John 6:60-71. Hard Sayings of Jesus

This passage brings to a climax the end of the first section of John’s gospel. It combines a glorious affirmation of faith with a depressing realism, as many disciples desert Jesus. Unfortunately it is all too common for people to turn their backs on him.

Mark Twain married a Christian lady. She at first didn’t want to marry him because he was not a Christian, but later did. He, at first, went through the motions of religion with her, but later said he couldn’t keep on being a hypocrite. After some time, his wife also decided that she no longer believed in a personal God. Later, during a time of deep grief, Twain said to his wife,

“If your Christian faith will comfort you, go back to it.” She replied, “I have none.”

Jesus has just fed the five thousand and explained that he is ‘the bread of life’. In the rest of John, chapter six, he clarifies exactly what he means by this,; he explains that he is the only Son of God and to believe in him is essential if we are to be given ‘eternal life.’

“For my Father’s will is that everyone who looks to the Son and believes in him shall have eternal life, and I will raise him up at the last day.” John 6:40

This section has a sad ending,

“From this time many of his disciples turned back and no longer followed him.” John 6:66

It is clear that by this stage the number of Jesus’ disciples was very large. They were not just listening crowds, they were people who would say they were his followers, his disciples. However, many were now drifting away from him; they were becoming disappointed as it was not working out as they wanted it to. Clearly the personal cost of following Jesus was going to be significant. It was what Jesus taught that seemed to be the main problem:

“On hearing it, many of his disciples said, “This is a hard teaching. Who can accept it?” John 6:60

This probably refers to the extraordinary claims that Jesus was now publicly making about who he really was,.For example Jesus said:

“For my Father’s will is that everyone who looks to the Son and believes in him shall have eternal life, and I will raise him up at the last day.” John 6:40

“I tell you the truth, he who believes has everlasting life. I am the bread of life.” John 6:47-48

Jesus made all-embracing claims on men and women. He never watered these down or tried to accommodate those who opposed him. He was adamant that he was the only Son of God who had entered this world to save people in it.

People’s understanding

How often people misunderstand Jesus today. Some may temporarily become enthusiastic about the gospel and become actively involved in their local church. However, as the implications of what commitment to Christ means and as the counter attraction of careers, hobbies and romances become more influential, they drift away from Christ. The temptation is then for church leaders to dilute their message and change the focus of their sermons away from passing on what Jesus and his apostles taught.

A bishop once wrote a paper wishing that Christians and Jews could be united, as they both believe in one God. Jesus would not concur with such a suggestion. Jesus does not want people to go back to the legalism of Judaism but to follow him and live to please him. He taught that the only way to know God is to know his Son. If we follow him we must acknowledge his exclusive claims.

“No-one has seen the Father except the one who is from God; only he has seen the Father.” John 6:46

In his 1950 essay, “What Are We to Make of Jesus?” the famous scholar and author C.S. Lewis discusses some of Jesus’s startling claims about himself. He insists that no-one can conclude that he was simply a “great moral teacher.” Lewis suggests that Jesus’ sayings are those of a “megalomanic.”

“In my opinion, the only person who can say that sort of thing is either God or a complete lunatic suffering from that form of delusion, which undermines the whole mind of man. If you think you are a poached egg, when you are not looking for a piece of toast to suit you, you may be sane, but if you think you are God, there is no chance for you. We may note in passing that He was never regarded as a mere moral teacher. He did not produce that effect on any of the people who actually met him. He produced mainly three effects — Hatred — Terror — Adoration. There was no trace of people expressing mild approval.”

John emphasises the divine omniscience of Jesus:

“For Jesus had known from the beginning which of them did not believe and would betray him.” John 6:64

Jesus never trusted men and women, he recognised how fickle we all are and that unless God does a work in us we will drift away from him. Yet it is we who need Jesus. After Jesus had cleared out his temple of the cattle, sheep, doves and those who were selling them there, many people began to follow Jesus but he knew their motives and their hearts.

“ . . . many people saw the miraculous signs he was doing and believed in his name. But Jesus would not entrust himself to them, for he knew all men. He did not need man’s testimony about man, for he knew what was in man.” John 2:23-25

We cannot tell Jesus anything he doesn’t know; he knows our hearts.

