Gospel of John - Lesson 6C

• Let’s dive right back into the conversation Jesus is having with the crowd He fed miraculously with the fishes and loaves

  • It’s the day after that miracle took place, and the crowd has followed Jesus around the Sea of Galilee hoping to find Him in Capernaum

    • And when they did, He confronts them over their reasons for following Him so fervently

    • Jesus told them they weren’t following Him because they had come to know Him as Messiah and Lord

    • They weren’t devoted worshippers as their actions might suggest

  • No, Jesus declared, they followed Him merely because they were hungry and they hoped Jesus would satisfied their desires for bread

    • So then He told them they should redirect their goal from satisfying earthly concerns to seeking for eternal satisfaction

    • Specifically, Jesus said they should seek the Bread that comes down from heaven, referring to Himself

    • By calling Himself “bread,” Jesus revealed that the manna given to Israel in the desert was a picture of Christ

    • Therefore, Jesus had fulfilled this picture when He descended from Heaven to bring eternal life to Israel

  • So Jesus told the crowd to stop working to preserve their physical lives; instead, work to save their souls

    • They asked what kind of work they must do, and Jesus replied they must believe in Him Whom the Father has sent

    • Instead, they demanded a sign and suggested Jesus repeat the one Moses performed in the desert

      • In other words, they want Jesus to produce manna

    • And in response, Jesus repeated they should be seeking the Bread from Heaven, meaning Himself

• It’s at this point that we rejoin the conversation, and it’s in this final part of chapter 6 that Jesus begins to teach the crowd and HIs disciples on the topic for tonight

  • The origins of saving faith

John 6:35  Jesus said to them, “I am the bread of life; he who comes to Me will not hunger, and he who believes in Me will never thirst.
John 6:36 “But I said to you that you have seen Me, and yet do not believe.

• We briefly covered v.35 last time, but I repeated it tonight as part of the context we’re studying

  • Jesus continues to affirm to this unbelieving crowd that He is the bread that gives life

    • This crowd may be hungering for earthly bread to nourish their bodies

    • But Jesus explains to the crowd that they suffer from another hunger

      • One that is far more dangerous and urgent than their need for food

    • They need the bread of life to feed a spiritual hunger

    • And like He told the Samaritan woman, they need to quench a spiritual thirst

  • The solution in both cases is for the crowd to come to Jesus

    • Remember in chapters 1 and 2 we heard the disciples repeatedly telling each new disciples that they must “come and see” for themselves

    • Here again, Jesus says eternal life begins with coming to Him

    • And one comes to Him, Jesus reveals Himself as Savior

    • By that recognition, the person is born again and follows Him

  • Nevertheless, these people have approached Jesus, and yet they have not believed

    • Jesus continues to tell them that they must “come” to Him

    • Haven’t they already come to Him at least in the sense that they followed Him across the Sea of Galilee?

  • Notice in v.36 Jesus says they have come and they have seen Him, and yet they do not believe

    • Why haven’t they acknowledged Him as Messiah? What’s holding them back?

    • Jesus has certainly been as clear with them as with anyone else to this point

    • And He’s done miracles in their presence  that are equal to anything else recorded in the Gospels

    • So why have they refused to see Him for Who He is?

  • At the end of last week’s lesson, I asked how it could be that the Lord Himself could present the Gospel message and yet His call to believe not be effective in converting?

    • If the Lord ‘s own presentation of the Gospel fails to persuade a man to believe, how can anyone convert another person?

    • If our own Lord strikes out, then what hope is there for us?

    • Is the outcome merely random?

  • Does the outcome rest on the capriciousness of a person’s perception or mood or feeling at a given moment?

    • Does eternal salvation rest on chance?

    • What explains the inability of these people to make sense of all they have seen and all Jesus has said?

