No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draw him,
and I will raise him on the last day.
Since we know that God desires all to be saved and come to knowledge of the truth (see First Timothy 2:3-4) we should not interpret this statement as a negative, as though he desired only to draw some and not others. Rather the Father himself would draw any would allow themselves to be drawn. He himself would tug on the hearts of all, but sadly all resist him to one degree or another. He is gentle, forcing nothing. But we are stubborn and often remain unmoved.
They shall all be taught by God.
God shall teach, but are we willing to learn? Are we willing to open our hearts to what God is telling us about himself, just as the eunuch was able to open himself to Philip teaching him about Jesus? We tend to prefer what flesh and blood can reveal to us. But that which matters most cannot remain at the level of visible and empirically verifiable. The material world is meant to point beyond itself, is, as it were, opened outward to transcendence, so that we look for a higher revelation of a deeper truth.
And Jesus answered him, “Blessed are you, Simon Bar-Jonah! For flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my Father who is in heaven (see Matthew 16:17).
Another way to speak about allowing ourselves to be drawn by God is to say that we listen to the Father and learn from him. But we do not have independent access to the Father as though we can bypass the Son. It is by drawing near to the Son, who alone has seen the Father, that we discover the Father's testimony about the Son. At the same time we discover the Son's revelation of the Father. This is how it happened for Peter, precisely after spending time with Jesus himself his heart was moved to transcend the merely visible in order to confess the deeper truth. We see a similar revelation for the Ethiopian eunuch. He tasted something of the draw of the Father in reading the servant song of Isaiah. But it was not until it is revealed to be about Jesus himself that he began to see the entire picture. The eunuch discovered that the Father's plan from time immemorial centered on Jesus himself, saw the Father drawing his creatures to the Son that the Son might reveal him.
I am the bread of life.
Jesus was not just healthy bread, not just all natural whole grain or something similar. He was not merely a supplement to a natural kind of health. It was rather he himself and him alone that truly possessed life.
In him was life, and the life was the light of men (see John 1:4).
This was a different sort of life than the mortal life which humans naturally possessed. It was divine, supernatural, and eternal. It might have almost seemed unfitting for creatures, unapproachable and unattainable. And yet Jesus himself would not hoard this life that he possessed. He desired rather to give it away, and to himself be the medium by which the gift was given.
this is the bread that comes down from heaven
so that one may eat it and not die.
Because it was a different sort of life Jesus came to give it did not necessarily imply that the body itself would not die. But it did guarantee that the spirit itself would live, and this spiritual life in turn guaranteed the eternal destiny of those who would receive the gift of heavenly bread. We can only take this for granted as we do because of how many times we have heard this. But let us again be amazed that Jesus came to give himself away, to be our food. He himself was the greatest gift he could give and he held nothing back. He made it possible for us to receive all of him, all that he is, even to the point of participation in his own divine nature.
and the bread that I will give
is my Flesh for the life of the world.
Here the bread of life discourse takes a turn. Previously his words had could be seen to be metaphorical and relating to matters of faith in him. But now he began to speak of his Flesh, given for us. We pray for our daily bread, and this has many levels of meaning. But the most unexpected and unguessed is this Flesh for the life of the world. It is the culmination of the gift of Jesus to us, and a perfect demonstration of the depths and the cost of his life. He could not have given his Flesh to us without offering himself upon the cross. Nor would he ask us to receive dead flesh, for the world had enough of that already. Rather, he offered us, in himself, risen Flesh. It was to be here in receiving this gift that the world received the true life which God had always intended for it.
Bless our God, you peoples,
loudly sound his praise;
He has given life to our souls,
and has not let our feet slip.
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