Online Resource Library
Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.com | DownloadHeinrich Meyer Commentary - John 6:63 - 6:64
(Show All Books | Show All Chapters)
This Chapter Verse Commentaries:
Joh_6:63-64. Instead of appending to the foregoing protasis its mournful apodosis (see on Joh_6:62), Jesus at once discovers to His disciples with lively emotion (hence also the asyndeton) the groundlessness of the offence that was taken. It is not His bodily form, the approaching surrender of which for spiritual food (Joh_6:51) was so offensive[250] to them, but His spirit that gives life; His corporeal nature was of no use towards ζωοποιεῖν . But it was just His bodily nature to which they ascribed all the value, and on which they built all their hope, instead of His life-giving Divine Spirit, i.e. the Holy Spirit given Him in all fulness by the Father (Joh_3:34), who works in believers the birth from above (Joh_3:6), and with it eternal life (comp. Rom_8:2; 2Co_3:6). Hence His death, through which His σάρξ as such would disappear, was to them so offensive a ΣΚΆΝΔΑΛΟΝ . Observe further, that He does not say ΤῸ ΠΝΕῦΜΆ ΜΟΥ and Ἡ ΣΆΡΞ ΜΟΝ , but expresses the above thought in a general statement, the personal application of which is to be to Himself. Comp. Hofmann, II. 2, p. 252. Note once again that ἡ σάρξ οὐκ ὠφελεῖ οὐδέν does not contradict what was previously said of the life-giving participation in the flesh of Jesus; for this can take place only by the appropriating of the spirit of Christ by means of faith, and apart from this it cannot take place at all. Rom_8:2; Rom_8:6; Rom_8:9; Rom_8:11; 1Co_6:17. Comp. 1Jn_3:24. The flesh, therefore, which “profiteth nothing,” is the flesh without the Spirit; the Spirit which “quickeneth” is the Spirit whose dwelling-place is the flesh, i.e. the corporeal manifestation of Christ, the corporeity which must be offered up in His atoning death (Joh_6:51), in order that believers might experience the full power of the quickening Spirit (Joh_7:39). When Harless, following Luther, understands by the flesh which profiteth nothing, the σάρξ of Christ in His humiliation, and by the quickening Spirit, “the spirit which perfectly controls the flesh of the glorified Son of man,” he imports the essential point in his interpretation, and this, too, in opposition to the N. T., according to which the conception of σάρξ is quite alien to the ΣῶΜΑ Τῆς ΔΌΞΗς of the Lord, Php_3:21; see 1Co_15:44-50; so that the ΣῶΜΑ ΠΝΕΥΜΑΤΙΚΌΝ cannot possibly be regarded as flesh pervaded by spirit (comp. 2Co_3:18). In no form is ΣΆΡΞ ever ascribed to the exalted Lord. The antithesis here is not between carnal flesh and glorified flesh, but simply between flesh and spirit. According to others, τὸ πνεῦμα is the human soul, which makes the body to have life (Beza, Fritzsche in his Nov. Opusc. p. 239). But ζωοποιοῦν must, according to the import of the preceding discourse, be taken in a Messianic sense. Others say: τὸ πνεῦμα is the spiritual participation, ἡ σάρξ the material (Tertullian, Augustine, Rupertius, Calvin, Grotius, and most others; also Olshausen, comp. Kling and Richter); but thus again the peculiar element in the exposition, viz. the partaking of the Lord’s Supper, is foisted in.[251] Others, interpolating in like manner, interpret τὸ πνεῦμα as the spiritual, and Ἡ ΣΆΡΞ as the unspiritual, sensuous understanding (Chrysostom, Theophylact, Euthymius Zigabenus, Mosheim, Lampe, Klee, Ammon, etc.[252]); comp. Tholuck. Others differently still.[253] “Quantopere sit hic locus variis expositionibus exagitatus, vix credibile est,” Beza.
