<p>6:35 <i>Jesus said to them: I am the bread of life. He that comes to me shall not hunger, and he that believes on me shall never thirst</i>- &quot;The bread of life&quot; was a Messianic term, and the Lord here makes one of His most direct claims to actually be Messiah. Several times the Lord stresses His personal identification with the manna / bread. But this was His flesh, which He gave for the life of the world. The cross epitomised the man Jesus. Thus He could take the bread and deftly insist: &ldquo;This is my body&quot;. There and then, He was to be identified with the slain body that hung upon the cross. In death, in life, this was and is and will be Him. But He was right then the bread of life. The essence of the cross was lived out in His daily life. And He was certain that He would be obedient to the final crisis of crucifixion, and would then and thereby become the ultimate &quot;bread of life&quot;.</p><p>&quot;He that comes to me shall never hunger&quot; is a reference to men and women &lsquo;coming to&rsquo; the cross to behold &ldquo;that sight&quot; of the cross, just as men came to the lifted up snake. But the Lord clearly has in mind how the believer in Him would be regularly fed, filled up with water so that &quot;he that believes on me shall never thirst&quot;. The Spirit is given not just once, but in an ongoing sense we are filled up with it, if we are open to it. Only in a personal appropriation of the cross to ourselves can we find an inspiration that is utterly endless. No wonder the Lord insists we remember His cross at least weekly in the breaking of bread.</p><p>The Lord challenged us that if we truly eat His words, we'll never hunger or thirst; but 30 years or so later, He said that in the Kingdom, He will stop us hungering and thirsting (Rev. 7:16,17). He realizes that although we have it within our potential to live this kind of fulfilled spiritual life, in practice we will only get there in the Kingdom.&nbsp;The idea may be that we shall hunger and thirst for righteousness and spirituality now, but we are filled in this life by being incrementally filled up by the Spirit, as it is poured out in an ongoing sense. But the final ending of all such hunger is in the Kingdom, when we shall have Spirit nature, and our spiritual deficiency and need shall be no more.&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;</p>