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Re: What Did Jesus Say About Himself?
• John 6:48-49 . . . I am the bread of life. Your fathers ate the manna in the
wilderness, and they died.
Manna was very nourishing but limited; it didn't sustain Moses' people
indefinitely even though it was God-given and miraculous.
Psalm 78:24-25 is commonly translated to say that the manna was angels'
food, but in none of the other fifteen places where the Hebrew word appears
is it translated to indicate celestial beings. It usually speaks of strength,
valiance, and/or superiority.
I think we can safely paraphrase Ps 78:25 to say that manna was powerful
food; and indeed it was because it's common to develop deficiency diseases
when people eat only one kind of food at every meal day after day;
especially vegans. But according to Deut 8:4, the people apparently enjoyed
exceptional health.
• John 6:50-51a . .This is the bread which comes down from heaven, that a
man may eat of it and not die. I am the living bread which came down from
heaven; if any one eats of this bread, he will live forever;
Jesus chose a good comparison. Up till that moment, the Jews knew of no
foods superior to manna.
• John 6:51b-52 . . And the bread which I shall give for the life of the world
is my flesh. The Jews then disputed among themselves, saying: How can
this man give us his flesh to eat?
The Jews misunderstood Jesus to mean cannibalism. Well; he laid that idea
to rest with this statement:
• John 6:61-62 . . Aware that his disciples were grumbling about this, Jesus
said to them: Does this offend you? What if you see the Son of Man ascend
to where he was before?
In other words; in order for people to successfully cannibalize Jesus' body, it
would have to be accessible where they could cut into it with a knife and
fork. Were he to depart for heaven, which he eventually did; people would
lose access to his body and thus find it impossible to comply if true that his
teaching spoke of cannibalism. So we can rule out a literal meaning of his
words right off the bat.
Jesus' teachings were somewhat cryptic.
• John 6:63 . .The Spirit gives life; the flesh counts for nothing. The words I
have spoken to you are spirit and they are life.
Spirit words oftentimes contain hidden meanings not easily discerned by
human intelligence.
• 1Cor 2:13-15 . .We speak, not in words taught us by human wisdom but in
words taught by the Spirit, expressing spiritual truths in spiritual words. The
man without the Spirit does not accept the things that come from the Spirit
of God, for they are foolishness to him, and he cannot understand them,
because they are spiritually discerned.
Jesus' spirit words were not well-received by the audience that day.
• John 6:66 . . From this time many of his disciples turned back and no
longer followed him.
Well; no surprise there. The reason they gave up on Jesus was simply
because they were listening to his spirit words with human ears instead of
hearing them with ears provided by God; ergo:
• John 6:63-65 . .There are some of you who do not believe. This is why I
told you that no one can come to me unless the Father has enabled him.
In order to get in on the Father's enabling, people must first be confident
that Jesus' teachings are reliable.
• John 6:67-69 . . You do not want to leave too, do you? Jesus asked the
twelve. Simon Peter answered him: Lord, to whom shall we go? You have
the words of eternal life. We believe and know that you are the Holy One of
God.
That was easily the wisest decision Peter ever made. Though he didn't have
a clue what Jesus was talking about at first, our guy was confident that
Jesus was the voice of God. That's a really, really good place to start with
Christ.
• John 12:49 . . I have not spoken of myself; but the Father which sent me,
He gave me a commandment, what I should say, and what I should speak.
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