The Scandal of the Supper Text: John 6:41-58
Introduction: The Great Sifting
We come now to a passage of Scripture that is designed by the Holy Spirit to be a great sifting. When Jesus preaches this sermon, He is not trying to win friends and influence people. He is not running for office. He is deliberately, methodically, and sovereignly driving a wedge between the true disciples and the false ones. He is making it impossible for anyone to follow Him for the wrong reasons, for the carnal reasons, for the reasons of the belly. After the feeding of the five thousand, the crowds were enthusiastic. They wanted to make Him king by force. But Jesus will not be a king on their terms. He will not be a bread king, a circus king, a king who serves their appetites. He is a king who demands total surrender, and He offers Himself as the only food that can grant eternal life.
This sermon is an offense. It was an offense to the Jews who heard it then, and it remains an offense to the natural man today. The offense is twofold. First, it is an offense to our pride. Jesus claims a divine origin that His neighbors find preposterous. Second, it is an offense to our reason. He speaks of eating His flesh and drinking His blood, language that is cannibalistic and grotesque to the unregenerate mind. But underneath both is the ultimate offense: the offense of divine sovereignty. Jesus makes it clear that no one can come to Him on their own steam. No one can just "decide for Jesus." Coming to Him is not a product of human ingenuity or free will; it is the result of a divine, effectual drawing by the Father.
So as we work our way through this text, we must ask ourselves which crowd we are in. Are we in the crowd of grumblers, offended by His claims and scandalized by His demands? Or are we with Peter, who, when many turned away, confessed, "Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life." This passage is a spiritual diagnostic tool. It reveals the true state of the heart. It separates those who want a manageable, reasonable, domesticated savior from those who will bow to the sovereign, mysterious, and all-sufficient Christ of God.
The Text
Therefore the Jews were grumbling about Him, because He said, “I am the bread that came down from heaven.” They were saying, “Is not this Jesus, the son of Joseph, whose father and mother we know? How does He now say, ‘I have come down from heaven’?” Jesus answered and said to them, “Stop grumbling among yourselves. No one can come to Me unless the Father who sent Me draws him; and I will raise him up on the last day. It is written in the prophets, ‘AND THEY SHALL ALL BE TAUGHT BY GOD.’ Everyone who has heard and learned from the Father comes to Me. Not that anyone has seen the Father, except the One who is from God; He has seen the Father. Truly, truly, I say to you, he who believes has eternal life. I am the bread of life. Your fathers ate the manna in the wilderness, and they died. This is the bread which comes down from heaven, so that one may eat of it and not die. I am the living bread that came down from heaven; if anyone eats of this bread, he will live forever; and also the bread which I will give for the life of the world is My flesh.”
Then the Jews began to argue with one another, saying, “How can this man give us His flesh to eat?” So Jesus said to them, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink His blood, you have no life in yourselves. He who eats My flesh and drinks My blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day. For My flesh is true food, and My blood is true drink. He who eats My flesh and drinks My blood abides in Me, and I in him. As the living Father sent Me, and I live because of the Father, so he who eats Me, he also will live because of Me. This is the bread which came down out of heaven, not as the fathers ate and died. He who eats this bread will live forever.
(John 6:41-58 LSB)
The Offense of His Origin (vv. 41-43)
We begin with the grumbling. Their complaint is rooted in a carnal familiarity.
"Therefore the Jews were grumbling about Him, because He said, 'I am the bread that came down from heaven.' They were saying, 'Is not this Jesus, the son of Joseph, whose father and mother we know? How does He now say, ‘I have come down from heaven’?' Jesus answered and said to them, 'Stop grumbling among yourselves.'" (John 6:41-43)
Grumbling is the characteristic sin of the unbelieving heart when confronted with God's provision and God's authority. Israel grumbled in the wilderness about the manna, and now their descendants grumble about the true Manna. The root of their complaint is what we might call the Nazareth principle. "We know this guy. We know his parents. He's one of us." They are operating on a purely horizontal, naturalistic plane. Because they can explain His earthly origins, they think they have explained Him away entirely. They cannot fathom the intersection of the eternal and the temporal, the divine and the human, in this man from their hometown.
This is the essence of unbelief. It reduces everything to what can be seen, measured, and empirically verified. It has no category for the transcendent, for the Word becoming flesh. They stumble over the incarnation. They think His ordinary humanity cancels out His claim to extraordinary divinity. But this is precisely the glory of the gospel. God did not send an angel or an avatar; He sent His Son, born of a woman, a real man. But He was not just a man. He was the God-man.
Jesus does not try to placate them. He does not offer them His birth certificate or bring Mary and Joseph out for an interview. He commands them to stop their grumbling. Why? Because their grumbling is not an intellectual problem to be solved with more data. It is a spiritual problem, a heart problem, that can only be solved by a divine work.
The Sovereignty of Salvation (vv. 44-46)
Jesus now drops the theological bombshell that explains their unbelief. It is the doctrine of sovereign grace, what we call effectual calling.
"No one can come to Me unless the Father who sent Me draws him; and I will raise him up on the last day. It is written in the prophets, ‘AND THEY SHALL ALL BE TAUGHT BY GOD.’ Everyone who has heard and learned from the Father comes to Me." (John 6:44-45)
This is one of the clearest statements in all of Scripture about the inability of fallen man. "No one can." It is not that they will not, but that they cannot. The natural man is not just sick or wounded; he is dead in trespasses and sins. He is spiritually inert. He cannot see the kingdom, he cannot enter it, and he cannot come to Christ. He is not sitting on the fence, weighing his options. He is in bondage to sin and loves the darkness.
