One In Jesus

(John 6:64-65 ESV)  ^{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.”

Jesus seemingly changes the subject by speaking of faith, but, of course, the entire lesson had been about faith. And he knew that some did not believe.

“Granted” is literally “given,” not “enabled.” The gift is not necessarily an enabling. But it surely sounds kind of Calvinistic, doesn’t it? Continue reading →

(John 6:47-51 ESV)  ⁴⁷ “Truly, truly, I say to you, whoever believes has eternal life.  ⁴⁸ I am the bread of life.  ⁴⁹ Your fathers ate the manna in the wilderness, and they died.  ⁵⁰ This is the bread that comes down from heaven, so that one may eat of it and not die.  ⁵¹ I am the living bread that came down from heaven. If anyone eats of this bread, he will live forever. And the bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh.”

But salvation is available to anyone who believes. If you “eat” of the “bread of life,” you’ll not die — unlike the Israelites who ate of God’s manna. Manna was mere physical food. Jesus is spiritual food, and he sustains through eternity. Continue reading →

(John 6:41-42 ESV)  ⁴¹ So the Jews grumbled about him, because he said, “I am the bread that came down from heaven.”  ⁴² They said, “Is not this Jesus, the son of Joseph, whose father and mother we know? How does he now say, ‘I have come down from heaven’?”

Indeed, it would be hard to accept that Jesus had come from heaven if you’d been with the family when they’d brought him home to Nazareth and seen him grow up. Continue reading →

(John 6:36-37 ESV)  ³⁶ “But I said to you that you have seen me and yet do not believe.  ³⁷ All that the Father gives me will come to me, and whoever comes to me I will never cast out.”

Despite the miracles and Jesus’ teaching, the crowd refuses to believe. In contrast to their uncertain, vacillating attitudes, Jesus says that God’s promises are firm. Continue reading →

(John 6:15 ESV)  ¹⁵ Perceiving then that they were about to come and take him by force to make him king, Jesus withdrew again to the mountain by himself.

Many of the Jews were desperately unhappy with Roman rule. Moreover, they imagined that the Messiah would be a king like the Maccabees, who had led the Jews to revolt against the successors to Alexander the Great and become an independent nation for a time ending when the Romans conquered them. Continue reading →

(John 6:1-3 ESV) After this Jesus went away to the other side of the Sea of Galilee, which is the Sea of Tiberias.  ² And a large crowd was following him, because they saw the signs that he was doing on the sick.  ³ Jesus went up on the mountain, and there he sat down with his disciples.

Imagine that you live in First Century Galilee. Germ theory, antibiotics, anesthesia, sterilization … all the elements of modern medicine are unheard of. Women routinely die in childbirth. There’s no cure for birth defects. Continue reading →

Let’s reflect a bit on the character of Jesus as revealed in this chapter.

Jesus healed a man lame from birth on the Sabbath. He had no hope of being healed by the medicine of the day. And hopping in the Pool of Siloam sure wasn’t going to work. And Jesus might never pass that way again.

Jesus was nearly stoned for having done this. He literally risked his life and mission to heal this man — and man who didn’t even believe in Jesus. Continue reading →

(John 5:17-18 ESV)  ¹⁷ But Jesus answered them, “My Father is working until now, and I am working.”  ¹⁸ This was why the Jews were seeking all the more to kill him, because not only was he breaking the Sabbath, but he was even calling God his own Father, making himself equal with God.

The Jews, of course, considered God their father. But Jesus was claiming a unique relationship with God. His argument is that if God can work on Saturday, so can I. He made himself equal with God. Continue reading →