Matthew Kudija

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ESV Expository Commentary (Volume 9) by Crossway

(New York: Crossway, 2020), 650

Full 12-Volume Set: ESV Expository Commentary | Crossway

The ESV is one of the translations I most frequently read and study from,¹ so I was excited to learn about the ESV Expository Commentary.

I chose to start with the commentary of Dr. James M. Hamilton Jr. on John in Volume 9 to shed some light on a question of mine that has been developing for some time: how do the best Reformed or Evangelical scholars interpret John 6 in relation to the Eucharist?

But let's not get ahead of ourselves: before getting into those details, Dr. Hamilton gives a wonderful introduction to the Gospel of John. He affirms the tradition that the Apostle John, the son of Zebedee, wrote the Gospel that bears his name in all manuscript evidence. This type of defense is—regrettably— important given modern skepticism, despite the massively more substantial historical and manuscript evidence we have for the New Testament than many other contemporary historical writings. Hamilton also identifies John's biblical worldview as a key to understanding his writing, and emphasizes how the Fourth Gospel must be read in light of the Old Testament story it fulfills for either to make sense, a point also emphasized by the Second Vatican Council in its document of Divine Revelation, Dei Verbum.

Next, Hamilton's commentary on John's Prologue is a fitting ode to perhaps the most majestic opening of any written work. I never tire of John's opening, and Hamilton's analogy is fitting: it is a diamond that might be "admired from various angles" (36).

Returning to the question of John 6, as someone who was raised with a Catholic understanding of Christ's real presence in the Eucharist, this text is quite plainly Eucharistic to me: "the bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh" (v51), "unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you" (v53), and "whoever feeds on my flesh and drinks my blood abides in me, and I in him" (v56). How is this interpreted, then, if not in a Eucharistic sense?

The two main threads of Hamilton's interpretation I gather are these: flesh connected to the cross, and a focus on spiritual needs. First he draws a connection from "flesh" to, not the Eucharist, but the sacrifice of Christ's flesh on the cross. Connecting John 6:53 to Hebrews 10:20, he states: "Jesus gives his flesh for the life of the world in the sense that he gives himself up to be crucified on behalf of sinners" (141). He further emphasizes the symbolic nature of Christ's flesh: "Jesus transformed the symbol [of the unleavened bread], replacing the celebration of the Passover with the celebration of the cross" (141, footnote 27).

Second he focuses on Jesus fulfilling our spiritual needs over our material needs, resulting in a symbolic reading of feeding on Christ's flesh and blood. This is first hinted at earlier in 6:22-40 when the crowd wants to be fed again, seeking the merely physical when Jesus further offers spiritual nourishment. In relation to Jesus giving us his body and blood to feed upon, Hamilton notes that "the feeding on Jesus in view here is not a cannibalistic feeding on his physical body but a spiritual feeding, a trusting in his death and resurrection that inaugurates the new covenant. The spiritual nourishment Jesus speaks of here is enjoyed by believers who celebrate the Lord's Supper" (143).

Hamilton does more explicitly rule out a literal interpretation of this passage:

Jesus is obviously not calling people to eat his literal body and drink his literal blood. Christians are not cannibals. Jesus does not want Christians to be cannibals. Jesus is calling people to come to him and believe what he says. Believing Jesus includes trusting that his death on the cross, the crucifixion of his flesh, propitiated the Father's wrath and made forgiveness possible. Believing Jesus includes trusting that being united to him by faith brings one into a new relationship with the Father, a new covenant in his blood. (142)

Ultimately, Hamilton's interpretation is a symbolic understanding rooted in our belief, trust, and faith in Christ's atoning work on the cross. Contrast this with a sacramental Catholic view as articulated by Bergsma that "the plain sense of the New Testament is that the Eucharist is Jesus' body (Jesus and the Jubilee-The Biblical Roots of the Year of God’s Favor, 150).²

One linguistic detail Hamilton does not mention in his commentary at all is how John records a change in Jesus' vocabulary to stress the physical eating of his body. He shifts from eats (phago / φάγω "to eat {literally or figuratively}") before the crowd questions him as to how they can eat his flesh, to feeds (trógó / τρώγω "to gnaw or chew") in Jesus' response. Given a chance to correct their interpretation of literally eating his flesh and drink his blood, Jesus chooses instead to double down and emphasize the physical nature of the eating he offers. A number of commentaries I referenced also emphasize this point,³ and the ESV translation does indeed pick up on this shift of vocabulary in the Greek:⁴

