The Father gave you the Son




Dear friends

On Monday morning I was reading John 6 as part of my daily readings. It tied in with what we were hearing in Sunday’s message.
Here the words I read from the Lord Jesus:
V35 “I am the bread of life; whoever comes to me shall not hunger, and whoever believes in me shall never thirst. 36 But I said to you that you have seen me and yet do not believe. 37 All that the Father gives me will come to me, and whoever comes to me I will never cast out.

He then went on to say
“Do not grumble among yourselves. 44 No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him. And I will raise him up on the last day

In those verses we have the word ‘whoever’. Whoever comes to Jesus shall not hunger and whoever believes in him will never thirst. The gospel invitation is open to whoever will come. just as in John 3:16 “that whoever believes in him will not perish but have eternal life”. So people should never think “Maybe I am not chosen by God, and so maybe Jesus will not accept me if I come to him”. Jesus promised to receive everyone who comes to him.
The gospel call and offer goes out. And whoever comes will receive. Here is a person’s responsibility to respond to the gospel.

Except the problem is that a person cannot by themselves do that. It takes a supernatural work of God for them to be able to respond to that call, since everyone in their human nature is dead in their sins.
Which is why Jesus said “All that the Father gives to me will come to me…” Who are the “all”? These are the ones who are the elect. Those foreknown and foreloved. Every single one of the them without fail will come to Jesus.

And v44 backs this up in that the only people that will come to Jesus are those who are irresistibly drawn to him by the Father.
Here is the paradox. Once you came to faith and willingly decided to put your trust in the Lord Jesus, you have since come to see that behind your willing decision to come and believe was the invisible work of God the Father who was drawing you to Christ.

It was this truth that helped me along my road to conversion age 22. I became aware that I was becoming more concerned for my spiritual state after rejecting God for years. And that I needed to be right before God. Since I had been taught by my church that God draws sinners to himself, I prayed “God, if you are drawing me to yourself, please don’t leave me alone until I am yours”.
Within the year I was converted. If God had not done that, I would never have come to Jesus.

This truth is to be a comfort to all believers. God from all eternity has always acted for the good of his people. And he will continue to do so.
It gives us solid ground to praise God for him saving us. It also gives us confidence that God will save people for himself; even those we think are beyond it.

So let this be a rock of truth to stand on and hold onto in these days. God the Father chose and gave you to the Lord Jesus. And he drew you to him.

Love,
Dave

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