Are Jesus’ Words Offensive?

A Study of John 6:60-64

“When many of his disciples heard it, they said, “This is a hard saying; who can listen to it?” But Jesus, knowing in himself that his disciples were grumbling about this, said to them, “Do you take offense at this? Then what if you were to see the Son of Man ascending to where he was before? It is the Spirit who gives life; the flesh is no help at all. The words that I have spoken to you are spirit and life. But there are some of you who do not believe.” (For Jesus knew from the beginning who those were who did not believe, and who it was who would betray him.)” 

John 6:60–64 ESV

Definitions of the original language in the context of this passage:

-Disciples: “μαθητῶν”, “mathētōn”; noun, genitive, plural, masculine | prepositional object – learner, pupil, disciple.

-Hard: “Σκληρός”, “Sklēros”; adjective, nominative, singular, masculine | predicate adjective – harsh, severe, tough, offensive, intolerable; hard to accept.

-Saying: “λόγος”, “logos”; noun, nominative, singular, masculine | subject – word, message, saying, statement; what someone has said.

-Listen To: “ἀκούειν”, “akouein”; verb, present, active, infinitive | complementary infinitive – hear, listen to, to give ear to one.

-Jesus: “Ἰησοῦς”, “Iēsous”; noun, nominative, singular, masculine | proper name – Jesus, Jehoshua; Jesus = “Yahweh is salvation”; Jesus, the Son of God, the Savior of mankind, God incarnate.

-Knowing (v.61): “εἰδὼς”, “eidōs”; verb, perfect, active, participle, singular, nominative, masculine | contemporaneous participle – to know, get knowledge of, understand, perceive.

-Were Grumbling: “γογγύζουσιν”, “gongyzousin”; verb, present, active, indicative, third person, plural | finite verb – grumble, murmur, mutter, to say anything in a low tone.

-Do [you] Take Offense at: “σκανδαλίζει”, “skandalizei”; verb, present, active, indicative, third person, singular | finite verb – to cause a person to begin to distrust and desert one whom he ought to trust and obey; to cause to fall away; to stumble, to take offense.

-Son of Man: “Υἱὸν ἀνθρώπου”, “Huion anthrōpou”; noun, accusative/genitive, singular, masculine – used by Christ himself, doubtless in order that he might intimate his Messiahship and also that he might designate himself as the head of the human family, the man, the one who both furnished the pattern of the perfect man and acted on behalf of all mankind. Christ seems to have preferred this to the other Messianic titles, because by its lowliness it was least suited to foster the expectation of an earthly Messiah in royal splendor.

-The Spirit: “τὸ πνεῦμά”, “to pneuma”; noun, nominative, singular, neuter | subject – spirit, soul, breath, breeze; in John 6:63 refers to the third person of the triune God, the Holy Spirit, coequal, coeternal with the Father and the Son; sometimes referred to in a way which emphasizes His personality and character (the “Holy” Spirit); sometimes referred to in a way which emphasizes his work and power (the Spirit of “Truth”).

–Gives Life: “ζῳοποιοῦν”, “zōopoioun”; verb, present, active, participle, singular, nominative, neuter | substantival – make alive, give life, to cause to live.

-Flesh: “σὰρξ”, “sarx”; noun, nominative, singular, feminine | subject – equivalent to the body, not designating it, however, as a skillful combination of related parts (`an organism,’ which is denoted by the word σῶμα (sōma)), but signifying the material or substance of the living body.

-Knew (v.64): “ᾔδει”, “ēdei”; verb, pluperfect, active, indicative, third person, singular | finite verb – to know, i.e. get knowledge of, understand, perceive.

-The Beginning: “ἀρχῆς”, “archēs”; noun, genitive, singular, feminine | prepositional object – beginning, origin; in John 6:64, John means from the time when Jesus gathered His disciples, or possibly also from the beginning of all things (John 1:1). Either way, both are true.

-Would Betray: “παραδώσων”, “paradōsōn”; verb, future, active, participle, singular, nominative, masculine | substantival participle – hand over, deliver, betray, to deliver up treacherously.

