New Thoughts (02/15/08-02/19/08)
There are a couple of technical questions I have asked in regards to this passage which I may be able to find answers to, given the tools at my disposal. The first of these has to do with the latter half of verse 45, where my question is who is credited with the hearing. In other words, these men who hear, do they hear because of something in themselves, or because God opened their ears? The evidence from a grammatical stance is, perhaps, beyond me to sort out. I will note, however that both ‘have heard’ and ‘have learned’ are in the same voice, tense and mood. By tense, it is clearly the man who does the hearing and learning which, I suppose, rather goes without saying. God does not need to hear and learn of Himself. He already knows. The active voice also indicates that the subject (man) is doing the hearing and learning.
For that, I think we must turn to that little word para [3844]. The KJV translates this as ‘of’. I.e. – the man hears of God and learns of God. That doesn’t do much for me. A better translation seems to be ‘from’. The basic sense of para is the matter of being near to or beside the thing indicated. In this case, I think we can afford to take it in its causal sense, since it seems clear that we are not discussing hearing and learning somewhere near God, or beside Him as He does the same. No, there is that sense of ‘on account of’, which seems to fit the overall flow of Jesus’ thoughts in this discussion.
What had the prophet written? The message was, “They shall all be taught of God.” Is the point that God shall be the subject matter they learn of? I think not. Being taught about God may give one a basis for something, but not salvation. No, it is when God breaks through to be heard that we finally begin to hear what He’s been saying all along. It’s of an accord with the message that He loved us while we were still enemies, and from His love for us, He was moved to take the actions necessary to reconcile us to Himself. God breaks through. He is the God of breakthrough! We like to make that about our circumstances and about our fiscal prosperity, but it’s really about our eternal situation. Like the bread that Jesus labors to make understood as more than just food for our stomach, the breakthrough of God into our circumstance is about more than making a profit in our businesses.
So, yes, I think it is reasonable to understand Jesus as saying that those who have heard because the Father made Himself heard in their ears, and learned because He has imparted understanding to them give this evidence of God’s intervention: They come to Jesus. That is, as it were, the seal of true learning, of truly hearing God. Now, I want us to keep in mind that all that Jesus is saying here is said in the setting of the local synagogue. That said, there were doubtless men present who would claim to be rabbis, teachers of God’s own wisdom. There would doubtless be those present who laid great store in rabbinical tradition, as being the teachings of those who had heard from and learned from God. Apart from this opinion, there was no cause to raise those traditions to an equal footing with Torah.
Such men as these should doubtless have heard a challenge to their position in what Jesus has just said. Indeed, it comes close to being an insult in their ears. Let me suggest that there is this undercurrent in Jesus’ words, “You who claim to be learned in the things of God, to be the expounders of true righteousness, here is the only valid evidence of one having learned God’s Truth: They come to Me!” Anything less marks you as an imposter, a wolf in sheep’s clothing, a hired hand usurping the shepherd’s authority. Do you hear the challenge in those words? Why, simple folk, fishermen, were coming to Him. Sinful folk like that tax-collector over there (yes, we know him, too) are coming to Him. Yet, the rabbis, the scribes with all their expertise in the trivia of the Law, the Pharisees with all their careful practices, these aren’t coming. Jesus has just explained why not. For all their supposed expertise and care, what these men have learned wasn’t from God. What these men speak as God’s wisdom is nothing they have heard from Him. It is their own vain imaginations. Were they prophets, the remedy would be clear from Torah, but they are not. They are merely misguided and blind leaders, and those who follow them in turning from the One God sent on this earthly mission are as blind as they.
There is one other portion of this where I think it critical that we understand the order of cause and effect, and that is in verse 47. “He who believes has eternal life.” Well, then, has he eternal life because he believes, or has he belief because he has eternal life? At risk of falling into rank sophistry, this seems worth at least a moment’s consideration, for how one understands it would seem to reflect something of how one views the work of salvation in general.
Again, let me turn to some parsing of the Greek to see if there are any clues to be had there. Well, one thing of note is that when Jesus says he has life, that ‘has’ is in the indicative mood, i.e. if it is not already realized as the present experience, it is as certain as if it were. Believing does not share this mood, although it, too, is in the present tense. OK, that’s not much to go on, and I sense that perhaps the question is more philosophical than anything. So, let me resolve it thus: The two are so inextricably linked that one cannot be had without the other. Apart from belief, there is no hope from eternal life. Conversely, the one in possession of eternal life cannot be a man of unbelief.
So, why am I laboring this point so painfully? Quite simply, if we come to grips with what Jesus is saying throughout this whole passage and begin to accept God’s word as to how this whole salvation thing works in us, there is such power in it! I noticed in the previous part of this message Jesus gives that several of the major tenets of Calvinism were to be heard in His words. Here, in this passage, I find Him declaring the basic doctrine of God’s foreknowledge and His predestination of those whom He shall save, and what I hear Him declaring is that it wasn’t the man’s choices that God foreknew, because quite frankly it wasn’t the man’s choice.
