospels is about being the bread of life. Over a long period of time, those who are faced with this message cannot stand in the middle and pretend to be on either side. All of us must realize that we do not want to give up our illusory independence or that we have nowhere else to go but to Christ.

The pastor-teacher of Desert Hills Bible Church in Glendale, Arizona, is Dr. Robb Brunansky. You can follow him at @RobbBrunansky on Twitter.

News Sources:https://www.christianpost.com/voices/jesus-is-the-bread-of-life-what-does-that-mean-for-you.html