45. The Bread of Life

Covering John Chapter 6:

Let’s consider where John has brought us that we might know how to receive everything he now writes going forward.

Physics is the scientific study of how the laws of physical things operate. We then need a similar term for the scientific study of how the laws of spirit operate. That term is Symmorphy. John 1:1-18 is science, that is, an explicit layout of how all things actually work. Science is supposed to study what is. It can do so only by measurable evidence, however. The measurable evidence that will place Symmorphy as greater than and inclusive of physics as a scientific study will be the resurrection of our bodies.

EVERYTHING comes out from God’s thoughts THROUGH the speaking of Christ Jesus and exists in the bath of the Spirit.

Knowing Another Person. Symmorphy forces the study of two things that physics cannot, consciousness and personhood. And John lays out the causes of both, very specifically, through his gospel.

But Symmorphy includes a third reality that cannot be known alongside the laws of how spirit operates. That third reality is that we are conceived of God by the One Seed/Kind of God, and the Sperm of God by which we are conceived is a very personal Person, the Lord Jesus, who is also inside of us as every Word God speaks fulfilled. We can discuss the laws of spirit rationally. But to consider the meaning of our literal conception out from God we need metaphors, beginning with the reproduction of Life. Yet Life is not a metaphor, but a Person, who says, “Come to Me. Receive Me. Learn of Me.” And that explains everything John writes. You know all reality ONLY by knowing another Person inside.

Ten Specific Anecdotes. This is a good place, now, to bring in the specific anecdotes John includes to show us how we are to KNOW this Jesus now inside each one of us. Let’s lay them out in order. (1) John and Andrew following Jesus, (2) Jesus seeing Nathaniel’s heart, (3) turning water into wine, (4) driving out those who sold the atonement, (5) a conversation with Nicodemus, (6) a conversation with the woman at the well, (7) healing the royal official’s son, and (8) healing the lame man at the pool. Then we add two more in Chapter 6, (9) using a little boy’s lunch to feed 5,000, and (10) walking across the sea to the disciples in the boat.

And now I see the pattern. Everyone of these incidents sparked a conversation between Jesus and someone else, either one or many. Jesus’ words come out from interaction.

The Power of Conversations. Let me give an example. In the movie The King’s Speech, Colin Firth won the Oscar for best actor, and rightly so. Yet Colin Firth was enabled to do his very best performance by his interactions with Geoffrey Rush, whose character was teaching a stuttering king to speak publicly. It was the intense interaction between the two that brought out from both their finest acting abilities.

Throughout John’s Gospel, Jesus speaks His words in ongoing conversations and interactions with specific people or groups of people, and inside of very specific settings. These conversations, their settings, and the people they are with, govern the meaning of Jesus’ words for our benefit. Let’s consider what that might mean just a bit.

Two Types of People. We also see that Jesus’ conversations are with two very different types of people, (1) those who draw near to receive His words, and (2) those who refuse to believe. This distinction is marked and important. For group number 1, the close personal attention of Jesus towards the heart of the individual is what stands out. For group number 2, there is always something Jesus does or says that provokes great hostility against Him.

In Chapter 2, turning water into wine clearly shows how the Water of Word becomes the Wine of the outpoured Spirit. We could ask – How do each of the several different conversations in that occurrence contribute to that meaning for us? Then, healing the official’s son shows the interaction of faith inside the heart of a man who wants to believe into Jesus.

Jesus’ Purpose. Healing the lame man at Bethesda contrasts with healing the blind man in Chapter 9. Both spark controversy with the Pharisees, but the lame man possesses an insincere heart in coming to Jesus, whereas the blind man has a heart true and certain towards Jesus and towards the ridiculous Pharisees.

In all of these things, we see that the essence and meaning of Jesus is utterly personal inside each one of us, that we know the Father through our ongoing conversation with a REAL Jesus inside our hearts. And that is the whole point, especially as we go through the conversations taking place in Chapter 6. The most important point of feeding the 5,000 was not feeding the 5,000, but what Jesus does with the gift of a little boy. People are not props on Jesus’ stage; they are His purpose.

