What did Jesus mean when He said, “My food is to do the will of Him who sent Me” (John 4:34)?

In John 4:34, Jesus declares to His disciples, “My food is to do the will of Him who sent Me, and to finish His work” (NKJV). Here, Jesus echoes the words of Deuteronomy 8:3, where Moses reminds Israel that life requires more than bread: “Man does not live by bread alone, but man lives by every word that comes from the mouth of the Lord” (ESV; cf. Matthew 4:4 and Luke 4:4).

In complete and total obedience to the Father’s will, Jesus perfectly exemplified the truth of Deuteronomy 8:3. The “food” that satisfied and sustained Jesus was the “work” that the Father gave Him to accomplish. In the context of John 4:34, the work Jesus was accomplishing was the salvation of souls. He had just finished His conversation with the Samaritan woman at the well, and soon her whole village would hear the gospel. The result was that “many more [would] hear his message and believe” (John 4:41, NLT).

In John’s Gospel, the Son’s earthly mission is a recurring theme. For example, in John 5:36, Jesus says, “The works that the Father has given me to accomplish, the very works that I am doing, bear witness about me that the Father has sent me” (ESV). And in John 6:38, Jesus says, “I have come down from heaven, not to do my own will but the will of him who sent me” (ESV).

Jesus did not simply pay lip service to the Father, as the Pharisees did (Matthew 15:8). To the contrary, Jesus demonstrated obedience to the Father’s will through the works that He performed: turning water into wine (John 2:1–12), healing the paralyzed man (John 5:1–17), feeding five thousand people with two fish and five barley loaves (John 6:1–15), walking on water (John 6:16–21), healing the man born blind (John 9), raising Lazarus to life (John 11), and offering Himself as a ransom for sinners (John 19:30). True sustenance, according to the Lord, comes not from physical food but from obedience to God’s will.

Jesus’ every encounter, miracle, and teaching is grounded in the Son’s submission to the Father’s will. Jesus’ meeting with the Samaritan woman (John 4:1–45), then, is a microcosm of His overarching ministry. The disciples, who frequently misunderstood Jesus, failed to grasp the essential truth that obedience to the Father’s will is greater than the satisfaction food provides. When Jesus told them, “I have food to eat that you know nothing about,” they were puzzled and “said to each other, ‘Could someone have brought him food?’” (verses 32–33). Their thinking was physical instead of spiritual.

John 4:34 anticipates the theme of the Son’s mission as revealed in John 5:19–47. There, the authority of the Son (verses 19–29) and the witnesses who bear testimony to His messianic identity (verses 30–47) converge, forming a comprehensive portrait of the Son’s earthly mission. “Whatever the Father does the Son also does” (John 5:14).

The true sustenance and satisfaction of life is found in obedience to the Father’s will. This theme, woven throughout John’s Gospel, finds its ultimate expression in the redemptive work of the cross. At the end of His earthly ministry, on the night of His arrest, Jesus prays, “I glorified you on earth, having accomplished the work that you gave me to do” (John 17:4, ESV).

Jesus perfectly modeled what obedience should look like for believers. In the words of the apostle Paul, the Son of God “humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. Therefore, God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father” (Philippians 2:8–11, ESV). May we follow in Jesus’ footsteps, knowing that He will satisfy our spiritual hunger (see Matthew 5:6).