Safe but sound pt3
There’s to be no turning back, whatever the temptations are! Chris Hill explains.
The Lord has laid John 6:60-65 on my heart and I had best discharge my responsibility! Temptation to turn back from following the Lord can overtake us from time to time.
It should come as no surprise when unregenerate church attenders fall away, but we should also never be surprised when we see people we believe to be genuine believers cooling in their devotion to Jesus, or even when we ourselves go through a low period and are tempted to cool off. The way of genuine discipleship is a hard and narrow way.
There are indeed occasions when pressures of various kinds can lead to a falling back into a period of lukewarmness. For the true disciple of Jesus these occasions cause great personal distress. We can even begin to doubt if we were ever true Christians in the first place! The situation is not helped when certain preachers encourage doubt by telling us we should not presume on our status before God. They tell us that if events combine to shake us and lead us down into a low level of faith, our Father may cast us off and treat us as if we were never His children. That seems to me to be perfect torment, causing anxiety and fear.
“Have I reached that point of no return?”
Down periods have been the experience of believers through the ages and are a common feature in spiritual warfare. It is typified in Psalm 42:5, a gloriously encouraging heart cry that speaks volumes about the reality of faith and its down-times as well as its up-times! The person that knows nothing of this is probably not living in the real world!
“Why are you downcast, O my soul? Why so disturbed within me? Put your hope in God, for I will yet praise Him, my Saviour and my God.”
Whenever he is confronted with the cost of discipleship, the soldier of Christ immediately recognises it as the attempt of Satan to drag him from his secure position, and he resists by standing firmly on the promises of God in spite of his feelings.
The cost of discipleship is uncomfortably high. Warfare involves discomfort, inconvenience, alienation and pain.
The one that truly knows the Lord Jesus acknowledges this and can even rejoice in it, knowing that his suffering identifies him with the sufferings of Christ
(1 Peter 4:12-13).
John 6:60
The “This” and the “it” to which John refers in this verse is our Lord’s offensive statement concerning the eating of His flesh and the drinking of His blood (John 6:53). It was repulsive to that larger group of so-called disciples. Doubtless it was repulsive to the Twelve as well. But the difference in reactions is so revealing. There were disciples … and there were disciples! John 6:66 shows that many of His larger circle of disciples simply could not cope: they turned back and no longer followed Jesus.
Different levels of relationship with Jesus are here exposed. There are large numbers of folk with a certain level of commitment to Jesus, that is easily shaken and exposed as false when testing comes. Sometimes it is shaken by doctrine that is tough to swallow – like in the present instance. Then again, it can be shaken by circumstances when disciples are required to take a stand for Jesus. Like Peter in the courtyard of the High Priest, they back right off from Jesus: the cost of standing with Him is just too high. The difference between Peter before he had received the Spirit and Peter afterwards is huge! Vive la difference! Praise the Lord!
“This is a hard teaching.” Literally, “a hard word”. The word “hard” (SKLEROS) does not mean hard to understand, but harsh or offensive. There are plenty of examples of that in the New Testament! Especially when hard words cut into fashionable thinking regarding beliefs and life-styles. Some of our Lord’s sayings are hard to receive and even harder to obey ! Our attitude needs to be that of the apostles when facing the Sanhedrin (Acts 5:27-33): “We must obey God rather than men.” When the Word of God is in direct conflict with the opinions of men – even religious men – the faithful disciple deliberately chooses to go God’s way, whatever the cost.
“Who can accept (hear) it?” Who can bear to listen to this offensive stuff? It’s evident today that many Christians are closing their ears to the uncomfortable truth of the gospel and the consequent life of faith. Many choose what they wish to hear and reject what they don’t. Many of the Jews in Isaiah’s day were like that – Isaiah 30:8-11.
This can apply to the way of salvation itself. Thousands of church-goers sit through evangelistic sermons and straight Bible teaching and they spend the entire time filtering out what they do not wish to hear!
This is amply demonstrated in the way in which the biblical gospel as originally given in Acts 2:22ff is so regularly compromised in order to remove inconvenient truth. Repentance, baptism and the urgent call to a holy life from the moment of new birth are elements of the whole that are hard to receive by many and so are removed in a bid to make the gospel easier to accept! The result is less than the gospel that alone can save and it produces spurious conversions.
