John 6:25-40 The Bread of Life

May 22, 2026September 2, 2026 ~ Vincent

Video Teaching
Verse-by-Verse Commentary
Full Transcript

From the Pulpit

Commentary

25 When they found him on the other side of the lake, they asked him, “Rabbi, when did you get here?”

Realizing Jesus didn’t board the disciples’ boat, the crowd searches both shores and eventually finds Him teaching in the synagogue at Capernaum (John 6:59). They may not fully understand what Jesus is trying to teach them, but there’s no doubt as to their zeal! They’ve come a long way to find Jesus.

26 Jesus answered, “Very truly I tell you, you are looking for me, not because you saw the signs I performed but because you ate the loaves and had your fill. 27 Do not work for food that spoils, but for 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.”

“Rabbi, when did you get here?”

1. Jesus doesn’t answer the question with any of the expected data (what, when, where, why). He gives an answer that’s entirely different from the question they asked!
2. Sometimes, God leaves questions unanswered, even as He reveals himself to us. There are always details that we won’t quite understand on this side of eternity, no matter how hard we search for them.
3. When he was on his deathbed passing away, Thomas Aquinas, one of the most famed theologians in Christian history, said, “Everything I have written is but straw!” If one of the deepest thinkers of God knew he knew nothing compared to the fullness of God’s revelation, how much can we claim to truly know the depths of God?
4. We can’t understand everything, but we can be humble enough to accept what we’ve been given and trust it given its source.
“Very truly I tell you, you are looking for me, not because you saw the signs I performed but because you ate the loaves and had your fill.”
1. Jesus explains their motive to them: they seek Him because his miracle gave them full bellies, not because they grasped the miracle’s meaning. They’re stopping so far short of what they could get!
2. The problem isn’t wanting too much but too little. They avoided hunger for an evening and are excited about that, when they could avoid death for an eternity.
3. “It would seem that Our Lord finds our desires not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased.” -C.S. Lewis, The Weight of Glory
4. “Not that he forbids his followers to labor that they may procure daily food; but he shows that the heavenly life ought to be preferred to this earthly life, because the godly have no other reason for living here than that, being sojourners in the world, they may travel rapidly towards their heavenly country.” -John Calvin, Commentary on John, 6.

28 Then they asked him, “What must we do to do the works God requires?”

29 Jesus answered, “The work of God is this: to believe in the one he has sent.”

“What must we do…

1. 1. [T]hey said this, not that they might learn, and do them, but to obtain from Him another exhibition of His bounty. -Chrysostom, Homlily xIv. 1.
“The work of God is this: to believe in the one he has sent”

1. The belief that Jesus is talking about isn’t just an acknowledgement that he exists or any other sort of intellectual affirmation of the facts. It’s trust. This kind of belief is the kind that we mean when we tell someone we love, “I believe in you.”
2. Laws are important, but they aren’t the core of the Christian life. You don’t become a member of God’s family because you followed the rules well enough. We’re adopted into the family of God through Christ. We follow the law because we love our Father and trust him, not because it earns us our spot in his family..

30 So they asked him, “What sign then will you give that we may see it and believe you? What will you do? 31 Our ancestors ate the manna in the wilderness; as it is written: ‘He gave them bread from heaven to eat.’”

32 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. 33 For the bread of God is the bread that comes down from heaven and gives life to the world.”

“What sign then will you give that we may see it and believe you?”
1. Even after they witnessed one of Christ’s miracles firsthand, they insist that they should get to see an even greater miracle so that Jesus can earn their trust. Their ancestors saw this miracle! It’s too old! What’s something better that Jesus can offer up?
2. They want to stay in control, rather than yield to Jesus. Belief is less about evidence than most people think. The inclination of the heart is more influential than any amount of evidence.
3. Romans 1:20 explains that we’ve all seen enough evidence of God’s existence just by looking around creation: “For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that people are without excuse.” Even with more miracles, a resistant heart reinterprets signs as coincidence and asks for more.
“it is not Moses who has given you the bread from heaven,”
1. Jesus corrects an important detail: Moses didn’t give anyone bread from heaven. God gave them bread from heaven, and he’s offering it to them again right now.
2. “Therefore, both that manna signified this meat, and all those signs were signs of me. You have longed for signs of me; do ye despise Him that was signified? Not Moses then gave bread from heaven: God gives bread. But what bread? Manna, perhaps? No, but the bread which manna signified, namely, the Lord Jesus Himself. My Father gives you the true bread.” – Augustine, Tractate 25, 13.
3. “‘But was it not true bread that their ancestors had in the desert?’
  I answer: If we define the true as defined against the false, then that bread was true, for the miracle of the manna was not false; but if we define the true as defined against the symbolic, then that bread was not true, but a symbol pointing to the spiritual bread, namely, our Lord Jesus Christ, whom the manna signified, as the Apostle says, 1 Cor. c. 10, 3: ‘all ate the same spiritual food.’” -Aquinas, Commentary on John, Lecture 4, 908

34 “Sir,” they said, “always give us this bread.”

35 Then Jesus declared, “I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never go hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty. 36 But as I told you, you have seen me and still you do not believe. 37 All those the Father gives me will come to me, and whoever comes to me I will never drive away. 38 For I have come down from heaven not to do my will but to do the will of him who sent me. 39 And this is the will of him who sent me, that I shall lose none of all those he has given me, but raise them up at the last day. 40 For my Father’s will is that everyone who looks to the Son and believes in him shall have eternal life, and I will raise them up at the last day.”

“I am the bread of life.”

1. “He does not say, I am the bread of nourishment, but of life, for, whereas all things brought death, Christ hath quickened us by Himself. But the life here is not our common life, but that which is not cut short by death: He that cometh to Me shall never hunger; and He that believeth on Me shall never thirst.” -Theophylact, Commentary on John, Ch. 6
“I have come down from heaven not to do my will but to do the will of him who sent me.”
1. Jesus isn’t there to do the crowd’s will or even his own will! He lives to do the Father’s will. And what is that will? Giving eternal life to those given to him.
2. God’s number one objective is solving the biggest problems: sin and death. Daily issues matter, but they’re not nearly as big and don’t matter nearly as much as we think they do.
“I shall lose none of all those he has given me, but raise them up at the last day.”

1. “They therefore who by God’s unerring providence are foreknown, and predestined, called, justified, glorified, even before their new birth, or before they are born at all, are already the sons of God, and cannot possibly perish; these are they who truly come to Christ. By Him there is given also perseverance in good unto the end; which is given only to those who will not perish. Those who do not persevere will perish.” -Augustine, de Cor. et Gratia, c. ix.
Life constantly throws new problems at us. Even today’s solutions lead to tomorrow’s problems! Bread today requires bread tomorrow. Most problems and solutions are temporary. Only God endures.

Full Transcript

We’ve been going through John chapter 6 here. The big question we’ve had on our minds as we go through is: if God is all-powerful, why doesn’t he give us what we want? Why doesn’t he give us health and wealth? We’ve thought of some different ways that people today answer that question.

The first week, we thought about prosperity gospel preachers—the people who say, “Why doesn’t God give you everything you want? He wants to! He wants to give you a million dollars. He wants to give you a new car. The problem is you. You don’t have enough faith. If you had more faith, God would be able to give you everything he wants to give you.” But when we look in John chapter 6, sometimes Jesus does say no. Sometimes Jesus puts people through difficult trials. Jesus doesn’t always give us an easy life. Not only that, but as we look through Christian history, there have been a lot of Christians who were very good, devout, and faithful, but were neither particularly healthy nor particularly wealthy. God doesn’t always give us everything we want.

