John 6:63

Ver. 63. The first proposition is a general principle, from which they should have started and which would quite naturally exclude the mistake which they commit. Chrysostom, Luther, Reuss give to the word flesh here the sense of grossly literal interpretation and to the word spirit that of figurative interpretation. But the opposite of the spirit in this sense would be the letter, rather than the flesh; and the word flesh cannot be taken here all at once in a different sense from that which it has had throughout the whole preceding discourse. “The Spirit alone gives life,” Jesus means to say; “as to the material substance, whether that of the manna, or that of my own body, it is powerless to communicate it.” Does this saying exclude the substantial communication of the Lord's body, in the Lord's Supper? No, undoubtedly, since the Lord, as He communicates Himself to believers, through faith, in the sacrament, is life-giving Spirit, and the flesh and blood no longer belong to the substance of His glorified body (1 Corinthians 15:50).

From this general principle Jesus infers the true sense of His words. If He said simply: My words are spirit, one might understand these words with Augustine in the sense: My words are to be understood spiritually. But the second predicate: and life, does not allow this explanation. The meaning is therefore: “My words are the incarnation and communication of the Spirit; it is the Spirit who dwells in them and acts through them; and for this reason they communicate life” (according to the first clause of the verse). From this spiritual and life-giving nature of His words results the manner in which they are to be interpreted.

The Alexandrian reading: “the words which I have spoken,” is adopted as unquestionable by Tischendorf, Westcott, Weiss, Keil, etc., on the evidence of the most ancient Mjj. And one seems to be setting oneself obstinately against the evidence in preferring to it the received reading: “the words which I speak (in general),” which has in its favor only the St. Gall MS. and nine others of nearly the same time (9th century). My conviction is, nevertheless, that this is indeed the true reading. The first reading would restrict the application of these words to the sayings which Jesus has just uttered on this same day, while the pronoun ἐγώ, I, by making the nature of the sayings depend on the character of Him who utters them, gives to this affirmation a permanent application: “The words which a being such as I am, spiritual and living, utters, are necessarily spirit and life.” Weiss does not appear to me to have succeeded in accounting for this pronoun ἐγώ, when he adopts the Alexandrian reading.