The Bread of Life Raises

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Jesus said:] “This is the will of My Father, that everyone who looks on the Son and believes in Him should have eternal life, and I will raise him up on the Last Day.”

Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ!

A significant theme in John’s Gospel is how Jesus came to give life, especially eternal life. You see this promise throughout the book. But in the Bread of Life discourse of chapter 6, Jesus says more. He explicitly promises to raise His people on the Last Day four times (v 39, 40, 44, 54). This promise of resurrection is central to the Christian faith. As we confess in the Nicene Creed, the goal of the Christian life is the resurrection of the dead and life in the world to come.

This reading allows us to address a few foundational questions about the nature of this resurrection under the theme, “The Bread of Life Raises.”

First question: He will raise from what?

The short answer is death. But this is more than the moment our hearts stop beating. Ever since the Fall, death has cast its shadow over every aspect of life in this world. Our relationships, our intellects, our communities, our bodies, our emotions, our wills—nothing is exempt. The entire human existence has been darkened by self-inflicted death and despair.

Picture the scenes of death and its allies: child abuse, genocide, starvation, injustice, violence, oppression. An eleven-year-old girl is sold into prostitution. A woman addicted sells her body for drugs. A soldier rapes a civilian in the name of a cause. In one country, people throw away half of their food; in another, children stare with vacant eyes and distended stomachs as the corrupt authorities sell the food sent by relief agencies on the black market. Sexual deviancy, once considered shameful, is now a source of “pride.” Someone with money or the right connections goes free; someone else without the resources or on the wrong side of the political aisle spends years in prison. We see abortion clinics where the mother and precious child are both sucked up in a culture of death. Doctors perform barbaric abortion procedures up to the time of delivery, while grandmothers are arrested for offering prayers and counseling outside the clinic. Camps of war refugees grow in number and diseases, and caravans of immigrants attempt long and dangerous journeys through jungle and desert, hoping to find a better life. Hostile nations and drug cartels take advantage of porous borders to deliver their poison to a hungry and hopeless market. A high-functioning alcoholic comes to grips with the adverse effects of drinking on his health and relationships.

But you need not look out there to see signs of death—take a look in your bathroom mirror or medicine cabinet. The wrinkles, graying hair, and pill bottles betray your age. A tiny virus can take you down. A car accident can maim you for the rest of your life. Pain, sickness, injury, age—we know these as sin’s consequences and the allies of an enemy who uses them to put us in the grave.  

Death is ruthless. It ambushes some and slowly sucks the life out of others. But it will get you in the end. The death rate is still 100% unless Jesus returns before you become another statistic. And once death seizes you, it rends asunder what God has put together: body and soul.

Now, our culture does not like to hear this story. We glamourize death in the media or show it on screens so often we are desensitized to its reality. We try to put a good spin on it: (“She was in so much pain that death was a blessing.”) We hide it from view and seldom talk about it because it’s such a morbid topic. We rely on funeral homes to make the body look good, even keeping it from becoming the decaying flesh that returns to the dust from whence it came.

In such a culture of denial about and sugarcoating of death, we fail to prepare people to die. Death is not a blessing. Death is not our friend. Death is our enemy, a constant thorn in the side. While God kindly allows seasons of human flourishing and joy, life on this side of Jesus’ return is always burdened by death and decay. We are victims, to be sure. But we are also guilty of turning away from God in toward ourselves. In this sense, Jesus promises to raise us from ourselves.

The Bread of Life raises!

Second question: He will raise to what?

A full, physical, bodily resurrection. Jesus is not explicit in these verses, but the Scriptures are clear that Jesus promises more than a disembodied “spiritual” existence after death. He has promised to raise our perishable, mortal bodies to immortality (see 1 Corinthians 15:35-58).

A focus on the physicality of the death of the body necessitates the redemption of the body. Death is not fully undone when the soul goes to be with Jesus. The death that consigns the body to decay and dust must also be defeated. The Apostles’ Creed directs us to the final day resurrection of the body for that victory. So does Paul, “And not only the creation, but we ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies” (Romans 8:23).

Unfortunately, that final day resurrection of the body has nearly disappeared from American piety and too much of the Church’s preaching. What has taken its place? An overwhelming concern for life after death, and not, as N.T. Wright says, life after life after death. People and preaching have zeroed in on what Scripture barely mentions—the interim state of the soul—and neglected what Scripture predominately offers as the Christian’s hope—the final day, the resurrection of the body, and the new creation of the heavens and earth.

Preaching on the state of the soul in between death and the Last Day is not wrong by any means, but the tunnel vision that preaches almost exclusively on it is. People must know that life after death is a rest from our labors with Jesus. It is a time of refreshment and joy. It is a blissful consciousness of our Savior’s loving and protecting presence. Indeed, it is a time when the soul rests in peace with Christ while the body is asleep in the grave. But read through the Bible, and you will find that this interim period is not the end. It is more of a temporary state while we wait for Jesus to return in glory to fully and finally defeat death.

Digging deep into the Scriptures, you won’t find much talk about dying and going to heaven. Instead, what you come across repeatedly is wonderfully consistent with Jesus’ words in our text, “For this is the will of My Father, that everyone who looks on the Son and believes in Him should have eternal life, and I will raise him up on the Last Day” (John 6:40).