Then we looked at another way people might try to answer that question, one that falls short of Christian orthodoxy. We thought about the people who kind of spiritualize it. They say, “Why doesn’t God give us everything we want? Because that’s not really what He does. That’s not what God’s interested in. God is not a god of earthly things; He’s a god of heavenly things. Go to Him with problems that are on your heart, problems that you know are on your mind, and problems that are about salvation, courage, and the things you can’t see and touch. That’s what God deals with. He doesn’t deal with stuff like food or money; that’s too earthly. It’s not good to go to him with things like that.”

But again, looking at John chapter 6, God does work that way. God works in ways that definitely impact the earth and earthly things. He multiplies food for hungry people. When his disciples are struggling to get across the Sea of Galilee, he helps them get to the other side. Not only does he repeatedly find ways to change the world, but he uses things that people actually do. He takes this offering of bread and fish from a boy and multiplies it. He takes the hard work that the disciples have put in and gets them all the way across. God does care not only about the physical world, but about what we do in it. He wants to see our work and magnify it. God’s not just a God of the heart; he’s the God over everything.

Today I want to introduce one more kind of answer to that question. The two we’ve looked at at least have a Christian framework. Today we’re going to look at one that does not: “Why doesn’t God give me everything I want if he’s all-powerful?” Some people respond, “Because he’s not real. If God were a person, we would not suffer the way we do.” People who have this answer very often have a wound they’re dealing with—some personal frustration or some hurt that is real. They ask things like, “If God’s real, why did my mom get sick? If God is all-powerful, why did my child die? If God is real, why did I suffer the way that I did while He didn’t lift a finger to help me? If God is all-powerful, He’s not good. Frankly, I don’t even think He’s real.”

That alone, I think, makes some of us hesitate. We see the woundedness and we don’t want to be insensitive, but I think we still need to acknowledge that that’s a wrong way of thinking. It’s easier to identify it when it’s in the positive. It’s easier to say, “God isn’t going to give you a million dollars just because you want it,” than it is to say, “God won’t always make your life easy, even when important things are on the line—even when you’re asking for someone you deeply care about to be healed, or even when you’re dealing with basic household economics and things aren’t coming out in the positive.” God doesn’t guarantee that everything is always going to go your way. Even when you aren’t just trying to get something actively positive, but are enduring something negative, there’s not always a miracle that comes in and sweeps you off your feet, hard as that is to acknowledge.

But it’s not that God doesn’t care. God cares. His plans are often hard for us to understand, but he cares. Do we trust him? That’s what’s at stake, and that’s what we’re going to be engaging with throughout these passages: trusting God even when we don’t get the things that seem like an obvious good, things that He knows are good.

Let’s engage here in chapter 6, starting at verse 22. Remember, we started at the beginning of the chapter. Thousands of people go around the Sea of Galilee to listen to Jesus speak and to have Him heal people for them. Jesus turns to Philip and says, “How are we going to feed all these people?” This is a test; he knows what he’s going to do. Philip says, “We can’t. Too many people. Can’t afford it.” Then the boy offers up his bread and fish. Jesus starts handing it out and just keeps handing it out. He just keeps going and going, handing out more than enough from this tiny little meal of a kid. The crowd sees that, and they get to thinking, “All right, if this guy can make bread and fish, what else can he do? I want this guy solving all my problems. Let’s get him working for us. Let’s make him the king. I don’t care what he thinks, I want him to be working for me.”

Jesus sees this happening. He sends the disciples across the Sea of Galilee, and he himself goes up on a mountain to pray. It’s a stormy day, and a storm kicks up over the sea. The disciples row all night, from evening until the dawn breaks, muscles aching and blisters forming on their hands, and they’re only halfway after all those hours. Jesus sees them, comes to them over the water, and they accept him onto their boat. Immediately, they’re where they need to be. I’m not saying that in an abstract way; they are at the other side. The second they take Jesus into their boat, they reach the other side.

Now we pick up, but we’re going to go back. We’re going to be with the crowd—the same crowd that saw Jesus do the loaves and fishes. They’re waking up the next morning and figuring things out. The next day, the crowd that had stayed on the opposite side of the lake realized that only one boat had been there, and that Jesus had not entered it with his disciples, but that they had gone away alone. Then some boats from Tiberias landed near the place where the people had eaten the bread after the Lord had given thanks. Once the crowd realized that neither Jesus nor his disciples were there, they got into the boats and went to Capernaum in search of Jesus.

They wake up and they realize, after enduring this night of storms—I don’t know how they slept, if they brought tents, or what their sleeping arrangement was—but they wake up and wonder, “Where’d the disciples go?” Gone. They took a boat last night. “Where’s Jesus?” Nobody knows. Nobody saw him. Maybe they even went up that mountain. Maybe someone saw him going up there. They’re peeking around for him. This is thousands of people; you can imagine how chaotic it would be to figure out what’s going on! So they spend all morning trying to figure it out. They don’t find him, and they don’t find any of the disciples, so they go on a search for Jesus.

Here’s just a little detail. I don’t think it has any deep spiritual or symbolic meaning, but I just think it’s a good thing to remember. Did you notice that boats come? The disciples were the only ones with a boat last night. There were no other boats—thousands of people, no boats. Now there are boats landing to take them. Why were there no boats the night before? Because there was a storm coming! Everyone else had taken their boats in. The disciples were the only ones crazy enough to get in their boat and try to cross the sea when there was a storm of that magnitude, and even then, it was only because Jesus told them to. Little details like that are helpful. It reminds us that this is not Aesop’s fables. Boats don’t just appear and disappear at random. These are real people in the real world. There are reasons for things. When the boats weren’t there, it’s because conditions were bad and the storm might damage them. When they are there, there is a rationale to it.

Verse 25 says, “When they found him on the other side of the lake…” This is another moment where I think it would be easy to misimagine what’s going on. It’s helpful to skip ahead a little bit to get the setting. Verse 59 tells us where they find Jesus; it says Jesus was speaking to them while teaching in the synagogue in Capernaum. So, this does not unfold on the beach. We don’t just go hang out on the beach with the crowd while Jesus and his disciples sit quietly, waiting for everyone to catch up with them. They’ve got places to be. They’re trying to make it to Capernaum. They get there, Jesus goes to the synagogue, and he starts teaching. He doesn’t just sit there quietly while the crowd catches up. So, that’s where they are; you can keep that in your mind.

This crowd is so eager to see Jesus that they not only walk around the sea and then boat over it, but they search for him on one side and then search for him on the other side, all the way to the point where they find him teaching in a synagogue in Capernaum. As much as they don’t get Jesus, you can’t doubt that they want to. They’re trying. These are people who are really, genuinely attempting to get it—crossing the sea twice and searching for him on both sides.

When they found him on the other side, they asked him, “Rabbi, when did you get here?” Can you imagine if he answered that? “Oh yeah, I was up on the mountain praying, but then I saw down in the storm that my disciples were having a hard time. So I just kind of strolled down and walked across the water to help them out. Then I used a little bit of miraculous power to teleport them the rest of the way. We took a break that morning while you were searching, strolled into Capernaum, and I started teaching.” He doesn’t say that. You have to wonder if they would even believe it if they heard it. They’ve seen Him multiply loaves and fishes, but would they believe He can walk across water? Would they believe he can teleport boats? You have to wonder if they would be able to believe any of those things. They don’t even have a framework to think about it properly.

But we don’t get to find out because Jesus doesn’t tell them. They ask this question, and Jesus never answers it. They don’t need to know. He just moves on. God does that to us sometimes, doesn’t he? We have questions that are burning on our hearts, and we ask God, “Why, God?” And He doesn’t answer them—sometimes not for days, sometimes not for months, and sometimes we just never know. That’s not because God doesn’t want us to know Him. Scripture as a whole is a revelation of God telling us who He is, what He’s about, and what He’s doing. But there are still these things that we just don’t know.

