John 6:25-26

“ And having found him on the other side of the sea, they said unto him: rabbi, when camest thou hither? 26. Jesus answered them and said: Verily, verily, I say unto you, You seek me, not because you saw signs, but because you did eat of those loaves and were filled. ”

We have seen that the motive for the action of the multitude was the seeking for Jesus; this is recalled to mind by the first words of this passage: “ And having found him. ” The question: when (not: how) camest thou? arises from the fact that they think it impossible that Jesus had made the journey on foot over the road which separates Bethsaida Julias from Capernaum (two to three leagues). The presence of Jesus produces on them the effect of an apparition. He replies, as on every occasion when He is questioned in the way of curiosity, not to the question of the interlocutor, but to the feeling which dictates it.

Comp. John 2:4; John 3:3, etc. He unveils to these Jews what is false and fleshly in their way of seeking Him. As there is here a revelation of their inward feelings, of which they were themselves unconscious, He uses the emphatic affirmation, amen, amen. Jesus contrasts here with the false and vain seeking after His person, which aims only at the satisfaction of the earthly man (John 6:26), that salutary seeking which tends to fill the wants of the spiritual man (John 6:27). His miracles were the visible signs of the blessings of salvation which He brings to mankind. It will be necessary, therefore, not to rest in the material relief which they procure; it will be necessary to rise by their means to the desire of the superior gifts of which they are the pledge and the image; it will be necessary, before and above all, to believe on Him whom God points out to the world by giving to Him to do such works. We see how necessary it is to avoid translating the word σημεῖα, signs, here by miracles (Ostervald, Arnaud, Rilliet). It is precisely on the meaning signs that the whole force of this saying depends. The multitudes interpreted the multiplication of the loaves as the beginning of a series of wonders of the same nature, the inauguration of an era of miracles more and more brilliant and satisfying to the flesh. “Instead of seeing,” as Lange says, “in the bread the sign, they had seen in the sign only the bread.” This gross want of understanding is what gives to their search for Jesus a false, earthly, sensual, animal character.

This tendency it is which Jesus points out to them from the very first word of the conversation, and particularly by the expression which betrays a sort of disgust: and because you were filled. What a difference between these people, who come with their gross aspirations, their earthly appetites, and the spiritual Israel which the Old Testament was intended to prepare and which cries out: “My soul thirsts after thee, oh living God!” This Israel would say to Him who multiplied the loaves: Give us more still! Do to-day for our hearts what thou didst yesterday for our bodies! The plural, signs, refers either to the two miracles related in the former part of the chapter, or rather to the miracles in general, which had been no better understood by the multitudes than the one of multiplying the loaves. We have rendered the article τῶν before ἄρτων by the demonstrative pronoun: “ those loaves,” because the word the contains an evident allusion to the loaves of the preceding day.

ADDITIONAL NOTES BY THE AMERICAN EDITOR.

Vv. 25-40.

1. The abruptness in the turn of thought from the question of the people to the answer of Jesus may indicate an omission of some intermediate words in the report of the conversation. These words, however, must have revealed to the mind of Jesus that their thoughts were moving in the sphere of earthly curiosity and earthly desire, and so, as everywhere in this Gospel (and to some extent the same thing is noticeable in the earlier gospels), He turns them away at once from the earthly to the spiritual things.

2. John 6:26 does not seem to intimate that they came to Jesus now for the purpose of having food provided for them again, as it had been on the day before, but that, in view of the fact that they had had such provision for temporal wants in one line, they hoped to find in Jesus one who would, as the great prophet, bring them the blessings which might belong to a temporal and earthly kingdom. They saw the miracle of the preceding day and were impressed by it. They said, Of a truth this is the prophet. But they did not see in it a true σημεῖον, in the sense in which Jesus intended it. They did not have the faith which took hold of the inner life. Hence they asked (John 6:30) for a sign, when He called for this faith, as if no sign had been already given.