Now, many hear that concept and think it somehow belittles man, that it leaves him as little more than an automaton forced to come into right relationship with God (or not) whether it would be his choice or not. What I wish to stress, however, is the absolute assurance contained in rightly understanding this God-ordained system. Who believes has life, who has life believes. The one serves as our assurance of the other in moments when our sense of the other is weak. If we can settle in ourselves the assurance that we are indeed possessed of eternal life according to the promise of God, then when our faith seems weak (which it often does) that knowledge of assured eternal life can serve to carry us through. It is, as it were, the proof that belief is ours, even when it seems so weak to us.
When that man cried out to Jesus, “Lord, I believe. Help my unbelief” (Mk 9:24), isn’t that about the most honest declaration of faith you’ve ever heard. Isn’t that the reality of our own confession every step of the way? However much we believe God, there is always that nagging strain of unbelief in us, whispering against what we know to be True.
Well, then, if assured eternal life is our life support in moments of unbelief, how do we establish that assurance? Doesn’t the very presence of unbelief in us become evidence that we don’t really have that life? I suspect every man of faith has felt that way at some point. I would suggest that even the ‘giants’ like Abraham, Noah, Moses, David – all of these must have felt this way at certain points in their life, and all with seemingly good reason. Every one of these men displayed unbelief in certain of their actions and choices. And yet, God steadfastly declares His choice of them as men after His own heart.
Let me suggest that the unbelief is but an eruption of the flesh. Let me suggest that belief, on the other hand is purely of the spirit, and the flesh cannot do a thing to change it. What happens, when we allow that momentary unbelief to disrupt our assurance, is that our enemy seeks to convince us that this is our real situation. I tell you absolutely that he is the father of lies and he is lying to you with this whole line of attack! How can I say that? I can say that because the True Word of God has said that this isn’t how things work. Love does not consist in the fact that we profess our love for Him. Love consists in the fact that He loved us anyway. Love consists in the fact that while we were busily working away at our rebellion against this God, He broke through our defenses, He shattered our shackles and liberated us to come to Him not as rebels awaiting punishment, but as members of His own household – members in good standing, counted as eternally loyal.
One more foundation for this whole system which God has laid out can be heard in what Jesus declares in verse 44. “No one can come to Me unless the Father draws Him, impels Him, drags Him even, though it be kicking and screaming.” Now, we have difficulty with the idea of the Father dragging us to His Son. This is not the loving Father we’ve heard about, nor does it really jibe with the wrathful God we try not to think about. What we need take from this idea of dragging is not the violence of it and not the motivations it might suggest to our mind, but the power behind it. It is irresistible. One being dragged off, try as he might, cannot effectively resist what is happening to him. He can go peaceably or he can go fighting, but he’s going. So, let us say rather that the Father impels us to His Son. But, He does so in such fashion that whether we were inclined to seek His Son prior to His intervention or not, we will seek Him now. Once more, I hear that wonderful passage: It is God who wills in you both to will and to work for His good pleasure (Php 2:13).
Now, look at the other end of verse 44. No one can. It is not a matter of desire. It’s not that the Father does something that stirs our interest so that we finally see Jesus as desirable. That may well be part of His work on an individual, but it is not the crucial point. See, what Jesus says here is “you are powerless to do this.” That ‘can’ shares with the dunamis we know so well as power, from which we take our word dynamite. So, let this be settled in your soul: You were thoroughly and utterly incapable of truly coming to the Christ Who Is Jesus until the Father so worked within you that it became just as thoroughly and utterly impossible that you wouldn’t.
Where is that beloved freedom of the will, then? I have to hold with Martin Luther on this, particularly in light of what Jesus is saying here. Prior to this work of the Father in impelling you to His Son, you had absolutely no freedom. That’s the point. You were utterly powerless to choose anything but sin and rebellion against His righteous rule. The devil had you so blinded that you couldn’t even see another option to choose. So you ‘freely’ chose the only option you saw available to you. Comes the Father, and He removes those blinders, makes it clear to you that yes, there really is another option. One can argue that in that moment, your will became truly free to choose, because it was only in that moment that it found another choice. One can equally argue that, given the nature of the choice God has revealed and given the nature of the soul He created in you, your choice, given the knowledge of choice, was so inevitable that one might well say you were impelled to make it with irresistible force.
Yet, it is freely chosen. The truth is we can only choose freely when we truly know the choices. The truth is that once we know the choices, there is really only one choice to make; and that choice isn’t the one we were forced to take beforehand. At the same time, we must know that our ignorance in that time of rebellion has not left us with an excuse. The evidence was really there all around us the whole time. But, as Paul explains, we suppressed the obvious truth of which our senses informed us, and exchanged it for the lie, willingly submitting ourselves to the chains of sin and even encouraging others to come join us.
