Cheryl Schatz

Peter, you said: So, if “driving away” can be said to a physical, earthly rejection of anyone who would try to follow him – with wrong motivation, it takes on a different nuance than does the judgement day scene in Matthew 7. I am not a Greek scholar, so perhaps you can answer (and help me understand) whether or not the use of the aorist tense allows for a reading of a time-based understanding of a judgement day future “driving away” – which comports with the present day action of people coming to him…” The problem you have here is that the unbelieving crowd’s leaving is not ever connected to Jesus “driving” them away. Instead, Jesus connects it solely to unbelief. Their unbelief. Jesus is not the cause of their unbelief and Jesus already said in chapter 5 that people CANNOT believe Him if they do not believe the words of Moses. You said: I see this passage as primarily being about discipleship – and not a salvific passage. That is not to say that salvation doesn’t factor in – just that He is mainly dealing with people who want to follow Him for the wrong reason. Not sure if that helps… I think you may have missed a part of the passage because it is a passage that is used by Calvinists as their proof text. But don’t let that stop you from seeing salvation here. John 6:40. John 6:40 “For this is the will of My Father, that everyone who beholds the Son and believes in Him will have eternal life, and I Myself will raise him up on the last day.” This is the will of the Father. Everyone who “beholds” the Son and “believes” in Him will have eternal life. Don’t think that “beholds” is only for the time that Jesus was on the earth. The term rendered as “beholds” means to perceive, observe. It is a term that Jesus attaches to the act of “knowing” and intimate knowledge and relationship. John 14:17 17 that is the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it does not see Him or know Him, but you know Him because He abides with you and will be in you. We could interpret John 6:40 as everyone who knows the Son and believes in Him will have eternal life. We know Jesus by seeing the testimony of Him in the Word. We learn from the Father by the Word and when we trust Jesus we have eternal life. The people of that day did not “see” the Holy Spirit physically, but they did “see” Him because they knew Him and He lived in them. You wrote: 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). I agree with you! The ones that the Father GAVE (past tense) to Jesus were the disciples that walked with Him. They are identified as the group given to Him when John speaks about the fulfillment of Jesus’ words when John has given the events of Jesus arrested in the garden. Does any of this make sense to you?