John 6:50

John 6:50. This is the bread which cometh down out of heaven, that any one may eat thereof, and not die. The ‘bread that cometh down out of heaven' (repeated from John 6:33) is of such a nature, and has such an object, that one may eat of it and not die. We are not to press too much our Lord's use of ‘one' or ‘any one' in this verse; but we may at least say that His studious avoidance of every word of limitation points once more to the unbounded offer of life, the offer to ‘the world' (John 6:33). When John 6:49-50 are compared, a difficulty presents itself. It may be said that the antithesis is not complete, for is not d eath used in two different senses? The fathers died in the wilderness: he that eateth of the true bread shall not die. There is exactly the same twofold use of the word in chap. John 11:26 (see the note on that verse). It is sufficient here to say that in neither verse is the meaning as simple as the objection supposes. In John 6:49 we must certainly recognise a partial reference to death as a punishment of sin, and by consequence to that moral death which even in this world must ever accompany sin. In John 6:50 again physical death may seem to be excluded, but we shall see that John elsewhere regards the believer as freed (in a certain sense) even from this, so entirely has death for him changed its character, so complete is the deliverance granted by his Lord.