Jesus recognises that for many our involvement with him is essentially for selfish motives. Jesus keeps asking us the question that he asked the crowds in his day,

“”You do not want to leave too, do you?” John 6:67

Jesus knows that some of us will drift away from him. Just as a marriage requires faithfulness from both partners for life, so all Christians need to develop a similar faithful mindset so that, whatever happens, we will not shift from our commitment to Christ. Jesus does not want his people to be ‘of the world’ but does want us to live in it for him.

C. S. Lewis wrote in his article “God in the Dock,”

“‘What are we to make of Jesus Christ?’ This is a question, which has, in a sense, a frantically comic side. For the real question is not what are we to make of Christ, but what is He to make of us? The picture of a fly sitting deciding what it is going to make of an elephant has comic elements about it. But perhaps the questioner meant what are we to make of Him in the sense of ‘How are we to solve the historical problem set us by the recorded sayings and acts of this Man?’ This problem is to reconcile two things. On the one hand you have got the almost generally admitted depth and sanity of His moral teaching, which is not very seriously questioned, even by those who are opposed to Christianity. In fact, I find when I am arguing with very anti-God people that they rather make a point of saying, ‘I am entirely in favour of the moral teaching of Christianity’ — and there seems to be a general agreement that in the teaching of this Man and of His immediate followers, moral truth is exhibited at its purest and best. It is not sloppy idealism; it is full of wisdom and shrewdness. The whole thing is realistic, fresh to the highest degree, the product of a sane mind. That is one phenomenon.

The other phenomenon is the quite appalling nature of this Man’s theological remarks. You all know what I mean, and I want rather to stress the point that the appalling claim, which this Man seems to be making, is not merely made at one moment of His career. There is, of course, the one moment, which led to His execution. The moment at which the High Priest said to Him, ‘Who are you?’ ‘I am the Anointed, the Son of the uncreated God, and you shall see me appearing at the end of all history as the judge of the universe.’ But that claim, in fact, does not rest on this one dramatic moment. When you look into his conversation you will find this sort of claim running throughout the whole thing. For instance, He went about saying to people, ‘I forgive your sins’. . . On one occasion this Man is sitting looking down on Jerusalem from the hill about it and suddenly in comes an extraordinary remark — ‘I keep on sending you prophets and wise men.’ Nobody comments on it. And yet, quite suddenly, almost incidentally, He is claiming to be the power that all through the centuries is sending wise men and leaders into the world. . . Sometimes the statements put forward the assumption that He, the Speaker, is completely without sin or fault. This is always the attitude. ‘You, to whom I am talking, are all sinners,’ and He never remotely suggests that this same reproach can be brought against Him. He says again, ‘I am the begotten of the One God, before Abraham was, I am,’ And remember what the words ‘I am’ were in Hebrew. They were the name of God, which must not be spoken by any human being, the name which it was death to utter.

Well, that is the other side. On the one side clear, definite moral teaching. On the other, claims which, if not true, are those of a megalomaniac, compared with whom Hitler was the most same and humble of men. There is no halfway house and there is no parallel in other religions.”

All of us have surely begun to waver at some point or other, but Jesus keeps asking,

“You do not want to leave too, do you?” John 6:67

So many church leaders today have become embarrassed with what Jesus teaches. Although Jesus emphasises his origin, his kingdom and the salvation he alone brings, there has been a tendency in sermons to move away from this to an emphasis on what we should all do to better our society!

Peter’s understanding

1. No alternative

Peter’s response to Jesus is worth studying in detail. He has begun to realise that there is no alternative to Jesus,

“Lord, to whom shall we go?” John 6:68

Professor Paul Vitz, a Christian Professor of Psychology in the United States, wrote the book, ‘Psychology is Religion – the Cult of Self-Worship’. It is a trenchant analysis of modern psychology. Professor Vitz maintains that psychology has become a religion, a secular cult of self-love, that is now part of the problem of modern life. In the last chapter he writes perceptively about the beliefs of those in the post war baby bulge. He looked at:

“. . . all the banners that that generation has followed and all of them proved false.”

He describes how the great ‘Cult of Sex’ has become more strident as it loses its hold on its followers; as a result pornographers have become increasingly extreme, macabre and violent. He says that ‘it looks as if they are losing their grip.’ At the end of the book he concludes,

“In another ten years, millions of people will be bored with the cult of self and looking for a new life. The uncertainty is not the existence of this coming wave of returning prodigals, but whether their Father’s house, the true faith, will be there to welcome them.”