48I am the bread of life. 49Your fathers ate [ἔφαγον] the manna in the wilderness, and they died. 50This is the bread that comes down from heaven, so that one may eat [φάγῃ] of it and not die. 51I am the living bread that came down from heaven. If anyone eats [φάγῃ] of this bread, he will live forever. And the bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh.”
52The Jews then disputed among themselves, saying, “How can this man give us his flesh to eat [φαγεῖν]?” 53So Jesus said to them, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless you eat [φάγητε] the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you. 54Whoever feeds [τρώγων] on my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day. 55For my flesh is true food, and my blood is true drink. 56Whoever feeds [τρώγων] on my flesh and drinks my blood abides in me, and I in him. 57As the living Father sent me, and I live because of the Father, so whoever feeds [τρώγων] on me, he also will live because of me. 58This is the bread that came down from heaven, not like the bread the fathers ate [ἔφαγον], and died. Whoever feeds [τρώγων] on this bread will live forever.”
–John 6:48-50, English Standard Version

A survey of a few other resources include the following comments on John 6 in relation to the Eucharist:

• From the Ignatius Catholic Study Bible note on John 6:53: "Jesus is speaking literally and sacramentally. If he were speaking metaphorically or figuratively, his words would echo a Hebrew idiom where consuming flesh and blood refers to the brutalities of War (Deut 32:42; Ezek 39:17-18)" (1901).
• The Catholic Commentary on Sacred Scripture sees the same connection between the "flesh" and the cross, and connects this to the Eucharist: "The same flesh and blood offered by Christ to the Father on the cross and then resurrected to glory is given to us in the Eucharist. By consuming Christ's glorified flesh and blood in the Eucharist, we receive eternal life and will also share in his resurrection" (129). This commentary also notes the change in vocabulary in the Greek for "to eat".
• The Navarre Bible notes the spiritual nature of Jesus offering his flesh to us: "In the same way as bodily food is necessary for life on earth, Holy Communion is necessary for maintaining the life of the soul, which is why the Church exhorts us to receive this sacrament frequently" (596).
• Aquinas indicates how the Eucharist communicates Christ: "Yet it was especially suitable that he institute in his own person this sacrament, in which his body and blood are communicated. Hence he himself says: the bread that I shall give for the life of the world is my flesh" (Thomas Aquinas-Selected Commentaries on the New Testament, 230). Thomas, elsewhere commenting on Hebrews 2:14, cites John 5 and St. John Chrysostom: "By flesh and blood can also be understood the flesh and blood of Christ according to the statement he who eats my flesh and drinks my blood (John 6:55), of which the children, i.e., the apostles, partook at the last supper and of which Christ partook, as Chrysostom expressly says about Matthew 26: He drank his own blood" (ibid. 123; cf. John Chrysostom, Homilies on the Gospel of Saint Matthew 82).
• I published these reflections on July 3, the feast of Saint Thomas, Apostle. The Prayer after Communion for this feast touches on these themes of Eucharistic and faith:

O God, as we truly receive in this Sacrament
the Body of your Only Begotten Son,
grant, we pray, that we may recognize him
with the Apostle Thomas by faith
as our Lord and our God
and proclaim him by our deeds and by our life.
Who lives and reigns for ever and ever.

After Dr. Hamilton's exposition that focuses on a primarily symbolic interpretation of John 6 that emphasizes belief, I am left somewhat confused by his closing that seems to endorse a more literal, sacramental reading, though perhaps this is just a matter of relative emphasis: "There is nothing we need Jesus to give us more than what he provides: himself...By eating his flesh and drinking his blood, we abide in him" (145). The term "Lord's Supper" is used throughout this exposition, and I am aware that this is a term commonly used in the Evangelical tradition to refer to the communal fulfillment of Jesus' command to "do this in remembrance of me", whether it is understood sacramentally or only as a symbol. I suspect there is a lot of Reformed theological context surrounding the term "Lord's Supper" that I have yet to learn, just as there is indeed a detailed theological tradition surrounding the word "Eucharist". This is an opportunity for me to learn more, in the spirit of Evangelicals and Catholics Together. With appreciation for deeper understanding to be had by all, Dr. Hamilton's closing remarks on this section ring true for every believer: "there is nothing more satisfying than what Jesus gives us: himself" (145).

