Our Identity in John’s Gospel Part V: Unmasking Hunger

After Jesus feeds the five-thousand in chapter six he delivers a chilling address to those who follow him. The people look to him as a new Moses, one who will feed them and take care of their needs. Jesus rejects this idea and delivers a statement that sends discontent throughout the crowd, “I am the Bread of Life,” he says. This is one of the famous “I Am statements” in John. Through this he demonstrates that his identity is that of God’s.
The people come hungry for a feeding like they got on the mountain, but Jesus confronts their hunger. The bread we seek contains the life we desire, and all our desires end in death. Jesus says he is not the giver of bread but bread itself. There is no life apart from his identity. Then in an alarming move he offers his flesh as food and invites the people to eat. He lays himself down as an answer to hunger.

I had always found John 10:17 disturbing, it states, “The reason my Father loves me is that I lay down my life—only to take it up again” (NIV). I bothered me because it seems to say The Father’s love was conditional on Jesus laying his life down. By looking at the passage again I realized that isn’t what the passage is saying at all. The Father loves who Jesus is in his identity, which IS being poured out. He doesn’t love Jesus because of what he does in John 10:17 but who he is. He is the Son of God whose death brings freedom from slavery (John 2), he is the truth that must be lives not just know (John 3), he is the living water (John 4), he is the true flesh and blood that give us the life he calls us to desire (John 6), and he is the LIGHT. A light that reveals our deeds, our self-centeredness and our egotism by being so other our masks are shattered and our complacency obliterated.