So, praise God! He impels you to His Son’s side. Call it a shotgun wedding if you like, but this is what He says for Himself on the matter: “Unless I do, you can’t. Unless I will, you won’t.” If it feels a little more comfortable, try on the Amplified Version of this verse. “No one is able to come to Me unless the Father Who sent Me attracts and draws him and gives him the desire to come to Me.” It feels a little softer when it’s put that way, but the underlying reality of God’s irresistible grace in saving us remains. Why did you come? God gave you the desire. Why did He do that? Did you ask? I doubt it. But, His love, that agape love which is more concerned with what you really need than what you think you want, is so great that He did it anyway. Why? Because you need it.
I know, we generally hold to the fact that God does as He does to magnify His own glory. That is true, so far as it goes. But He is not such a narcissistic being that He can only ever think of Himself! The fact of the matter is that He expends great energy concerning Himself with everybody and everything other than Himself. He is so deeply involved with the operation of this Creation He has created, and His concern for it is not simply that of an artist for his art. These are living beings, beings created to be in fellowship with Himself. They are fashioned in His image that He might enjoy their companionship. At the same time, being a God full of mercy and compassion, He has a deep and abiding interest in their well-being. It’s not selfish concern for the quality of companionship He can derive from us. It’s that sacrificial love of His which, were such a thing possible, impels Him to act on our behalf.
View it however you will, the point is simply that the work that has brought you to salvation has been all God’s doing. He provided the sacrifice, and He provided the freedom and willingness within you that allowed you to avail yourself of that sacrifice. This rather belies the concept that some have regarding predestination and foreknowledge.
I grant that these are difficult concepts, and in many ways offensive to our innate sense of self worth. We have such a need to feel that we were not only involved, but in control of the process of salvation. We have to feel that it’s about us, or it just doesn’t seem right to us. But once again, as I hear what Jesus says, I can no longer believe such a thing. If I was powerless apart from God acting and, if once He had acted, I was so forcefully impelled by His action as to make resistance meaningless, than how was it my doing? It was His doing from the start. I shall maintain that – because it is He who works in me to will and to work, because it is He who began the work who is faithful to complete it – it shall remain His doing until the end. This does not leave me somehow free and clear to live however I like in the meantime. If that is my mindset, then I have clearly fooled myself as to what He has done. For, if He has done as I believe, then I am impelled into a different lifestyle, the lifestyle of faith in Him and in His Son, the lifestyle of one indwelt by the Holy Spirit and bearing the fruitful evidence thereof. I am not a perfected being, any more than a fruited tree has reached its ultimate state. But, I am progressing in the right direction.
So, considering this, what shall we say that God foreknew? My decision? No! If it was His will that impelled me to His Son, if it was His work that made me willing, then the Truth is I decided nothing. What God foreknew was what He had determined to do, and as it was His determination and His doing, it is impossible that any opposition could stop it from being as He planned it. That’s why it’s pre-destiny! It was determined by the Only One whose determination means anything. Before Jacob and Esau were born, before they had even had any least opportunity to do anything good or bad, God chose. Why? Because it was His purpose that the matter of salvation and election be by His call, not by our efforts. Why? Because, as He has ever declared of Himself, “I will have mercy on whom I choose, and compassion upon whom I choose.” In other words, it’s not yours to demand! It’s His to choose (Ro 9:11-16). How I love the conclusion of that thought, as Paul expresses it! “So, then, it does not depend on the man who wills or the man who runs, but on God who has mercy.”
Let me spell that out for you even more plainly. It doesn’t matter if you were willing. It doesn’t matter if you were trying your hardest. It’s all about God. If He has chosen to manifest His mercy and compassion on you, it’s done! He has begun it and He shall finish it. In His perspective, dwelling outside of time, He has already finished it.
Now, lest His listeners think that message was just a mental hiccup of some sort, Jesus repeats that declaration for the people. He explains that the Spirit gives life, that the flesh is not the point, and its cleanliness in the end signifies nothing. He declares the Truth that He has spoken words of spirit and life to them, and then He observes the obvious truth. “But, there are some of you who do not believe.” They have seen, they have heard, they have had every possible proof of the validity of both Message and Messenger, but they reject it. They don’t believe it. Then, comes the closer, “For this reason I have already told you once that no man can come to Me unless the Father has granted him the privilege” (Jn 6:63-65).
You don’t believe because it is not permitted you. It is not possible for you because the Father has not worked in you. If it were just a matter of mental faculties, you all are smart enough to process the data that’s been presented to you. You are all of you reasonable enough to draw the proper conclusions from what you have witnessed. If you were to think about it, if you were allowed to think about it, you would know Who I AM and what it means for you. But, you are not allowed. You have not been granted the necessary privilege and authority to understand, and therefore you cannot accept Me, nor can you obtain the benefit of what I shall do for those whom the Father has granted this to.