I'll close this reflection on the ESV Expository Commentary on John by affirming how spiritually enriching it was for me to consider Dr. Hamilton's exposition, which spurred me to revisit some other commentaries as well. The majesty of John's Gospel is a deep well to drink from, and Dr. Hamilton's exposition does justice to an incomparable text while continually drawing his readers back to the worship of its ultimate author: "To encounter Jesus in John is to encounter one who inspires us to thank and praise God. The Gospel of John provokes the worship of Jesus" (26). I am confident I will continue to refer to this commentary on John, and I am looking forward to exploring more of the ESV Expository Commentary series.

Notes

Contents

• John
  • Introduction to John
  • John 1:1-18
  • John 6:22-40
  • John 6:41-71
  • John 17:9-26
• Acts
  • Introduction to Acts
  • Acts 2:1-47

John

James M. Hamilton Jr.

Introduction to John

• Mark starts with John the Baptist. Luke starts with Elizabeth and Zechariah. Matthew starts with Abraham. John reaches all the way back to the beginning, evoking the opening words of Genesis. (19)
• There is no observed manuscript variation in the title "The Gospel according to John" or shortened "According to John". (19-20)
• "Western culture has suffered from a widespread fad in scholarship involving profound skepticism about authors and authorship...The evidence, however, points to the conclusion that John son of Zebedee wrote the Fourth Gospel. Those positing a different author often set aside primary source data and reliable early testimony in favor of elaborate theories reflecting deep suspicion of the evidence in our possession. No manuscript attributes the Fourth Gospel to anyone other than John." (20)
• "John states the reason he wrote in 20:31: 'That you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name.' John no doubt wanted unbelievers to start believing and believers to continue believing." (21)
• "Every aspect of John's worldview has been quarried, hewn, sculpted, and textured by Scripture. That is to say, John was a biblical theologian. John's heart, mind, and soul were enlivened by the way Jesus taught him to understand the OT's accounts of how God created and redeemed, covenanted and promised...The best phrase for describing the kind of literature found in the Gospel of John is biblical narrative." (21)
  • John writes from the same worldview as the authors of the OT, and his narrative is much more like that than Greek biographies. The evangelists write in Greek to fulfill Jesus' command to make disciples of all nations. "The commentary that follows seeks to understand how John intended the words he used to activate a dynamic between his narrative and the OT, a dynamic that presents Jesus as the culmination, fulfillment, resolution, and realization of everything anticipated in the Law and the Prophets." (22)
• "John's Gospel and the OT must be read in light of each other, each expositing and informing the other." (22, cf. 2022-12-03-Dei Verbum)
• Hamilton's commentary is organized around John's contributions to: story, symbol, truth, worship, culture, way of life. (23ff)
• "So much of what John says is tantalizingly brief, and many things are left unexplored." (23)
• "John tells the story of Jesus such that his Gospel is both a straightforward historical narrative and a pervasively allusive biblical-theological account whose resonance with the OT is so full and sophisticated that it takes its place as one of the great achievements of human art....Like a symphony studied centuries after its creation, its melodies and harmonies charm those who hear only the surface, while astounding those who explore its depths." (23)
• John highlights Jesus in relation to the Passover and Tabernacles (24). "Israel's prophets, guided by the institution of the feasts, used the historical acts of God celebrated in the symbols to depict the way God would save his people in the future." (25)
• "To encounter Jesus in John is to encounter one who inspires us to thank and praise God. The Gospel of John provokes the worship of Jesus." (26)