• Jesus gives us the answer to why this crowd was unable to accept Jesus as Lord

John 6:37 “All that the Father gives Me will come to Me, and the one who comes to Me I will certainly not cast out.
John 6:38 “For I have come down from heaven, not to do My own will, but the will of Him who sent Me.
John 6:39 “This is the will of Him who sent Me, that of all that He has given Me I lose nothing, but raise it up on the last day.
John 6:40 “For this is the will of My Father, that everyone who beholds the Son and believes in Him will have eternal life, and I Myself will raise him up on the last day.”

• Over the next series of verses, Jesus teaches the origins of salvation and why it is that some people accept Him as Lord

  • The explanation Jesus provides is absolutely foundational to our understanding of the Gospel and of grace itself

    • In fact, there are few individual verses in the New Testament more important on the topic of our salvation than v.37 by itself

    • So let’s note carefully what Jesus says in this verse

  • First, Jesus says the Father “gives” people to Christ

    • The meaning of this statement is very specific and not at all ambiguous

    • Jesus says some people are given to Christ by the Father

    • The Father selects (or the Bible would say elects) certain individuals to come to Christ, to accept Him as Messiah

  • The verb “gives” clearly indicates that this process is entirely within the Father‘s control

    • The Father is the One Who gives

    • He isn’t reacting to something or responding to something in Creation

    • He is the One initiating the process, determining that certain ones will come to His Son

• Then notice the second verb in this opening phrase

  • Jesus said all the Father gives will come to Jesus

    • Jesus doesn’t say those the Father gives may come, as if they are presented a choice as to whether to come or not

    • Rather, Jesus says all will come, meaning the outcome is determined by the Father

  • Furthermore, Jesus uses the word “all”

    • Not some, but all of those the Father gives will come to Jesus

    • There will be no exceptions

    • No one can be given to Christ but then fail to come to Christ

    • All those the Father gives to Christ will come to know and believe in Christ

  • Based just on the first half of this verse, we learn two fundamental aspects of the doctrine of salvation, soteriology

    • First, our salvation rests on a decision of the Father to bring us to Christ

      • It does not depend on our will

      • This is often called the doctrine of election

    • Secondly, the Father’s election always leads to a person to accept Christ

      • We cannot resist salvation once the Father has determined to give us to Christ

      • This is called the doctrine of irresistible grace

  • So when the Father has determines that a person will receive His mercy in Christ, then that person will inevitably respond affirmatively to that grace

    • They do so because God’s grace changes them from within, as we learned in chapter 3

      • They are born again so that they can then respond to the call of the Gospel

      • Salvation is a work of God in the heart

    • And there is no power in the Universe strong enough to stop the work of God

      • Not even our own will can resist what God purposes to do

      • For as Paul says in Romans 9, who can resist God’s will?

      • Answer: no one

• And the Bible also teaches that the Father’s choice to bring us grace was made long before we were born

  • Paul teaches that the Father’s decision was made before time began

Eph. 1:3 Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ,
Eph. 1:4 just as He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world, that we would be holy and blameless before Him. In love
Eph. 1:5 He predestined us to adoption as sons through Jesus Christ to Himself, according to the kind intention of His will,
Eph. 1:6 to the praise of the glory of His grace, which He freely bestowed on us in the Beloved.

• Notice again that Paul credits the Father with choosing us to be holy and blameless in Christ

  • And Paul says the Father made that choice before the foundations of the world

  • The word in Greek for foundation can also be translated “conceived”

    • So before the world itself was conceived, you and I were chosen by the Father to enter into His grace

    • We were predestined to be adopted as children by God

  • This is the definition of grace according to the Bible

    • Grace is not defined as the offer of the Gospel, as some have erroneously defined it

    • The Bible describes grace as God’s willingness to save us even while we were His enemies

      • That is, even before we knew well enough to say yes to the Gospel

• That’s why Paul says this in later in Ephesians

Eph. 2:8 For by grace you have been saved through faith; and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God;
Eph. 2:9 not as a result of works, so that no one may boast.

• Notice Paul’s particular choice of words

  • We are saved by grace, through faith

  • We aren’t saved by faith, because faith is the second step in the process

  • We are saved by grace

    • And all that follows is the result of God’s grace

  • So by grace, God delivered salvation to us

    • So what part does faith play in this process?

