Commentary - John 6:59-65

Bird's-eye view

In this section of John's gospel, we come to the great sifting. After Jesus' profound teaching on being the Bread of Life, a teaching that reached its scandalous apex in the command to eat His flesh and drink His blood, the crowd begins to thin out. This is not because Jesus was a poor communicator, but rather because He was a perfectly effective one. He was not interested in gathering a multitude of fans; He was interested in gathering a people for His name. The offense of the gospel is a key instrument in this gathering, separating the wheat from the chaff, the true disciples from the mere hangers-on. Here we see the collision between carnal expectations and spiritual reality. The crowd wanted a political messiah who would fill their bellies with earthly bread, but Jesus offered them heavenly bread, which is Himself. This passage lays bare the absolute necessity of God's sovereign grace in salvation. Man, in his natural state, finds the words of life to be difficult, offensive, and impossible to receive. The flesh profits nothing, and only the Spirit can give life. Faith is not a human work but a divine gift.

Outline

Clause-by-Clause Commentary

v. 59 These things He said in the synagogue as He taught in Capernaum.

John anchors this radical teaching in a specific time and place. This was not some esoteric discourse delivered to a select few on a misty mountaintop. This was public proclamation, delivered in the synagogue, the center of Jewish religious life, in Capernaum, the hub of His Galilean ministry. Jesus is not hiding the sharp edges of His message. He is laying out the terms of the kingdom in broad daylight. The offense is deliberate and public. The synagogue setting heightens the contrast: the old forms of worship, centered on shadows and types, are now confronted by the reality, the substance, to which they all pointed. The Bread of Life is now teaching in the house of study, and He is Himself the lesson.

v. 60 Therefore many of His disciples, when they heard this said, “This is a difficult statement; who can listen to it?”

The word "therefore" connects the reaction directly to the teaching. The sermon worked. It did what it was supposed to do. Notice, it is not the Pharisees or the outsiders who are grumbling now, but "many of His disciples." These are the people who had been following Him, who had seen the miracles, who had eaten the loaves and fishes. But the jump from a full stomach to a saved soul is a jump they are not willing to make. Their complaint is that the statement is "difficult," or hard. The Greek word is sklēros, meaning harsh, stiff, not just intellectually puzzling but morally and existentially offensive. They are not saying, "We don't understand." They are saying, "We understand enough to not like it." Their question, "who can listen to it?" is rhetorical. What they mean is, "No reasonable person can be expected to accept this." This is the perennial cry of the natural man when confronted with the unvarnished gospel. It is too much, too exclusive, too demanding, too... spiritual.

v. 61 But Jesus, knowing in Himself that His disciples were grumbling at this, said to them, “Does this cause you to stumble?”

Jesus' knowledge is not the result of eavesdropping. He knows "in Himself." This is a quiet assertion of His divine omniscience. He knows their hearts, He hears their inward grumbling, the same kind of grumbling their forefathers specialized in during the wilderness wanderings. His question is pointed. "Does this cause you to stumble?" The word is skandalizei, from which we get our word scandal. "Is this the scandal that trips you up?" Jesus is putting His finger directly on the issue. The cross, and the theology of the cross, is the great stumbling block. To eat His flesh and drink His blood is a graphic, visceral metaphor for absolute dependence on His atoning sacrifice. This is an offense to human pride, which always wants to contribute something to its own salvation. Jesus is forcing them to decide if they will get over the scandal or be broken by it.

v. 62 What then if you see the Son of Man ascending to where He was before?

Jesus answers their complaint about a hard saying by giving them an even harder one. They are choking on the idea of Him coming down from heaven, so He asks how they will handle it when He goes back up. If the incarnation is a stumbling block, what will the ascension be? He is telling them, "You think this is hard to swallow? You have not seen anything yet." The ascension would be the ultimate vindication of His claims. The one who ascends is the one who first descended (Eph. 4:9-10). It is a confirmation of His heavenly origin. But for the carnal mind, it only deepens the problem. A Messiah who leaves is not the kind of Messiah they signed up for. They wanted a king to set up a throne in Jerusalem, not one who would ascend to a throne in heaven. He is systematically dismantling every earthly, political, and materialistic hope they have attached to Him.

v. 63 The Spirit is the One who gives life; the flesh profits nothing; the words that I have spoken to you are spirit and are life.

