The bread of life is the starting-point of the whole conversation. In
the widest possible sense it is whatsoever truly stills the hunger of
the immortal soul. In a deeper sense it is the person of Jesus Christ
Himself, for He not only says that He will _give_, but that He _is_ the
Bread of Life. And, in the deepest sense of all, it is His flesh broken
for us in His sacrifice on the Cross. That bread is a gift. So the
paradox results which stands in our text—_work_ for the bread which God
will _give_. If it be a gift, that fact determines what sort of work
must be done in order to possess it. If it be a gift, then the only
work is to accept it. If it be a gift, then we are out of the region of
_quid pro quo_; and have not to bring, as Chinese do, great strings of
copper cash that, all added up together, do not amount to a shilling,
in order to buy what God will bestow upon us. If it be a gift, then to
trust the Giver and to accept the gift is the only condition that is
possible.
It is not a condition that God has invented and arbitrarily imposed.
The necessity of it is lodged deep in the very nature of the case. Air
cannot get to the lungs of a mouse in an air-pump. Light cannot come
into a room where all the shutters are up and the keyhole stopped. If a
man chooses to perch himself on some little stool of his own, with
glass legs to it, and to take away his hand from the conductor, no
electricity will come to him. If I choose to lock my lips, Jesus Christ
does not prise open my clenched teeth to put the bread of life into my
unwilling mouth. If we ask, we get; if we take, we get.
And so the paradox comes, that we work for a gift, with a work which is
not work because it is a departure from myself. It is the same blessed
paradox which the prophet spoke when he said, 'Buy … without money and
without price.' Oh! what a burden of hopeless effort and weary
toil—like that of the man that had to roll the stone up the hill, which
ever slipped back again—is lifted from our shoulders by such a word as
this that I have been poorly trying to speak about now! 'Thou art
careful and troubled about many things,' poor soul! trying to be good;
trying to fight yourself, and the world, and the devil. Try the other
plan, and listen to Him saying, 'Give up self-imposed effort in thine
own strength. Take, eat, this is My body, which is broken for you.'