Commentary on the Gospel of John

                                  Chapter Six

                                                                                                                                               Verses 52-59 continued

Jesus continued to preach about salvation by His grace when He told these unbelievers that if they would eat His flesh and drink His blood, they would live in Him, and He would live in them. Jesus tried mightily to get these materialist Jews to receive His spiritual food by faith so that He could immediately give them His everlasting life right where they stood. But these unbelievers refused to open their spiritual natures to receive the spiritual truths that Jesus preached.

Even though Jesus tried mightily to get these unbelievers to receive His spiritual truths, at the same time, He knew they would not believe. God does nothing half way. Jesus had to try as hard as He could to get them to believe, even though He knew they would not. Jesus evidently preached past these unbelievers to all humans in the future who would read or hear the Gospel of John who would be able to open their spiritual natures to receive His Word by faith and become saved by grace. Jesus deliberately preached a materialist message with a spiritual meaning to these unbelievers in order to get them to walk away which they all did except for Judas Iscariot. John 6:66. Jesus desired to keep His Church as clean as possible. Jesus preached as hard as he could as long as they listened, but when they made their final rejection, He wanted them to walk away. Jesus also knew that He would save all of these unbelievers with a lesser form of salvation when He would appear to them in the regions of death near the end of the world. Revelation 5:11-14; John 6:27; John 6:58.

In His last statement to these unbelievers, Jesus contrasted physical life with eternal, spiritual life. Jesus told them that God had given their fathers manna in the wilderness to save their physical lives, but they all had died. By contrast, Jesus told them that just as God had given manna to all their fathers to save their physical lives, He would eventually give them all His spiritual bread for them to eat and receive everlasting life. When Jesus told them that they would all live forever by eating His spiritual bread, He did not mean salvation by grace because He did not mention drinking His spiritual blood to them. John 6:58; Hebrews 2:9.

When Jesus spoke about eating "living bread" which is His spiritual flesh, and He did not mention His blood, He meant the lesser salvation that He would provide for the entire human race. John 6:27; John 6:51; John 6:58; Hebrews 2:9; John 5:28-29; I Corinthians 15:22; Revelation 5:11-14; John 6:33. When Jesus spoke about eating His flesh and drinking His blood, He meant the immediate, spiritual salvation by His grace that He would give to all who would believe in Him while they were still alive in the flesh. John 5:24; John 6:53-58; Matthew 26:26-28.