That’s frustrating. I think it’s frustrating. I am someone who wants to know everything I possibly can, so to know that there are some things I will never know is deeply frustrating, and I know some of you have certainly endured that same frustration. But the question is: can we trust God even when we don’t know all the answers? Can we trust Him even when we lack the framework to understand them, even if He did give them to us?

Thomas Aquinas, one of the greatest Christian theologians from the Middle Ages, wrote big commentaries on Scripture. He wrote giant, weighty tomes that are still read to this day, and he was one of the foremost Christian scholars of his era. When he was passing away, kind of drifting in and out of consciousness on his way to be with his Lord, his final words were, “Everything I have written is but straw.” His life’s work—some of the greatest Christian writings that we still look to—he called nothing. I don’t think he was saying that they are useless, but I do think that compared to eternity, compared to what we will know when that veil is lifted and everything is made clear to us, what we have now is so small in comparison. There are some things we just won’t know this side of eternity.

Can we trust God? Can we trust God even when He doesn’t give us the answer that we’re looking for? Jesus doesn’t give this crowd the answer they’re looking for. Instead, He says, “Very truly I tell you, you are looking for me, not because you saw the signs I performed, but because you ate the loaves and had your fill. Do not work for food that spoils, but for 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.”

First off, he immediately knows their hearts, right? Jesus knows why they’re there. There is no fooling him. He knew when they wanted to make him king, and now he knows exactly what got them there. He says, “Oh, I know why you’re here. You want more bread.” And they want more than that too, right? They want all kinds of things. They want the solution to every problem. They want to make him king so that he can execute their vision. But does Jesus scold them? Does he say, “Shame on you for wanting more bread”? Does he say, “Shame on you for wanting solutions to your problems?” Does he say, “It doesn’t really work like that. I’m kind of tired. I can only do so many miracles a day, so I’m kind of in my cool-down period. You’ve got to understand”? He doesn’t say any of that. Instead, Jesus says, “You’re not asking for enough. You are focusing on things that are too small. You want the solution to the problem right in front of you, but you know what’s going to happen after that? Another problem. And after that, there’s going to be another problem, because that’s the way life is. There’s always something, isn’t there? There’s always something new that draws your attention.”

Jesus tells them, “I don’t just want to give you the solution to one problem. I want to give you the solution for all of your problems—the biggest solution there is. Think bigger! You’re getting distracted by the bread. I want to solve death! That’s the problem I want to solve. You are going to die someday, and I want to solve that. I want eternal life for you. I want to take away the biggest thing that is stressing everything, the thing that causes every other problem. I want to address that.”

Think bigger! Address the biggest problem there is. I think C.S. Lewis said it really well: “It would seem that our Lord finds our desires not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at sea. We are far too easily pleased.” Jesus offers them more than they asked for.

It is worth addressing because I think to many people, just reading that Jesus is offering them the bread of life—this eternal life thing—feels like, “Okay, but that’s a spiritual thing. That’s not something genuinely real that I can touch and have, and that’s not the kind of solution I’m interested in. That’s a luxury.” For people who already have food, money, and their whole lives figured out, then they can dabble in things like eternal life and these theoretical problems.

Maslow’s hierarchy of needs comes to mind—this idea that you can’t really focus on self-actualization until you’ve addressed a million other things, and once you get those in place, then finally you can start to think about things like spirituality and eternal life. But here’s the thing: Jesus is addressing a concrete problem, which is death.

Think about Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. In many ways, it’s anti-poor. It assumes that if you don’t have the physical stuff you need, you will have no interest in addressing questions like, “Why do I exist? How do I live a good life?” There can be no bigger question than that. How are you going to live a good life if you don’t know what one is? How are you going to reach the end of your life and say, “I’m glad that I lived the way I did,” unless you know what the point was? Spirituality is not a trifle to be toyed with by people who already have life figured out. It’s the biggest question there is: why do you exist, and how do you live well? That’s what Jesus is addressing. He says, “Seek eternal life. Solve the death problem.”

Then they ask him, “What must we do to do the works God requires?” Verse 29: “Jesus answered, ‘The work of God is this: to believe in the one he has sent.'” Look at their question: “What must we do to do the works God requires?” They’re thinking quid pro quo. “What do I have to do? You won’t give me this stuff; I get it. Maybe I’m not good enough. What do I have to do to get to a place where you will give me the things that I am seeking?” And what does Jesus say? “Believe in me.”

When he says “believe,” he’s not saying to theoretically affirm his existence. He’s saying it in a way that means loving trust—the same way you might say, “I believe in you” to a friend that you love. If you turned to someone and said, “I believe in you,” you certainly wouldn’t be saying, “I affirm that you exist.” You’d be saying, “I trust you. I know you’ve got this.” That’s what Jesus is talking about. That’s what he’s looking for—not just adhering to a law, and not just behaving in a way that’s acceptable. Not that laws are bad; there are a lot of laws in the Bible. They are good things, and they are intended to get you on track, but that is not the core of our relationship with God. The core of our relationship with God is trusting Him, loving Him, and believing in Him.

Can you imagine a family that functioned strictly based on rules? There was no affection at all, but all of the kids did exactly what they were told the whole time. The way that family functioned would be bizarre! It would be really weird. I know some of you who have kids are probably like, “I don’t know, I might be able to deal with that a little bit.” But that’s not what a family is about. It’s not about marching orders and strictly adhering to the rules. Love is the core of a family. The rules and laws are good; you hope your kids follow the rules because you love them and want what’s best for them, and you hope that they trust you enough to do what you ask. God wants us to be members of his family. He’s not just looking for us to take marching orders strictly. He says, “I want you to believe in me.” That’s the starting place, and we can go from there.

The crowd’s not thrilled with this answer. They respond, “What sign will you give us that we may see it and believe in you? What will you do? You want us to believe in you? What are you going to give us? Our ancestors ate the manna in the wilderness; as it is written, ‘He gave them bread from heaven to eat.'”

Our other passage touched on this: the Jews are seeking signs. Isn’t it interesting that they’re seeking signs even though they were already given one? They literally saw Jesus multiply bread and fish right in front of their eyes. But when Jesus says, “Trust me. You’re worrying about the little stuff. Trust me and stop worrying,” the first thing they say is, “Well, hold on. You haven’t given us enough evidence to trust you yet. You’re jumping the gun. Sure, you did the bread thing—that was interesting—but let’s be honest, the people in Moses’ day got bread from heaven. We’ve seen that one before. You’re going to have to do better than that if you want us to really trust in you.” They flip it around so that rather than putting their faith in Jesus, giving him agency, and following him, they want to be the ones in the driver’s seat. They say, “Jesus, you do what we say.” Jesus says, “Trust me,” and they say, “You haven’t given me reason to yet. Give me a little more evidence. Give me something bigger.”

That, again, I think is something many people wrestle with. I wrestled with that for a long time. Is there enough evidence? Has God given us sufficient evidence? This group had the advantage of literally seeing the multiplication of bread and fish, but even after that, did they think it was sufficient? No.

God gives us all the evidence we could possibly want. The book of Romans says that in chapter 1: all of the world has sufficient evidence to know that God exists and is good. Just by looking around, just by looking outside, we can see the universe is so intricately and carefully designed. The beauty around us alone is testimony to the fact that God exists and loves us. Who could look at the eclipse and say there’s no evidence? Who could look outside at a field and say there’s no evidence? There’s evidence all around us. God has given us evidence after evidence.