    • Paul says God granted us salvation through (or by way of) our faith

    • Said another way, God’s grace was delivered (or manifested to us) through a faith we received

  • Paul says very specifically that the faith we have we received

    • It is a gift from God, Paul says

    • God gave us the gift of faith so that we would respond to the Gospel

    • This is how Jesus can say with confidence that all who are given to Him will come to know Him

    • Because even our coming to Christ is something God Himself produces in us by His grace

• Obviously, the idea that our salvation originates in the Father’s choosing of us can be a challenging and disorienting revelation

  • Almost without exception, every Christian who has come understand the doctrine of election from scripture has been surprised to see how they were saved

    • But let your surprise cause you to reject this teaching out of hand

      • Because our pride naturally recoils at the suggestion that our decision to follow Christ was not truly ours to make

    • The teaching of John 6:37 clearly shows that salvation does not originate in our own choices or decisions

    • And of course, this truth is backed up by the entire text of scripture from Genesis to Revelation

    • Few doctrines of scripture are more clearly evident throughout the pages of scripture than the principle of God’s sovereignty

    • But no where is it more clearly seen nor more succinctly expressed than in the first ten words of v.37

• So in the first half of this verse, Jesus taught the doctrines of election and irresistible grace

  • Then in the second half of this verse, He teaches another core doctrine of salvation

    • Jesus says that the one who comes to Jesus, He will certainly not cast out

    • Casting out in this context means to opposite of coming to Jesus

      • As in to be cast into the judgment fires of Hell

    • Once a person has come to Jesus, once they have believed in Him, then that person will never again be without faith in Christ

    • As some have come to say, “once saved, always saved”

  • Notice Jesus doesn’t say those who remain in Him will not be cast out

    • There is no requirement placed on the individual to maintain their salvation by anything they might do

    • And this makes sense, because our entry into salvation in the first place wasn’t a result of anything we did

      • So it makes sense that our continuing in salvation isn’t dependent on our own strength

    • Once the Father wills us to come to faith, Jesus says this person will never be cast out

    • Eternal judgment has been eliminated forever...

Rom. 8:31 What then shall we say to these things? If God is for us, who is against us?
Rom. 8:32 He who did not spare His own Son, but delivered Him over for us all, how will He not also with Him freely give us all things?
Rom. 8:33 Who will bring a charge against God’s elect? God is the one who justifies;
Rom. 8:34 who is the one who condemns? Christ Jesus is He who died, yes, rather who was raised, who is at the right hand of God, who also intercedes for us.

• The phrase theologians use to summarize this point of soteriology is eternal security

  • Every believer is eternally secure in the salvation they have received from the Father

  • There is no potential for a believer to ever “lose” what the Father has given them freely in Christ

• If you’re challenged by the three pillars of soteriology in v.37, consider what Jesus says next

  • Notice in vs.38-39 Jesus’ repeating emphasis on the Father’s will in each verse

    • In v.38, The Father’s will dictated Christ’s role in the plan of salvation

    • Jesus says the Father determined that His Son would come down because the Father “sent” Jesus

    • So that even Christ Himself was subject to the Father’s will

Is. 53:4  Surely our griefs He Himself bore,
And our sorrows He carried;
Yet we ourselves esteemed Him stricken,
Smitten of God, and afflicted.
Is. 53:5   But He was pierced through for our transgressions,
He was crushed for our iniquities;
The chastening for our well-being fell upon Him,
And by His scourging we are healed.
Is. 53:6  All of us like sheep have gone astray,
Each of us has turned to his own way;
But the LORD has caused the iniquity of us all
To fall on Him.

• If Christ Himself was obedient to the Father’s will, even to death on a cross, then we know that no man can resist the Father’s will!