Open to Me. Truly, truly, we now understand God’s meaning of the Flow of Gospel Word into us. Let’s paraphrase from Revelation 3. – “Look and see, dear individual reader. I stand at your door and knock. If you will open your door to Me, I will come into you and we will share personally all things together.”

(Chapter 6) 9 “Here is a little boy who has five loaves of barley and two small fish; but what are these for so many?” – • 11 Jesus then took the loaves and, having given thanks [spoken good grace upon them], He distributed to those reclining; likewise also of the fish, as much as they wanted. 12 Then, when they were filled, He said to His disciples, “Gather together the abundance of fragments over and above, so that nothing might be lost. 13 They gathered, and filled twelve hand-baskets of fragments from the five loaves of barley, which were abundantly above what had been eaten.

Making Individuals Personal. John names the people who converse with Jesus each time, if he knows their names. He did not know the name of the little boy, but we can be sure that this boy went home with a deep glow inside his heart. – “Mom, I gave my lunch to Jesus. You should have seen what He did with it. He made it so big.”

We don’t know the life of the little boy, but we can infer from the stories of Nicodemus, that John knew him well, and that it is highly likely that Nicodemus was in the upper room on the Day of Pentecost, one of the 120 born of the Spirit. Yet at the same time, each individual of the 5000 also had a personal experience that day, in seeing the abundance of bread coming through Jesus and satisfying their need. Yet that was a shallowness and the very reason why Jesus then contradicted them with the metaphor of Bread that drove them away.

He Calls Us by Name. Every single human spins their own personalized fake story of self, and every single one requires LIGHT to penetrate their darkness, including all Christians. But that comes later, here we want to comment on Jesus and the little boy.

Covenant: People are Jesus’ purpose. He calls each of us by name (see John 10:3). The miracle was not as important as Jesus touching the heart of the little boy by making use of his lunch. Covenant is always personal with Jesus.

Kingdom: When we give to Jesus what we are and have, He turns it into blessing for many, even to abundance left over.

At this point, it is much easier to write the Gospel Comments through the remainder of Chapter 6, because we know what Jesus means into us. Yet Jesus will now use this experience of bread to confront the hearts of many.

Our Work. 28 They said to Him, “What must we do, that we might be working the works of God?” • 29 Jesus answered them, “This is the work of God, that you should believe into Him whom He sent.”

God designed us to work; doing things to improve our lives is an essential part of being human. God has given us two things to DO. – Believe into Jesus and love one another.

Ruling Verse 2 & 10: Christ lives in your hearts through faith. The word “believe into” is literal. Our work is to put ourselves inside of Jesus through faith, to put Him upon ourselves, for Jesus is inside of us.

Ruling Verses 7, 6, & 5: Our confidence is that we are inside of Jesus who has carried us into God, having come into union with us in all that we are.

Ruling Verse 8: Our work is to believe into Jesus and to love one another – the full completion of Jesus (see John 15:12).

The Bread of Life. • 35 Jesus said to them, “I am the bread of life; the one coming to Me shall never hunger and the one believing into Me shall never thirst at any time.

Definition: Hunger is triggered by our body’s need for energy, and thirst is triggered by our need for hydration, for our bodies are mostly water. Life is movement within and without. Water allows free movement in all living things, and energy causes that movement. Bread provides Fire and wine provides Water. Christ Jesus, as Spirit and Word together, is literally both inside of us, the physical as sustaining Word and our conception out from God as Gospel Word.

Ruling Verse 5: Life is personal knowing, however, and Jesus is our Energeia and our Doing as we receive His intimate union with us.