τὰ ῥήματα ἃ ἐγὼ , κ . τ . λ .] This does not mean that we are to hold to His words instead of to His corporeal flesh (Rückert, Keim), His words which remain as a compensation to us after His death (Lücke, De Wette, B. Crusius). It stands (seeing that σάρξ has already its full antithesis in what precedes) in close connection with the following ἀλλʼ εἰσὶν ἐξ ὑμῶν τινες οἱ οὐ πιστ ., and therefore a comma only is to be placed after ζωή ἐστιν . “The words which I have spoken unto you” (meaning the discourse in the synagogue just ended[254]), “so far from containing any real ground for σκάνδαλον , are rather spirit and life, i.e. containing and revealing the divine spirit in me, and the Messianic life brought about by me; but the real guilt of the offence lies with you, for among you are many who believe not.” He, namely, who does not believe in Him as the true Messiah, who secures by His death the life of the world, but expects Messianic salvation by His corporeal manifestation alone, which is not to die, but to triumph and reign—to him who is such a μαθητὴς of Jesus the discourse concerning feeding upon His flesh and blood can only be a stumbling-block and an offence. And of such τινές there were πολλοί , Joh_6:60.
ἐγώ and ἐξ ὑμῶν stand in emphatic antithesis.
πνεῦμα ἐστι καὶ ζωή ἐστιν ] The two predicates are thus impressively kept apart, and the designation by the substantive is fuller and more exhaustive (comp. Joh_3:6; Rom_8:10) than would be that by the adjective ( πνευματικὰ καὶ ζωηρά , Euthymius Zigabenus).
ᾔδει γάρ , κ . τ . λ .] an explanation added by John himself of the preceding words, ἀλλʼ εἰσὶν , κ . τ . λ ., which imply a further knowledge; comp. Joh_2:24-25.
οἳ οὐ πιστεύουσιν ] result of their wavering; for they are μαθηταί , who, from an imperfect and inconstant faith, have at last come to surrender faith altogether. They had been πρόσκαιροι (Mat_13:21). Here we have οὐ with the relative, then μή with the participle accompanied by the article (Joh_3:18), both quite regular.
ἐξ ἀρχῆς ] neither “from the first beginning” (Theophylact, Rupertius); nor “before this discourse, and not for the first time after the murmuring” (Chrysostom, Maldonatus, Jansenius, Bengel, etc.); nor even “from the beginning of the acquaintance then existing” (Grotius, De Wette, B. Crusius, Maier, Hengstenberg, etc.; comp. Tholuck, “from the very time of their call”); but, as the context shows (see especially καὶ τίς ἐστιν , κ . τ . λ .), from the beginning, when He began to gather disciples around Him (comp. Joh_1:43; Joh_1:48, Joh_2:24), consequently from the commencement of His Messianic ministry. Comp. Joh_16:4, Joh_15:27. From His first coming forth in public, and onwards, He knew which of those who attached themselves to Him as μαθηταί did not believe, and in particular who should be His future betrayer. On this last point, see the note following Joh_6:70. Were we, with Lange and Weiss, to render: “from the beginning of their unbelief,” this would apply only to disciples in constant intercourse with Him, whom He always could observe with heart-searching eye,—a limitation, however, not justified by the text, which rather by the very example of Judas, as the sole unbeliever in the immediate circle of His disciples, indicates a range beyond that inner circle.
[250] Godet, according to his rendering of ver. 62: “which you will see to vanish at my ascension.”
[251] Kahnis (Abendm. p. 122) has explained the passage in this sense seemingly in a manner most in keeping with the words: “What imparts the power of everlasting life to them who feed upon my flesh, is not the flesh as such, but the spirit which pervades it.” According to this view, the glorified flesh of Christ, which is eaten in the Supper, would be described as the vehicle of the Holy Spirit, and the latter, not the flesh itself, as that which gives life. Comp. also Luthardt. But it is self-evident that the thought of glorified flesh has to be imported from without.
[252] So also Luther: “Ye must indeed have the Spirit likewise, or obtain a spiritual understanding, because it is too high and inconceivable for the flesh.” See the striking remarks of Calovius against this interpretation.
[253] Wieseler, on Gal. p. 446, takes σάρξ in the sense of original sin; sinful human nature can do nothing for man’s salvation; the Spirit of God produces this. But σάρξ must take its stricter definition from the foregoing discourse; and if it were intended as in Joh_3:6, οὐκ ὠφελεῖ οὐδέν would be far too little to say of it. This also tells against the similar interpretation of Hengstenberg: “The πνεῦμα is the Spirit represented through Christ, and incarnate in Him, and the σάρξ humanity destitute of the Spirit.”
[254] The usual but arbitrarily general rendering brought with it the reading λαλῶ . Tholuck and Ebrard have the right reference. Comp. εἴρηκα , ver. 65.