  • Secondly, Christ says in v.39 that the Father’s will ensures all those He gives to Christ forever remaining in Christ

    • Christ loses nothing

    • Christ promises that all the Father has given Him will be raised on the last day, meaning resurrected into a new body to live eternally

  • Jesus summarizes all His statements with a powerful conclusion in v.40

    • He says everyone who beholds the Son and believes in Him will have eternal life and be resurrected

    • And He prefaces this conclusion once again with the phrase “this is the will of my Father”

    • We could read v.40 in this way: “It is by the will of my Father that someone beholds the Son and believes, and these I will raise up”

• As challenging as this teaching may sound, it is just Jesus’ opening salvo in this discourse

  • And if this teaching is a challenge for us, how do you think this unbelieving crowd responded to Jesus’ words?

    • Predictably, not well...

John 6:41 Therefore the Jews were grumbling about Him, because He said, “I am the bread that came down out of heaven.”
John 6:42 They were saying, “Is not this Jesus, the son of Joseph, whose father and mother we know? How does He now say, ‘I have come down out of heaven’?”

• In response to Jesus’ statements about Himself, the crowd began grumbling or murmuring amongst themselves

  • To grumble or murmur means to utter disapproving comments indirectly

  • Specifically, they didn’t approve of the idea that someone so ordinary as Jesus of Nazareth should compare Himself to God

    • Their concern betrays their hearts, for it proves to us that they didn’t know Jesus as Lord

    • They are grumbling over His identity

  • Jesus’ claim to have authority whether they enter Heaven is too much for them to accept

  • The Gospel always comes back to Jesus’ identity

    • If you cannot accept that Jesus is Who He claims to be, God in the form of Man with the power to determine our eternal destiny, then nothing else He says will matter

    • It’s our view of the identity of Christ that determines whether we are truly saved or not

    • Those who recognize Jesus as Lord are saved; those who don’t, are not

• At this point, Jesus has explained how someone comes to believe in Him

  • But if this is so, then do we conclude about this crowd that that has seen and heard so much and yet hasn’t believed in Him?

    • We get that answer in the next part of Jesus’ teaching

John 6:43 Jesus answered and said to them, “Do not grumble among yourselves.
John 6:44 “No one can come to Me unless the Father who sent Me draws him; and I will raise him up on the last day.
John 6:45 “It is written in the prophets, ‘AND THEY SHALL ALL BE TAUGHT OF GOD.’ Everyone who has heard and learned from the Father, comes to Me.
John 6:46 “Not that anyone has seen the Father, except the One who is from God; He has seen the Father.
John 6:47 “Truly, truly, I say to you, he who believes has eternal life.
John 6:48 “I am the bread of life.
John 6:49 “Your fathers ate the manna in the wilderness, and they died.
John 6:50 “This is the bread which comes down out of heaven, so that one may eat of it and not die.
John 6:51 “I am the living bread that came down out of heaven; if anyone eats of this bread, he will live forever; and the bread also which I will give for the life of the world is My flesh.”

• Jesus rebukes the crowd for disapproving of His words

  • And in response to their rejection of Him, Jesus teaches a corollary truth to His earlier statements

    • Just as everyone the Father gives will come to Jesus, so also those who are not given by the Father will never come to Jesus

    • As Jesus says, no one can come to belief in Jesus unless the Father draws him

    • The way Jesus spoke these words in the Greek language is more dramatic and consequently, more revealing

    • The word for draw in Greek is helko, which literally means to drag

    • Consider some other uses of that same Greek word in the New Testament:

John 21:6 And He said to them, “Cast the net on the right-hand side of the boat and you will find a catch.” So they cast, and then they were not able to haul it in because of the great number of fish.

Acts 21:30 Then all the city was provoked, and the people rushed together, and taking hold of Paul they dragged him out of the temple, and immediately the doors were shut.