What God Wants. • 37 All whom the Father gives Me will come to Me, and the one coming to Me, I will not cast out. 38 For I have come down out from heaven, not that I should do My own intentions, but the desire of the One who sent Me. • 39 And this is the desire of the One who sent Me, that of all whom He has given Me, I should lose none, but will raise them up in the last day. • 40 For this is the desire of My Father, that everyone seeing and experiencing the Son, and believing into Him, should have age-unfolding life; and I will raise him up in the last day.”

The idea that, “if you do not testify to your neighbor and they are lost, it’s your fault,” is not Biblical, neither is the idea that “some whom God has given to Jesus might be lost.” Jesus defines exactly what God wants. He wants us to LIVE and Life is to know God.

Two Aspects of Life. Yet Jesus presents two aspects of Life, Life that unfolds the ages and the resurrection of our physical bodies. Age-unfolding Life is every next step we share with God, but Resurrection Life is something we hardly know. We have ideas of it, but not yet experience.

Definition: Jesus chooses us (see John 15:16) because God gave us to Him. We know that all whom God has given to Jesus will also come to Him. We rest inside the certainty of God.

Ruling Verse 9: The ruling thought that compelled Jesus, and that continues to drive His same ministry now through us, is God’s DESIRE – what God wants.

Ruling Verse 10: God wants us to live, that is, to know Him. We live as we experience Jesus inside of us and us inside of Him.

Taught of God. • 44 No one is able to come to Me if the Father who sent Me does not draw him, and I will raise him up in the last day. • 45 It is written in the prophets, ‘And they will all be taught of God.’ Everyone who has heard and learned in the presence of the Father comes to Me. • 46 No one has seen the Father, except the One who is in the presence of God, He has seen the Father. 47 The one who believes possesses life age-unfolding.

Only inside the Flow of Gospel Word can we begin to know the depths presented here. We normally think that we come to the Father through Jesus. But Jesus is saying that only those who already are taught of God will come to Him. This is almost as shocking and offensive as “Eat My flesh.” We know that God has His hand on us because we are willing to know Jesus in Person inside our own persons.

Life as Kingdom. Life: Age-unfolding Life is every next moment, every next step, shared with God, forever. Resurrection Life is a quality we hardly yet know, for, although we have tasted of it, we have not yet experienced its completion. The physical part of our bodies swallowed up by Life will affect us more than we can now know, yet we remain the same people loving Jesus.

Definition: Everyone who comes to the Father to know Him, in sincerity of heart, the Father Himself brings to Jesus. This means that our hearts laid bare inside the presence of God, that the Father might teach us of His Son, is the Way to Life.

Kingdom: The Kingdom is every movement, every experience, every interaction coming out from knowing the Father inside of Jesus inside of us. The Kingdom is the expression of Life, age-unfolding and Resurrection.

If Anyone Should Eat. • 48 I am the bread of life. 49 Your fathers ate the manna in the wilderness and died. 50 This is the bread coming down out from heaven, that anyone might eat of it and not die. • 51 I am the living bread, having come down out from heaven. If anyone should eat of this bread, he will live into the age; and also the bread that I will give, My flesh, is for the life of the world-cosmos.

What does “bread” mean? Yet verse 51 adds the concept of Life for life. What does that mean? I am convinced that eating of Jesus is our acknowledgment of Him in conversing together inside the full knowledge of His intimate union with us. I am convinced that it means the interweaving of our shared stories of self. Yet the “flesh of Christ” reaches out to include one another in that fellowship.

Life for Life. Definition: Bread speaks of the Energeia of our lives, but eating of that Bread means a personal fellowship with Jesus inside the full knowledge of His intimate union with us. Yet ‘His flesh’ then adds our fellowship together to that meaning.

Ruling Verses 1 & 5: God has already symmorphosed us with Jesus; we already share Life and every next moment with Him. Jesus gives His life to us that He might receive our life in return. When we give Him our life, our story of self in return, He gives it back to us brand new and fully shared with Him.

Definition: Symmorphy means sharing the same form together. Form includes all things. We share consciousness with Jesus, one Spirit with Him, and our stories of self.

