John 6:60 Commentary - Dr Peter Masters

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John 6:60

Comments

Many of his disciples – not the twelve – now turned away from him. What was the hard saying that they would not listen to? It is what Christ said from verse 53, when he began to speak of them having to eat his flesh, and drink his blood, and they said, whatever does he mean? He then reiterates the statement several times over and explains it, and it obviously becomes clear to them, that he is speaking figuratively. They didn’t understand, at first; they took his statement literally. ‘How can we eat Him, and drink Him?’ But it is evident that they came to see that he was speaking figuratively. He was Messiah, the Son of God. They needed to believe in Him, and receive his words, and take a blessing from Him, or they were lost. ‘But we’re not lost,’ they would have said, ‘we are Jewish people, all Jewish people,’ so they mistakenly thought, ‘all Jewish people are God’s children, and will go to heaven – and here is this person, who can do these mighty miracles, who claims to be the Son of God, saying, ‘No, without me, Jewish or not, you are utterly lost.’ Christ’s sayings then became hard in this further sense: they implied that Jews also needed to repent and believe in order to be saved.

Application

They were a great crowd, but many of them were going to turn away from Him, and abandon the quest – searching for Christ’s blessing. Why did Christ allow them to do this? Why did he say things to them that were so hard for them to receive that they went back and abandoned Him? Surely that’s not good tactics? Surely that’s not how preachers should behave. Indeed, many will turn conversion into a simple little thing of merely assenting to the existence of Christ and leave out repentance, and heart searching, and yielding entirely of the life. They will do away with the standards for Christian living, that you’ve got to put the Lord first and serve Him, and worship Him. They allow the people to do just as they like, be as rich as they like, have every kind of enjoyment, and pleasure, and as many holidays as they like. Why, they are terrified that people will be offended. Christ wasn’t terrified. If people were not whole-hearted, if people didn’t seek him on the right terms, and didn’t belong to him, and love him, and receive his every word, he turned them away – and this is pivotal these days.

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John 6:60 Commentary and Bible Study