I. The conversation of our Lord was well fitted to damp the zeal of those worldly-minded ones whose only object was to use His aid in resisting the Roman power. He had never sought to make partisans. He would simply encourage the faith which would lead them, whose hearts were honest, from things temporal up to things spiritual. He shows that there is not only provided for us spiritual food food for the soul; Christ, not only is the giver of it, but yet more, the spiritual food is Himself.
II. It was impossible for those who heard our Lord at the time of His uttering these solemn words to understand their full import. But thus much they could understand, that having had proof that our Lord could give miraculous food, and that in some way or other He would confer it upon those who should abide with Him, it was their duty to have acknowledged Him, to have said, "We believe and are sure that Thou art Christ, the Son of the Living God, and we will stay with Thee to be instructed further in the mysteries of that kingdom of which Thou art the King."
III. And when the kingdom of God was established, when our Lord had commissioned His Apostles and successors, what He did mean was fully known. To us, then, it is given to know that by union with Him we are united to God; and He thus is the support of the soul to know that there is Bread from heaven, that Christ is that Bread; nay, further, that the Bread, the sustenance, with which He supplies us, is His Body and Blood, no longer visibly present, but sacramentally received by faith in the holy ordinance called on that very account the "Sacrament of His Body and Blood."
IV. By our Lord's command to gather up the fragments we are taught that it is sinful to waste any of the good things with which God may at any time bless us, and that it is our duty, when our souls are strengthened and refreshed by the Bread of Life, to take care that none of the superabundant grace be lost in us, but that we may abound more and more in works and labours of love.
W. F. Hook, Sermons on the Miracles,vol. i., p. 321.
References: John 6:35. H. W. Beecher, Christian World Pulpit,vol. xviii., p. 220; Clergyman's Magazine,vol. i., p. 286; Spurgeon, Sermons,vol. xix., No. 1112; F. D. Maurice, The Gospel of St. John,p. 172.