A hard saying.

John 6:60-65, When many of his disciples heard it, they said, “This is a hard saying; who can listen to it?” But Jesus, knowing in himself that his disciples were grumbling about this, said to them, “Do you take offense at this? Then what if you were to see the Son of Man ascending to where he was before? It is the Spirit who gives life; the flesh is no help at all. The words that I have spoken to you are spirit and life. But there are some of you who do not believe.” (For Jesus knew from the beginning who those were who did not believe, and who it was who would betray him.) And he said, “This is why I told you that no one can come to me unless it is granted him by the Father.”

Jesus did not make any apologies for giving them a hard saying, in fact He gives them and us an even harder saying, that He knows who is faithful and who is faithless, and in fact no one can to Him unless the Father calls him. Paul fleshes this out as he tell us that it is by God’s amazing grace that we are saved through faith. And amazingly even our faith is a gift of God. In the garden, Adam was told that to eat the fruit would be to die die: twice for a Hebrew exclamation point! That death is obviously not temporal, but spiritual. For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God; in our natural condition we are spiritually dead, lifeless, unable to help anyone or even ourselves. As told to Ezekiel in the valley of dry bones, only God can breathe life into the dead to bring forth the newborn spiritual life!

We humbly bow before Your amazing gift of grace, receiving mercy in our time of need!

ESV Lectionary