Without truly understanding what they are asking for, the people say, Lord, give us this bread. How the Lord strives to make it clear! ‘I am’ – the first of seven great I AMs.
Bread satisfies hunger and when we come to Christ he satisfies our deepest needs. We see that he is designed by God to fulfil our needs. ‘But I thought I just had to hope and have faith.’ No, when you are truly converted, you know he is blessing you. You have a definite experience. You have a greater insight into life, and you are certain of it.
All can eat bread, the rich, the poor, the educated, the ignorant. ‘Oh, but I want to find the Lord on the basis of my own knowledge, studying, reading books.’ That would be elitist. It is no good knowing about Christ if you do not eat of him, that is, trust in him for life. Eating is a very personal act. If you do not eat, you won’t be nourished. We do not eat Christ with the mouth but with the soul.
Let no one think that this has anything to do with the Lord’s Supper. [The Lord’s Supper had not yet been instituted and was not spoken of in advance by the Lord. It is true that the Lord’s Supper uses the same metaphor as Christ uses here, but no act of physical eating can convey the spiritual blessing that he is speaking of. That blessing was only obtained by spiritual means, by faith, and Christ confirms in verse 63 that the flesh counts for nothing, and that the words he has spoken are spirit, not flesh, not physical. Neither the physical act of eating of the manna in the wilderness, nor the physical eating of bread or drinking of the cup in the Lord’s Supper are able to confer a spiritual blessing. That blessing comes only through faith in Jesus Christ, faith which appropriates the blessing that comes from his atoning death on Calvary.]