Reading for Aug 15: John 6:41-46

41 The Jews then complained about Him, because He said, "I am the bread which came down from heaven." 42 And they said, "Is not this Jesus, the son of Joseph, whose father and mother we know? How is it then that He says, 'I have come down from heaven'?"
43 Jesus therefore answered and said to them, "Do not murmur among yourselves. 44 No one can come to Me unless the Father who sent Me draws him; and I will raise him up at the last day. 45 It is written in the prophets, 'And they shall all be taught by God. Therefore everyone who has heard and learned from the Father comes to Me. 46 Not that anyone has seen the Father, except He who is from God; He has seen the Father.

Comments:

Yesterday, Jesus emphatically told the Jews that He was the "bread of life" and that this "bread" is the source of eternal life. In verse 41 we see that this angered the Jews. Why? Because, they knew that He was equating Himself with God so, as it has been said, Jesus was either a liar or a lunatic (and therefore a blasphemer as they charged) or He was indeed Lord (as He claimed). There is no ambiguity about it, Jesus said He was God; either you believe Him or you don't.

The Jews didn't believe, and that begs the question: why didn't they believe? Jesus answers that for us in verse 44, "no one can come to Me (i.e. believe in Jesus) unless the Father who sent Me draws him." So in the context of the passage we see that Jesus is telling them that the reason they are murmuring and do not believe is because the Father has not drawn them. That leads us to a bigger question, why didn't the Father draw them? Why does He call some but not others? That is a much harder question to answer so I'll leave it open for discussion. I'll lead off the discussion by saying this: man by nature loves sin; in fact he/she is dead in sin (Eph. 2:1, Col. 2:13). Unless their desires are changed by an external force then they will remain unchanged because man is powerless to change their sinful natures (Jeremiah 13:23, Rom 5:6). That "force" that changes the lost's desires for sin is God working in many different ways, including using us Christians, His church, to tell those lost who Jesus is and what He has done.

There is one more thing I should say, the reason I want to leave this open for discussion is because this is an actively debated topic amongst Christians with very Godly mature Christians on both sides; so let the discussion begin.