• Personally, I’m not sure why the NASB translators choose to soften Jesus’ language in John 6,

  • Jesus literally said no one can come to Jesus unless the Father “drags” us to Christ

    • The word “drag” accurately reflects the fact that we are opposed to God by our own nature

    • They we must be dragged into the Light of Christ

  • As John said in chapter 1  one comes to Jesus of his own will

    • Only by the Father’s will do we come to belief in Jesus

  • And now we learn why this process must depend on the Father’s will

    • Because we must be “dragged” to Jesus

    • Our sinful nature is set against God and the Gospel

    • So unless the Father elects us and drags us to faith, we will never go there on our own accord

  • Paul and John also teach this truth in various places of the New Testament

Rom. 8:6 For the mind set on the flesh is death, but the mind set on the Spirit is life and peace,
Rom. 8:7 because the mind set on the flesh is hostile toward God; for it does not subject itself to the law of God, for it is not even able to do so,
Rom. 8:8 and those who are in the flesh cannot please God.

1Cor. 12:3 Therefore I make known to you that no one speaking by the Spirit of God says, “Jesus is accursed”; and no one can say, “Jesus is Lord,” except by the Holy Spirit.

1Cor. 2:14  But a natural man does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him; and he cannot understand them, because they are spiritually appraised.

1John 4:1 Beloved, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God, because many false prophets have gone out into the world.
1John 4:2 By this you know the Spirit of God: every spirit that confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God;
1John 4:3 and every spirit that does not confess Jesus is not from God;

• Jesus is revealing to this crowd that their murmuring over His identity was proof that the Father had rejected them already

  • Notice in v.45 Jesus says even the OT prophets said that God’s people would know Him because they would be taught by Him

    • Jesus quotes Isaiah 54:13 to emphasize that this is not a new concept

    • God has always worked this way in bringing men to Himself in faith

    • Everyone who has heard and learned from the Father will come to Jesus

    • Once again, it’s a 100% success rate for God as evangelist

  • So as I asked last time, how could Jesus present the Gospel and not have success in converting this crowd?

    • The answer is that the Father had not taught these people about Christ

    • He was not in the process of dragging them into the Light

    • And so naturally they preferred the darkness

  • If the Father had taught them Who Christ was (as Isaiah says He does), then 100% of them would have received Christ

    • But because the Father had not taught them, exactly 0% received Jesus

    • It’s a black and white process: those who receive God’s grace are saved

    • Those who do not, are not

• As a side note, when when the word of God says that God’s children are taught by God, it doesn’t mean we are taught directly by the Father

  • For no one has seen the Father at any time Jesus says

    • Jesus clarified that the only One Who has seen the Father is the One Who is from God

    • That One, of course, is Jesus

    • Jesus has seen the Father

    • So Jesus is our teacher by means of His word and His Spirit living in us

  • Therefore, men are taught by God through His Spirit and once we have been taught, we will believe

    • As Jesus emphasizes again, he who believes has eternal life

    • And with that, Jesus now return to emphasizing His identity as the key to salvation

• Once again, Jesus uses bread as His analogy, saying He is the bread of life

  • The bread that the Lord gave Israel in the wilderness was only good enough to sustain their earthly bodies

    • Even though they ate the manna, they still died

    • But Jesus is a new, improved manna, the bread of life

  • As we said last time, manna pictures Jesus’s ministry

    • Manna came at night, as Jesus came into darkness

    • Manna came from Heaven, as Jesus descended from Heaven and became flesh

    • The manna was sweet, and Psalm 34:8 says

Psa. 34:8  O taste and see that the LORD is good;
How blessed is the man who takes refuge in Him!

• Just as Israel in the desert took the manna into their bodies, so we have to take Him into our spirit through faith

  • Just as the manna was completely consumed up by the people each day, so will Jesus be completely consumed as He saves us spiritually

    • Jesus gave up everything on the cross to save us

  • But there is an important difference between manna and Jesus

    • The Jews in the desert had to eat manna every day in order for it to sustain their physical bodies

    • Yet a man need only take in Jesus once to be saved for eternity

• Specifically, Jesus says that it will be His flesh that is consumed like bread for the life of the world

  • We understand that Jesus was referring to His sacrificial death on the cross for the sins of the world

    • In that sense, His flesh was like bread, given to the world to consume so that we might live

    • But can you imagine what the unbelieving crowd was thinking at this point?

