Why Did Jesus Walk Away From a Crown?
This episode is part of Bible Study 101, a short series teaching a method Rachael calls the color method. The idea is simple. You take one passage, and instead of reading it once and moving on, you go through it several times marking different things in different colors. Each color answers a different question, and by the end you can see things on the page that you'd never catch reading at normal speed.
This week the passage is John 6:1-15, the feeding of the five thousand. Today's color is red, and red marks the action words. Once the whole passage is covered in red, you can go back and ask a question that changes how the story reads: who is actually doing all of this? The answer is that Jesus starts every single thing, and everyone else responds. Which makes the very last verse land differently, because it's the one moment the crowd tries to move first.
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Chapters
0:00 Where we are in the series
0:30 Red is the color people overthink
0:59 What counts as an action word
1:56 The picture test
2:50 Reading John 6:1-15
4:46 Marking the passage verse by verse
5:16 When a word needs more than one color
7:45 The words that could go either way
8:14 Repetition is not an accident
8:42 Verse 11, and why John slows down
10:20 The last action in the passage
10:45 What all that red tells you about the kind of writing you're in
12:09 Why verse 11 is the center of gravity
12:38 Now go back and look at who is acting
13:31 Jesus initiates. Everyone else responds.
14:32 Verse 15 and the crown
16:11 Prayer
17:22 Homework
What is the color method?
It's a way of studying the Bible that Rachael developed years ago while teaching sixth and seventh graders who had never been shown how to read Scripture for themselves. She later published it in her first book, She Hears.
You take a short passage, ten to fifteen verses, and you mark it with colored pencils or highlighters. Each color stands for one question. Green marks the who, meaning every name, title, and pronoun. Blue marks the supernatural, the things only God could have done. Red marks the action words. There are three more colors coming later in the week.
The point isn't the colors. The point is that you can't put a color on a word without making a decision about that word, and you can't make a decision without slowing down enough to actually read. Most of us skim familiar passages without realizing it. This makes skimming impossible.
What passage are we in?
John 6:1-15, the feeding of the five thousand. Jesus is followed by a large crowd, He asks Philip where they'll buy bread, Andrew finds a boy with five loaves and two fish, and Jesus feeds thousands of people with it. The passage ends with the crowd trying to make Him king.
We're spending the whole week in these fifteen verses, adding one color a day.
What does red mark in the color method?
Red marks the action words. The verbs.
But red is the color people overthink, so use the picture test. Could you watch this happen? Would it show up on a video? Running, walking, sitting, healing, handing something to someone. If you can see it happening, mark it.
Technically words like is, was, and had are verbs too. You can't picture "was," so leave it alone. You can picture "sat down," so mark it. That's the whole rule.
What if a word needs more than one color?
Mark it twice. In verse 2, the word "healing" is red because it's an action, and it's also blue because healing is something only God can do. That overlap happens constantly, and it's telling you something. God is active, so the things only He can do tend to also be things He is doing.
Some words could go either way. In verse 9, "how far will they go" is about food stretching rather than a person moving. Rachael would probably mark it. You might not. There's no wrong answer.
What does repetition in Scripture mean?
It's not an accident.
Look at verse 10. Jesus said, have the people sit down, and then they sat down. Same action twice, once as the instruction and once as it happens. The writer had a reason for including both.
You often can't see repetition until you've marked it. Once it's in color on the page, it jumps out.
Why does John slow down in verse 11?
Because he's pointing at something.
Jesus then took the loaves, gave thanks, and distributed to those who were seated as much as they wanted.
Took. Gave thanks. Distributed. Three deliberate movements in a row, each one named separately. John could have written "Jesus fed them" and moved on. He didn't.
When a writer slows down like that, pay attention. Verse 11 is also the verse with the most blue in it, which makes it the center of gravity for the whole passage.
How can you tell what kind of writing a Bible passage is?
Look at how much red is on the page.
This passage is covered in it. People cross water, climb a hill, sit down, eat, gather, leave. Things happen in sequence. That's a historical narrative, a story about events that took place.
Now compare that to a passage in Romans, where Paul is building an argument. You would find almost no red at all, because nobody is doing anything. They're thinking. Poetry looks different again, and so does law.
So red is one of the fastest ways to identify what kind of text you're holding, and you don't need a study Bible or a class to do it.
Who is actually doing the actions in John 6?
Go back through and track it.
Verse 1, Jesus crossed. Verse 3, Jesus went up and sat down. Verse 5, Jesus looked up, saw, said. Verse 6, Jesus asked. Verse 10, Jesus said. Verse 11, Jesus took, gave thanks, distributed. Verse 12, Jesus said. Verse 15, Jesus withdrew.
Now everyone else. The crowd followed, saw, sat down, ate. Philip answered. Andrew spoke up. The disciples gathered and filled.
Jesus initiates. Everyone else responds. He moves and people follow. He speaks and people sit. He gives and people eat. He asks a question and Philip answers. Nobody in this entire passage does anything that Jesus didn't start first.
That's not something you catch reading at speed. You see it when the actions are marked and you go back and ask who is doing them.
Why did Jesus walk away when they wanted to make Him king?
Look at verse 15, the last action in the passage. Jesus, knowing that they intended to come and make him king by force, withdrew again to a mountain by himself.
Hold that against everything else you just marked. Fifteen verses of Jesus initiating. He crosses, He climbs, He asks, He takes, He gives. And the one moment the crowd tries to initiate something, He leaves.
They had just been fed. They had just called Him the Prophet who is to come into the world, and they weren't wrong about who He is. But what they wanted to do next was put a crown on Him by force, and He wanted no part of that. They were looking for a king who would deal with Rome and keep the bread coming.
That last action tells you something about the distance between what people wanted from Jesus and what He actually came to do. John ends the passage right there on purpose.
FAQ
Do I need to have heard the earlier episodes? No. This one explains what it needs to. If you want the full method from the beginning, start at the episode on writing in your Bible.
What do I need to follow along? A Bible or a printed copy of John 6:1-15 that you're comfortable marking, and something red. You can print the passage free at Bible Gateway.
Do I need special supplies? No. Colored pencils from a kid's school supply drawer work fine. Wax Bible highlighters are nice because they don't bleed through, but a pencil gets you most of the way there.
Am I going to have to remember grammar rules? No. Use the picture test. If you can watch it happen, it's red.
What if I'm marking different words than Rachael? That's fine. Some words genuinely go either way, and God shows different things to different people from the same text.
Can I pause the episode? Yes, and you should. There's no race and nothing is being graded.
What's the homework? Pray and ask God to show you something you haven't seen before. Then go back through the actions you marked and count how many of them Jesus does.
What's next? Purple, and there's a phrase in this passage we've been walking past all week that changes how the whole thing reads.
Where can I go deeper on the color method? She Hears, available on Amazon, teaches it over six weeks through the stories of six women in the Gospels. All the Scripture is printed in the workbook, so you don't have to write in your Bible if you'd rather not.
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