When all is said and done, we must admit that the Christian walk is very tough. Particularly so if we tread a lonely path in isolation. To keep our eyes fixed on Jesus when we are isolated is never easy. We are meant to be in genuine fellowship with brothers and sisters who will stand with us, so that together we are encouraged to move forward with Jesus.
James 5:16 demonstrates the necessity of close and open fellowship to enable progress and growth to take place.
In the face of tough truth, we have to exercise humility. If we find any of our Lord’s sayings hard to accept, we should humbly acknowledge that we not know everything, and acknowledge that revelation develops in us. Patience is a virtue. If we find any of His sayings difficult to obey, we should humbly call to mind that He will never expect impossibilities of us: He will give us grace to do all that He requires of us now. Grace for today is His wonderful provision.
John 6:61-62
The journey of our Lord back to Heaven began with the Passion: the sufferings of Jesus leading to His death on the cross and subsequent Resurrection and Ascension. The entire sequence moves toward His ascent to where He was before. What He says here about eating His flesh and drinking His blood takes things to a further level of gross offence. He is pointing to the cross as the first step in His journey home. Nothing could be more offensive than the crucifixion. Isaiah 53 takes us to the heart of the matter. The cross is the most grotesque and foul event, and to the Jews and nominal disciples would be unspeakably horrible.
But that is the gospel. Jesus became sin with my sinfulness that I might become righteous with His righteousness. Let us never forget the hideous reality of the cross. Words – even words in the gospel accounts – cannot convey the full, ghastly revelation that the Holy Spirit provides through the prophet Isaiah.
John 6:63-64
One of the contrasts of Scripture is between flesh and spirit: essentially what is of the world and what is of God. This applies to discipleship as much as to anything else. There is a level of Christianity – both faith and practice – that is of the flesh. It has an appearance of godliness but is in fact a sham: a pretence. There is nothing of the Holy Spirit in it and yet superficially it appears to be genuine.
Jesus says the flesh counts for nothing. If the Holy Spirit is not infusing it with life, it counts not for a little: it counts for nothing! It is reminiscent of our Lord speaking through Isaiah 64:6 – “All of us have become like one who is unclean, and all our righteous acts are like filthy rags.”
Jesus went on, “The words I have spoken to you are spirit and they are life” (John 6:63).
Because the words of Jesus emanate from the Spirit, they are life and they generate life in the one who obeys them. It is nothing short of eternal life experienced here and now. Human beings are to live by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God (Deuteronomy 8:3; Matthew 4:4). The identical claim is now made for the words of Jesus, precisely because He is God, the Word incarnate (John 1:1; 5:24).
In these two verses Jesus establishes the link between His Passion, which culminates in His Ascension and Glorification and the subsequent coming of the Spirit. (see John 16:7).
Jesus then said, “Yet there are some of you that do not believe.” For Jesus had known from the beginning which of them did not believe and who would betray Him.
John 6:65
This plunges us once more into the doctrine of the Providence of God. If a person is not enabled to believe in Jesus through the personal conviction of the Holy Spirit, he cannot come to Jesus. The Holy Spirit elects to reveal the truth to those whose names were written in the Lamb’s Book of Life from before the Creation of the world. But they still have the responsibility to respond to that prompting: to take full advantage of that open door and come through it into salvation.
John 6:68-69
These verses form a tragic conclusion to the whole discourse flowing on from the feeding of the multitude. Even when Jesus Himself was the preacher, most seem to have refused the astonishing revelation that was pouring through Him straight out of Heaven.
Enthusiasm for a preacher usually lasts for as long as his popularity is high and his preaching is pleasing, interesting, amusing and inspirational. But if he changes his approach and begins to move away from “smooth things” to direct exposition of the whole counsel of God, affront or please, a change often takes place. A division is created. Some folks, hitherto supportive and enthusiastic, cool in their readiness to listen and consider what is being proclaimed, and they start to drift away. Others – who truly love the Lord and His Word and want to become genuine disciples, forsaking all and following Him – will press the preacher, “Please give us more of this and not less. We want to hear God through His Word no matter what personal cost is demanded of us. All we want are the words of eternal life: and we know they do not come cheap !”
Turn back? … NEVER!