  • Well, we don’t have to imagine because we see the response in the next section

John 6:52 Then the Jews began to argue with one another, saying, “How can this man give us His flesh to eat?”
John 6:53 So Jesus said to them, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink His blood, you have no life in yourselves.
John 6:54 “He who eats My flesh and drinks My blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day.
John 6:55 “For My flesh is true food, and My blood is true drink.
John 6:56 “He who eats My flesh and drinks My blood abides in Me, and I in him.
John 6:57 “As the living Father sent Me, and I live because of the Father, so he who eats Me, he also will live because of Me.
John 6:58 “This is the bread which came down out of heaven; not as the fathers ate and died; he who eats this bread will live forever.”

• The people have the predictable response to Jesus’ words: they are disgusted at the prospect of cannibalism, which is what they assumed Jesus was suggesting

  • So naturally, they ask one another how can this man give us His flesh to eat?

    • Notice John says they were arguing with one another and not with Jesus

    • The word in Greek means an intense argument erupted

    • Some people were trying to make sense of Jesus’ words, while others had heard enough and were ready to leave it seems

  • But Jesus doesn’t intend to make this any easier for these people

    • He repeats Himself saying one must eat His flesh and drink His blood to have life

    • Jesus adds the reference to blood in response to the crowd’s claim that Jesus was advocating cannibalism

    • Obviously, that’s not what Jesus is talking about, and it’s their inability to see Jesus with spiritual eyes that has led them to this conclusion

    • Therefore, Jesus decides to pick up on the idea of cannibalism and pushing it even further to mock their ignorance

• When He refers to eating His body and drinking His blood, He’s saying two things at once

  • First, He’s using a figure of speech called a synecdoche, which means using a part of something to stand for the whole of it

    • Jesus’ flesh and blood are parts of His body, but by the context we can see Jesus meant the whole of Himself

    • He’s telling the crowd they must take in not only Jesus flesh but also His blood, meaning all of Him

    • You must accept everything about Me, everything I claim to be and do, or else you do not have eternal life

  • Secondly, Jesus is also alluding to the Last Supper and the command for believers to participate in the Communion meal

    • Obviously, that sacrament had not yet been established at this point

    • Nevertheless, Jesus’ words are an allusion to that coming ritual

    • Our salvation depends on consuming Christ, which means to believe in Him

    • And our belief is pictured by our participation in the Communion meal, where we consume symbols of His body and blood

• Then in vs.56-57, Jesus returns to the principles of eternal security and the Father’s sovereignty in the salvation process

  • Jesus says those who consume Christ will abide in Him and He will abide in them

    • The word abide in Greek is meno, and it has a range of meanings

    • It can mean to continue or to endure or to remain

    • So, the person who takes in Christ (i.e., believes in Christ) will remain in Him

    • Our salvation is eternally secure

  • And our belief will ultimately lead to resurrection from the dead

    • We will live again as Jesus lives again

    • Jesus says as He lives because of the Father, so will we who take Him in live because of the Father

    • Jesus’ resurrection was accomplished by the power of God to raise Him from the dead

    • And that same power will act to raise us because of our faith in Jesus

  • Jesus sums up His point on bread by repeating that He is a kind of bread that is far superior to the bread their father’s knew

    • He is a type of bread that won’t lead them to death

    • But instead to eternal life

  • His point is stop worrying about how to keep your body alive

    • Start concerning yourself with how to keep your soul alive

    • As Jesus says elsewhere

Luke 12:4  “I say to you, My friends, do not be afraid of those who kill the body and after that have no more that they can do.
Luke 12:5 “But I will warn you whom to fear: fear the One who, after He has killed, has authority to cast into hell; yes, I tell you, fear Him!

• So Jesus has addressed the question of the crowd’s unbelief by explaining that they haven’t been led by the Father into belief

  • But what of the disciples in all this?

    • They were also having a hard time accepting Jesus for Who He was, at least in the sense that they didn’t recognize His power

    • So where did Jesus’ words to the crowd leave them?

John 6:59 These things He said in the synagogue as He taught in Capernaum.
John 6:60  Therefore many of His disciples, when they heard this said, “This is a difficult statement; who can listen to it?”
John 6:61 But Jesus, conscious that His disciples grumbled at this, said to them, “Does this cause you to stumble?
John 6:62 “What then if you see the Son of Man ascending to where He was before?
John 6:63 “It is the Spirit who gives life; the flesh profits nothing; the words that I have spoken to you are spirit and are life.
John 6:64 “But there are some of you who do not believe.” For Jesus knew from the beginning who they were who did not believe, and who it was that would betray Him.
John 6:65 And He was saying, “For this reason I have said to you, that no one can come to Me unless it has been granted him from the Father.”

• We now learn that the crowd caught up to Jesus while He was teaching in a synagogue service, presumably on a Sabbath day

  • Naturally, His disciples were in the room also, so they heard all the same things the crowd heard, including Jesus calling for people to consume His flesh and blood

    • So in v.60 many of His disciples began to join in with the crowd’s grumbling

    • They say this is a difficult statement, but the word in Greek is a euphemism for offensive

    • They were offended by Jesus’ words

  • Their reaction tells us that the word disciple in this context isn’t synonymous with the word “believer”

    • A disciple was simply someone who chose to follow Jesus at least for a time

    • But not all who followed Jesus were believing in Him

    • And it merely took some hard statement like this one to weed them out

  • The same pattern exists today in the church as it always has

    • False disciples are everywhere

    • And we come to know them when we see them rejecting clear teachings of Jesus from the Bible

    • When they reject Jesus as God

    • When they reject Jesus’ teaching on sin, Hell, judgment, etc.

    • When they reject the notion of salvation by faith alone and not by works...

    • They are showing themselves to be false disciples because they are rejecting the very truths that define our need for Christ

• In v.61, Jesus asks these grumbling disciples if His words are leading them to stumble?

  • His question is rhetorical and serves to set up His next statements

    • Jesus adds in v.62 that if they are unable to accept this teaching, how will they accept Jesus resurrected from the grave and ascending into Heaven?

    • The answer of course is they can’t

    • If they cannot accept Jesus’ word in one thing, then they cannot accept Him at all

    • Once again, it’s an all or none proposition

    • You are either in or not, according to the Father’s grace

  • Then Jesus graciously offers a clarification of what He meant in His earlier statements

    • He says in v.63 that the One Who gives men eternal life is the Spirit

    • He’s referring to the regeneration process that the Spirit does in the heart

    • Being born again is literally a process done to us by the Spirit inside us

    • Because of that Spirit’s work of regeneration, we come to believe in the Gospel and are saved

    • In that way we receive eternal life

• And then Jesus calls out those in the room for there unbelief

  • In v.64 He says that some of these people have not believed

    • But notice, John adds that Jesus knew from the beginning who these unbelievers were

    • What does John mean when he says “from the beginning?”

    • From the beginning of what? The meeting? The day? The events of the prior day?

  • The answer is from the beginning of the foundations of the Earth as Paul taught

    • Jesus knew which people were given to Him by the Father and therefore they would come to Him

    • And He knew which ones were not given to Him and would not come to believe

    • And in fact, Jesus knew He had a disciple following Him who would one day betray Him

• In other words, Jesus wasn’t waiting for each person to make up their minds concerning His identity so that He could know who would be His followers

  • Jesus knew who the Father had selected for Him before He ever left Heaven and came to earth

    • So that as Jesus walked around the Galilee and ministered to the crowds, He could see His sheep even before they knew Him

    • Just as He did with Nathaniel

    • Just as He did with the woman at the well

  • Likewise, Jesus knew who wasn’t given to Him by the Father and therefore would never come to believe in Him

    • This crowd and even some of His disciples were people such as these

    • Men and women who could not accept the things Jesus said because they were not among those elected by the Father