Yet listen to sermons today and you will hear almost nothing of the final day resurrection of the body. Rather, people are directed to the state of the soul with Jesus. This gives the impression that the soul is really the immortal part of us. Thus, the body becomes “somewhat unnecessary, really a hindrance, and this view, incredibly, regards the death of the Christian’s body as a victory, as something good rather than as an ongoing manifestation of sin and evil.” This becomes a form of Gnosticism in which the spiritual is good while the physical “if not bad, is at least indifferent or unimportant.”

The Last Day finds God not abandoning His creation but remaking it. He redeems His creation in its physicality, where space and matter matter. The Last Day resurrection brings back our bodies with all their senses and members. These bodies will be incorruptible, not subject to disease and decay; we will be transformed like Jesus’ glorified body. Justice will finally prevail, and all things will be made right. You know the phrases—no more tears, no more hunger, no more thirst, no more pain. No more of death’s allies wreaking havoc on our bodies. And joyfully, wonderfully—no more death!

The Bread of Life raises.

Third question: Whom will He raise?

Jesus answers this question three different times in three different ways. First, in verse 40, Jesus promises to raise all who come to Him and believe in Him. Resurrection by faith, you might say.

But lest we think of faith as our responsibility, Jesus gives us a second answer in verse 44. “No one can come to Me unless the Father who sent Me draws him.” All are called to come to Jesus. All are commanded to believe in Him. But when we do, it is always the work of the Father.

This leads to His third answer. In verse 54 (which is technically part of the reading for next Sunday), He puts it like this: “Whoever feeds on My flesh and drinks My blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up on the Last Day” (John 6:54). Those who believe in Jesus also believe what He says about His body and blood. While this text may not be explicitly about the Lord’s Supper, it is hard to miss the connection for Christians who have witnessed Jesus’ passion and resurrection. All who eat and drink the Supper in faith will be raised on the Last Day for the full and final feast.

The Bread of Life raises.

Fourth question: He will raise when?

Each time Jesus mentions raising in John 6, He is clear about when this will happen—“on the Last Day.” This is when He will “raise me and all the dead and will give to me and all believers in Christ eternal life” (Luther’s explanation of the Third Article). Christians always live with the end in view.

All this happens when Jesus returns to earth (not when we go to heaven). Jesus’ return is the biblical answer to death. Even though Jesus will give Martha more than she could have ever imagined with Lazarus’ exit from his tomb after four days, her confident hope is for a different day: “I know that he will rise again in the Resurrection on the Last Day” (John 11:24).

In the face of death, the Christian’s confident hope is the same as Martha’s—on the Last Day, we will rise again in the Resurrection. Hope anticipates. Hope looks forward. Hope eagerly awaits.  We are not prepared to die unless our hope is the true biblical hope, watching and waiting for Jesus’ return.

But this changes how we live now, too. We live as “people ahead of time” (Richard John Neuhaus in Freedom for Ministry). Raised already in our baptism (Romans 6:1-4), we walk in newness of life here and now.

How do we live ahead of time as those already raised with Christ, even as we await the promised Resurrection on the Last Day? How do we prepare ourselves and others to die a Christian death? By proclaiming the victory over death that Jesus’ return brings. By describing the glories of the Resurrection. By reading the Scriptures with an eye toward the Last Day, the great Day of the Lord, the return of Christ, and simply declaring what those words say to people. When you do, you will find this future hope throughout the prophets and apostles and those who have come after them throughout the ages of the Church. That includes every time we confess: “I believe in the Resurrection of the body.”

In the meantime, we who live with this future hope are invited, called, and urged to bring glimpses and moments of that hope into this broken world. Every act of love, gratitude, and kindness; every work of art or music inspired by the love of God and delight in the beauty of His creation; every minute spent teaching a severely handicapped child to read or walk; every act of care and nurture, of comfort and support, for one’s fellow human beings and for that matter all of God’s creatures; and of course, every prayer, all Spirit-led teaching, every deed that spreads the Gospel, builds up the Church, embraces and embodies holiness rather than corruption, and makes the name of Jesus honored in the world—all of this will find its way, through the resurrection power of God, into the new creation that God will one day make.

Jesus’ assurance that He will raise us up on the Last Day is a powerful testament to God’s ultimate plan for humanity: the defeat of death and the restoration of all creation. This hope is not merely about the soul's survival but encompasses the full, physical resurrection of our bodies, redeemed and glorified, free from the afflictions and injustices that plague our current existence.

As we await this glorious day, we are called to live as people ahead of time, embodying the love, justice, and beauty of God's future kingdom in our present lives. Every act of kindness, every moment of compassion, and every declaration of the Gospel are glimpses of the world to come, affirming that our lives in Christ are not in vain. Let us, therefore, hold fast to this hope, preparing ourselves and others for the true victory over death, assured that in Jesus, our eternal life and resurrection are secure. Amen.

Unless otherwise indicated, all Scripture quotations are from the Holy Bible, English Standard Version, copyright © 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.