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 has just spoken of eating His flesh and drinking His blood, and many of His followers call it a hard saying. This verse is His own key to it: it tells us what "flesh" cannot do, who gives life, and how His words reach a person.
What "the flesh" Means Here
The word does not point first to gross sin. Commentators take it to mean all of natural human life, weighed against eternity.
An Outline of Sound WordsThe flesh, as the Lord speaks of it here, would involve the whole of man's existence in present things apart from God. Man's life naturally consists of the things that occupy him in this world. They profit him nothing, because death finishes them forever. His life is a life of flesh, a life of natural desires in which he seeks to gratify the nature into which sin has entered. The question here is not the evil of man's flesh. It is the whole course of human life that busies itself with present things instead of eternal things.
Refinement Does Not Help
If flesh only meant the coarse and immoral, education might improve it. The verdict falls on the cultivated as much as the crude.
Hamilton SmithThe unbelief of the flesh only proves that it profits nothing. It may be highly cultivated, as with Nicodemus or a Saul of Tarsus. Even so, it is completely unable to take in the things of God. It is the Spirit that quickens, through Christ and His words, which partake of the character of the Spirit. They are spiritual, and where the Spirit works they are life.
Nicodemus was a respected teacher who came to Jesus by night. Saul of Tarsus was a strict Pharisee before he became the apostle Paul.
Christ's Own Correction of a Literal Reading
This verse tells us how to read His earlier words about eating His flesh.
H. B. CoderVerse 63 says, "The words that I have spoken to you are spirit and life." That makes it clear: we must not take the Lord's words you ask about in a material sense. The eating and the drinking He speaks of is not done with the mouth. It also has nothing at all to do with the Lord's Supper, where we eat bread and drink wine. Yet when we eat and drink these, we declare that we are among those who have eaten the Saviour's flesh and drunk His blood.
The same reasoning is set out at length elsewhere: the chapter speaks of One who came down from heaven, gave Himself for the life of the world, and would ascend up where He was before — none of which can be squeezed into an ordinance.
J. N. DarbyWe take the words spiritually, as Christ in the chapter itself tells us to do (v. 63).
"The Spirit Who Gives Life"
The older wording is "quickens." That word has one fixed sense.
Morrish Bible DictionaryIn the New Testament the Greek word is zōopoieō. It always means making alive those who are in the state, or under the power, of death. So it is sometimes used to mean resurrection, but it is never used of the wicked dead. It is God's work: the term is used in connection with the Father (John 5:21), with the Son (John 5:21), and with the Spirit (John 6:63). The term itself carries the principle of divine sovereignty. God makes alive according to His will.
How the Words Become Life in a Person
His words are the channel; the Spirit is the power.
J. N. DarbySpiritual things were communicated by the word. Then, by the power and action of the Spirit, they become realities in the soul — living realities, a real part of our being.
Taken up by natural ability alone, the same words do the opposite work.
H Forbes WitherbyThe bare letter of God's truth, apart from the Spirit's work in us, does not give us life. The word of God does not take root in our old fallen nature. Instead, that word only condemns our old and fallen nature, and teaches us the truth about ourselves. Apart from the Spirit of God, the letter kills. What more could it do? For the word tells us that we are in our sins and need life, and shows us that life is the gift of God.
Why This Steadies a Teacher
If the life is in the words and the Spirit, the one who passes them on can stop leaning on technique.
William J HockingIf you are teaching passages of Scripture, you are like a person planting acorns. The manner of planting is not the chief thing, but whether there is a germ of life in the seed or not. The Lord said, "The words that I have spoken to you are spirit and life." So you may be sure that in teaching Scripture you are teaching words of life.
Summary
- Sentence. "The flesh is no help at all" is God's verdict on natural life taken up with present things. Death ends it.
- Source. Life is not self-produced. To quicken means to make alive those under the power of death, and it is God's work, done according to His will.
- Channel. The Spirit gives that life through Christ's words. By His action they become living realities in the soul, not just text.
- Safeguard. Christ tells us to take His words spiritually. The eating He speaks of is not done with the mouth.
- Confidence. The life is in His words. So teaching Scripture is planting seed that already holds life.