John 6:51

The affirmation of John 6:51 a is the summing up of all that precedes, with the design of passing to a new idea (51b). The epithet ὁ ζῶν, the living bread, declares even more clearly than the expression bread of life (John 6:48), that Jesus is not only the bread which gives life, but that He is Himself the divine life realized in a human person; and it is for this end that He gives life to him who receives it within himself.

Vv. 51b. The second part of the verse is connected with the first by the two particles καί and δέ, which indicate an idea at once co-ordinated (καί, and) and progressive (δέ, now) with reference to all that precedes: “ And moreover; ” or: “And, finally, to tell you all.” Jesus is now resolved to make them hear the paradox even to the end; for it is here indeed that, as Weiss says, the hard saying begins (John 6:60). At first Jesus had spoken in general of a higher food of which the miraculous bread of the day before was the image and pledge.

Then He had declared that this bread was Himself, His entire person. And now He gives them to understand that He will be able to become the bread of life for the world only on condition of dying, of giving Himself to it as sacrificed. This is the reason why, instead of saying me, He from this time onward uses the expression, my flesh. How can His flesh be given as food to the world? Jesus explains this by this new determining phase: ἣν ἐγὼ δώσω, “(my flesh) which I will give. ” These words are rejected, it is true, by the Alexandrian authorities, but no doubt because of the apparent tautology which they present with the words which precede: ὃν ἐγὼ δώσω, “(the bread) which I will give. ”

They should be retained in the text, as Meyer has acknowledged, notwithstanding his ordinary prepossession in favor of the Alexandrian readings, and whatever Weiss, Keil, Westcott, etc., may say. The limiting words for the life of the world cannot be directly connected with the words my flesh; what would the expression: “my flesh for the life of the world” mean? A participle like given or broken would be necessary. 1 Corinthians 11:24 is cited: “This is my body [broken] for you.” But there, there is at least the article τό which serves as a basis for the limiting word. Weiss so clearly perceives the difference that he proposes to make the limiting phrase: for the life of the world, depend, not on the words my flesh, but on the verb ἐστίν, is, and to make my flesh an appositional phrase to the bread: “The bread which I will give, that is to say, my flesh, is for the life of the world.” But even if it were possible to allow such an apposition and so harsh a use of the verb ἐστίν (the passage John 11:4 is too different to prove anything), would not the future δώσω, I will give, require that the verb to be should also be placed in the future: “The bread which I will give, my flesh, shall be for the life of the world?” His flesh will not be able to serve for the life of the world except after it shall have been given. The reading of the Sinaitic MS. is an unhappy attempt to restore the text after the omission of the words ἥν ἐγὼ δώσω had made it intolerable.

The first which I will give, applied to the bread, is to be paraphrased thus: “which I will give to be eaten; ” it sums up the preceding conversation. The second, applied to my flesh, signifies: “which I will give to be sacrificed; ” it forms the transition to the following passage (my flesh and my blood). It is in view of this double relation and this double sense that the words: which I will give, had to be repeated. In fact, the flesh of Jesus cannot be eaten as food by each believer, until after it shall have been offered for the world as a victim. This expression: my flesh, especially in connection, as it is here, with the future I will give, which points to a fact yet to occur, can only refer to the sacrifice of the cross. The interpreters who, like Clement and Origen, de Wette, Reuss, Keil, etc., apply the term give to the voluntary consecration which Jesus makes of His person during His earthly life, take no account of the καὶ δέ, and moreover, which indicates a different idea from that which precedes, and of the future I will give, which permits us to think only of a gift yet to come. In this verse is betrayed more and more distinctly the preoccupation with the Paschal feast which filled the soul of Jesus from the beginning of this scene, which was one of the grandest in His life. The expression: “the life of the world ” shows that the new Passover, of which Jesus is thinking, will have an altogether different extent from the old one: it is the entire human race which will be invited to it as soon as the victim shall have been offered and the feast of sacrifice can be celebrated.