Fri, 16 December, 2005: Today’s Bible readings.

John 6:60-71

⁶⁰ When many of his disciples heard it, they said, “This is a hard saying; who can listen to it?” ⁶¹ But Jesus, knowing in himself that his disciples were grumbling about this, said to them, “Do you take offense at this? ⁶² Then what if you were to see the Son of Man ascending to where he was before? ⁶³ It is the Spirit who gives life; the flesh is of no avail. The words that I have spoken to you are spirit and life. ⁶⁴ But there are some of you who do not believe.” (For Jesus knew from the beginning who those were who did not believe, and who it was who would betray him.) ⁶⁵ And he said, “This is why I told you that no one can come to me unless it is granted him by the Father.”

⁶⁶ After this many of his disciples turned back and no longer walked with him. ⁶⁷ So Jesus said to the Twelve, “Do you want to go away as well?” ⁶⁸ Simon Peter answered him, “Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life, ⁶⁹ and we have believed, and have come to know, that you are the Holy One of God.” ⁷⁰ Jesus answered them, “Did I not choose you, the Twelve? And yet one of you is a devil.” ⁷¹ He spoke of Judas the son of Simon Iscariot, for he, one of the Twelve, was going to betray him.

Jesus is growing in popularity. At the beginning of this chapter, He feeds the five thousand. Imagine the excitement in the crowd as they realize what is happening around them. They are witnessing a miracle before their very eyes. As the excitement grows, the people of the crowd decide to make Jesus king by force. If Jesus can spontaneously create food for them, He can successfully overthrow the despised Roman occupiers. He certainly won’t have trouble with the logistics of feeding the army they will need to raise to battle the Romans, and if He can create food, He probably has some other interesting things up His sleeves to use against their dreaded enemy.

But instead of capitalizing on His growing popularity, Jesus withdraws from the crowd and continues to preach difficult things. He tells the people that He is the bread of life, and that they must eat of Him to have eternal life. He tells them that He has come from the Father to save those whom the Father has elected. He continues to say things that seem calculated to drive people away. Because He continues to preach these hard things, the people are offended, and whereas the chapter starts with the crowd of followers growing, it ends with many disciples leaving Him. He squandered the capital of good will He had been building up, and now He is loosing followers, all because He wasn’t more circumspect in what He said.

What do we learn from this?

Jesus certainly doesn’t subscribe to the notion that in evangelism we should draw a large crowd by any means possible and then slip them the gospel message. In fact, He keeps preaching the truth knowing it is offensive to many and will drive them away. His concern is not to build a following, but to make disciples. As we consider how we present the gospel, we certainly should not go out of our way to intentionally be offensive. But we should never tone down the fundamentally offensive nature of the gospel because of fear that it will drive people away.

The doctrine that Jesus taught, particularly the doctrine that God is sovereign in salvation, is offensive to people. They don’t like to be told that God is the one who chooses whom He will save and that we are not the ones who save ourselves by our choice. Many disciples turned back and stopped following Jesus when He told them this truth. It is not more popular today.

There is a great comfort in understanding what Jesus was teaching, because if God is sovereign in bringing you to salvation, He is also sovereign in keeping you saved. This doctrine frees us from the tyranny of trying to be good enough to keep our salvation, and enables us to enjoy obeying God out of gratitude for what He has done rather than out of fear of losing our salvation.

We don’t choose our doctrine based upon how popular it is, but based upon if it is true. We should desire to believe what God has proclaimed in His Scriptures, not whatever we personally like best, nor what we think will attract the biggest crowd. Truth is not a popularity contest.

Where is Christ in this passage?

Jesus Christ is the one who tells us these things. And like Peter, as others turn away from the hard things taught by Jesus our response should be , “Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life, and we have believed, and have come to know, that you are the Holy One of God.”