Here is the interpretive key to the entire discourse. Jesus explicitly tells them they have been thinking about His words in a woodenly literal and carnal way. They were thinking of cannibalism, but He was speaking of spiritual union. "The Spirit is the One who gives life." This is the bedrock of our theology. Regeneration is the work of the Holy Spirit. Life does not come from human effort, from religious observance, or from understanding spiritual things in a fleshly way. "The flesh profits nothing." The "flesh" here is unregenerate human nature, with all its capacities, wisdom, and ambitions. On its own, it is spiritually dead and can produce nothing of eternal value. It cannot understand God, it cannot please God, and it certainly cannot save itself. Then He says, "the words that I have spoken to you are spirit and are life." His words are not dead letters. They are the vehicle through which the life-giving Spirit works. To receive His words by faith is to receive life. They are stumbling because they are trying to process spirit-words with flesh-minds.

v. 64 But there are some of you who do not believe.” For Jesus knew from the beginning who they were who did not believe, and who it was that would betray Him.

Jesus now makes the implicit explicit. The root problem is not intellectual confusion but willful unbelief. "There are some of you who do not believe." This was true in the larger crowd of disciples, and it was true even within the twelve. John then adds his own inspired commentary: "For Jesus knew from the beginning..." This is another profound statement of Christ's deity. He was not taken by surprise. He was not learning as He went. From the very start of His ministry, He knew every heart. He knew who was truly His and who was not. He knew Judas was a devil from the get-go. This is not fatalism; it is divine sovereignty. Jesus' mission was not thwarted by unbelief; His mission was to reveal and deal with that unbelief, drawing out His own and hardening the rest in their rebellion. The presence of a traitor in the inner circle does not undermine Christ's authority; it establishes it.

v. 65 And He was saying, “For this reason I have said to you, that no one can come to Me unless it has been granted him from the Father.”

He concludes by tying everything back to the fountainhead of divine grace. "For this reason..." The reason for their unbelief is not ultimately found in the difficulty of the saying, but in the fact that saving faith is a divine gift. He repeats the principle He had stated earlier (John 6:44). "No one can come to Me unless it has been granted him from the Father." Coming to Jesus is not a matter of human initiative. The verb "can" speaks of ability. Fallen man does not have the spiritual ability to come to Christ on his own. He is dead in his sins. The ability, the desire, the very life to believe, must be "granted" from the Father. This is sovereign grace, pure and simple. It is an offensive doctrine to the proud, but it is the only hope for the dead. The great sifting in Capernaum was not an accident. It was a divine orchestration, designed to show that salvation is entirely of the Lord.

Application

The sifting that happened in Capernaum happens in every generation, and in every human heart. The words of Christ are still spirit and life, and the flesh still profits nothing. The central application for us is to examine the nature of our own discipleship. Are we following Christ for the loaves and fishes, for what we can get out of Him in this life? Or have we, by the grace of God, embraced the scandal of the cross?

When we encounter hard sayings in Scripture, our first reaction should not be to grumble, but to pray for the Spirit to give us life and understanding. We must confess that our fleshly minds are inadequate for spiritual truths and that we are utterly dependent on God to open our eyes. The offense of the gospel is a good offense; it offends our pride, our self-sufficiency, and our carnal expectations. We should thank God for it.

Finally, this passage is a tremendous comfort. Our salvation does not depend on the strength of our grip on Christ, but on the Father's grant and Christ's unbreakable hold on us. He knew from the beginning who were His. If you believe, it is because it was granted to you by the Father. This should not lead to passivity, but to profound gratitude and humble confidence. Because our faith is a gift from God, we can be sure that He who began a good work in us will bring it to completion.