Bill's Starting Point

• Power of words
• Should
• Could
• Would
• What will you say?

• The crisis of belief is now upon the disciples:  they "murmur" and take offense.  The scandal of Jesus confronts them also with decision.  Can they understand that Jesus speaks of final things -- of the Spirit that gives life?

- Massey H. Shepherd, Jr.., Interpreter's One-Volume Commentary, p. 717
• The cross and resurrection are facts integral to the revelation.  A spiritual response to these facts is mediated through the words of Jesus, which are spirit and life.  Material flesh cannot evolve into spiritual life.  Spritual appropriation is the work of the Spirit.  The words of Jesus embodied in His discourse are life-giving, creating spiritual desire and life in the soul.

- A.J. Macleod, New Bible Commentary, p. 879
• As yet these disciples had not learned to distinguish the physical from the spiritual.  This is what Jesus makes clear in these verses.  They were concentrating on the flesh, but He urges them to consider the real meaning of the words spirit and life. 

- Donald Guthrie, New Bible Commentary: Revised, p. 944
• It is the Spirit -- The spiritual meaning of these words, by shich God giveth life.  The flesh -- The bare, carnal, literal meaning, profiteth nothing.  The words which I have spoken, they are spirit -- Are to be taken in a spiritual sense.  And -- When they are so understood, they are life -- That is, a means of spiritual life to the hearers.

- John Wesley, Notes Upon the New Testament
• [This passage is speaking of] the reception of the revelation of Jesus as the heavenly wisdom, the bread from heaven... Thus, as throughout the Fourth Gospel, the division of spirits is determined by the acceptance or rejection of Jesus as the life-giving revelation of God.

- Reginald H. Fuller, Preaching the Lectionary, p. 341
• The word and ordinances, if the Spirit works with them, are as food to a living man;  if not they are as food to a dead man... To believe that Christ died for me, to derive from that doctrine strength and comfort in my approaches to God, my opposiitions to sin and preparations for a future state, this is the spirit and life of that saying.

- Matthew Henry, Commentary, Vol 5,  p. 957
• If you leave the divine life and aspect of things, there is no alternative but outer darkness... Jesus Christ comes to me with poetry, which instantly becomes faith, and which is the truest reality of hope.

- Joseph Parker,  The People's Bible, vol. 22, p. 135
• It is the inspired Power, the impregnating Spirit, in his words, by which their souls ought to be quickened and rise into a living faith.  The flesh -- the carnality which the sensual perverts would put into his words, profiteth nothing.

- D.D. Whedon, Commentary on the Gospels, Luke-John, p. 292
• He had come down from heaven-this was His doctrine; He would ascend thither again. Material flesh profited nothing. It was  the Spirit who gave life, by realising in the soul the mighty truth of that which Christ was, and of His death.

- John Darby, Synopsis of  the New Testament
•  Spirit, that is, that power which flows from the Godhead causes the flesh of Christ (which is otherwise nothing but flesh) both to live in itself and to give life to us. 

- Geneva Study Bible
•  The Gospel, and the truths of it, which are the wholesome words of our Lord Jesus Christ, are the means of conveying the Spirit of God, as a spirit of  illumination and sanctification, into the hearts of men, and of quickening sinners dead in trespasses and sins: the Gospel is the Spirit that giveth life, and is the savour of life unto life, when it comes not in word only, or in the bare ministry of it, but with the energy of the Holy Ghost, and the power of  divine grace. 

- John Gill,  Exposition of the Bible
• The whole burden of the discourse is "spirit," not mere flesh, and "life" in its highest, not its lowest sense, and the words I have employed are to be interpreted solely in that sense.

- Jamieson-Fausset-Brown Commentary
•  It is the spirit that makes alive. The spirits of men must feed upon me by faith, that they may be made alive. My words are spirit and life. He who feeds upon them will be made alive.

- Johnson, B.W., People's New Testament
Augustine thinks that we ought to supply the word only, or by itself, as if it had been said, “The flesh alone, and by itself,  profiteth not,” f171 because it must be accompanied by the Spirit. This meaning accords well with the scope of the discourse, for Christ refers simply to the manner of eating. He does not, therefore, exclude every kind of usefulness, as if none could be obtained from his flesh; but he declares that, if it be separated from the Spirit, it will then be useless... Now the word is called spiritual, because it calls us upwards to seek Christ in his heavenly glory, through the guidance of the Spirit, by faith, and not by our carnal perception; for we know that of all that was said, nothing can be comprehended but by faith.
- John Calvin, Commentary, on vs. 63
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Word Study

• No wonder they "are spirit and are life" (pneuma estin kai zwh estin). The breath of God and the life of God is in these words of Jesus.

- Robertson, A.T., Robertson's Word Pictures, on vs. 63
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