As I mentioned in a previous post, I am blessed to be part of a men’s bible study. We meet once a week during the fall, winter, and spring to chat about our favorite sports teams, our families, and various other topics (politics do occasionally sneak into the discussion…). We also spend a good amount of time in God’s word, reading scripture and discussing what we’ve just read. Currently, we are working our way through the Book of John and have settled the last few weeks on John 6. The Gospel of John was written by John (surprise) who was one of Jesus’ early followers (aka a Disciple of Jesus). God tasked John to write several of the books in the New Testament including John and the Book of Revelation.

John fits nicely into the four gospels ( the others being Matthew, Mark, and Luke). The Gospel of John focuses less on what Jesus did and more on the person of Jesus; who he is and what his purpose is as God incarnate. ¹ Throughout the bible we read people’s reactions to Jesus. Generally, those whom he heals are thankful and respond to Jesus appropriately as the Son of God. But many people react differently, struggling to come to terms with the person of Jesus.

Jesus is God’s only son who came to save the world. He, along with God the Father and the Holy Spirit, are known as the Triune God.² Jesus is God with a specific mission. His mission, to use a phrase often used in football, is to take God’s chosen people across the goal line. In John 6 Jesus uses the metaphor of being the bread of life to assert that God is the one who calls us to him. Jesus nurtures those who believe that he is our Lord and Savior as the real bread, bread in the person of Christ. He is the bread of life that has come down from heaven and is giving eternal life to those who believe!³

In John 6:37 Jesus states, “All that the Father gives me will come to me, and whoever comes to me I will never drive away.” He continues in verse 40 assuring those who were listening to him, “For my Father’s will is that everyone who looks to the Son and believes in him shall have eternal life, and I will raise him up at the last day.”⁴ In verse 44 Jesus again tells the people, “No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him, and I will raise him up at the last day.”⁵ And then Jesus says these beautiful words: “I tell you the truth, he who believes has everlasting life.”

This is hard for many Christians to believe. How can God choose to draw some to Jesus and not others?⁶ The answer lies in who God is and who God is not. God is the ultimate arbiter with authority over all aspects of our lives. He’s omniscient; he’s omnipotent; he’s omnipresent.⁷ God is transcendent, uncreated, and fully divine because he is God. According to his will each of us was created, each of us live, and each of us who are saved are saved, again, according to His will. God is not all these things yet subject to our desires. He is not beholden to his creation. He does not owe us anything, including his gift of eternal life. I have heard it argued that on this matter, human arrogance and pride is at play as we seek to impute how we feel God should be and participate in His salvation process. But God chose to save us because he loves us⁸ and that is where we need to settle. His love and grace extended to us through Jesus is the bread that nurtures our souls as we walk this earth.

Why is this good? Why is this important? Because it serves to completely sever our efforts from God’s saving grace. We are severed from the process and only through God’s gifting of his grace are we saved. In our lives we have choices to make from the mundane (what to have for dinner) to the important (career options) and with choice comes participation in the outcome. Not so with God’s gift of salvation! No effort of our own can warrant God’s gift of eternal life; it’s all on God as he works through his word and his Holy Spirit (that third iteration of God that makes up the third person of the Triune God) to bring people to Him. Our salvation is God’s great expression of his love for us!

I am not going to pretend that this is an easy doctrine. As we read and study scripture we see Jesus and Paul saying something that we would initially not prefer. Election⁹ means exclusion which can be untenable for a believer who rejoices in God’s love for all of his creation. In fact, many Christians choose to believe in God’s election but not the other side of that choice, God’s exclusion (see footnote 6). Even as we grapple with this concept the great news is this: everything is in God’s control, including our salvation. Our struggles, our pain and suffering are experienced through the lens of God’s love and mercy.

I do not want to discount the concerns and objections that are well documented and serve as a theological tenet of many Christian denominations. Please email me at karltucker4@gmail.com with questions and concerns. Let me know how you feel and don’t hold back if you do not agree! 🙂

1. What does God incarnate mean? Simply stated, God came to earth and became fully human. He could feel his toe being stubbed on a rock just like us. He needed to eat to stay alive, He felt emotion and even wept when one of his best friends had passed away. Yet, he was also fully God who lived a sinless, perfect life as a human. He regularly performed miracles that only someone who is God could perform. ↩︎
2. A little more about the term Triune God. From Google’s AI Overview: The Triune God is a Christian concept that God is one being who exists in three distinct persons: the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. The word “triune” comes from Latin words meaning “three” and “one”.
   The three persons of the Trinity are as follows:
   God The Father: The creator, who plans, chooses, and wills
   God The Son: The fulfiller, who obeys the Father and does His will
   God The Holy Spirit: The creative force that dwells in people, pointing them to the Father and the Son. ↩︎
3. See John 6:32. The Message states that verse as follows: “The real significance of that Scripture (referencing the time when God provided manna from heaven to feed the Children of Israel while they wandered through the desert) is not that Moses gave you bread from heaven but that my father is right now offering you bread from heaven, the real bread. The Bread of God came down out of heaven and is giving life to the world.” ↩︎
4. The Message states this verse as follows: “This is what my Father wants: that anyone who sees the Son and trusts who he is and what he does and then aligns with him will enter real life, eternal life. My part is to put them on their feet alive and whole at the completion of time.” Awesome promise that I think about every day!! ↩︎
5. The Message states this verse as follows: “The Father who sent me is in charge. He draws people to me—that’s the only way you’ll ever come. Only then do I do my work, putting people together, setting them on their feet, ready for the End. ↩︎
6. There are many wonderful believers, particularly Lutheran brothers and sisters, who hold that God chooses those to save but does not choose those who will not be saved. They argue that the bible is essentially silent on the later (God chooses who will not be saved) while clear on the former (God chooses who will be saved). These believers are content in their belief that the later is a mystery, one of the many aspects of God that we are not given the ability to understand. ↩︎
7. Those are big words to describe the complete and total power God wields as our creator. Omnipotent because God is in total control of himself and his creation. Omniscient because he is the ultimate criterion of truth and falsity, so that his ideas are always true. Omnipresent because God’s power and knowledge extend to all parts of his creation and he is present everywhere. Together they inform our understanding of who God is and give us the ability to see God in terms of who he is – the God of creation, of providence, and the architect of our salvation. ↩︎
8. See John 3:16; See also Romans 5:8 in which Paul declares God’s love as follows: “But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” ↩︎
9. Election (also called predestination by most bible scholars) is another word for God’s choosing who will come to Christ. Paul speaks directly to this several times in scripture (See Romans 9 for an examination of election using the choice of God to favor Jacob over Esau). Basically, Paul argues in Romans and elsewhere in scripture that it is God’s sovereign right to show mercy and compassion to whomever he desires, not basing it on anything previously done by an individual to earn that mercy and compassion. Paul’s description of election is unconditional election meaning it is only by God’s choice that we are saved. ↩︎