3. Faith is presented in this passage as an ἔργον, and as the one comprehensive ἔργον. But this seems to be rather incidental to the form of the sentence than indicative of a doctrine of faith as a work. As they called on Him to tell them what they must do in working for the meat which abides to eternal life, He tells them that the sum of what they have to do is gathered up into believing in Him. But this believing is set forth in the following discourse as involving the closest union with Jesus, the feeding upon him, and thus it is represented as a working and transforming power renewing the whole life of the soul.

4. In the demand which they make for a new sign it is probable that the miracle wrought on the preceding day may have led them to refer to the manna, rather than any other wonderful manifestation in the Old Testament history. Not a mere provision for a day, like that which He had just given, but something great and continuous, such as had come through Moses, might reasonably, as they thought, be asked for, before they should accept Him as one on whom eternal life for themselves should so wholly depend.

5. The progress of thought from John 6:32 to John 6:35 is as follows: Jesus first donies that the bread which answers to the true idea of bread which He now has in mind (ἀληθινόν) was given by Moses, and affirms that it is given by God (John 6:32); secondly, He gives the proof of the affirmative statement it is God who gives the true bread, because the bread of God is that which descends and gives life to the world, and that which thus gives life can alone be the ἀληθινὸς ἄρτος (John 6:33); thirdly, He declares that He is Himself this bread (John 6:35). The construction of John 6:33 is in accordance with the order of the words, ἄρτος being the subject and ὁ καταβ. κ. τ. λ. the predicate. The fact that God's bread is that which gives life is the proof that not Moses, but God, gives the ideal bread. The emphasis of the last clause of John 6:33 is especially on the words ζωὴν διδοὺς τῷ κόσμῳ. The ideal bread must be the life-giving bread. The close connection between John 6:35 and John 6:33 seems to show that the gentitive ζωῆς is to be explained as equivalent to διδοὺς ζωήν.

6. The reference in the word εἶπον of John 6:36 is supposed by Weiss, Keil, Milligan and Moulton, among the most recent commentators, to be to the words of John 6:26. Westcott says: “The thought is contained in John 6:26, and the reference may be to those words; but more probably the reference is to other words like them, spoken at some earlier time.” The general character and plan of John's Gospel makes it probable that in such cases there is an allusion to something which he has himself recorded, and, if this be the fact in this case, the reference to John 6:26 is somewhat more probable than that to John 5:37 ff.

7. The emphasis in John 6:37 ff. is on the word πᾶν. It is, therefore, the universality of the blessing with reference to those who believe, rather than the question of Divine election as limiting it only to them, which is here in mind.

8. John 6:37-40 are closely connected in thought with John 6:35. As Christ is the life-giving bread, the one who comes to Him and believes on Him will never hunger or thirst (John 6:35), because every such person is a gift to Christ according to the will of the Father, and this will is that the gift, when once made, should never be lost. Four points may be noticed here:

(a) The emphasis which is laid on the absolute security of the continuous and ever-enduring blessing.

(b) The foundation of this security in the fact that Christ's mission to earth is to do the Father's will there can be no selfish or arbitrary action on His part, therefore, with reference to those who come to Him by the Father's gift.

(c) The gift of the Father is immediately united with the existence of faith in the one who comes to Christ (comp. John 6:39-40 in their parallelism, and the relation of the latter to the former through the particle γάρ); the Father draws (John 6:44), and the susceptible soul comes with faith by reason of the drawing influence.

(d) The experience of those who thus come is set forth from the beginning to the end first, they are none of them rejected when they come; secondly, they are none of them lost afterwards, but are all kept safely; thirdly, they have eternal life from the moment of believing, and it is in this life that they are kept; fourthly, the consummation at the end is the resurrection. The whole is a development of life, in the carrying out of the Divine will by Christ, which naturally and necessarily moves forward to its completeness.

9. The connection of ἔχη ζωὴν αἰώνιον (John 6:40) with μὴ ἀπολέσω (John 6:39) points to the idea of duration in αἰώνιον (the quantitative idea); the contrast of the ἔχη and ἀναστήσω, on the other hand, points to the present possession of the life, and thus to the qualitative idea. The two elements are united in the Johannean thought.