Observation/Summary (short explanation of what the passage says in your own words):

After Jesus finished His discourse in the synagogue of Capernaum where He explained that all must believe in Him to receive eternal life, and after the people compared Jesus’ miraculous signs to the manna provided for their ancestors in the wilderness journey of Exodus, Jesus used metaphorical language to say that whoever would receive eternal life must “eat His flesh and drink His blood.” By this He meant that similar to how we need to take physical food into ourselves for temporary nourishment, we need to take Jesus into our very souls in believing faith to receive eternal, spiritual satisfaction and life. After hearing this His disciples said what they just heard was hard to accept. Jesus knew they were grumbling among themselves so He asked them, if they took offense to this saying of His then how would they feel when they saw Him, “the Son of Man,” ascending to where He was before? Jesus then said, “It is the Spirit who gives life, the flesh is no help at all,” and also what He had taught them was spirit and life, but even so there were still those among the disciples who did not believe. At the end of verse 64 John the gospel writer also adds a parenthetical that tells the reader Jesus knew from the beginning who among His disciples did not believe in Him, and who would betray Him.

Implication (what does this mean to us):

The events in John chapter 6 take place during the time of Passover, one year before the Passover during which Jesus would die. This passage, John 6:60-64, describes how Jesus’ disciples reacted to His discourse in the previous verses, and how Jesus responded to them. In the previous verses Jesus used the metaphor of eating His flesh and drinking His blood to point to His impending death, and to describe the necessity to believe in Him to receive eternal life. The Galilean Jews He spoke to had compared Him to Moses and the miraculous provision of manna by God to their ancestors in the wilderness, and because Jesus was making many claims about being the source of life and more, they asked for a greater sign than the ones performed by God through Moses. Jesus went on to explain He was the greater sign. The manna their ancestors ate only provided temporary, physical sustenance, and therefore they still died. But Jesus is the True Bread from heaven, and everyone who eats His flesh and drinks His blood will live forever.

By saying this Jesus was using graphic, metaphorical language to point towards His death, and the need to take Him into the very core of our being in believing faith. He was using the metaphor of physical eating to describe spiritual faith. He was not describing cannibalism or anything like it (see the study of the previous section of verses for more on this). While many of the people may not have fully understood Him, they still would have been able to understand He was speaking metaphorically, but still, many of them were offended, including His own disciples.

We can see this in verse 60 which says, “When many of his disciples heard it, they said, “This is a hard saying; who can listen to it?”. The word disciples in this verse describes more than just “the Twelve” disciples of Jesus. There were more disciples of Jesus besides the main 12 we usually think of during His earthly ministry. A disciple is simply a student or follower of a teacher, and the word disciple in regards to Jesus’ earthly ministry describes both the people who followed Him around, and those who did not join Him on His travels but still viewed Him as their authoritative teacher. In this case the word disciple does not mean “Christian” in that the disciples referred to had not all savingly trusted in Jesus. And to this point, in chapter 8 Jesus will speak about what it means to be a “true” disciple of Him. And we can see by the response of many here that they were not all true disciples because they took offense to Jesus’ words and did not accept them. Furthermore, in John 6:66 we also learn that many will walk away after this.

The Greek word used for “hard” in verse 60 is “skleros,” and it means “hard to accept,” not “hard to understand.” While they likely did not completely understand Jesus, His disciples understood enough and it was difficult for them to accept. Some were offended because they were more interested in seeing Jesus provide more food, performing more miracles or establishing an earthly messianic kingdom there and then. Some were offended because Jesus described truly coming to God as giving up one’s own sovereign will and surrendering to God by admitting their helplessness and total inability to save themselves. Others were offended that Jesus claimed to be greater than Moses, and the source of all life itself. While others, likely most of  them, were offended by Jesus’ metaphor of eating His flesh and drinking His blood to describe the necessity for saving faith in Him that penetrates to the very core of one’s soul. For many of the offended disciples who heard this it was likely a combination of these things that offended them, and they were therefore unwilling to accept Jesus’ true words.

