THE BREAD OF LIFE

I am the bread of life: he that cometh to me shall never hunger; and he that believeth on Me shall never thirst.  (John 6:35)

Read the label on the last loaf of bread you bought. More than likely you'll discover that it has been vitamin-ised, fortified, etc. Bread is not the simple thing it once was when Grandma used to make it. You can make bread from wheat, rye, rice, barley, corn, even potatoes. Bread for the soul though can come from only one source. Jesus said, "I am the bread of life", having said, My Father gives you the true bread out of Heaven, (John 6:32) “true” not just in the sense of fact but in the sense of genuine, ideal.

Christ is called the bread of life because He gives spiritual life to those who are spiritually dead. All of us have sinned, and since the payment for sin is death (Rom 6:23),  it follows that all of us are spiritually dead. Sin cuts us off from God, and all the benefits and blessings that come from Him. The Bible describes us as being “dead in trespasses and sins” (Eph 2:1); that means that though our bodies are alive, the real “us” is spiritually dead, and we need therefore to have a new spiritual life. That life results from coming to  Christ, the bread of God, coming as one who has nothing (but sin) and needs everything, and turning to Him, the bread of life, just like plants turn their green parts to the sun. Repentant sinners who come to Jesus with a believing heart will in no way get hungry nor ever get thirsty. As words like hungering and thirsting express what can be met by natural supplies, so coming to Christ and believing on Him is the means of meeting our spiritual needs. As bread gives nourishment to our physical bodies, so Christ as the bread of life nourishes and supports the spiritual life. None are excluded from the benefit of this bread, except those who exclude themselves.

Freshly baked bread from the oven in itself is a “dead” thing, and only gives nourishment by the help of the faculties within a living body. However Christ doesn’t need help from other faculties to give spiritual life, He nourishes by His own power.

Today the Lord Jesus continues to invite people to feed on Him; those who accept the invitation find that He brings contentment to their souls. We need to feed on Him daily through submission of our lives to His control, believing that when He died on the cross it was because He was bearing our sin – taking the punishment that was rightly ours - in His own body. We can rejoice that 3 days later He arose from the dead and is alive! May we come to daily feed on Him through prayer and the reading of the Bible. The doctrines of the gospel concerning Christ - that He is the mediator between God and man, that He is our peace, our righteousness, our Redeemer, etc. – are the staff of life for the Christian. The doctrine of Christ crucified is now as re-assuring to believers as ever it was. Our bodies might survive without food but our souls have no hope without Christ the bread of life.