Christology Through Imagery
By Jerry Batson, Th.D.
Special to The Alabama Baptist
For several weeks Theology 101 has been looking at Christology or the Doctrine of Christ through various images that are associated with Him. Some are given by others, such as John the Gospel writer calling Him “the Word of God” and John the Baptist identifying Him as “the Lamb of God.”
There are other images Christ claimed for Himself. One of these is bread, an image which He voiced twice in John 6, saying, “I am the Bread of Life. He who comes to Me shall never hunger” (v. 35). He repeated to an audience of Jewish listeners, “I am the Bread of Life. Your fathers ate manna in the wilderness and are dead. This is the bread which comes down from heaven, that one may eat of it and not die. I am the living Bread which came down from heaven” (vv. 48–51).
As often noted, earlier in this same chapter of John we read about Jesus’ miracle of taking five loaves from a young lad and feeding the multitude with 12 baskets of bread left over. It was in the afterglow of the feeding of the 5,000 that Christ introduced the image of the Bread of Life. The Greek term for “bread” (“artos”) occurs 21 times in John 6, being rendered in English as “bread” or “loaves.” Jesus took this common item of everyday life and used it to speak about who He is and what He wishes to do.
‘Bread of God’
What are we to take from this imagery concerning His person and work? As to His person, Jesus’ image of bread was expressed as the “bread of God” and therefore carries the truth of His eternal divinity. He put it like this: “Moses did not give you the bread from heaven, but My Father gives you the true bread from heaven. For the bread of God is He who comes down from heaven” (John 6:32–33). For those with ears to hear it, Christ — in choosing to begin the image with the phrase “I am” — invested the image with divinity, inasmuch as “I am” had long been a shorthand way of speaking of God.
God chose this phrase to introduce Himself to Moses in His famous response to Moses’ question about God’s name, “I AM WHO I AM.” God told Moses to tell his generation when they wanted to know who sent him to be their leader, “I AM has sent me to you” (Ex. 3:14). From that time forward generations of Israelites recognized the expression “I am” as speaking of God Himself. To make this truth even more forceful, Christ repeated Himself: “I am the bread which came down from heaven” (John 6:41).
Giving ‘life to the world’
Concerning the work He came to accomplish, Christ also uses the image of bread to speak of what He came to do. He came to give “life to the world” (John 6:33), to satisfy the spiritual hunger of people (6:35), to accomplish the will of the One who sent Him (6:38) and to bring everlasting life to those who believe in Him, life with a future resurrection (6:40). He summarized His mission in these words: “I am the living Bread which came down from heaven. If anyone eats of this bread he will live forever; and the bread that I shall give is My flesh, which I shall give for the life of the world” (6:51).
EDITOR’S NOTE — Jerry Batson is a retired Alabama Baptist pastor who also has served as associate dean of Beeson Divinity School at Samford University and professor of several schools of religion during his career.
Share with others: