88. Bread from Heaven
John 6:32 My Father giveth you the true bread from heaven.
John 6:33 For the bread of God is he which cometh down from heaven, and giveth life unto the world.
John 6:35I am the bread of life: he that cometh to me shall never hunger, and he that believeth on me shall never thirst.
Bread is a global symbol for everything needed for the survival and sustenance of physical life. Everyone knows what “bread” means; in our day it is a word for money. Jesus says pray like this: “Give us this day our daily bread,” which means everything that belongs to the support and wants of the body. It is the only physical petition of the Lord’s Prayer.
But in John 6 Jesus says He is “the Bread of Life.” This moves the meaning of bread to the spiritual realm. Jesus is Life, spiritual life, and He is also the essential nourishment for that life. Just as we need physical bread for physical life, so we also need spiritual bread for spiritual life. Jesus is that bread, and He gives it to us. The bread we need is the true bread from heaven, that is, from the spiritual world inserted into our present physical world. The bread of God is the man who comes down from heaven, from the spiritual world. Jesus, the person, is the bread, and any person who comes to Him and believes in Him will never hunger and never thirst. In other words, we shall never be empty of the life we need to live with God. He is with us, He is in us, and He supplies us with Himself for every spiritual need.
We eat the bread when we believe the Gospel; we receive Jesus when we hear the Gospel; we are nourished and strengthened for life when we believe the Gospel. Although we will never hunger or thirst, we will hunger and thirst for righteousness, not because we are empty but because we are attacked on all sides from our enemies. We have God, yes, but we still yearn for Him more and more every day.