Neither is this some novelty which Jesus has dreamed up to support His claims. Jeremiah, speaking God’s word to his nation, had much the same to say in his own way. Relaying the LORD’s words, he writes, “I have loved you with an everlasting love. Therefore I draw you to Me with lovingkindness” (Jer 31:3). Yes, the means of impelling you in the direction of His love is lovingkindness, tenderness, compassion. He is not pushing you along like some military prison guard from an old war movie. He draws you with His love, but it is every bit as irresistible as if He were pushing you from behind with a bayonet. And, hear the assurance in His words: That love which has drawn you? It’s everlasting. It doesn’t fade. There is no threat of divorce coming when He sees somebody younger and fresher. His love does not change. He does not, as men do, change His mind and decide to reject the one He has loved.
So, what means might we use to know in ourselves that He has truly chosen us, and that we are not deluding ourselves? Well, armed with the understanding of what Jesus has declared here in verse 44, I think there is one very simple proof or seal that we can ascertain for ourselves. It comes in verse 45. “Everyone who has heard and learned from the Father comes to Me.” Have you come to Him? Have you taken Jesus to be the sole possibility of your salvation, your only hope of heaven? Well, then, you have reason to be assured that you have learned from the Father, don’t you? You have evidence that you have heard what He was saying. Furthermore, if you have come to Jesus in faith then it can only be that the Father drew you to Him, impelled you to Him. There is no other way.
Of course, there must be other evidence of this being the case as time passes, but here you have the foundation. Yes, as James tells us, the works of faith must certainly flow from a life of faith. If they don’t, then there never really was a ‘life’ of faith, for that faith is dead. But, I must stress that the works don’t come as a required prerequisite, nor are they to be done as if to prove something. No. All James is saying here is that where true faith is, works are inevitable. They cannot help but flow from the life of one who is truly in the kingdom. So, yes, they are evidence, but they are, as it were, anecdotal evidence. They are a confirmation for those observing you, that you are genuine in your profession of faith, and are no wolf disguised by attempts at pious actions.
Let me shift directions now. As I left my time of study yesterday, one thing that rang out to me was that the scribes and the Pharisees, whom we know to have become staunch enemies of the Christ, were hardly unaware of what Jesus was teaching. This is not, I think, something we generally consider in reading the Gospels. We hear the messages Jesus was preaching to the crowds, and we tend to think of those crowds as being ‘supporters only’. But, I would have to think that at the very least there would be a rabbi or two in those crowds, and I would tend to believe that at least some of these were reporting what they heard to the Temple authorities.
Those authorities had, after all, sent out scouts to find out what John was all about as he was ministering, and they had not enjoyed a very good reception in his camp. He was, perhaps, a bit too honest for their tastes. It would be unimaginable that they would be this concerned about the forerunner and fail to check out the master Himself. Perhaps they had learned to be a little less conspicuous so that they could better mingle with the crowds, but I rather doubt it. Pride would prevent them, and their confidence in their own superiority would likely keep them from seeing the need. It is far more likely that Jesus was quite aware of their presence in the crowds and chose to seemingly ignore that presence. I say, ‘seemingly’, because I think it is very clear that He addresses them quite directly, if somewhat obliquely.
This message in verse 45, for instance, I think could be taken as a direct hit on those who represented official Judaism. And I would note that John records this particular discourse as having taken place right in the synagogue. At the very least, the head of that synagogue was doubtless present for the occasion. At the very least, there must surely have been one rabbi in the room to hear this. And, what do they hear, “Those who have heard from the Father and learned from it, come to Me.” There is a barely veiled attack in that message! It is an attack that could as easily be leveled at much of the Church today, be it Catholic or Protestant.
We have a plague of religious leaders, men who by their profession claim to represent the knowledge of God to we lesser lights. We have seminaries churning out ministers who don’t believe the Christ Who Is revealed in the Scriptures, who don’t really believe the God Who Is revealed in the Scriptures. They come to the pulpits seeking to replace Truth with a sufficient array of platitudes to satisfy their congregants. Pharisees all! This is precisely what the scribes were doing, isn’t it? We will present you with this tome of a thousand and one observances to obey if you would be holy, but we will neglect the ten which G-d (for we would never pronounce His name lest He be offended) laid down for us. Indeed, you will have to ignore the fact that some of our rituals are rather in conflict with the original. But, hey! Trust us! We’re the professionals here. Our ancestors heard this from the Big Man Himself, and passed it on, so we’re sure it’s right. As for this upstart, this Jesus, well, you don’t see us swarming after Him do you? Shouldn’t that tell you something?