Earlier in this chapter we read of a couple instances where the Galilean Jewish audience disputed and grumbled among themselves, and also of how Jesus knew this and responded to them. Now, we read Jesus’ own disciples grumbled among themselves and Jesus knew it. So, Jesus addressed them directly by first saying, “Do you take offense at this?”. This is a rhetorical question, because Jesus already knew they took offense. What we see Jesus doing here is understanding the offense people took at what He said, but also His unwillingness to back down or soften His language. Instead, He confronted them and pushed the matter further. The Word who became flesh is always unwilling to compromise His perfectly true words.

At this point we should ask the question, “Were Jesus’ words offensive?”. Well, what was Jesus explaining to them? He was proclaiming the gospel, which means, “good news.” And while Jesus spoke the truth in love and with grace, the gospel does contain a message that is inherently offensive. The message is that you, me, and every single man, woman and child are dead in our sin and there is nothing we can do to save ourselves from the righteous, just, eternal punishment we deserve for our sinful rebellion against our Creator. That is offensive and “hard to accept” for many of us. It takes a work of God’s Spirit to soften our hearts so that we can even begin to make the choice to believe this. But the good news of the gospel is that God Himself, the Lord Jesus Christ, sacrificed Himself, and took the punishment we rightly deserve for our sin. He died in our place, rose back to life three days later, appeared to at least hundreds of witnesses over the course of a few weeks, and then ascended back into heaven where He is seated at the right hand of God the Father. Now, when any of us confess our sin and our inability to save ourselves, and confess Jesus Christ as our God and Savior who died for us and rose from the dead, we will be saved; and we will be raised to eternal life with Him.

This proclamation of our helplessness and guilt is offensive to many people. But these offensive words from Jesus are also perfectly loving, gracious and true. He did not deliver them in a rude, brash or offensive way. They are offensive to us because of our sinful nature. In the fallen, prideful state we are all born in, this message is offensive. But when we, by the grace and power of the Holy Spirit, humble ourselves to accept and believe this message from Jesus, there is eternal joy, love, peace and life to be had. We must not stumble at this offensive obstacle of admitting our own sin and helplessness. We must admit our inability to save ourselves, and then surrender our lives to Jesus and accept His free, loving gift.

Moving on though, in verse 62 Jesus continued His response to His offended disciples saying, “Then what if you were to see the Son of Man ascending to where he was before?”. This is an open-ended question. Jesus is asking them to consider how they will respond to the various aspects of what is coming. Up to now Jesus had been speaking to them about how He came down from heaven, and this offended them. Now, Jesus switches to speak about when He will ascend back into heaven. This question is loaded with meaning and should be understood in a few ways. First, given their offense taken at Jesus telling them He descended from heaven, many of them will be even more offended when He ascends back into heaven. If they cannot accept this first truth Jesus presented to them, further revelation will only offend them more. Second, all will stand before the throne of God one day. How will they feel when they must stand before the ascended Jesus in judgment?

Third, the ascension of Jesus will also result in the removal of the offense for others. In John’s gospel, John recorded Jesus using terms like “lifted up” (John 3:14) to describe Himself being lifted up on the cross. Up to this point the people have found Jesus’ language about drinking His blood and eating His flesh to be offensive, but how will they react to seeing Jesus lifted up on the cross, which will be an important step on His path of ascending back in glory to where He came from? The crucifixion of the One who claimed to be the Messiah would be far more offensive than the words Jesus has spoken so far. As Paul wrote in 1 Corinthian 1:23, this concept is a stumbling block to the Jews and foolishness to the Gentiles (non-Jews). However, the moment of Jesus’ greatest humiliation from a worldly perspective is actually the moment of His ascension back into the glory He has had with God the Father for eternity past. And this redemptive act of Jesus, where He was willing to be despised and rejected, as well as torturously crushed and killed, will be what opens the path for people to set aside any offended sensibilities, and humbly accept Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior.

