John 6:35-40

³⁵Then Jesus declared, "I am the bread of life. He who comes to Me will never go hungry, and he who believes in Me will never be thirsty. ³⁶But as I told you, you have seen Me and still you do not believe. ³⁷All that the Father gives Me will come to Me, and whoever comes to Me I will never drive away. ³⁸For I have come down from heaven not to do My will but to do the will of Him who sent Me. ³⁹And this is the will of Him who sent Me, that I shall lose none of all that He has given Me, but raise them up at the last day. ⁴⁰For My Father's will is that everyone who looks to the Son and believes in Him shall have eternal life, and I will raise Him up at the last day."

Jesus responds to the Jews’ arrogant and/or blindly materialistic interpretation of His teaching with unmistakable clarity, saying, “I am the Bread of Life.” (This is the first of seven “I am” sayings – John 6:35,48; 8:12; 9:5; 10:7,9,11,14; 11:25; 14:6; 15:1,5.) The bread they claim to want in v34 is standing before them. Jesus directs them to Himself, explaining clearly that whoever comes to Him in genuine saving faith will never go hungry or be thirsty. Bread alleviates hunger, but it does not quench thirst, so in adding the part about thirst, Jesus is making the audience see that He’s not talking about literal bread, but rather nourishment in general – in fact, He is speaking of Himself, as we have seen, as the fountain of all life, both in the sense of creating and sustaining it. Think of John’s prologue.

Of course, by coming to Jesus and receiving Him as He is – as we will later see, by “eating His flesh and drinking His blood” – Jesus just means believing on Him. “He who comes to Me” is synonymous with “He who believes in Me,” “He who receives Me,” or “He who accepts Me.” This refers to genuine saving faith. Jesus is instructing the audience how to take the food He offers – through faith. A person must have faith in order to believe in Christ, that is, in who He is, and what He has done on the cross (or for these people, in what He would do for them – they are looking forward to the cross through Isaiah 53 and Psalm 22 glasses, while we are looking back through Romans-type or Gospel glasses), in order to partake of the eternal life that Jesus gives.

In v36, Jesus rebukes the Jews for willingly rejecting this gift of God in Him. They have more than enough evidence. When Jesus speaks of them as having seen Him, He doesn’t mean physically viewing His body with their eyes; He means they have born witness to His Person as the Christ. They have seen the truth, yet they are suppressing the truth by their wickedness and unable to receive Him (Romans 1:18-19; 1 Corinthians 2:6-8,12-14). At this point, it seems as if Jesus’ message, His offer of eternal life, is in vain – clearly it is falling on deaf ears. However, it is not a problem because Jesus does not rest His hope of bringing a people from death into life on the basis of their ability to believe. His hope rests in something more fundamental, that the Father has promised to give a certain people to the Son, and that He will unfailingly bring this people to true faith in Him by His Spirit. Zechariah 4:6 “Not by might nor by power, but by My Spirit, says the Lord Almighty.” This is what Jesus begins to reveal in v37.

V37 is one of my favorites. Look at it closely. “All that the Father gives Me will come to Me, and whoever comes to Me I will never drive away (or I will certainly not cast out).” It’s beautiful. There is a giving on the part of the Father, there is a coming on the part of men and women, there is a receiving on the part of Jesus Christ. We come to Christ, as the Father gives us to Him, and He receives us. There’s nothing about us accepting Him, as if we are in control. Shorten it to read like this: All the Father gives will come. (Faith is not dependent on the will of man – John 1:12-13; Romans 9:16; Ephesians 2:8-9; etc.) And all who come will be received. (This second half of the verse is for the comfort of the elect – we do indeed come freely and will certainly be taken in.) Shorten it even more: All the Father gives will be received. This issue of our coming to Christ is in the hands of the Father and the Son – by their Spirit. If the Father has given you to the Son, you will voluntarily come to the Son; and if the Father has given you to the Son, the Son will never drive you away. He will receive you. The doctrine of election here is unmistakable and here for our comfort. But make sure you are among the elect (2 Peter 1:10) and continue to work out your salvation with fear and trembling, because you know that God works in you to will and to act according to His good purpose (Philippians 2:12-13).

Furthermore, taken in the context of Jesus’ explanation, He’s categorizing this group of Jews as reprobate (not elect), as goats and not sheep, as outsiders and not insiders, and it’s offensive to them, as we’ll see in v41. But Christ has come only to do the Father’s will. It is in this sense that the gospel is more than a mere offer of salvation; it’s a certainty worked out in the covenant of redemption prior to creation. And since it is the Father’s will that an exact number of definite, chosen persons believe on the Son, and that of those, none should perish, but the Son should give them all eternal life, it is therefore absolutely certain that this people whom the Father has chosen to give the Son will believe and indeed be eternally saved (Ephesians 1:3-14). Lastly, notice that when Jesus says, “Whoever looks to the Son and believes in Him,” He’s deliberately bringing up seeing and believing, because He had early said that the Jews saw and did not believe. Faith knows Christ. To believe in Christ, we must know who He is and what He has done.