Move that to the modern pulpit. As for all these ‘miracles’ and such that we read about, you don’t see us taking them as real events do you? Shouldn’t that tell you something? Well, yes, indeed it should! What it should tell us is spelled out for us right here. “Everyone who has heard and learned from the Father comes to Me.” Being as you confess that you have not come to Him, the evidence would seem to be that either you never heard from the Father or if you did, you didn’t learn anything from it.
Surely, at least a few amongst the ranks of rabbinical officialdom had understood the implications of that message! This was an attack on their own authority, and I really don’t think they missed the point. News of this would be whispered all they way back to Jerusalem. This was exactly the sort of thing that really riled up the Sanhedrin and their ilk. It wasn’t His ministry that offended them, it was the threat to their own power. Why was this a problem? Because they knew as well as Jesus that their power and authority had little to nothing to do with what God had ordained for His people. Where was it written, after all, that the high priest should be a political appointee, and that, of a Gentile politician? Where was there ever a provision made for there being more than one high priest extent at any time? These things were not permitted in Torah, and they knew it full well. Yet, they practiced it, and they practiced any number of other things to try and cover their own shame. But, all of it was destined to fail, for none of it was founded upon the one Way that God had provided, and when that very Way was set before them, they would rather destroy Him than suffer His kindness.
Before I leave this particular verse, I want to explore that matter of learning just a bit. See, it’s not enough to hear God. King Saul heard God, if indirectly. But, he failed to learn from what he heard. So, he proceeded into his own foolish way and destroyed not only himself, but his family. Consider Solomon, for that matter. Hailed as the wisest of man even to this day, he had received wisdom from God on high. Wisdom: applied knowledge. Yes, he could apply that knowledge to everybody’s situation, judge with near perfection in every case presented to him. Except for himself. The record of his life shows that, however well he spoke, he failed to really take his wisdom to heart for his own case. He allowed himself to be slowly dragged into the idolatry that came with wives he should never have taken in the first place. And the beginning of the slow death of the kingdom of Israel must be lain at his feet, for it was his failure to learn from what he heard that began the slide.
It is one thing to hear. It is one thing to be able to speak words of wisdom (or what passes for wisdom) to those around us. It is one thing to be able to keep our language all pious and holy, so long as anybody’s in earshot. Yes, we are masters of Christianese. We have our secret code words, and our clever little phrases that frankly, we don’t even understand. But, the key is in learning from what we have heard. It must be learned, experienced. We must ‘cause ourselves to know the moral responsibility’ that has just been taught. I like where Zhodiates takes this. Jesus, he says, is the “sum and substance of the Gospel.” What does he mean? Quite simply, to know Him is to not just understand His teaching and example, but to abide in them.
This comes down to that ‘moral relevance’ part of studying the Word. If it isn’t applied to my life and my situation here, now, today, then I have really been listening and learning at all. Until I take responsibility for what these times of study are giving me to understand, until I start making each of these lessons a matter of practice in my life, I cannot claim to have heard and learned. By and large, it seems to be human nature to hear and ignore. We learned how to do it as kids. We heard our parents, and ignored the bits we didn’t like. We got even better at it going through school. Now, by gum, we are practically speed-listeners. We are so proficient at skipping over everything that seems either irrelevant or uncomfortable that we barely hear anything at all. We are so happy here in our blissful ignorance. It’s such an ingrained habit that I don’t think we even notice anymore. We think we’re doing pretty good here with all this study time, all these moments of illumination and the great ‘wow!’ that comes from it all. But, ten minutes later, what’s happened to the lesson?
I must confess that I feel the sting of this, and I feel it often. I must also declare, however, that I know progress is made all the same. It may not be as swift as I would have it, or as complete. Apparently, though, it is progressing at the pace which God has set for me. Oh! How the soul longs to see an end to the failures of the flesh! I hunger for it so, that I could almost fear my own slide into heresy in that hunger. It is so easy to lay the failure on the flesh and leave the soul out of it. It is so easy, so somehow comforting, to blame all on the flesh and condemn it as evil. But, the Truth is that God made this body in its entirety, and therefore, it must be recognized as good. The flesh as well as the soul, although this flesh, as Jesus says, profits us nothing (Jn 6:63). [Whoa! Always think it’s Paul who said that.] Surely, I must understand that message as saying something far different than a condemnation of physical life.
I would suspect (although I’ll consider it more fully when I come to that passage) that it is the life focused on the physical needs of the flesh to the exclusion (or detriment) of the more critical spiritual needs that are thereby spoken against. That is certainly in keeping with the whole flow of what Jesus has been saying here. You came for your stomach, but there’s something greater that you are missing. And, you are missing it because it’s not yours to find. You cannot come unless the Father impels you to Me, and if you were listening to Him, you’d be looking to Me now, and not for something as prosaic as lunch. Look at that whole verse! “The Spirit gives life. The flesh profits you nothing. I have spoken to you words of spirit and life, but there are those among you who do not believe.” Jesus knew full well from the start who did not believe and who would betray Him. That is why He made the point, “No one can come to Me, unless it is granted him from the Father” (Jn 6:63-65).