When we say there’s not enough evidence, very often God has already given it to us. But even when we get the evidence—even when God gives us a special revelation, or even when he does a miracle to show us that he’s there, he loves us, and he’s seeking us—if our heart is not in a place where we are able to trust him, there’s no amount of evidence that will be sufficient. God could give us more and more up until eternity, and it wouldn’t be enough. You get one thing and say, “God, if you give me this, I’ll believe in you.” Then you get it and say, “Eh, that’s just a coincidence. I’m going to need another one.” Then something else happens and you think, “I’m not sure. It would need to be bigger.” Being able to believe in Jesus is much less an evidence problem than some people make it out to be. It’s much less about evidence and much more about the heart. Can we trust that someone else is seeking what’s best for us, or are we unwilling to get out of the driver’s seat and trust someone else?

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. For the bread of God is the bread that comes down from heaven and gives life to the world.”

“Sir,” they said, “always give us this bread.”

We’re back to bread talk. They like that—something physical, something they can wrap their minds around. “Give us that.”

Jesus declared, “I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never be hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty. But as I told you, you have seen me and still you do not believe. All those the Father gives me will come to me, and whoever comes to me I will never drive away. For I have come from heaven not to do my will but the will of him who sent me. And this is the will of him who sent me, that I should not lose anything, but raise them up at the last day. For my Father’s will is that everyone who looks to the Son and believes in him shall have eternal life, and I will raise them up at the last day.”

“I’m not here to do your will. I’m not here to do my will. I’m here to do the Father’s will.” And he makes the Father’s will clear in no uncertain terms. What does God want? Eternal life for us. That’s what He is seeking. He wants to solve the biggest problem there is.

As we go through life, there are a million problems that catch our eye. We are not so very different from the people who kept chasing Jesus all over the place, trying to get more miracles out of him. We face problems about where we are going to get our meals, problems about governance, and problems about economics. There are a million and one problems constantly bearing down on us. Can we trust God? Can we trust God even when we don’t get what we want all the time? That’s the question we have to endure.

God recognizes that even in spite of the individual problems stacked up against us, there’s a bigger problem bearing down on us. All of these problems that we see are only problems for a day. They are problems for a day that we will endure, we will get past, and we will continue to work through. But everything we see is passing away. None of it is permanent. The little problems aren’t permanent, and the solutions aren’t permanent. We get a bag of bread, and then we need a new bag of bread. There’s only one permanent thing, and that permanent thing is God. He lives forever, he endures, and he wants us to endure too. Put your faith in me. He says, “I will not just solve the little problems; I’m going to solve all of them. I’ve got a plan. Do you trust me?”

Do you trust him?

John 6:16-24 Jesus Walks on Water

May 11, 2026September 2, 2026 ~ Vincent

Video Teaching
Verse-by-Verse Commentary
Full Transcript

From the Pulpit

Commentary

16 When evening came, his disciples went down to the lake, 17 where they got into a boat and set off across the lake for Capernaum. By now it was dark, and Jesus had not yet joined them. 18 A strong wind was blowing and the waters grew rough. 19 When they had rowed about three or four miles,

“…they got into a boat and set off…”

1. Why did Jesus send his disciples away from the crowd while he went to the mountain? Knowing that the crowd had differed from Christ’s teachings so much that he had to remove himself, it is likely he wanted his disciples exposed to the same tempting thought patterns.
2. The crowd preferred the gift to the giver. The disciples left their company, assuring that their thoughts would not start to drift towards their way of thinking.
“A strong wind was blowing and the waters grew rough.”
1. The Sea of Galilee, 600 feet below sea level and surrounded by mountains, is prone to sudden, strong winds and storms.
2. “Darkness was increasing, discernment was diminishing, iniquity was growing. When, therefore, they had rowed about twenty-five or thirty furlongs. Meanwhile they struggled onward, kept advancing; nor did those winds and storms, and waves and darkness effect either that the ship should not make way, or that it should break in pieces and founder; but amid all these evils it went on.” -Augustine, Tractates on the Gospel of John, 25, 6.
…they had rowed about three or four miles…”
1. The disciples rowed all night (six to eight hours) in a brutal storm and only reached halfway across the sea (about three to four miles).
2. This struggle wasn’t some sort of punishment; Jesus Himself sent them into the storm. He has something to teach them here.
3. Even though the disciples couldn’t see Jesus, Mark 6:48 explicitly says that Jesus was watching them straining at the oars from the top of the mountain and praying for them. He never took his eyes off them.

they saw Jesus approaching the boat, walking on the water; and they were frightened. 20 But he said to them, “It is I; don’t be afraid.” 21 Then they were willing to take him into the boat, and immediately the boat reached the shore where they were heading.

“It is I; don’t be afraid.”
1. Strangely, they are afraid of the very thing that can save them. The glory of Christ on the water is a sight they can’t fully comprehend at this point in their lives.
2. “[T]he interior effect was fear; and therefore the fear of the disciples, conceived from Christ’s sudden appearance, is set forth when it says: ‘and they were afraid’ — either with a good fear, because it was caused by humility; ‘Do not be haughty, but fear’ (Romans 11:20). Or with an evil fear, because, as is said in Matthew 14:26, they thought him to be a ghost. ‘They trembled with fear where there was no fear’ (Psalm 13:5 [Vulgate numbering]). For fear especially belongs to carnal people, who shrink back from spiritual things.” -Thomas Aquinas, Commentary on John, Ch. 6, 882.
Here, Matthew’s Gospel mention’s Peter’s attempt to walk on water (Matt. 14:22-33), which is an incredible act of faith, even though he faltered.
“Then they were willing to take him into the boat, and immediately the boat reached the shore where they were heading.”
1. Jesus waited until the disciples were willing to take Him into the boat. He doesn’t force His way in; He waits for an invitation.
2. The moment Jesus entered the boat, they “immediately” reached the shore. This is a second miracle, which shows the the power of letting Jesus take control.

22 The next day the crowd that had stayed on the opposite shore of the lake realized that only one boat had been there, and that Jesus had not entered it with his disciples, but that they had gone away alone. 23 Then some boats from Tiberias landed near the place where the people had eaten the bread after the Lord had given thanks. 24 Once the crowd realized that neither Jesus nor his disciples were there, they got into the boats and went to Capernaum in search of Jesus.

“Our Lord, though He did not actually shew Himself to the multitude walking on the sea, yet gave them the opportunity of inferring what had taken place; The day following, the people which stood on the other side of the sea saw that there was none other boat there, save that one whereinto His disciples were entered, and that Jesus went not with His disciples into the boat, but that His disciples were gone away alone. What was this but to suspect that He had walked across the sea, on His going away? For He could not have gone over in a ship, as there was only one there, that in which His disciples had entered; and He had not gone in with them.” -Chrysostom, Hom. xliii. 2.

Full Transcript

“Sow a financial seed on your MasterCard, Visa, or Discover and watch the heavens open up and the blessings of the Lord come down on you.”

Last week, we started talking about John chapter 6 with a conversation about what’s known as the prosperity gospel—this idea that God wants you to have everything you could possibly want. He wants you to have a million dollars; he wants you to get that raise at work; he wants you to have an attractive spouse. He wants you to have health, wealth, and prosperity—everything you could ever dream of. The problem, according to this view, is you. You don’t have enough faith. If you just had a little more, he would give you everything you wanted.

Now, that’s not true. You can tell because even the people in the biblical era didn’t have big hordes of cash. The apostles were poor. Jesus was poor. Throughout history, there have been a lot of great Christians who have not been particularly wealthy or healthy. Your faith does not directly correlate to you getting everything you’ve ever wanted.

