John 6:66-71 - To whom shall we go?

6:66

At this point many disciples turned back. We must never measure the success of what we do by numbers. This section is undoubtedly one of the greatest teachings that has ever been given, yet its effect was to greatly reduce the number of followers that Jesus had. Conversely we must not go to the other extreme and think that the more people we offend the more faithful we have been! We do the will of the Father as well as we can, the results are up to the Holy Spirit.

6:67

Jesus then turned to the twelve and asked them if they wanted to leave as well. Now why did He ask this? Jesus knew what was in the heart of men, so He knew what was in the heart of the twelve. So I guess it must have been to make the twelve think. There are times in life when people seem to be deserting the faith, or there are problems in the church and some are leaving. These times can be troubling. So the question came from Jesus. This is significant for it puts our focus on who Jesus is and what He is doing, which is far more important than what men are thinking or doing.

6:68,69

In some ways Peter’s words are not exactly a ringing endorsement “to whom shall we go”, ie what choice have we got. But then the rest of the words actually show true faith and insight. “You have the words of eternal life”. Whoever or whatever else you might turn to you can sure that it will not have the words of eternal life, it will not be able to give life.

Then Peter goes on to say “we have come to know that you are the Holy One of God”. Peter recognised who Jesus was. Jesus is Lord, so there can be no question about what we must do. So there may be much debate, much grumbling going on around us, but we need to keep our eyes fixed on Jesus.

6:70,71

Jesus now tells them that He chose them, yet one of them is a devil. At this point Jesus does not name Judas, though John adds a note that Jesus is indeed speaking about Judas Iscariot. So again we see that Jesus knew all along what was going on and what was going to happen.

Notice also that Jesus did nothing about it. One might think that Jesus should have got rid of Judas at that point. Now we know that it was all part of God’s plan, but let’s just think about this a little more. When we look the future there are lots of times when there are things that we hope don’t go wrong or don’t happen. We will be anxious or fearful about something, half expecting disaster. Our prayer, secret or otherwise, is “please God don’t let such and such a thing happen”. This is often not actually our greatest need. Things going wrong in our life is not the worst thing that can happen to us! If we walk with the Lord then we will overcome in all circumstances.