How can anybody read that and still think their free will choice brought them into this salvation? Oh, I know. I have held that view in the past, but it becomes impossible to sustain in the face of hearing the testimony of Scripture. How is the will free if it can’t possibly choose to come to Him? How is it my choice when God chose to grant me the privilege, and having chosen, impelled me to the Christ? Yes, He impels me with love. Absolutely! But, He impels me nonetheless. Oh, there was a choice. Yes, there was a choice all along, but these eyes never saw it until the Father, our Father, commanded that the blinders be removed from them to see that there was another option. With open eyes, what other choice could I have made? Yes, I chose freely, but given the choice, it was impossible that I should choose otherwise. The love of God impelled me.
God, why is it so hard to accept Your sovereignty? Why is it that even men of profound faith look upon the Truth You have declared of Yourself and refuse to accept it? How can it be, Lord, that a man after your own heart should look upon Your sovereign rule over all the ways of man and refuse to see that the same Authority upon which their salvation rests requires that You retain the right of Just Wrath upon those whom You have determined shall not know Your mercy?
Honestly, as much as I used to see things so much differently, it just eludes me now, that anybody could seriously look at the testimony of Paul, or the teaching of Jesus – which are, after all, of one accord – and still hold that God’s foreknowledge was only a matter of His knowing what we would choose. I don’t see how one can hear what Jesus says here and still think that it is trumped by, “God desires that all be saved.” Isn’t it patently obvious that if this was God’s will and purpose, then there would be no sinner who ever needed to fear the day of Judgment? Truly, to hold that view, one would be required to suppose that all of those who gathered together in Jerusalem to seek the destruction of Jesus were saved in spite of themselves, because that’s God’s will and purpose. For, we must surely agree that God’s Word does not return to Him without accomplishing all His purpose (Isa 55:11). His will is not subject to failure.
Look, when Jesus declares that only those to whom the Father has granted the privilege have the power to come to Him, the implication is clear that there are those who haven’t been granted that privilege. Paul goes to great lengths to make it clear to us that this matter of grace or graceless is not about what we have done to earn one or the other. It’s not about God’s capacity to predict our choices. It’s about God knowing His own perfect will, and the simple fact that His will shall be done. Really! If the devil is incapable of thwarting the perfect will of God, do you really think your own choices are going to do it? God has turned much greater evils than yours to His own good purpose, and all against their own will. That fact – that God turned their evil purpose to His own good ends – did nothing to lesson their guilt for having done as they did. Not at all! Their condemnation is just. Truly, were God to condemn every last man and woman on the face of the earth, their condemnation would be just from first to last. For, all have sinned. No man has ever been found righteous, except Jesus. No, not one.
God alone, Zhodiates points out, has life independently from all else. He is the sole uncreated being. He is the sole independent being. He requires no other to continue His existence. He requires no other to authorize His actions. Truly, He alone is all-knowing and all-powerful. He knows all because He created all, and He created all according to that very will which cannot be opposed with any real hope of success.
Think about David. “Where can I go from Thy Spirit? Were can I flee from Thy presence? Were I to fly to heaven, there You are. Were I to dig to the depths of Sheol and make my bed there, still, there You are. There is no foreign land so remote that it is not in Your domain. There is no darkness so dark that You could not see me through it as in brightest day. You made me! In my mother’s womb, You knit me together as a being too wonderful for my own understanding. Even there, in that moment of conception, I was not hidden from You. You saw me before I even had form, and had already determined the number of my days” (Ps 139:7-16).
Contemplate that last thought. Before I even had form, God, You had already decided my end. This has nothing to do with knowing how David would choose in this situation and that. It has to do with God’s determination. This is clearly no reaction to David’s works, for what work could a being yet unformed have done! It is God’s will, pure and simple. It is God’s will which held that David was a man after His own heart even in David’s darkest moments, for that darkness did not hide David from the sight of his loving Father.
God alone is independent. Man has craved his share of that status from the moment the devil began whispering in Eve’s ears. Oh, yes! You can be like God. You can know like God and decide like God. You can be as independent as He is, set your own course, make your own choices with nobody to tell you otherwise. There lies the city of man, the kingdom of man! We have been called to seek a better city, and to serve a greater kingdom. We have been called into service to the Most High God, and I tell you that from start to finish, it has been His choice and His doing that we have persevered in that service.
