Peter McKenzie

I should add that I have debated with Calvinists quite a bit around this passage. Most of them go away when they see that the “ones the Father gave Jesus” is a specific group of people (it cannot be said of future, yet-to-exist people that they “kept” His word). Also, typical non-Christians get nervous when they think I am trying to alter truth or something. In actual fact, I am merely suggesting that the observation process take place first. Once that is established, then we can move on to interpretation and then to application. So, I am not in any way suggesting that, just because we have narrowed this passage to a then-specific narrative, we cannot therefore derive any take-away truth and application for ourselves in today’s world. It just that our application will be to derive the general concept of the truth that the passage conveys – as opposed to the truth that the specific action conveys, that may not directly apply to us. IOW we cannot follow the physical, earthly Jesus today, so we need to be careful to not inject ourselves into a narrative that is dealing with following a physical,earthly Jesus. My issue is that we do the observation first and then make application after. Most people seem to jump to application pre-maturely. It is great that you are sticking with the text with your line of questioning!