But there are some of you that believe not. For Jesus knew from the beginning who they were that believed not, and who should betray him. And he said, Therefore said I unto you, that no man can come unto me except it were given unto him of my Father.
From that time many of the disciples went back and walked no more with him. Then said Jesus unto the twelve, Will ye also go away ? Then Simon Peter answered him, Lord to whom shall we go ? thou hast the words of eternal life. And we believe and are sure that thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God.
Jesus had been explaining the spiritual meaning of the miracle of the 5 loaves and two fish feeding the 5,000. He had said things which challenged the predisposition and perspective of the Jewish religion. So many who had become disciples now renounced him.
Jesus is unperturbed.
One wonders how many churches today would take the same attitude. Not only to speak the hard truth but to trust God all the while. To lose members and stay faithful to the Saviour, knowing that all is in God’s hands. That their success and numbers are God’s business, not theirs; that to remain faithful to the teaching and preaching of Jesus Christ is their only concern. The rest is God’s.
Talk of the blood and body of Christ had caused offence. They had missed the spiritual point; and that was because they did not seek to understand. Jesus explained it all in what we know as verse 63 of chapter 6 of John’s Gospel.
The words that I speak unto you are spirit and life… It has nothing to do with the things of physical analogy but with the spiritual realities involved: It is the spirit that quickeneth; the flesh profiteth nothing.
Then Jesus goes on to repeat what certainly causes offence today, which is:
no man can come unto me except it were given unto him of my Father.
This is called the doctrine of Election or Predestination. It means God chooses us, not the other way round.
No altar call or crusade appeal can make any person a Christian.
It is an act of God.
God alone can give faith; God alone can open the heart of a person to his truth; God alone can come as the Holy Spirit; God alone could cause Peter to utter those amazing words
we believe and are sure that thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God !!!
No man can do this; no man can create this – yes human beings can falsify it, or convince themselves of it – but only God can truly do it.
Human beings are automatically under God’s condemnation. That is their just reward for their disobedience to their holy and righteous Creator. By God’s perfect standard all are condemned to eternal banishment from his presence to utter loneliness in outer darkness with no relief….
But by God’s grace – his unmerited favour – by the substitutionary sacrifice of his Son Jesus Christ, certain are saved from condemnation in order to live with God forever. They are the Elect, the Chosen.
For them, Christ’s sacrifice on the cross, the shedding of his blood to appease the anger of the holy and righteous Father against their disobedience – for them there is forgiveness and eternal life.
For them there is Salvation.
The rest remain where they already are. Under God’s wrath, his undeniable and irreversible anger and rejection. And in that situation, human beings are unbelievably self centred, however good they may appear, however effective their attempts to hide it or to justify it.
Jesus was not afraid to see his following reduced to just 12, knowing too that one of them would betray him – all again within the unfathomable but far greater purpose of God.
Jesus understood he could only be sincerely followed by those whom God had given him – not by those who had of themselves chosen him – and chosen him because he was the idol of the hour, the charismatic personality with whom they were enthralled; the film or tv star of his day.
Jesus was having none of it. As he says elsewhere in the Gospel of John,
The Son can do nothing of himself, but what he seeth the Father do…
Too often churches and ministers, and those who seek for ministers or elders, do what man does, or what they want to do, and do not perceive and act on what they see the Father doing….
And what does Jesus say elsewhere in John’s gospel ?
Except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God.
And what does Jesus answer when asked how that can happen ?
He says this.
Except a man be born of water and the Spirit he cannot enter into the kingdom of God.
And Jesus goes on there in the account in chapter 3 of John’s Evangel to state the stark contrast between those who believe in Jesus and those who don’t; and he says that men love the spiritual darkness rather than the spiritual light; that they refuse to go any where near the light. But that those who love the light will come to God to show that what they do is wrought in God. ie done by God’s will and ability, not their own.
It all comes from God, is done by God and ends in God.
Man does not figure, except as an object of grace and as a channel of God’s grace.
And that is the offence today.
Man gets no glory, and no choice.
In the materialistic and humanistic world in which we live, man is become his own god, and acts as though he is god.
But he is not, and never can be.
And all the while he loves darkness and hates God, he will reveal himself for what he is.
A sinner in need of God’s grace.
He that believeth and is baptised, shall be saved.
Christianity 