The prosperity gospel is not true, but I do want to clarify something here. I think we can go in the opposite direction pretty easily and end up in a bad place. We can say, “Oh, God doesn’t like us talking about money. Maybe he can’t handle money. Maybe I should never pray about money or health. Maybe God’s a spiritual God and he only handles spiritual things.” We might think that when we pray to God, we should only bring the spiritual stuff, but for the real world—for this life—we shouldn’t go to God because that’s too worldly.

I think of a monk from a long, long time ago named Evagrius. Isn’t that a great name? Evagrius. He sounds like a wizard. Evagrius the monk was someone who wrote about prayer. He wrote a lot of good stuff and a lot of bad stuff—it was kind of a toss-up. In his writing on prayer, he said that if you’re a really mature Christian, you should only have to pray one prayer: “Thy will be done.” That’s it. You don’t need to pray for anything else because you should just be able to trust God. Don’t worry about the details; just one prayer: “Thy will be done.” I can see what he was trying to get at, and I don’t want to be uncharitable—there is some wisdom to that—but I can’t help but notice that it doesn’t sound very much like what Jesus said.

In Matthew chapter 7, verses 7 through 11, Jesus said, “Which of you, if your son asks for bread, will give him a stone? Or if he asks for a fish, will give him a snake? If you then, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give good gifts to those who ask him?” You can ask God about food and worldly things. It is interesting that Jesus gives the specific examples of bread and fish. Those are two things he brings up that someone might ask for.

Isn’t that exactly what Jesus dealt with last week? We saw that he was dealing with bread and fish in the feeding of the five thousand. Remember, there were probably more than five thousand men, and we don’t know how many women and children. “The feeding of the five thousand” sounds really cool, so we just go with that. Jesus did this miracle, and while there were certainly symbolic and spiritual elements to it, keep in mind the primary reason he did it: people were hungry. They needed something to eat.

Our God is not just the God of the spiritual realm. He’s not someone you can’t go to about your real physical needs. Jesus cares about all of it, and he’s the God over all of it. So don’t fall into that opposite trap of thinking Jesus doesn’t care about physical stuff. He does. The problem with the prosperity gospel isn’t that God can’t give us whatever we ask for—God can do whatever he wants; he’s God. The problem is that sometimes we’re more interested in the gifts than the Giver.

Sometimes we forget to seek God and trust that he knows more than we do. Sometimes the things he is trying to help us with are things we don’t even know about. We think our biggest problem might be that we don’t have a million dollars, but God can see other things. Sometimes he’s working on our character or teaching us to trust him. He is teaching us lessons that are really important in the face of eternity. If we only lived 100 years, that would definitely change our needs, but we know we’re eternal beings. There are things really important beyond this life that God might be working on in us. We need to be open to God, trust him, and let him work on what we need. We must trust that he knows what we need and not get angry and say, “Well, God hasn’t given me all the stuff I want. God, you owe me some stuff.”

This is one of those things we’re going to keep hearing about as we continue. If God has all this power, why doesn’t he give me all this stuff? Last week at the beginning of chapter six, we looked at the feeding of the five thousand. We saw how Jesus turned to Philip and said, “Hey, we need to feed all these people.” Philip said he didn’t know how they were going to do that because they didn’t have the money or the logistics. It didn’t make sense to him. Jesus was testing him, and Philip failed the test because he relied on what was in his control. He didn’t rely on Jesus or trust him; he tried to solve it by himself.

Andrew, a different disciple, introduced the young boy who gave Jesus his lunch of bread and fish. Jesus took that lunch and started handing it out. He just kept going and going. Not only was he able to feed everyone who had gathered, there were actually whole baskets of food left over. It wasn’t just enough for everyone to have their fill; it was more than enough.

Then those people got to thinking: “If Jesus can do this, what else can he give me?” They wanted to force Jesus to become their king. It didn’t matter what he wanted; they wanted him in charge so he could solve all their problems. This is something I didn’t talk about last week, but I wanted to touch on it because they say, “Surely this is the prophet who has come into the world.” From that, we learn that Jesus knew their intent was to force him to become king.

Why would they say that? It seems like an odd, random thing to say, but it’s a reference to Deuteronomy chapter 18, verse 15. That is where Moses is speaking to the Israelites and says, “The Lord will raise up a prophet like me from among you.” Moses was the greatest prophet of all time. David was a great king, but Moses was the one—the Ten Commandments guy who got them out of Egypt. You can’t do better than Moses, and Moses said there would be a prophet like him. People were waiting on that guy who was going to be as incredible as Moses.

Now here comes Jesus. Moses led them into the wilderness and fed them bread from heaven to sustain them for forty years. Jesus leads them into the wilderness and doesn’t just give them enough bread to sustain them; he gives them more than enough. This guy’s not only like Moses, he’s even better. That’s where that phrase connects.

They want to make him king, but Jesus has had this offer before. At the beginning of his ministry, Jesus went into the wilderness where he was tempted by Satan. One of the temptations was to bow down, and everything he saw would be his. Of course, Jesus said no. Jesus does not need the approval of the world. He has authority of his own. He doesn’t need an earthly crown; he has a heavenly one. Jesus said no to Satan, and here is this crowd hoping he will seize a crown for himself. Jesus leaves and goes to a mountain by himself.

This morning, I am going to rely on a few different passages. This story of Jesus walking on the water appears in three of the gospels: Mark, Matthew, and John. The only one that does not contain it is Luke. I’m going to rely on all of them. Normally, I don’t always do this. I think there is wisdom in looking at individual passages and letting them stand on their own. But as I read the other two accounts, I couldn’t help but notice that they all add something really important. Mark tells us so many details about motivations, Matthew tells us about the reactions of the disciples, and John tells us some of the more miraculous elements.

At the end of the day, I am not just looking at this passage because I want to know the words John chose. I am learning about it because I want to know what happened that day with Jesus and the disciples. If you want to look at them in the coming week, I encourage you to—they are well worth it. The other two are Mark chapter 6, verses 45 through 52, and Matthew chapter 14, verses 22 to 33. It is really interesting to read them all next to each other and see how those elements interact.

Mark tells us a little more about the motivation of why Jesus left. John just says, “And Jesus left and went to a mountain by himself.” Mark tells us he went to the mountain to pray. Now we know what Jesus is doing: he is spending time with his Father in heaven. While Jesus is on that mountain praying, see verse 16: “When that evening came, his disciples went down to the lake, where they got into a boat and set off across the lake for Capernaum.”

Again, we can rely on Mark to tell us why. Why are these disciples getting into a boat and going across a lake when Jesus is going up the mountain? Why don’t they follow him? Mark tells us Jesus told them to do that. Before he went up the mountain, Jesus turned to them and said, “Hey, get in the boat. Go across the lake. I’ll catch up.”

Isn’t it interesting that he tells his disciples to get out of here in a way that’s difficult for people to follow? The crowd wants Jesus to become king. They are so hopeful he will solve all of their problems after seeing his divine power. Don’t you think the disciples might have been a little tempted to do the same? They already believe in Jesus and think he’s incredible. They don’t always understand him, but they know he’s an impressive guy. With all these people wanting him to be king, there would be that temptation to say, “Maybe Jesus doesn’t know what’s best. Maybe he should be king. Maybe he doesn’t believe in himself enough, and I believe in him more than he does. Jesus, yes, we’re going to make you king. The crowd is right.”

Rather than stay and allow them to be continually tempted, Jesus tells them to get out of there. That is a good reminder for all of us. How often do we put ourselves in situations where we are tempted to do something we know God wouldn’t want us to do? Rather than leave, we stay and see how long we can make it, continually fending off that temptation. Don’t do that. Get out.