John 1:1-18

• "Could there be a more profound opening to a book than the one to John's Gospel?" (35)
• John 1:1-18 has a chiastic structure, with Jesus' rejection by the world, but reception by those born of God in the middle. (35)
• "The Word was with God and the Word was God. Something so beautiful and glorious, so complex and simple, must be admired. John is like a man holding out a diamond to a viewer who, after the initial awe-inspiring presentation, begins to turn the stone so that all its facets might be admired from various angles." (36)
• "John declares the mystery of the Trinity in the fewest words possible. Could more be stated with less? These two verses, John 1:1-2, invite us to contemplation and meditation. We must repeat these statements until they are etched on our minds, and ponder them, read about them, and respond to them by worshiping the incomparable God these words describe." (36)
• John uses Logos, the Word, to refer to Genesis and how God created by speaking. (37)
• "John here asserts that creation and life came from God's direct activity in Christ. This excludes the possibility of a random process of natural selection in which life simply happened. There can be no more rapprochement between belief that God created the world and belief in evolution than there could be between Churchill and Hitler, fidelity and adultery, or ultimate significance and morose nihilism." (37)
• Jn-01: "dwelt among us" could just as well be rendered "tabernacled among us" since John uses the cognate verb for the noun used in the Septuagint to refer to the tabernacle. (40)

John 6:22-40

• Typology: Moses and Jesus both went up onto the mountain by themselves; as Moses parted the Red Sea, so Jesus walked across the water of Galilee (131)
• The crowd seeks Jesus to fulfill their needs (good), but the wrong needs (merely physical food) (132)
• Distinction between material and physical needs: "This crowd with which Jesus interacts has been so distracted by their physical needs that Jesus has had some difficulty getting them to understand what he is telling them about their spiritual need." (134)
  • →Can't Jesus fulfill both our spiritual needs and our physical needs?
• Note the strong emphasis on the Father's will in 6:37, 38, 39, and 40 (135)
• Strong view of Predestination:
  • "If the Father has given someone to Jesus ,that person is eternally secure." (135)
  • "If we look to Jesus and believe, it means that in eternity past the Father ordained that we would belong to Jesus...Our redemption is as certain as our Redeemer is reliable." (136)
  • Predestination is used to explain the behavior of those in 6:66: "In response, those not given to Jesus by the Father begin to drift away..." (144)

John 6:41-71

• "Why would Jesus make such a shocking statement?...Once again Jesus has used something physical to teach a spiritual truth." (141)
• Connects "flesh" not to the Eucharist, but to the sacrifice of his flesh on the cross, connecting Jn-06 to Heb-10: "Jesus gives his flesh for the life of the world in the sense that he gives himself up to be crucified on behalf of sinners" (141). "That unleavened bread would commemorate something about the new exodus, namely, the body of Jesus broken for his people. Jesus transformed the symbol, replacing the celebration of the Passover with the celebration of the cross." (141 footnote 27)
• "Jesus is obviously not calling people to eat his literal body and drink his literal blood. Christians are not cannibals. Jesus does not want Christians to be cannibals. Jesus is calling people to come to him and believe what he says. Believing Jesus includes trusting that his death on the cross, the crucifixion of his flesh, propitiated the Father's wrath and made forgiveness possible. Believing Jesus includes trusting that being united to him by faith brings one into a new relationship with the Father, a new covenant in his blood." (142)
• "'Whoever feeds on my flesh and drinks my blood abides in me, and I in him' (6:56). Those who eat the Lord's Supper in remembrance and proclamation of Jesus' death in their place, who drink the cup in celebration of the new covenant into which Jesus has brought us with the Father—these people abide in Jesus and he in them. The presence of Christ is mediated to us and maintained among us as we believe his word and enjoy what he has given us in the celebration of the Lord's Supper." (142)
• "The feeding on Jesus in view here is not a cannibalistic feeding on his physical body but a spiritual feeding, a trusting in his death and resurrection that inaugurates the new covenant. The spiritual nourishment Jesus speaks of here is enjoyed by believers who celebrate the Lord's Supper." (143)
• "There is nothing we need Jesus to give us more than what he provides: himself. There is nothing more precious than what Jesus gives us: himself. There is nothing more able to save than what Jesus gives us: himself. There is nothing more satisfying than what Jesus gives us: himself. He is the Bread of Life. He has life in himself. By eating his flesh and drinking his blood, we abide in him. The Father gave life to Jesus, and he gives life to us." (145)

John 17:9-26

261

• add additional notes

Acts

Brian J. Vickers

Introduction to Acts

311

• add additional notes

Acts 2:1-47

347

• add additional notes

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Topic: Bible Commentary

Source

• Crossway Review Program

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Created: 2025-06-02-Mon
Updated: 2025-07-03-Thu