Oh! The majesty of God! That He should choose the likes of me to call His own! No, none could convince me that I was seeking Him out, that I chose Him, for I would know it as nonsense by my own experience. Oh! The joyful assurance of having experienced that impelling love of God firsthand, of discovering that the same Jesus I had refused and rejected for years was suddenly irresistible to me. God, how can I ever hope to express the full wonder of that? How can I ever hope to give back to you anything that could even scratch the worth of all You have given me just in that moment? How can it be, Lord, that the beauty of Your predestination, that clearest of ways by which You make a way where there was no way, is seen as not only incorrect, but downright evil? God, it is beyond me! That men of good faith and good conscience could disagree in considering the depths of Your wisdom, this I can understand. But, that men of true faith should lay accusations of demonic influence against the wonders of Your Truth, how can it be?
Holy One, my heart is so troubled within me that this should be so. I lay it upon Your will as to what should be said and what should be done. I pray, my God, that should it be my place to speak this most marvelous Truth, that You would restrain this tongue to speak it in love, as You command. I pray, even more, my God, that you would heal this rift of misunderstanding, that You would open the eyes and ears of understanding in whichever and whomever it is needed that there might be accord of belief in Your house.
Let me move on, today, to the powerful message which closes out this part of the discourse. It begins there in verse 48. I AM the bread of life, I AM the source! Coming into verse 50, it seems Jesus wants to make certain that they aren’t missing the magnitude of that claim. “This is the bread of heaven.” I can almost picture Him slapping His chest in emphasis as He says this. This! This man right here. Me, here in front of you. That’s what we’re discussing. It’s still not enough. “I AM the living bread that came down out of heaven. The bread is My flesh. I AM manna incarnate.” The claims here are so incredible that one must either write Him off as mad or else accept His claims with all they imply and fall down in worship at His feet.
Bread, why this focus on bread? Quite simply, bread is the staple food of man. It may not be as prominent in our diet now as it once was, but it still makes up a large portion of our diet. For purposes of understanding what Jesus is driving at through all of this, that matter of being a staple food is critical. It is that food which it would be unimaginable to go without. If the bread is gone, then the famine has advanced to the point of utmost danger to life. If there is no bread, there is no life. That is the connection being made here. Were it somewhere in the far east, it might be rice that served as the image. The idea of a meal without rice would be all but unthinkable. For us, the idea of a meal without starch in some form is all but unthinkable. Sure, we can do away with the meat – some of us. Vegetables? Who would miss them? But, the noodles, the breads? Pancakes and cereal? Why, it would be intolerable!
The point, though, is far stronger than how intolerable life would be without Jesus. It’s more like impossible. I don’t think we have any image here in the west that could really drive this point home, because we have been so far removed from anything that smacked of famine that it’s become an exotic, foreign affliction to us. For the people of Israel in that day, it was nothing so obscure. It was the day to day reality of an agrarian culture in a difficult land. In our Midwestern regions, folks still have some connection to this. They still know how fragile their crops are, and what life is like when the crops fail. However indirect the line has become between the crop in the field and the bread on the table, the failure of one is surely the absence of the other. And, where there is no bread on the table – the cheapest, most abundant foodstuff – there is nothing left to sustain life.
There is your image. And, Jesus comes declaring, “I AM that most basic of foods, when it comes to real life, and I AM here in abundance.” But, what use is an abundance of bread of nobody will eat it? What use, if it is allowed to sit in the cabinet and become moldy? No, bread that is not eaten becomes a threat to life. Think about that manna that Jesus has been referring back to, the type of which He is the fulfillment. The manna was only good for the day on which it was presented. Try to hold it for another day, and it would become putrid and inedible.
Jesus, the bread, the Life, had come to Israel for a specific day, and that day was drawing quickly towards nightfall. The Bread of heaven was there to be eaten, but when that day closed, it would be of no further avail to those who refused to eat. When the offer of life comes, don’t try to hold it for another day. The offer has been given, and the time to accept is right then, right there. Take. Eat. This is My life offered up that you might have life – real life. He didn’t offer up His body to give us the hollow pleasures of today. How could we think such a thing?
Do you really, truly believe that He took upon Himself the unimaginable agony of the cross, of even such a momentary separation from the love of the Father, which He had known through all eternity uninterrupted, just so you could avoid some momentary illness here on earth? Do you really think that He suffered thirty some years of humiliation and degradation before the sight of His own subjects just so you could realize a better profit in your employments here? Can you really be that petty in your appreciation of what it means that God sent a Savior to redeem you from this slave pit?
No! He’s talking about a life of eternal proportions. He’s talking about things that transcend the grave. He’s talking about life with significance, life with all its moral implications, and with all its eternal bearing. We are so incapable of thinking in those terms that we find ourselves being just as stupid as these folks who stood there listening to Him. He is laboring constantly to turn their eyes toward God in heaven, to get them to consider something more than the wants and needs of the flesh, but they just can’t do it. They listen to this whole discourse which Jesus speaks and their minds have never gotten off the matter of lunch. When they come to this matter of His flesh being the bread, they can’t think in any other terms, and because of this, they are utterly disgusted at the thought. He wants us to practice cannibalism? Anathema! And, they walked away as blind as they had come.
