Are You Feasting on the Bread of Life?
By Lynette Kittle
“I am the bread of life.”-- John 6:48
So much about life is focused on food today, of making sure you eat certain food to receive the most health benefits to grow stronger and to live longer.
Entire television networks, publications, websites, and festivals are devoted to food, instructing people how to buy it, prepare it, serve it, and eat it.
As well there are heated debates over which foods to eat and which foods to abstain from, similar to the discussions mentioned in Scripture between believers over which foods are okay to eat.
Yet no matter how much care you may take in putting food into your mouth, Jesus said not to put your focus on earthly food as your source of life.
Just like health organizations like to give their “Seal of Approval” on foods they believe are of higher quality, Jesus encourages to, “Do not work for food that spoils, but for the food that endures to eternal life, which the Son of Man will give you. For on Him God the Father has placed His seal of approval” (John 6:27).
To help give a better understanding of what He is saying, Jesus refers to the Israelites time in the wilderness, “Jesus said to them, ‘Very truly I tell you, it is not Moses who has given you the bread from heaven, but it is my Father who gives you the true bread from heaven” (John 6:32).
Psalm 78:24 describes how the bread from Heaven, called manna, was given to the them. “He rained down manna for the people to eat, He gave them the grain of Heaven.”
Scripture explains that, “Human beings ate the bread of angels; He sent them all the food they could eat” (Psalm 78:25).
As well, John 6:33 explains it like this, “For the bread of God is the bread that comes down from heaven and gives life to the world.”
Jesus took great effort to teach this truth by comparing the manna from Heaven that sustained the Israelites in the wilderness for 40 years, to how He is the bread of Heaven who will sustain you, so you’ll never go hungry (John 6:35).
Rather than focusing your life on earthly food as the sustainer of your life, Jesus asks you to look higher to Him stating, “I am the bread of life” (John 6:48).
As God wanted the Israelites to look to Him for the bread of life, Jesus explains in John 6:51 how He wants you to look to Him stating, “I am the living bread that came down from heaven. Whoever eats this bread will live forever. This bread is my flesh, which I will give for the life of the world.”
Jesus is the bread that came down from Heaven and whoever eats His bread will live forever (John 6:58).
Lynette Kittle is married with four daughters. She enjoys writing about faith, marriage, parenting, relationships, and life. Her writing has been published by Focus on the Family, Decision, Today’s Christian Woman, iBelieve.com, kirkcameron.com, Ungrind.org, and more. She has a M.A. in Communication from Regent University and serves as associate producer for Soul Check TV.
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