John 6:56 says it is the person
that eats Jesus’ flesh and drinks his blood who abides in him and he in that
person. But drinking Jesus’ blood drops out in the immediately following vv.
57-59, so that Jesus’ flesh captures the spotlight; for flesh is what the Word
became (1:14). The reaction of many disciples follows naturally: “This word (λογος) is hard.
Who can hear it?” (6:60). As a saying of Jesus this word is hard to hear, so
that “his disciples grumble about it” (6:61). As Jesus himself this Word
is hard to hear, so that “many of his disciples backslid and were no longer
walking around with him” (6:66). So hard this word/Word, in fact, that whether
it is Jesus’ saying or Jesus himself, no one can come to him unless it be given
that person to do so (6:65; see also 6:44).
But according to 6:63 “the flesh is profitable in no
way.” Why not, if the bread that Jesus gives for the life of the world is his
flesh (6:51)? If being profitable in no way contrasts with making alive, as it
does in 6:63, surely Jesus’ flesh is profitable. He does not say” My flesh
is profitable in no way,” however, rather, “The flesh is profitable in
no way” just as in 3:6 “that which is born of the flesh” contrasts with “that
which is born of the Spirit” and just as in 8:15 Jesus says that the Pharisees
judge “according to the flesh.” By contrast his flesh is profitable, makes
alive, because it is not ordinary flesh. It is the Word-made-flesh on whom the
Spirit descended and abode (1:32). So he says, “The words (τα ρηματα, synonymous with ο λογος ουτος in 6:60) that I have spoken (λαληχα) to you are Spirit and are life,”
for “the Spirit is what makes alive” (6:63). The life-giving words that Jesus
speaks are the Word-made-flesh that he is; for he not only has life in
himself (1:4), he is the life (11:25; 14:6; cf. 1 John 1:1-2, where “the
word [λογου] of life,” “the life” that “was
manifested,” and “the eternal life that was with the father and was manifested
to us” function virtually as christological titles).
Flesh as such profits in no way,
then, so that apart from the Spirit the flesh of the Word would have done no
good but imbued with the Spirit did immense good. For at the cross water as
well as blood flowed out of Jesus’ riven flesh. Water represents the Spirit as
the agent of rebirth from above and the source of life (3:5; 7:37-39). Put the
equation of Jesus’ words with Spirit and life (6:63) together with the
statement that Jesus has the words of eternal life (6:68) and you get
Jesus’ identification with the Spirit alongside a distinction from the Spirit
similar to the Word’s identification with God alongside a distinction from God
in the Prologue. (Robert Gundry, “How the Word in John’s Prologue Pervades the
Rest of the Fourth Gospel,” in The Old Is Better: New Testament Essays in
Support of Traditional Interpretations [Wissenschaftliche Untersuchungen Zum
Neuen Testament 178; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2005; repr., Eugene, Oreg.: Wipf
and Stock, 2010], 340-41)
