John 6:61-63

“ But Jesus, knowing in himself that his disciples murmured at this, said unto them: Does this word offend you? 62. And if you shall see the Son of man ascending where he was before? 63. It is the Spirit that gives life; the flesh profits nothing. The words which I speak unto you are spirit and life. ”

As Lange remarks, the words “ in himself ” do not exclude the perception of any external signs, but they signify that Jesus had no need of questioning any one of them in order to understand these symptoms. The word offend, is to be taken here in the gravest sense, as in Luke 7:23: to cause to stumble with respect to faith.

The words ἐὰν οὖν (John 6:62), which we have translated by and if, do not depend upon any principal proposition. One must, therefore, be supplied. We may understand, “What will you then say?” But this question itself may and must be resolved into one of the two following ones: “Will not your offense cease then?” or, on the contrary: “Will you not then be still more offended?” This last question is the one which is understood by de Wette, Meyer andLucke . According to Weiss, this second view is absolutely required by the οὖν, therefore; the first would have required but: “ But will not your present offense cease?” True; nevertheless, this second form of the question, if one holds to it, cannot be any more satisfactory.

What purpose indeed would it serve to refer them to a coming fact which would offend them still more? We must come to a third supposition which unites the two questions, by passing from the second so as to end with the first. “If therefore, one day, after you have heard this saying which is so intolerable to you, an event occurs which renders it altogether absurd, will you not then understand that you were mistaken as to its true meaning?” The apostle calls this event an ἀναβαίνειν, ascending. A whole class of interpreters find here the indication of the death of Jesus as the means of His exaltation to the Father (Lucke, de Wette, Meyer, Reuss, Weiss). “It is then indeed, Jesus would say, that your Messianic hopes will be reduced to nothing!” But are the ideas of suffering and disappearing identical, then, with that of ascending? When the idea of death on the cross is united with that of the heavenly exaltation of Jesus (John 3:15; John 12:34), the apostle uses the passive term, ὑψωθῆναι, to be lifted up. When he desires to present this death from the point of view of the disappearance which will follow it, he says ὑπάγειν, to go away (to the Father) but not ἀναβαίνειν.

When John applies this last term to the exaltation of Jesus John 20:17, he does not mean to speak of His death; for it is after His resurrection. How could the term ascend designate the moment of His deepest humiliation? and that in speaking to Jews! Still more, according to all these interpreters, it is the death of Jesus with its consequences which is the hard saying at which the disciples are offended; and yet the new offense, a still greater one, which should form the consummation of the first, is again the death! Weiss perceives this contradiction so clearly that, in order to escape it, he supposes that the mention of the death contained in John 6:53 was imported by the evangelist into the discourse of Jesus; the allusion to the great separation of death could have occurred only in this passage. This is to make over the discourse, not to explain it. The only natural and even possible interpretation is that which applies the term ascend to the ascension. It is objected that the fact of the ascension is not related by John and that the words: if you shall see, do not apply to this fact, since the apostles alone were witnesses of it.

But the omission of the ascension in John is explained, like that of the baptism; his narrative ends before the first of these facts, as it begins after the second. Nevertheless John alludes to the one and the other (John 1:32 and John 20:17). And as to the word see, it is not always applied to the sight of the eyes, but also to that of the understanding; comp. John 1:51 “you shall see the angels ascending and descending;” John 4:19: “I see that Thou art a prophet;” but especially Matthew 26:63: “Henceforth you shall see the Son of man seated at the right hand of power and coming on the clouds.” This last passage is altogether analogous to ours. In the visible facts of Pentecost and the fall of Jerusalem, the Jews beheld, whether they would or no, the invisible ones, the sitting of Christ on the right hand of God and His return in judgment. As to believers, they have seen and still see through the eyes of the apostles. Jesus Himself, if He foretold these facts, must have clearly foreseen the ascension which is the condition of them. Various details confirm this meaning. In the first place, the present participle ascending, which forms a picture (see Baumlein); then, the opposition between this term and the term descending from heaven which, throughout this whole chapter, has designated the incarnation, as well as the words: where he was before, on which, as Keil observes, lies precisely the emphasis of the sentence; finally, the parallel in John 20:17. It is evident that this meaning is perfectly suited to the context: “You are offended at the necessity of eating and drinking the blood of a man who is here before you. This thought will seem to you much more unacceptable, when you shall see this same man ascend again into heaven from which He descended before, and His flesh and blood disappear from before your eyes. But at that time you also will be obliged to understand that the eating and drinking were of an altogether different nature from what you at first supposed.” The following verse fully confirms this explanation.