{4} Jesus answered them and said, Verily, verily, I say unto you, Ye seek me, not because ye saw the miracles, but because ye did eat of the loaves, and were filled.

(4) They that seek the kingdom of heaven lack nothing: nevertheless, the gospel is not the food of the stomach but rather of the mind.

People's New Testament

6:26 Ye seek me, not because ye saw the miracles. The Savior reveals to them the true motives which induced them to seek him. Henry says:

Not because he taught them, but because he fed them; not for love, but for loaves. Thus do all who seek in religion secular advantages and follow Christ for the sake of secular preferments.''

People are more clamorous for earthly bread, than anxious concerning food for their souls.

Wesley's Notes

6:26 Our Lord does not satisfy their curiosity, but corrects the wrong motive they had in seeking him: because ye did eat - Merely for temporal advantage. Hitherto Christ had been gathering hearers: he now begins to try their sincerity, by a figurative discourse concerning his passion, and the fruit of it, to be received by faith.

Jamieson-Fausset-Brown Bible Commentary

26. Ye seek me, &c.-Jesus does not put them through their difficulty, says nothing of His treading on the waves of the sea, nor even notices their question, but takes advantage of the favorable moment for pointing out to them how forward, flippant, and superficial were their views, and how low their desires. "Ye seek Me not because ye saw the miracles"-literally, "the signs," that is, supernatural tokens of a higher presence, and a divine commission, "but because ye did eat of the loaves and were filled." From this He proceeds at once to that other Bread, just as, with the woman of Samaria, to that other Water (Joh 4:9-15). We should have supposed all that follows to have been delivered by the wayside, or wherever they happened first to meet. But from Joh 6:59 we gather that they had probably met about the door of the synagogue-"for that was the day in which they assembled in their synagogues" [Lightfoot]-and that on being asked, at the close of the service, if He had any word of exhortation to the people, He had taken the two breads, the perishing and the living bread, for the subject of His profound and extraordinary discourse.

Matthew Henry's Concise Commentary

6:22-27 Instead of answering the inquiry how he came there, Jesus blamed their asking. The utmost earnestness should be employed in seeking salvation, in the use of appointed means; yet it is to be sought only as the gift of the Son of man. Him the Father has sealed, proved to be God. He declared the Son of man to be the Son of God with power.