The Gospel of John - Outline Part 17 - The Difficulty of Faith

TITLE

John 6:60-71 – The Difficulty of Faith

EXPLANATION

After listening to Jesus’s lecture on the bread of life, many of the people following Him were unsettled.  The Lord had been describing to them a pattern of life and behavior that was, quite frankly, significantly more extreme than anything they had encountered before in Judaism.  The message Jesus taught was one of complete devotion and unwavering loyalty.  Such a single-minded fixation on God seemed then and continues to seem today like lunacy.

For this reason, some of the people who were following Jesus balked and the instincts of their flesh prompted them to recoil from pursuing Him any longer.  Rather than console the people in their unbelief, Jesus instead pressed His attack of truth even harder than before.  He confronted them for being offended at His teaching.  He upped the ante by questioning, if they were already hesitating over what He had said to that point, what would they do when they witnessed even more extreme examples of truth such as when He would, in the future, ascend into Heaven.

Critically, Jesus identified that the reason for the unbelief of the people was their flesh.  He correctly pointed out that only the Spirit of God can give life.  The flesh is a hindrance to someone who desires to follow the patterns of the Spirit.  Furthermore, because all men are in the flesh, Jesus clarified that no one can willingly come to Him on their own.  They must be drawn by the Father and granted the gift of faith.

Many disciples chose to stop following Jesus at this point.  This demonstrated in graphic fashion that they had not been granted to believe by the Father.  In sharp contrast to this stood the twelve, Jesus’s personal chosen representatives.  He asked them whether they wanted to stop following Him also.  Peter, ever the spokesman of the group, responded that there was no one else to turn to because only Jesus had the truth that leads to life.  As if to drive the point home that He had already made about the difficulty of faith, Jesus pointed out that He had chosen these twelve men.  They did not come to faith in Him on their own.

APPLICATION

This is an incredible passage that deals with one of the most difficult aspects of salvation for many people to accept.  That is, true saving faith which leads to salvation comes not from men, but from God alone.  There is no way to read this text clearly and with an open mind, and then walk away with the idea that man can drum up the faith to believe in Christ on his own.

How does this actually impact us in everyday life though?  I think there are two aspects we must consider.  The first is to express profound gratitude toward God for choosing and drawing us to Christ.  Were it not for His work, we would be hopelessly lost in our sins.  The second is to recognize that anyone we witness to who rejects us does so out of their own nature.  Their rejection is not personal.  It is merely who they are.  It requires a fundamental change of the heart, accomplished only by God, for anyone to be saved.  Therefore, we must view our evangelism with at least somewhat of a detached eye, understanding that God will use the seeds we plant in His timing, not ours.