Speak Christ: We speak the same words that are Jesus as our own that we might “eat of Him,” that we might know Him.

True Food and True Drink. • 53 Jesus therefore said to them, “Let it be as I say to you. If you do not eat the flesh of the Son of man and do not drink His blood, you do not have life inside yourselves. • 54 The one who eats of My flesh and drinks of My blood has life age-unfolding, and I will raise him up in the last day. • 55 Indeed, My flesh is true food, and My blood is true drink. • 56 The one who eats My flesh and drinks My blood abides inside of Me and I inside of him. • 57 Just as the living Father sent Me, and I live through the Father, so also the one who feeds on Me, even he will live through Me.

We are now at the heart of Chapter 6, approaching Ruling Verse 3. We must show how it all fits together. The metaphor of eating bread has now turned into the metaphor of eating the flesh of Jesus and drinking has become His Blood.

Agony of Soul. I can write only out from God’s interaction with me, inside of me, right now. What I have written in the past can inform me, but cannot be the Source of the Flow.

And right now God has me decidedly inside the agony of Jesus’ Soul upon the Cross, that in my despair, in my feelings of inadequacy and my memory of so much failure, I would join God my Father together with all whom He has given to Jesus for the hour of His Unveiling, inside my refusal to leave a God who always and has already answered me, no matter how “far away” such an answer might appear to be. And in my agony, I hold to the certainty that my flesh is Jesus’ flesh, that He arises always in me, regardless, and that my life is His Blood, always energeoing me, no matter how low or how little I might feel myself to be.

Transubstantiation. No matter how contrary I might feel, I will never turn away from His flesh being True food and His Blood being True drink, that Jesus right now transfers His substance to me, and that as I fellowship with Him, regardless of my soul’s contortions, so He makes me like Himself inside of God.

Covenant & Ruling Verse 5: Dear reader, you must know Jesus inside yourself, sharing all with you. You must know Him for real, in the deepest of intimate fellowship. You must know that He has already come into union with you, in all your weak and inadequate humanity.

Covenant & Ruling Verse 1: Dear reader, you must know this Jesus inside yourself as He transfers His substance, all that He is, to you, as you “dine” with Him, as you acknowledge Him, that He shares all with you and makes you like Himself inside of God.

How Can You Know? It is good to step back and to show the reader Jesus, in the Gospel Comments, for truly in this and in all, Jesus alone must open to any Christian what He is inside of them, His flesh and His blood. In the same way, we want to point the reader from these words of Jesus to Ruling Verse 3 coming up in Chapter 7, a verse that continues to grow for us, the HOW of all that is Kingdom flowing out from us forever.

Ruling Verse 3: Dear reader, how can you KNOW that you share flesh with Jesus, one flesh with Him? How can you KNOW that He transfers His substance to you, that you might know the Father as He does? To drink of Jesus, of His Blood as TRUE drink, is to open yourself to RIVERS of God now flowing through your soul. You must be taught of God.

Feed on Me. We must now weave John 6:53-57 into Ruling Verses 10 and 1, but especially verse 57, which I don’t yet understand. – Just as the living Father sent Me, and I live through the Father, so also the one who feeds on Me, even he will live through Me.

Ruling Verses 10 & 1: John 14:20 is the Tree of Life, to KNOW that we live only inside of Jesus and that He lives now inside of all that we are. Inside of this sharing of soul with Soul, we partake of Him, both individually and together, for Jesus’ flesh is also His entire Church. We remain always inside of Him through His faith now given to us. It is God who sent Jesus into us, having already determined, with great Desire, that we are already symmorphosed with Jesus as the revelation of the Father. Jesus alone must show you what it means to “feed on Him,” that you might live through Him.

How We Know. • 63 The Spirit gives life; the flesh benefits nothing. The words that I speak to you are Spirit, and they are life.

I have made the decision to include this verse as an integral part of Ruling Verse 3. In the next lesson covering John 7, we will see how it must be included and where it fits.