Maybe you’re in a situation where you’re working with someone who’s just irritating. They’re driving you nuts, they’re getting everything wrong, and they’re saying crazy things. You’re about to give them a piece of your mind—get out of there. If you need to talk, come back later when you’ve cooled down. Don’t allow yourself to be continually tempted. Remove yourself from the situation.

Or maybe you’re with a friend and you’re enjoying your evening, but suddenly you start talking about things that aren’t very edifying. Suddenly, you start sniffing around some gossip. You might say, “Oh, we shouldn’t talk about that,” but then you come around for another pass. You just keep getting closer and closer. Don’t do that! Get out of there. Change your environment. When you see yourself being tempted in an environment where it’s continually coming at you, move. Maybe Jesus is telling you, “Get out of there! Go!” That’s what he tells the disciples.

So they get on this boat and they go. A strong wind was blowing and the waters grew rough. There seem to be an awful lot of storms on the Sea of Galilee, don’t there? This is not the only miracle about a storm on that sea. I am sure you remember another one where the storm is raging and Jesus is sleeping. The disciples tell him, “Jesus, we need help,” and he quiets the storm.

The Sea of Galilee has a lot of storms because of a geographical feature. Galilee is a mountainous region, and the Sea of Galilee is six hundred feet below sea level. When a wind comes whipping down off those mountains, it becomes very easy for the weather to get rough. It’s just a region given to storms because of its geography. Now, these disciples knew this well; some of them were experienced fishermen.This was not their first rodeo. It wasn’t that they’d never seen a storm before, but this one was especially brutal. John tells us that they had rowed about three or four miles, which is about halfway through the Sea of Galilee. They were at the halfway point, and Mark tells us how long it took them to reach that spot: he says it was about dawn.

They left the night before, meaning they had been rowing all night and were still only halfway. That would be brutal. Just imagine being in that boat. Imagine the darkness around you and the wind howling. Imagine the thunder and lightning. Imagine sweat dripping down your brow, interspersed with seawater. You are straining at those oars, and blisters are forming on your hands because you’ve been at it for hours and hours. It’s three or four in the morning at this point, and you’re still going.

But when they had made it about three or four miles, they saw Jesus approaching the boat, walking on the water. Now, you have to admire where they’d been until this point. They worked hard, didn’t they? The venerable Bede, one of the most prolific commentators in the Middle Ages, wrote regarding this passage: “The ship does not carry a lazy crew.” They were all stout rowers. The Church is not lazy or fragile; we are tireless, constantly persevering in good works, eager to reach the harbor of everlasting salvation. These were men who worked hard. Jesus told them to do it, so they did it—even though he sent them right into a storm.

Some of you might be in storms right now. I know several of you have told me about the storms you’re facing. This week, more than usual, I feel like a lot of people are facing some hard stuff. If you are in a storm, just remember: that is not evidence that you are doing something wrong or something that Jesus doesn’t want you to do. There is that prosperity gospel thinking that says, “If God wants me to do it, it will be easy.” That’s really tempting. We think, “Oh man, this is getting hard; God must not want me doing this.” That is not necessarily true.

Here, Jesus sent these men into something very difficult because he was teaching them something. There was value to this. Going into something hard was not worthless; it was important. If you are in a storm, stay with it. You never know when you are right on the brink of something. You never know when Jesus is going to come walking to you over the waters.

Where was Jesus to these disciples? They didn’t know. They couldn’t see him. We know he was up on a mountain, and the book of Mark provides those little details: he was watching them and praying. He saw them straining at the oars. He knew they were having a hard time, and he was praying for them. They were never out of the sight of Jesus. They may not have been able to see him, but Jesus never took his eyes off them.

When he saw it was time, he came down off that mountain. I don’t know what that looked like. Did he just zoom down? Did he make a trek? We only know that he made his way over those stormy waters. These were not still, gentle pond waters, either. I imagine it would be harder to walk on storm waters—that’s just my hot take.

Jesus comes walking over the storm waters, and they are terrified. Verse 19 says: “When they had rowed three or four miles, they saw Jesus approaching the boat, walking on the water, and they were frightened. But he said to them, ‘It is I; don’t be afraid.'” Maybe that is something Jesus is saying to you. If you are in a storm, if you are having a hard time, if you are facing something that’s frustrating and just beating you down, Jesus is saying to you: “Do not be afraid.”

Matthew tells us the part where Peter gets out of the boat and tries to walk to Jesus. He makes it a couple of steps across those waters, but then he ultimately falls in because he does not have enough faith. Usually, that is a lesson about how Peter should have had more faith. But I have to give Peter a little bit of credit. Even making one step on the water is more than I’ve made. That’s impressive—to have so much faith you could even take one step on water. We should all try to have as much faith as we can.

After that incident, they were willing to take him into the boat. Now, Jesus had just walked across the water; if he wanted on that boat, there wasn’t a thing anyone could do to stop him. But Jesus doesn’t just jump onto the boat. He waits. He waits until they want him on the boat.

I’m not going to say Jesus always follows this rule, because sometimes he does things that are unexpected. For example, Paul, who wrote so many of the epistles in the New Testament, was someone who persecuted the church, and Jesus blinded him so that he would see the truth. Sometimes things happen in unexpected ways. But as much as that is true, more often than not, Jesus does not go around blinding people on a regular basis. Most of the time, he waits. He waits just outside the boat, waiting for someone to let him in. He stands at the door and knocks, waiting for someone to answer.

Is there an instance in your life where Jesus is waiting just outside of it? You haven’t let him in yet. You’re trying to do it on your own, working by your own power, and Jesus is just waiting for the invitation to come in. Look what happens when he is on the boat: it says that immediately the boat reached the shore where they were heading.

This passage doesn’t get enough credit. A lot of people don’t notice that this right here is a miracle. It doesn’t say, “And the storm subsided and they got there pretty quickly.” It says immediately the boat reached the shore where they were heading. They were exactly where they needed to go. The minute Jesus got on the boat, they were there.

How many of you need to learn the same lesson that Philip learned: that if you are trying to make it through something on your own power, it’s going to be hard? It might not be enough. Maybe there is a storm in your life, a challenge that you are facing. You are straining at the oars and working hard, giving it all of your effort, but making little to no headway. Jesus is coming to you across the water. He is waiting. Let go of those oars, let him into the boat, and trust that he will get you where you need to go.

The Historic Challenge of Christian Parenting

September 24, 2021September 24, 2021 ~ Vincent ~ 3 Comments

I just ran across this quote from the famous 4th century Christian preacher, John Chrysostom:

We spare neither labors nor means in order to teach our children secular sciences, so that they can serve well the earthly authorities. Only the knowledge of the holy Faith, the service of the Heavenly King are a matter of indifference to us. We allow them to attend spectacles but we care little whether they go to Church and stand within it reverently. We demand an account from them of what they learned in their secular institutes—why do we not demand an account from them of what they heard in the Lord’s house?
as cited by Theophan the Recluse, The Path to Salvation, trans. Fr. Seraphim Rose, 331

It was kind of a shock to read! Here’s a man in our heralded Christian past, preaching in an era which I all too readily assume was full of devotion and piety, and he’s addressing the same thing that we face today: parents often care more about secular education than they do the Christian faith. After all, life is long! A child has a whole lifetime to think about God. The window for getting into a good school? That’s approaching fast. So should their child attend church or piano lessons? Wake up early on Sunday for an entry-level job, or head over to worship? The piano lessons and job look better on a college application than anything the Church has to offer. A good application means a good school. A good school means a good job. A good job means a stable income and a higher chance of job satisfaction. Job satisfaction means a higher chance of being happy! And what more could a person ask for than a happy child? Conversion can happen anytime; the road to happiness is happening now. Children need to get on or get left behind.

