35 Jesus said to them, “I am the bread of life; he who comes to me shall not hunger, and he who believes in me shall never thirst.
The day following the multiplication of the loaves to feed the five thousand, Jesus has delicately prepared his audience for the bombshell on one of the difficult hidden truths about the expected Messianic Banquet.
The Messianic Banquet was a commonly held belief about what would happen in the fullness of time. Quasi-divine figures like the Son of Man from the Book of Daniel were expected to arrive, incorporate the Nations and the Hebrews together under one New Covenant with God. This would be celebrated with a feast amongst the heavenly host.
The typical feast imagery we should be imagining is that of where you get to the Patriarch of the household face-to-face and get to eat at his table as if you were a part of his family. The divine surprise is that Jesus, routinely referring to himself as the “Son of Man”, definitely takes place of the Messianic figure at the Banquet but he also declares that he is the food. “I am the bread of life”. This is where many of his audience would probably be scratching their heads and further on in the discourse they will be outright disgusted because they realise he is being quite literal.
Second Temple Literature like 1 Enoch which was very influential on the New Testament authors speaks of a time, at the end of time, where people will not be sad or hungry or suffer sickness. Jesus here is presenting himself as the medicine to human suffering hunger and thirst, the difficulty was the typical expectation was that God was the one who would do the mending, to his audience, Jesus is just a man so by placing himself as the solution to human frailty he is not so subtly claiming divinity, along with one of the “I am” statements proceeding it, this is very rich text for divine claim. It is eating this bread (himself) and believing in him, that transfigures human issues like hunger and thirst.
36 But I said to you that you have seen me and yet do not believe.
Up to this point Jesus has offered clear signs of both his prophetic and Messianic claims through his supernatural miracles, explicitly for this crowd, the multiplication of loaves which both imitate but transcend the miracles of the Prophet Elisha and the prototypical messiah Moses. He is the representative sent by God, they can physically see him, witness his miracles yet still do not believe.
37 All that the Father gives me will come to me; and him who comes to me I will not cast out.
All those who believe, and by belief we mean live out the requirements of Jesus as well as intellectually assent to him will come to him. He himself will not “cast out” these that come to him. The Greek here uses the same word used in the Greek Old Testament for when our first parents were “cast out” of the Garden in the Book of Genesis. Some have taken this line of Jesus to mean eternal security, basically no matter what you do, as long as you intellectually believe in Jesus, you go to Heaven. This would contradict other parts of the Gospels and the Epistles so that can’t be the case. What is being articulated is that Jesus does not cast you out, you cast yourself out which is how the Church understands those who are damned to hell. They choose it. They choose to blaspheme the Holy Spirit and reject Jesus at the end and choose to be cast out of the elect.
38 For I have come down from heaven, not to do my own will, but the will of him who sent me;
39 and this is the will of him who sent me, that I should lose nothing of all that he has given me, but raise it up at the last day.
40 For this is the will of my Father, that every one who sees the Son and believes in him should have eternal life; and I will raise him up at the last day.”
Jesus mentioned previously that a true manna from Heaven will be sent, he then said that he is that manna, the bread of heaven and life. To make his point even more explicit he states that he has come down from heaven. This is an outright claim of divinity, although we might read past it, in the Hebrew context what comes from heaven is of God and therefore have connect to the divine in some way.
Like the prophets before him Jesus comes because of the will of his father, the difference is that the previous prophets were of earth, he is of heaven and does the will of God. This lines up with the expectations of the Son of Man figure who is at the right hand of the Ancient of Days. He is a divine figure, from heaven, doing the will of God on earth.
He is gathering for God the father from the people of earth, those who the Father seeks to “raise” at the last day. Although an eternal spiritual existence with God would be great, God’s plan involves the body to be a part of this communion with him.
[unfinished]
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