LIFE is knowing two other Persons inside yourself, Father and Son, NOT three. To try to know “three” is an intellectual exercise of the flesh that results only in not knowing God, which is death, that is, “benefitting nothing.” The Spirit is HOW you yourself know. The Spirit is on your side of things. If you divorce yourself from the Spirit in order to call the Spirit a member of a “Trinity,” then you are toast, for you cannot then know Father and Son inside yourself.

Scientific Law. John 6:63 is scientific law inside of the study of Symmorphy. Life is knowing the Father. I know the Father through the Person of His Son Sent into me, but the Spirit is HOW I, myself, know. The Spirit is the how of God now part of me. The spirit of the prophet, one Spirit with the Lord, is subject to the prophet (1 Corinthians 6 & 14).

Then, all words spoken are anointed by some spirit and energeo in the heavens and in the lives of other people. The issue is whether that Spirit is the Devoted Spirit or if it is the spirits of fallen angels. Words are serious business; they kill or make alive, whether for ourselves or into others. The distinction is the “I,” as in, “the words that I, Jesus, speak into you.” This is why we speak Christ, that we might know His words – that we might know His Person for real in us.

The Spirit Gives Life. Definition: Jesus could have said nothing more offensive to those who heard Him than “eat My flesh.” In John 6:63, Jesus asserts that He is not speaking of cannibalism, but of qualities we can know only by His Spirit. He then applies this same fact to everything else He speaks in the Bible.

Ruling Verse 3: The Spirit of God flowing through our souls as RIVERS, the Spirit given us by God, the Spirit now part of our own human make-up, one Spirit with the Son, is the ONLY way we can know anything that is God – and live.

Life: Life is knowing God. The Spirit gives Life. All words that are Jesus, the all-speaking of God, are Spirit Words, and they are Life, living and energeoing inside of us.

Speak Christ: We speak the same words that we might KNOW

To Whom Will We Go? 66 From that time, many of His disciples departed and no longer walked with Him. 67 Then Jesus said to the twelve, “Do you not want to leave as well?” • 68 Simon Peter answered Him, “Lord, to whom will we go? You have the words of age-unfolding life; 69 and we have believed and have known that You are the Devoted One of God.”

The person who says, “I know what Jesus meant when He said to eat His flesh,” has missed the whole point. The point is that you do NOT know. And your darkness of being incapable of knowing must be penetrated with Fire. One thing and one thing alone will bring us out of our psychotic lostness, our raging insanity, and that is this Person, Jesus, as Peter later said, this One whom we LOVE, being our Friend, our Master, and our Life inside of us.

Escaping Death. Those who want “Christ” without Jesus and “God” without Father have already walked away, being offended by Him. Jesus MUST BE offensive to you as a horrible slap on your face to get you to stop imagining you can invent yourself, to get you to stop playing tiddly winks with your soul. Unless the Spirit FLOODS your soul, you cannot know God; unless you know Jesus in Person as Bread inside of you, your soul cannot be saved. You must remain in your own ruin.

Ruling Verses 3, 10 & 1: Unless the Spirit FLOODS your soul, you cannot know God; unless you partake of Jesus in Person inside of you, you must remain in your own death. Life is knowing the Father inside of Jesus inside yourself, two Persons not you, yet sharing all with you. You know this Symmorphy by the Spirit whom God has made part of you, that you might live.

Let’s Pray Together. “Oh God, our Father, we thank You that You have taught us to come to Jesus, for You have given us to Him. And we thank You that this One whom we love has already carried us back into You that we might know You.

“Lord Jesus, You are our Friend, our Master, and our Life. You fill all that we are with all of Yourself. You have caught us up into the passion of Your own Heart, and there You are showing us the Father, and through the Father, Your Church. Lord Jesus, Your Church is so beautiful to us. We give ourselves to You, now in the day of Your Power, that all our fellow Christians might know the Glory in which they live.

“Father, we thank You that You have given Jesus to us, the mightiest ANSWER that You possess.”