John 6:57

Ver. 57. To be in communion with Jesus is to live, because Jesus has access Himself to the highest source of life, namely, God. “Life passes from the Son to the believer, as it passes from the Father to the Son,” (Weiss). This second transmission is at once the model (καθώς, as) and the principle (καί, also) of the first. The principal clause does not begin, as Chrysostom thought, with the words κἀγὼ ζῶ, I also live, but with καὶ ὀ τρώγων, also he who eats me.

There are two parallel declarations: the first, bearing on the relation between God and Jesus, the second, on the relation between Jesus and the believer; each one containing two clauses: the one relating to Him who gives; the other to him who receives. Jesus is a messenger of God, fulfilling a mission here on earth; He who has given it to Him is the living Father, ὁ ζῶν πατήρ, the author, the primordial and absolute source of life; it is in communion with this Father that Jesus, His Son and messenger, derives unceasingly, during His earthly existence, the life, light and strength which are necessary to fulfill His mission. “I live by the Father.” The word ζῶ, I live, does not indicate merely the fact of existence; it is at once the physical and moral life, with all their different manifestations. Every time that He acts or speaks, Jesus seeks in God what is necessary for Him for this end and receives it. It is not exact to render διὰ (with the accusative) as we have been obliged to do, by the preposition by (per patrem).

Jesus did not express Himself in this way (διά with the genitive) because He did not wish to say merely that God was the force by means of which He worked. But, on the other hand, it would be still more inexact to translate: because of the Father (propter patrem; Lange, Westcott), in the sense of: with a view to the service or the glory of the Father. For the preposition διά with the accusative signifies, not with a view to (the purpose), but because of (the cause). Jesus means to say that, as sent by the Father, He unceasingly has from God the moral cause of His activity.

It is in the Father that He finds the source and norm of each one of His movements, from Him that He gets the vital principle of His being. The Father, in sending the Son, has secured to Him this unique relation, and the Son continues sedulously faithful to it (John 6:17). Thus it happens that the life of the Father is perfectly reproduced on earth: Jesus is God lived in a human life. From this results the fact described in the second part of the verse. Grammatically speaking, this second part forms but one proposition. But, logically, the first member indicating the subject: “ He who eats me,” corresponds with the first proposition of the preceding declaration: “ As the Father sent me; ” and in the same way the predicate: “ He also shall live by me,” corresponds with the second member of the first proposition: “ And as I live by the Father. ” The relation which Jesus sustains to the Father has its reflection, as it were, in that which the believer sustains to Jesus, and is for the believer the secret of life. The first καί, also, corresponds with the καθώς, as, of the beginning of the verse: it is the sign of the principal proposition. It takes the place of a οὕτως, so, which was avoided because the analogy between the two relations was still not complete. For the first relation is more than the model: it is the principle, the moral reason of the second.

The latter, while being analogous to the first, exists only in virtue of the other. The second καί before the pronoun makes the subject prominent: ἐκεῖνος, he also. The believer, by feeding on Jesus, finds in Him the same source and guaranty of life as that which Jesus Himself finds in His relation to the Father. Δἰ ἐμέ, not strictly by me or for me, but because of me, the norm and source of his life. In each act which he performs, the believer seeks in Christ his model and his strength, as Christ does with relation to the Father; and it is thus that the life of Christ and consequently that of the Father Himself become his. A thought of unfathomable depth is contained in this saying: Jesus only has direct access to the Father, the supreme source. The life which He derives from Him, humanly elaborated and reproduced in His person, becomes thus accessible to men. As the infinite life of nature becomes capable of appropriation by man only so far as it is concentrated in a fruit or a piece of bread, so the divine life is only brought within our reach so far as it is incarnated in the Son of man.

It is thus that He is for us the bread of life. Only, as we must take the piece of bread and assimilate it to ourselves in order to obtain physical life by its means, we must, also, in order to have the higher life, incorporate into ourselves the person of the Son of man by the inward act of faith, which is the mode of spiritual manducation. By eating Him, who lives by God, we possess the life of God. The living Father lives in One, but in this One He gives Himself to all. This is not metaphysics; it is the most practical morals, as every believer well knows. Jesus therefore reveals here at once the secret of His own life and of that of His followers. Here is the mystery of salvation, which St. Paul describes as “ the summing up of all things in one ” (Ephesians 1:10). The Lord sought thus to make clear to the Jews what appeared to them incredible: that one man could be for all others the source of life. The formula here given by Christ is of course that of His earthly life; that of His divine life was given in John 6:26. It follows from these words that no other even miraculous food can give life.