Thanks for all the feedback and encouragement I receive from you weekly. This week I received an e-mail from the elder of the Adventist church in Stockholm who had a few questions regarding the feeding of the 5000 and in particular the bread and its symbolism.
While Jesus does not offer an explanation about the bread in the immediate context of the story He does return to the importance and symbol of the bread a bit later in the same chapter. In fact the very next day after the miracle of the Feeding of the Five Thousand, Jesus proceeds to teach the crowd about the most important things of life. He said, “I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never be hungry again. Whoever believes in me will never be thirsty” (John 6:35).
He also cautions them by saying, “Don't be so concerned about perishable things like food. Spend your energy seeking the eternal life that the Son of Man can give you” (verse 27). In other words, He wanted to shift their focus from physical bread (which they ate and were filled) to the true Bread of Life, Jesus himself. This is what they should have been living for.
The tragedy of this encounter is that after Jesus had finished teaching the crowd, most of the people walked away from Him. It would appear that the crowd did not approve of what Jesus had to say. After they had received a free meal they decided to move on.
Jesus then turned to His own disciples and said, “Are you also going to leave?” (verse 67). To which they answered, “Lord, to whom would we go? You have the words that give eternal life. We believe, and we know you are the Holy One of God” (verses 68–69).
I believe as Christians we need to continually serve people and show compassion toward those who are in need. Jesus modeled this. But He also showed us that in addition to meeting people's physical needs, we need to minister to their spiritual needs.
While there is always a need to help people with their physical needs we need to remember that the most important thing we can do for people is to care for their spiritual needs by introducing them to Jesus.
Remember:
If in our attempts to reach out to people and meet their physical needs, we somehow neglect to meet their spiritual needs, then I believe we have failed in our task as Christians. As Christ-followers our primary calling is to lead people to Christ – the bread of life that gives eternal life. What are you personally doing to meet people’s spiritual needs?