People will start to look for sustainable answers that are more real than alcohol, drugs, careers and sex, but will the church be robust enough to give them God’s answer and tell them that the solution to life lies with Jesus Christ? There are many false religions around.

The son of Ron Hubbard, the founder of ‘Scientology’, renounced his father’s religion and became a Christian. He has been very critical of this ‘pseudo-faith’, saying that the ideas did not come from years of study, but were largely written off the top of his head, usually when he was under the influence of drugs. He added that some other ideas were plagiarised from Alistair Crowley the Black Magic Satanist. He said that his father was addicted to cocaine and Mescaline, that he had a long history of venereal disease, sexual perversion and mental illness. Critiques can also be made of such new religions as Mormonism and Jehovah’s Witnesses and Transcendental Meditation. It is incredible that people will leave the Lord Jesus to follow such religions, yet they still do.

Peter understood that nothing compared to the Lord Jesus,

“Lord, to whom shall we go?” John 6:68

2. Eternal life

The reason there is no alternative to Jesus Christ is now given by Peter,

“You have the words of eternal life.” John 6:68

Note that eternal life is given to those who hear the words that God says, it is not found through involvement in rituals and sacraments. John is constantly speaking against a ‘false sacramentalism’ that was creeping into the churches. Some have misunderstood the meaning of Jesus’ words,

“I am the living bread that came down from heaven. If anyone eats of this bread, he will live for ever.” John 6:51

“I tell you the truth, unless you can eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you.” John 6:53

Some sacramentalists take this literally and claim that salvation is found by receiving the elements in the Eucharist. Strangely in many such churches only what they call ‘the body of Christ’ is shared, whilst ‘the blood’ is restricted. In contrast Jesus insists that he is speaking about spiritual matters, about belief in him, and makes this abundantly clear when he explains,

“The Spirit gives life; the flesh counts for nothing. The words I have spoken to you are spirit and they are life.” John 6:63

The Holy Spirit applies the words of Jesus to our hearts. It is when these words, his teaching, are received and positively responded to that eternal life is given. It is only a personal commitment to Jesus that results in us being given eternal salvation. All Christians can say with Peter, ‘Yes, we have felt the power as Jesus speaks. As we sit under and accept Jesus’ words we experience a power to change and save us.’ The disciples understood this,

“You have the words of eternal life.” John 6:68

We Christians can all say that we have come to understand that Jesus is the only person who can give us eternal life; it is a gift to all who turn to follow Jesus Christ personally.

3. Knowledge

Peter speaks up for all the disciples and for all Christians when he says,

“We believe and know that you are the Holy One of God.” John 6:69

This is a remarkable statement. The world today says that ‘faith’ and ‘knowledge’ are opposed. Peter says the opposite. If, as the Bible teaches, God is behind the creation of this world, then there can be no conflict between science, the discovery of the ‘laws of nature’ and a reasonable faith that God is as he has revealed himself to us. Modern science was able to develop because people believed in a rational God who had made a rational world. How were the scientific constants of the universe all precisely right for our world to develop? Who composed the new meaningful DNA codes that enabled new species and genera to form – this language can’t have been random. But more important than these arguments is the fact that without Jesus Christ we cannot find answers to the real questions of life such as,

1. What is the purpose of my life?

2. Can I know God now?

3. Can I be forgiven for the wrongs I have done?

4. Can I be sure of eternal life?

5. How should I live now?

Some say that there are no ultimate answers to such questions and that we have to just get on with life as best we can on our own. They would call themselves ‘agnostic’. It is significant that this word has the same origin as ‘ignorant’! Answers are there to be found, but only by looking in the right place, where God has revealed them in His Son. Faith in Jesus is the basis of all life.

Summary

This powerful section asks us all the following questions,

1. Am I a true disciple or could I drift away?

2. Am I convinced that there is no alternative to Christ. Have I discovered that alternative ‘gods’ do not satisfy?

3. Have I come to realise that it is in hearing the words of Jesus that I can experience God’s power. It is as his words enter my mind, my heart and my conscience that I begin to change into the person God wants me to be.

4. Am I convinced about Jesus, do I love him and long to serve him? Jesus was holy, set apart to live for his Father. If I have been given the gift of the Holy Spirit, I will have this very same longing.

BVP