Read­ing Time: 2 minutes

Introduction 

The hatred on Jesus is gradu­ally gain­ing momentum. The Jews are com­plain­ing and mur­mur­ing. Their reas­ons include the fol­low­ing words of Jesus:

• “I am the bread that came down from heaven”;
• “No one can come to me unless the Fath­er who sent me draws them, and I will raise them up at the last day” (John 6:44);
• “I am the bread of life” (John 6:48).
• “I am the liv­ing bread that came down from heav­en. If any­one eats from this bread he will live forever. The bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh” (John 6:51).

These were hard words and dif­fi­cult pro­nounce­ments for the Jews. And to some extent, they con­sidered them ser­i­ous insult. How can Jesus claim to be the bread from heav­en? How dare he com­pare this heav­enly bread with what they.….….

Jesus the living bread

“I am the bread of life. I am the liv­ing bread that came down from heav­en” (John 6:48.51). The Jews had no option than to believe. As Jesus told the crowd who wanted to know the work they must do to work for the food that lasts for etern­al life, doing the work of God means believ­ing in him whom God has sent (cf. John 6:28–29). Hav­ing informed the Jews that he is the bread of life, Jesus reminded them that they can no longer rely on the bread their ancest­ors ate in the wil­der­ness because although they ate that bread, yet, they died (cf. John 6:49). Jesus for­ti­fies his asser­tion of being the bread of life and dis­tin­guished between this bread and the one the ancest­ors ate in the desert. Such dis­tinc­tion is con­tained in these words “This is the bread that comes down from heav­en, so that one may eat of it and not die” (John 6:50). To for­ti­fy his argu­ment, and in case the Jews are still won­der­ing what bread of life means, Jesus went fur­ther and informs them that “he is the liv­ing bread that came down from heav­en. Who­ever eats of this bread will live forever; and the bread that he will give for the life of the world is his flesh” (John 6:51). But how did the Jews respond and react to this? The answer fol­lows next Sunday. 

Conclusion

We should not repeat the mis­take of the Jews espe­cially, as high­lighted in the Gos­pel accord­ing to John. Because they were not dis­posed (intern­ally and extern­ally), they could not be taught by God, and con­sequently, they could not be drawn to Jesus by believ­ing in him. Their not being dis­posed con­trib­uted immensely in their not under­stand­ing Jesus. They took everything Jesus said lit­er­ally because they were only mater­i­al and depended solely on their mere human capa­city. This was and is still, a ser­i­ous error. Cer­tainly, there are Chris­ti­ans who are Jews in the way they take many words of the Gos­pel lit­er­ally, thereby, end­ing up as fan­at­ics. The bread giv­en to the Jews in the desert was to test their faith­ful­ness in God and to sat­is­fy their mater­i­al hun­ger. But the bread of life and the liv­ing bread from heav­en is giv­en to grant and guar­an­tee etern­al life.

FOR DETAILS, GET YOUR OWN COPIES OF THE BOOK “THE WORD OF LIFE: SUNDAY REFLECTIONS” (vols. I and II)!! The reflec­tion for the 19^th Sunday of the year (B) is found in vol. II pages 344–351. Happy reading!

For details on how to get it, con­tact the author on this link: https://m.me/uchennabiblia?fbclid=IwAR2yeg4a6sDGBp9QGkIvKj6FSADumMokN6lshdE0zuo-JHs6qOmlhA7jyHo or email me at: postmaster@uchennabiblia.com or simply send an SMS on 08116100926, and I will get back to you.

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