Listen again to what Jesus has been saying, though! The bread of God comes down out of heaven and gives life to the world (Jn 6:33). OK. There is clearly a matter of sustaining power here. It is just as Paul writes, “In Him we live and move and have our being” (Ac 17:28). With that simple message, the quest of the philosophers of Greece had been answered. Not that they would accept it, but there it was. Here is the bread that sustains life. More than that, here is the very source of life. Were it not for God, we would not have being. We could not exist except He spoke our existence.
Oh, sure, we can list all sorts of biological phenomena which led up to our existence. Depending upon your particular bent, you might opt to chase that right back down to the ape or the fish or the single celled amoeba. Or, you may be content to settle for your human progenitors. It really doesn’t matter. However you choose to look backward, the Truth remains the same: Apart from God’s plan and purpose, none of that would have resulted in you.
Moreover, let God take His attention off this universe He has created for one day – one day! And, what do you think results? “In Him we live.” “Consider the birds.” How is it that they survive? Scientists will cheerfully explain the mechanics of the process, as best as they can understand it. They will marvel over the construction of these creatures as they uncover new information. Wow! These birds have a built-in GPS system allowing them to navigate with high accuracy over regions they have never seen before! Amazing! Their chronometers keep them moving between their summer and winter homes right on schedule, however the weather might vary. Stunning! Yet, they are concerned. Changes in the cycles up here might lead them to starve and die because of those accurate chronometers of theirs. They’re coming at the same time next year, but maybe the bugs they like to eat have already peaked.
But, Jesus says that these birds do not labor anxiously for their meals. No. Their Father in heaven feeds them. It may be the bugs they particularly like, or it may be some family putting seed out for the pleasure of watching those birds eat. The means are not the point. The Source is the point.
It’s really no different for us. We may act like everything depends on us, but it doesn’t really. If we found ourselves thoroughly and utterly incapable of providing for ourselves, yet God will provide. If, on the other hand, God has determined to cut us off, then all our efforts and all our labors cannot possibly hope to counter that. Some will look upon that and think that I lean too far towards fatalism. But, God will allow no such excess. No, He admonishes the sluggard to effort. “If they won’t work, don’t you go feeding them.” That’s the instructions to the Church! That’s the proper bounds of charity! That’s what we have violated by allowing our nation to become a welfare state. That is wildly off topic.
Jesus comes declaring that He is the Source and the Sustainer of life. Apart from Him, though you walk this earth for some few decades, you are as dead today as you ever will be. We naturally think ‘grave’ here, but Jesus thinks further. That’s exactly why the skeptical atheist looks at the curse that was pronounced on Adam and finds it to be some sort of contradiction. God said they would die on the day they ate of that tree and look! They walked away from it. See? They live!
The truth is that no, they are dead though they walk. They are, from that very moment, separated from the Source and Sustainer. The Truth is that apart from the very purpose of God which Jesus is walking out as we see Him in the Gospels, that death they were walking in would have been their eternal condition – always separated but never dispatched into any restful final destruction.
See, this is what makes things seem tolerable to the reprobate sinner. This is what makes unbelief tolerable for the atheist. Convinced that the grave is the absolute finality, that with interment all thought and feeling shall cease, they have no problems with the present. Eat, drink, be merry, for tomorrow we die! That was the gladiator’s strength in battle. If we live, fine, but if we die all suffering is over. That may be the thinking, but it isn’t the Truth. No, my friend. Apart from Jesus, apart from this bread of Life Who offers Himself for your freedom from the gladiator’s chains, your death will not be the end of your suffering, but really the beginning. For, with the close of this earthly life comes the removal of that offer of life. The manna which you could have eaten in this life and lived has expired. The sun has set on your days, and the Bread which would have given life is no longer available.
Slip down to John 6:58 and you hear this from our Lord and Savior: “He who eats this bread shall live forever.” I tell you it is just as true that he who refuses to eat this bread shall die forever. It shall not be the nihilistic bliss of forgetfulness that has been the solace of so many who have rejected God. It shall be an eternity of conscious death, aware of what could have been and what shall never be. Think how long it used to seem when your parents sent you to your room to consider what you had just done. Think how long it would have been without any hope of pardon. Now, consider how long it’s going to be when it really is an eternity without hope of pardon. Oh, and you’ll have much more to do than just think about your errors, for the punishing justice of a wrathful God, whose eternal righteousness has been maligned by your ways is equally eternal.
Jesus has given you a limited-time offer. If you do not redeem that offer before the midnight of your life, there will be no later offers coming. The time to choose is now. The choice is clear. On the one hand, life, on the other death. Either can be yours for an eternity that lies ahead. Which would you prefer?
