Jesus answered them, "This is the work of God, that you believe in him whom he has sent."
      [2.] They shall  never die,  not die eternally; for,  First,  He that believes on Christ  has everlasting life  (; John 6:47); he has the assurance of it, the grant of it, the earnest of it; he has it in the promise and first-fruits. Union with Christ and communion with God in Christ are  everlasting life  begun.  Secondly,  Whereas they that did  eat manna  died, Christ is such bread as a man may eat of and never die,  John 6:49-50. Observe here, 1. The insufficiency of the typical manna:Your fathers did eat manna in the wilderness, and are dead.  There may be much good use made of the death of our fathers; their graves speak to us, and their monuments are our memorials, particularly of this, that the greatestplenty  of the most  dainty  food will neither prolong the thread of life nor avert the stroke of death. Those that did eat manna, angel's food, died like other men. There could be nothing amiss in their diet, to shorten their days, nor could their deaths be hastened by the toils and fatigues of life (for they neither sowed nor reaped), and  yet they died.  (1.) Many of them died by the immediate strokes of God's vengeance for their unbelief and murmurings; for,  though they did eat that spiritual meat,  yet with many of them God  was not well-pleased, but they were overthrown in the wilderness,  ; 1 Corinthians 10:3-5. Their eating manna was no security to  them  from the  wrath of God,  as believing in Christ is to  us.  (2.) The rest of them died in a course of nature, and their carcases fell, under a divine sentence, in that wilderness where they did  eat manna.  In that very age when miracles were  daily bread  was the life of man reduced to the stint it now stands at, as appears,  Psalms 90:10. Let them not then boast so much of  manna.  2. The all-sufficiency of the true  manna,  of which the other was a type:  This is the bread that cometh down from heaven,  that truly divine and heavenly food,  that a man may eat thereof and not die;  that is, not fall under the wrath of God, which is killing to the soul;  not die  the second death; no, nor the first death finally and irrecoverably.  Not die,  that is, not perish, not come short of the heavenly Canaan, as the Israelites did of the earthly, for want of  faith,  though they hadmanna.  This is further explained by that promise in the next words:  If any man eat of this bread, he shall live for ever,  ; John 6:51. This is the meaning of this  never dying:  though he go down  to death,  he shall pass through it to that world where there shall be  no more death.  To  live for ever  is not to  be  for ever (the damned in hell shall  be  for ever, the soul of man was made for an endless state), but to be  happy  for ever. And because the body must needs die, and be as water spilt upon the ground, Christ here undertakes for the gathering of that up too (as before,  John 6:44,  I will raise him up at the last day); and even that shall live for ever.