  • Notice in v.65 Jesus repeats His central tenet on the origins of our faith

    • No person can come to believe in Jesus unless it has been granted by the Father

    • So that if someone rejects Christ, it is evidence in itself that the person is not given to Christ

    • Or at the very least, the day of their salvation has not yet arrived

• We see the truth of Jesus’ words in the effect it had on the crowd

John 6:66  As a result of this many of His disciples withdrew and were not walking with Him anymore.
John 6:67 So Jesus said to the twelve, “You do not want to go away also, do you?”
John 6:68 Simon Peter answered Him, “Lord, to whom shall we go? You have words of eternal life.
John 6:69 “We have believed and have come to know that You are the Holy One of God.”
John 6:70 Jesus answered them, “Did I Myself not choose you, the twelve, and yet one of you is a devil?”
John 6:71 Now He meant Judas the son of Simon Iscariot, for he, one of the twelve, was going to betray Him.

• As a result of His teaching, many of these so-called disciples withdrew and stopped following Jesus

  • These people were exposed for who they truly were: unbelievers

    • As Peter teaches in 2Peter, a dog returns to its vomit

    • They acted differently than their true nature for a time, but eventually the act grew old

    • It became too hard to follow Jesus given all that He was saying

  • So then it came down to the twelve disciples, those Jesus handpicked

    • How will these men react to Jesus’ teaching?

    • Jesus offers them the chance to leave as well, asking you don’t want to leave too, do you?

    • The point of His question is to expose their hearts as believing just as He had exposed the rest of the disciples’ hearts as unbelieving

• In response to Jesus’ challenge, every-ready Peter steps up and declares, “Where else would we go, since you have the words of eternal life?

  • This is a great opening, and if Peter had left it there, he might have done pretty well in Jesus’ eyes

    • Instead, Peter pushes the conversation once step further saying we have believed and come to know you are the Messiah

    • Now that statement might not seem too bad either, except that it’s completely wrong

  • Peter asserts that these twelve were sticking around because they had come to know Jesus as Messiah

    • The construction of Peter’s statement in Greek suggests that the disciples themselves worked out Jesus’ identity on their own

    • As if to suggest they evaluated His claims

    • Considered His teaching and miracles

    • And then concluded that Jesus must have been the Messiah

  • But nothing could have been further from the truth

    • These disciples didn’t come to faith in Jesus any differently than any other person

    • As Jesus says in v.70, “Wasn’t I the One Who chose you?

• Jesus is pointing out that each of the was brought to Jesus and subsequently selected as apostles entirely because of Jesus’ own choice

  • And as He taught earlier, their faith in Him was ultimately the result of the Father’s will

    • These men didn’t “come to know” Jesus as Lord

    • They were made to know Jesus as Lord

    • They aren’t staying because they have resolved to stick around

    • They are staying because Jesus will not lose any the Father has given to Him

  • And just to prove the point, Jesus says that one among them is a devil?

    • John explains in v.71 that Jesus was referring to Judas who was later to betray Him

    • Of course, the rest of the disciples didn’t have a clue what Jesus meant at the time

    • Though obviously it made an impression, since John remembered the statement

• God’s sovereignty is so certain and His plan so intricately worked out in advance that even Jesus’ betrayer was selected by God in advance

  • The Father knew that no true disciple of the Lord would ever desire to betray their Master

    • So if the plan of the Father is for Christ to be killed by Romans on a cross, then He must position at least one unbeliever inside Christ’s inner circle

    • So that by this one, Christ may be handed over to His enemies at the right time

    • And in that way, Christ’s death in our place would be assured

  • So when Peter declares that they chose Jesus, the Lord rebukes Peter saying, “No, I chose you.”

    • And so it it for each of us who believe in Jesus

    • While you might be tempted to think you chose Christ

    • The word of God declares that He chose you

Scripture quotations taken from the (NASB®) New American Standard Bible®, Copyright © 1995, 2020 by The Lockman Foundation. Used by permission. All rights reserved. www.lockman.org