What makes the difference? The Father "draws him." This word for "draws" is a strong word. It is used elsewhere of dragging a net full of fish to shore. This is not a gentle wooing or a polite invitation that man can ultimately veto with his vaunted "free will." This is a powerful, effective, irresistible drawing. The Father does not just make salvation possible; He makes it certain for His elect. The Father chooses, the Son dies for those the Father chose, and the Spirit applies that salvation, regenerating the dead heart and drawing the sinner to the Son. Every person the Father draws, comes. And every person who comes, Jesus promises to raise up on the last day. The chain of salvation is unbreakable.
He grounds this in the Old Testament. The promise of the new covenant is that God's people "shall all be taught by God." This is not mere external instruction. This is an internal, life-giving illumination by the Holy Spirit. To hear and learn from the Father is to be regenerated. And everyone who is so taught, comes to Jesus. The teaching itself is what creates the coming. This is why some believe and others do not. It is not because some are smarter or more righteous than others. It is because the Father has sovereignly chosen to open the ears and hearts of some, and not others.
The Bread of Life and the Scandal of the Flesh (vv. 47-53)
Jesus now returns to His central metaphor, but He raises the stakes and intensifies the offense.
"Truly, truly, I say to you, he who believes has eternal life. I am the bread of life... I am the living bread that came down from heaven; if anyone eats of this bread, he will live forever; and also the bread which I will give for the life of the world is My flesh." (John 6:47-51)
He first equates believing with having eternal life as a present possession. This is not something we get when we die; it is something we have the moment we believe. Then He identifies Himself as that which must be consumed for life. The manna in the wilderness was a type, a shadow. It sustained physical life temporarily, but everyone who ate it eventually died. Jesus is the reality. He is the true bread that gives eternal life. To eat of this bread is to never die spiritually.
But then He specifies what this bread is: "the bread which I will give for the life of the world is My flesh." This is where the grumbling turns into an open, hostile argument. "How can this man give us His flesh to eat?" They are still thinking in crass, literalistic, carnal terms. And just as before, Jesus does not back down or soften His language. He doubles down.
"Truly, truly, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink His blood, you have no life in yourselves." (John 6:53)
This would have been doubly scandalous to a Jewish audience. Not only is it cannibalistic, but the prohibition against drinking blood was central to the Mosaic law. Blood represented the life, and it was to be offered to God on the altar, not consumed. Jesus is taking the most visceral language possible to describe what it means to have union with Him. To "eat His flesh and drink His blood" is a metaphor for faith, but it is a robust, graphic metaphor. It means to fully receive, to internalize, to appropriate, and to depend entirely upon His atoning sacrifice. It is to take His broken body and shed blood, offered up on the cross, as your only source of spiritual life and sustenance.
The Covenant Meal and Abiding Life (vv. 54-58)
Jesus concludes by explaining the results of this spiritual consumption. It brings eternal life, resurrection, and intimate union with Him.
"He who eats My flesh and drinks My blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day. For My flesh is true food, and My blood is true drink. He who eats My flesh and drinks My blood abides in Me, and I in him." (John 6:54-56)
Here we see the objective reality of what faith receives. It is not just a feeling or a decision. It is a partaking of Christ Himself. His flesh is "true food" and His blood is "true drink." They are what truly nourish the soul unto eternal life. This partaking results in abiding. "He abides in Me, and I in him." This is the language of intimate, personal, covenantal union. We are in Christ, and He is in us. This is the heart of the Christian life.
Now, we cannot read this passage without thinking of the Lord's Supper. While Jesus is not exclusively talking about the sacrament here, He is establishing the theological reality that the sacrament will later signify and seal. The Lord's Supper is a visible sermon that preaches this very truth. In the Supper, by faith, we spiritually feed upon Christ. The bread and wine are not the literal body and blood, but they are not empty symbols either. They are the instruments through which the Holy Spirit nourishes our faith and deepens our union with the crucified and risen Christ. When we come to the Table, we are doing in a sacramental way what we are called to do every day in a spiritual way: eating His flesh and drinking His blood by faith.
He concludes by returning to the manna comparison.
"This is the bread which came down out of heaven, not as the fathers ate and died. He who eats this bread will live forever." (John 6:58)
The contrast is absolute. The old covenant provision was temporary and pointed forward. The new covenant provision is eternal and is the final reality. To feed on Christ is to have a life that death cannot touch. This is the glorious, offensive, and absolutely essential message of the gospel.
Conclusion: An Invitation to the Feast
The crowd's reaction to this sermon was telling. We read just a few verses later that "many of His disciples turned back and no longer walked with Him." The offense was too great. The demands were too high. The sovereignty was too absolute. The language was too scandalous. And so they left.
The gospel still has this effect today. It sifts and it divides. For those who want a religion that makes sense to their fallen reason, a religion that leaves them in the driver's seat, a religion that caters to their felt needs, the words of Jesus are foolishness. They will grumble, they will argue, and they will walk away.
But for the one whose heart has been drawn by the Father, for the one who has been taught by God, these words are not a scandal; they are life itself. To the hungry soul, the invitation to eat the flesh and drink the blood of the Son of God is not grotesque; it is the most glorious invitation imaginable. It is the invitation to be utterly dependent on another. It is the invitation to find our life not in ourselves, but in His sacrifice.
The question Jesus put to the twelve is the question He puts to us: "Do you want to go away as well?" May we respond with Peter, out of a faith given to us by the Father, "Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life." There is no other bread. There is no other drink. There is no other life. He is the only feast that satisfies, and He is the only feast that lasts forever. So come, and welcome, to Jesus Christ.