John 6: 49-50
” Your ancestors ate the manna in the wilderness, yet they died. But here is the bread that comes down from heaven, which anyone may eat and not die.”
Throughout the Gospels, there is a battle that rages between Moses and Jesus. Unfortunately for the Jewish leaders, the battlefield existed only in their minds. In reality, Jesus and Moses both serve the same God and both taught the same lessons about serving God: Love God above all else and your neighbor as yourself.
In the minds of the Jewish leaders, however, Moses represented THE GIVER OF THE LAW, and they believed that only through obedience to THE LAW could people hope to be saved. Clearly, this Jesus guy was not into obeying their laws, so, therefore, he must stand in opposition to the great lawgiver himself, Moses.
What they seemed to forget was that there were two kinds of laws: those written by men and those given by God. Among the laws given by God, there were laws that were specific to the Old Testament covenant and then there were laws such as the Ten Commandments which embody immutable principles of God’s will. Thus the kind of laws that the Jewish leaders associated with Moses generally had nothing to do with Moses. Most of them had been written by the Scribes and the Teachers of the Law during the seventy years Israel was in exile.
By pointing out that manna was not food that gave eternal life, Jesus points out the folly of relying on the things of the things of this world rather than those things of the spiritual realm that give real life.
Q: When Jesus says that anyone can eat of the bread that “comes down from heaven” and “not die,” what does he mean?
He is referring to Himself. He is eternal life. Like manna nourished God’s people physically in the wilderness, Jesus is who nourishes us spiritually and grants eternal life. That being true, I would imagine we would not be able to get enough of Him. Yet sadly, so many worldly distractions can divert us from the full life that Jesus has for us.