So, the question to them, and to us today, is: “How will we respond to the ascended Christ?”. Will you and I take offense to the message of Jesus? Or will we believe Him that He is like no other prophet or king to come before. He is not simply a man empowered by God for a time here on earth. He is God in the flesh who came down from heaven to pay the debt we owe for sin with His own life. And, He rose back to life from the dead, and ascended back up to heaven where He rules right now. Will we believe in Him and His message, and accept His freely offered gift of eternal life? Or we will be offended by the notion that we must depend on someone else to save us, and that we are wholly unable to save ourselves? Will we be offended by the concept of a God that is so full of love, He is willing to suffer and bleed for us? How will we respond to the risen, ascended Christ? The answer to this question will determine our eternal fate.

In verse 63 Jesus says, “It is the Spirit who gives life; the flesh is no help at all. The words that I have spoken to you are spirit and life.” Jesus is speaking of the third person of the Trinity, God the Holy Spirit, and also of how His words are the source of life to us when we believe, because He is full of the Spirit, and what He says is perfectly in unity with the Spirit.

Throughout this discourse Jesus repeatedly called attention to spiritual realities over physical realities. It is not that the flesh, or the physical, has no importance. After all, the fact that “the Word became flesh” (John 1:14) is incredibly significant, but Jesus continually calls us to consider eternal, spiritual realities whose importance far exceeds temporary, physical realities. This is why He compares faith in Him and His redemptive sacrifice to eating and drinking. We need to eat and drink to sustain our physical bodies, but even in doing so we will still die someday. For this reason, we need food and drink for our souls that will sustain us for eternity, and Jesus is the only eternally sustaining source of life and ultimate satisfaction. It is “the Spirit who gives life,” and just as Jesus (God the Son), and God the Father are One, Jesus and God the Holy Spirit are One. When we believe in Jesus, His Spirit, the Holy Spirit, immediately comes to dwell inside of us and imparts life to us for eternity, even as we walk through the valley of death itself in this world. Death for the believer is merely a short journey into the eternal, undying Kingdom of God.

Lastly for this passage, in verse 64 Jesus concludes His response to His followers who took offense at His words by saying, “But there are some of you who do not believe.” Even though Jesus and His words are full of grace and truth, and even though they were faced with this great revelation and promise from Jesus Christ, some of the people among Jesus’ disciples still did not believe Him.

John the gospel writer also adds the parenthetical, “For Jesus knew from the beginning who those were who did not believe, and who it was who would betray him.” By this John meant either that Jesus knew from the beginning of His earthly ministry or the beginning of all things written about in John 1:1. I think it is very likely John could have meant both of these things at the same time. Whatever the case may be though, what is clear is that Jesus knew full well that many of the people following Him were not true believers, and even that one of His 12 closest disciples and friends would betray Him. The betrayal on the night of His arrest, and the cross He would die on came as no surprise to Jesus. Jesus knew full well what was coming, and He willingly went forward.

Response (How does this change how I think, act and pray?):

Jesus willingly died for our sakes. He is the eternally existent, all creating God of the universe who left the perfect splendor of heaven, to become human like us, and to suffer derision, betrayal, torture and death to save us. His love is selfless, magnificent, and infinite. And He freely offers salvation to everyone who calls upon His name. His words might offend us, but He came to lovingly tell us the truth about our condemned state, and to take the condemnation we deserve in order to save us and give us eternal, glorious, joyful life with Him and all who trust Him forever. We must set aside any offense we might take in hearing Jesus’ true and gracious words, and see His love spilled on the ground at the foot of the cross where His blood flowed.

He could have leapt off the cross at any time. He could have called down legions of angels to stop His arrest, but He did not. He did all of this because of His love for us. Is this a God we should take offense at? No, this is a God we should surrender our lives to. And all we have to do is believe. “Believe and you have eaten.” – Augustine of Hippo

“because, if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. For with the heart one believes and is justified, and with the mouth one confesses and is saved.”

Romans 10:9-10 ESV

Self Reflection:

• Is there any part of God’s Word I am offended by and have been unwilling to accept?

• Am I humble and teachable? Am I willing to be corrected and instructed by God’s Word, even setting aside long held beliefs of mine when they contradict Him?

• How does Jesus’ loving and selfless act seen at the cross give me confidence to trust Him that what He says is true and for my good?