Jesus is referred to as true “bread” often in the bible. He’s the bread of life. He’s the real manna that came down from heaven. John 6:33 puts it this way.,“For the bread of God is he who comes down from heaven and gives life to the world.” To get the context of Jesus’ words you should remember that he had just finished feeding 5000 or more with a couple fish and a few small loaves of bread. He then walked on water to the other side of the sea of Galilee and the crowds found him there the next day. Jesus confronted their motives saying “you follow me, not because you believe in me, but because you want the bread.” Not only did they want the bread but they wanted to learn the “trick” of the bread so they could do it themselves. Jesus explained that the bread was a “work” of God. They asked “what must we do to do the works of God.” Jesus then explained something very simple yet very profound. He said, Jesus answered them, “This is the work of God, that you believe in him whom he has sent. So they said to him, “Then what sign do you do, that we may see and believe you? What work do you perform?” I think they were wanting to know what his connection with God was that enabled him to do such things so they could do it also. But Jesus went on, “Our fathers ate the manna in the wilderness; as it is written, ‘He gave them bread from heaven to eat.’ Jesus then said to them, “Truly, truly, I say to you, it was not Moses who gave you the bread from heaven, but my Father gives you the true bread from heaven. For the bread of God is he who comes down from heaven and gives life to the world.” They said to him, “Sir, give us this bread always.” Jesus said to them, “I am the bread of life; whoever comes to me shall not hunger, and whoever believes in me shall never thirst.”

Everyone knows immediately that Jesus is not talking about literal bread here. That kind of bread is grown from various seeds planted in the earth. We take that nourishment from the ground from which our bodies were actually taken as described in Genesis. Our bodies come from dust and will return to dust. We nourish them and keep them alive with the food and drink we enjoy in this life. Bread may not be the main staple for us today but it is still significant. Further, the Greek word for “Bread” is sometimes translated as “Food.” But there is another kind of existence we have that comes from being made “in the image” of God. I have often argued that the whole Bible is about Jesus. His acts as recorded in the Gospels are acts that fulfill the prophecies of the Old Testament. His teaching is does the same thing. In regard to this passage on Jesus being the “true bread of God” he is looking back at another lessor known Old Testament Prophet. Amos 8:11-12 describes the situation into which Jesus came. It also describes the hearts of all men in rebellion to God. He writes, “Behold, the days are coming,’ declares the Lord God, ‘when I will send a famine on the land— not a famine of bread, nor a thirst for water, but of hearing the words of the Lord. They shall wander from sea to sea, and from north to east; they shall run to and fro, to seek the word of the Lord, but they shall not find it.”

The late James Montgomery Boice applied this situation well. Speaking of the Amos prophecy he writes, “This is a horrible prophecy. But in some ways it is even more horrible to have the Lord Jesus Christ, the bread of life, available (as he is today) and yet have men refuse to come to him. Men have great hunger—a hunger for truth, righteousness, peace, joy, spiritual satisfaction, and other things. Jesus is the answer to this hunger. Yet the tragedy is that men will not come to him. Jesus showed the wisdom of coming when he told the people who had followed him to Capernaum in Galilee, “I am the bread of life. He who comes to me will never go hungry, and he who believes in me will never be thirsty.”1 Just as bread (food) is necessary for physical life, so too is Jesus necessary for spiritual life! You wouldn’t do without food, would you?

1 James Montgomery Boice, The Gospel of John: An Expositional Commentary (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Books, 2005), 476.