July 7, 2004

THE BREAD FROM HEAVEN

"I am the bread that came down from heaven" (John 6:41, NIV).

Ten times in a single discourse, Jesus employs the metaphor of bread to describe Himself (see John 6). Among the many symbolic designations of our Lord, none is more significant than that of bread.

Christ's stimulating discourse about bread arose out of the Feast of Passover and the Feast of Unleavened Bread as well as Christ's notable miracle of the feeding of the five thousand (see John 6:1-14). Amazed by the recent miracle of the loaves and fishes, Christ's audience began to discuss His puzzling distinction between the bread that perishes vs. the bread that endures. In the response that followed, Jesus alluded to the forty-year miracle of the manna. He indicated that while the manna was divinely provided by God, it was not spiritual food. Those who ate of it all died. Then Jesus added that the real imported bread that came down from heaven was spiritual and eternal rather than material and perishable.

The punch line of the discourse was Christ's bold assertion, "I am the bread that came down from heaven" (John 6:41, NIV). Jesus was no ordinary bread, but the genuine, life-giving bread. As the bread from heaven, He was filling and satisfying as well as life-giving and life-sustaining. Those who eat of Christ, the spiritual, heaven-sent bread, "will never go hungry" (John 6:35, NIV). As the hymn writer expresses it, "Bread of heaven, feed me till I want no more." "Our Saviour is the bread of life, and it is by beholding His love, by receiving it into the soul, that we feed upon the bread which came down from heaven."--Lift Him Up, p. 131.

My Prayer Today: Bread of heaven, since You are life-giving and life-sustaining, "feed me till I want no more." Amen.