It’s easy to suggest that this is a phenomenon that only really effects nominal Christians that attend church on Christmas and Easter, but it’s not quite as simple as that. Even the great Augustine of Hippo, bishop and theologian extraordinaire, had parents that prioritized his academic education before his faith journey. When he took a concubine (or started living with his girlfriend, to try to translate a weird ancient idea into a modern one), his Christian mom was surprisingly calm about the whole thing. If anything, she was glad they weren’t getting married:

The reason why she showed no such concern was that she was afraid that the hope she placed in me could be impeded by a wife. This was not the hope which my mother placed in you for the life to come, but the hope which my parents entertained for my career that I might do well out of the study of literature. Both of them, as I realized, were very ambitious for me: my father because he hardly gave a thought to you at all, and his ambitions for me were concerned with mere vanities; my mother because she thought it would do no harm and would be a help to set me on the way towards you, if I studied the traditional pattern of a literary education. That at least is my conjecture as I try to recall the characters of my parents.
Augustine, Confessions, trans. Chadwick, p. 27

In Confessions, Augustine almost NEVER says anything bad about his momma. She is the shining pinnacle of saintliness that follows him around, praying for his conversion and hoping that her son might know God! But even SHE buys in to the theory that he needs to put his studies first while he’s young and then maybe someday he can convert when he’s nice and settled. This isn’t just a thought pattern for nominal Christians; this is a pervasive way of thinking for a lot of Christian parents.

Andrew Root talks extensively about this in his book, The End of Youth Ministry. He suggests that each society has a different vision of what a parent is supposed to be. Obviously, a good parent produces happy children. That tends to be universal. But what does it mean to be happy? Is happiness luxury? Elevated social standing? Religious identity? What does the culture say that happiness is? Because regardless of whether or not you personally affirm it, you’re going to find yourself influenced by it:

It would be super weird for even me (the theologian and husband of a pastor) to say [to my next-door neighbor], “Yes, [my children are] doing very good. Owen fasted all week and saw two visions. And Maisy felt the deep conviction of the Holy Spirit and has entered a time of confession and penance. She wore our family hair shirt to school today. It made gym class difficult, but that’s the point: doing penance for sin isn’t easy!” There was a time in history when this might have been exactly how a person would respond. But not today. The moral imagination has changed, and if I did respond like this, even a churchgoing neighbor would make all sorts of moral interpretations about me… My neighbor might even call social services, assuming that I’m some crazy religious freak, because my sense of the good feels wrong to her. And what would give her the moral high ground is her assumption that my poor kids are being kept from living a full life.
Andrew Root, The End of Youth Ministry, p. 25

So what is good parenting today? What is that thing that our society strives to achieve? For people in the eras of Augustine and Chrysostom, it was clearly tied to an increase in wealth and standing. Are things so different today? Not to suggest that the core of all goodness is located in a person’s pocketbook, but we clearly assume that more money will lead to better opportunities for happiness. Augustine’s parents got all kinds of admiration for saving up and sending him off to a top-notch school! That made them good parents in the eyes of the world. Good parents just like that were being lectured by Chrysostom: don’t let material success take priority over faith, regardless of how good it makes you look in the eyes of the world. If we want to avoid being good parents and be godly parents, it’s going to be a challenge that we can’t embark on alone.

I have no kids. It’s easy for me to say that Christians need to find ways to push back against the presiding social imaginary and put faith first when raising children. That being said, I’m still a church member. I’m responsible for helping raise children within my church community, and I’m responsible for supporting their parents. I hope I can can help them on that difficult journey, and I hope I can find a community to help me when that time comes. Raising children faithfully been a challenge for thousands of years, and the lure of defining parenting by the measure of secular success isn’t going away anytime soon.

THE NEPHILIM! A Word Study and History of Interpretation

September 10, 2021January 24, 2022 ~ Vincent

2 Timothy 3:16 famously says that all scripture is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting, and training in righteousness. Unfortunately, not all of it is easy to understand. So let’s pick out a really weird verse and see what God has to say in it! We’ll take a good look at the verse itself, explore the history of its interpretation, and see what we can make of it.

Genesis 6:1-8

6 When human beings began to increase in number on the earth and daughters were born to them, 2 the sons of God saw that the daughters of humans were beautiful, and they married any of them they chose. 3 Then the Lord said, “My Spirit will not contend with humans forever, for they are mortal; their days will be a hundred and twenty years.”

4 The Nephilim were on the earth in those days—and also afterward—when the sons of God went to the daughters of humans and had children by them. They were the heroes of old, men of renown.

5 The Lord saw how great the wickedness of the human race had become on the earth, and that every inclination of the thoughts of the human heart was only evil all the time. 6 The Lord regretted that he had made human beings on the earth, and his heart was deeply troubled. 7 So the Lord said, “I will wipe from the face of the earth the human race I have created—and with them the animals, the birds and the creatures that move along the ground—for I regret that I have made them.”8 But Noah found favor in the eyes of the Lord.

What on earth is happening in this passage? For me, the pinnacle of weirdness is in verse 4: “The Nephilim were on the earth in those days—and also afterward—when the sons of God went to the daughters of humans and had children by them. They were the heroes of old, men of renown.” What the heck?

To make heads or tails of this passage, we have to be able to identify 3 different groups: the sons of God, the daughters of man, and the Nephilim. Unfortunately, it’s incredibly hard to translate the Hebrew here with any level of certainty. Not only are the words and phrases vague enough that they leave several interpretive possibilities on the table, but exact phrases like these are used so rarely in the Bible that we don’t have a lot of clues to help us out.

First, we have the sons of God or “bene haelohim”. The phrase appears two other times in the Bible (Job 1:6 and Job 2:1) and in each instance it clearly means “angels.” That being said, Genesis and Job weren’t written at the same time, and there are several other translations that would be well within the bounds of reason. It could mean something like “men who follow God” or “men who are like God,” (aka godly men). To add even more confusion to the matter, the word “elohim” can mean “God” or it can be used to refer to any being that’s particularly impressive. It could mean “king.” It could mean “angel.” You get the picture. Bene haelohim could easily mean “sons of kings” or “sons of warlords.”

Clearly the “daughters of humans” (a phrase uncommon in Scripture and more clearly rendered “daughters of man” in Hebrew) are intended to be the opposite of whatever the sons of God are. If we say that the sons of God are angels, then thinking of them as human women makes the most sense. If the sons of God are godly men, the daughters of man are intended to be worldly women. If we say that the sons of God are the sons of kings or warlords, then they are intended to be peasant women.

Finally, we have the Nephilim. You know a word is bad when Bible translators don’t even touch the thing. There’s a few options here as well. The literal translation from the Hebrew is “the fallen ones,” It appears in two other places in the Bible: once in Numbers when the Hebrew spies look over at Canaan to see if it is safe to inhabit and they see nephilim (usually rendered “giants” in English) and again in Ezekiel 32 to describe warriors that have fallen on the battlefield. In a battlefield context, the word could also be used to talk about strong attackers, or those who “fall upon” their opponents with attack after attack. The giants idea might seem out of left field, given the English translation, but an ancient Greek manuscript grants us a little insight. The Septuagint (a Greek translation of the Old Testament from the 3rd century BC) has Nephilim translated as “gigantes” or giants, so there’s some kind of cultural or linguistic link there, even if it’s not immediately apparent.

Where does that leave us? Well, we have three story options starting to emerge. This could be a story about angels coming to earth, having children with humans, and giants being born as a result of that union. It could be a story about righteous men of God having children with worldly women, leading to a slow compromise of faith over the generations. Then there’s the option that it could be about the sons of rich merchants mistreating peasant women and raising a generation of fierce warriors. Each of these seems viable.

So what now? Well, time to look at tradition.

The oldest interpretation I could find was from the Book of Enoch. This little apocryphal book (book that didn’t make it into the Bible) was probably written between 200 and 300 BC. And obviously Enoch didn’t write it. Enoch is the guy who was famously “taken away” by God in Genesis 5:24 (and there’s much speculation about what THAT means, but that’s a story for another time), so someone else must have written it and popped his name on it. The book is basically an attempt to retell the story of Genesis more thoroughly, filling in all the plot holes that the original has. In the retelling of this story, the sons of God are DEFINITELY angels that come to Earth to have children with human women:

And it came to pass when the children of men had multiplied, in those days were born unto them beautiful and comely daughters. And the angels, the children of heaven, saw and lusted after them, and said to one another: ‘Come, let us choose wives from among the children of men and beget us children.’
1 Enoch 6:1-2

Not only do they have children with human women; they give humans science and technology! Unfortunately for them, God is not best pleased with this development:

Bind Azazel hand and foot, and cast him into darkness: and make an opening in the desert, which is in Dudael, and cast him therein. And place upon him rough and jagged rocks, and cover him with darkness, and let him abide there for ever, and cover his face that he may not see light. And on the great day of judgment he shall be cast into the fire.
1 Enoch 10:4-6

Bad times for Azazel.

Does the story sound familiar to you? It sounds suspiciously like the Greek myth of Prometheus to me! A lesser divine being comes to Earth, hands out some tech, and gets banished to torment in a barren wasteland for their sin against the divine being/beings in charge. I don’t think it’s any coincidence that this book starts showing up around 200-300 BC considering that Alexander the Great did his grand crusade of the world between 356 BC and 323 BC. Would it be so crazy if an Israelite that heard the Greek myth was looking for greater clarity in their Scriptures and took a little inspiration from the Greeks? I don’t think so. Mind you, that’s a disputed point, but the dates and the narratives are too similar for me to dismiss.

In any case, we’ve got the angels and giants theory on the table. How does mainstream Judaism react in the coming years? They don’t seem to care for it much. Not only is the Book of Enoch never canonized, but a majority of rabbinic writings that emerge tend to favor readings that cast the sons of God as tyrants and the Nephilim as powerful warriors. These readings gain more and more momentum over time. Nonetheless, the apocryphal books have their supporters. There are certainly people, especially at the fringes, that strongly support a supernatural reading.

When Christians start popping up, they’re a little more interested in the whole angels and giants thing. After all, a lot of early Christians were on the fringes of Judaism. Apocalyptic Judaism was a fringe movement that focused heavily on the coming of the messiah, and the Book of Enoch was very popular with them. If mainstream groups didn’t like the Book of Enoch, it was because they were scared of its prophecies concerning the messiah! And so early Christians inherited the angels/giants theory from some of their earliest supporters.

Mind you, its momentum didn’t last long. After about the year 300, the angel/giant theory seems to take a nosedive in popularity within the Christian community. Not only did they slowly accept 1 Enoch as “not legit,” but they started asking questions. What is an angel? What can an angel do? Are angels all male? When did angels fall? Why does the term say “angels” when clearly disobedient angels are devils? Jesus said specifically in Mark 12 that Angels have no interest in procreation. Why did the angels do that? What happened to them? And what happened to the giants, because if you render that word “giants” to resolve their appearance in Numbers, you need them to survive a world-ending flood that the Bible deliberately says they would not have survived. The whole interpretation is just incredibly bizarre and doesn’t make logical or narrative sense. So theologians started speaking out against it. You have heavy hitters like Clement and Augustine weighing in against it. Chrysostom goes so far as to call the theory “blasphemous.”

To read the passage well, Christians looked back at what happened previously in Genesis and tried to think about how this puzzle piece fit. Genesis 5 is highly interested in genealogies. Seth is born to Adam “in his image and likeness.” Genesis 1:26 previously established that Adam was made in God’s image and likeness. To some interpreters, this was a symbolic passing of the torch. Seth inherited his godliness from his father, and his people would continue to strive for godliness in the coming generations. There became two types of people on the Earth: the children of Seth, and the children of Cain. These two branches seem to be symbolic, more than biological. The devout and the worldly both lived on the earth, though living in very different ways. This, then, is a story in which people of faith decide to compromise their beliefs to intermingle with the attractive people of the Earth. As Eve tempted Adam, so now the daughters of man tempt the children of God. The resulting offspring are fallen; they do not know God, even though they know the ways of the world quite well. The only truly devout man left is Noah. You know how the story goes from there.

By the time the reformation rolls around, there seems to be broad consensus that this view is correct. Martin Luther presents it as the obvious meaning. John Calvin only brings up the angels and giants thing only to ponder why ancient thinkers would possibly have thought something so odd:

That ancient figment, concerning the intercourse of angels with women, is abundantly refuted by its own absurdity; and it is surprising that learned men should formerly have been fascinated by ravings so gross and prodigious.
Calvin’s Commentary on Genesis 6:2

The matter seems settled. But lo and behold, the angels and giants make their way back into popular Christian thought around the 18th century. At this point, modernists (a group that considered their Bibles to likely contain large amounts of mythology) started re-investigating the issue. If the Bible is full of myths that aren’t literally true, why can’t this be a story about angels and giants? Ironically, some fundamentalists reached the same conclusion, but through very different methodology. If the Bible is always true and you don’t need tradition to understand it, then why shouldn’t you be willing to believe a fantastical story about angels and giants? It’s one of those weird points in history where really conservative people go one way and really liberal people go another, and somehow they end up making a giant loop and meeting up at the same point.

But now we’ve looked at all the interpretive options and poked around all the major strands of tradition. What do I believe? Well, you ought to know that I’d rather be wrong with the likes of Augustine, Aquinas, Luther, and Calvin than right with anybody else. Not only is their interpretation the most well-represented in Christian tradition, but it just makes sense. It’s logical. It fits the Biblical narrative leading from genealogy to flood, and it addresses a constant theme in the Bible: don’t compromise your faith to fit into this world more comfortably (Deut 7:3, 2 Corinth. 6:14, Deut 16:21, etc). To be a true disciple of Christ, you can’t afford to compromise any part of the truth. You have to live your whole life in constant worship and obedience. Not only do I think this is a good interpretation, but I think it’s something that’s an important reminder as we try to live out our faith today. We live in a world that’s increasingly secular. Our culture is more than happy to accommodate Christians that are willing to compromise on the things that they believe. If you’re willing to make a few concessions, you’ll fit in easier. You’ll be the “right kind” of Christian. Your life will be significantly attractive on the outside. If you don’t? Well, things might get difficult.

As people made in the image and likeness of God, we can’t afford to compromise truth for temporary gain. After all, we know truth itself in the person of Jesus Christ. The only way for us to live well is to hold fast to truth and to continually honor God, rather than ourselves.

That’s my take! But rather than end on a dramatic note, I’ll end with some humility. It’s a tough passage! If you think I missed something or want to dig around on your own, check out some of the resources below! See what you think! Either way, wrestle with those tough verses when you find them. If all Scripture is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting, and training in righteousness, sometimes we have to do a little bit of wrestling to see what God is saying.

Great articles if you want to know more:
https://www.biblicalcyclopedia.com/B/bene-elohim.html
https://biblehub.com/interlinear/genesis/6.htm
https://lutheranreformation.org/get-involved/bible-study-luther-genesis-61-8/