The Life I Want

Two sailboats slice through the waves of a vast sea. Both are seeking the shore. The crew of one vessel turns against the wind, thinking to find harbor in that direction. But, unknown to them, they are headed for a life-threatening storm, and their little craft will not survive. The crew of the other boat chooses to sail with the wind, and before long they see the lights along the shore. And in time they are warm and dry and safe at home.

That’s what we have here at the end of John, chapter 6. We have would-be disciples who turn back from following Jesus because they are not convinced that He can give them the life they want. And we have the Twelve—minus one, of course—who remain with the Lord because they ‘have believed, and have come to know’ that the life they want, the only real life there is, is to be found in Him.

The contrast places a choice before us. Will we sail against the wind? Will we go against the witness of the Spirit, who ‘blows where [He] wishes’ (John 3:8), or will we sail toward Jesus, our safe harbor and our home? Or, to put it in the words of our text, will we believe and come to know that Jesus alone has the words of eternal life?

Let’s say our heart is set on this latter course. We desire Jesus. We yearn for the life He gives. How will it become ours? Or, more precisely, how will we become His? And how will we know that the life we want—the life we truly want—is in Jesus?

The answer? It is all of grace. Peter says to Jesus in verses 68 and 69, ‘Lord…, You have the words of eternal life, and we have believed, and have come to know, that you are the Holy One of God.’ It is only in Jesus that we will find the life we truly want. But how did Peter know? And how will we know? According to what we read here in God’s Word, we will ‘come to know’ through the grace of the Triune God—Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

In John 6, the Spirit gets first mention. In verse 63, near the beginning of our passage, Jesus says, ‘It is the Spirit who gives life; the flesh is no help at all.’ You want life? The life you want is in Jesus, and you will ‘come to know’ that through the Spirit.

Not through ‘the flesh.’ It is ‘no help.’ And yet, that’s what the would-be disciples relied on. They were counting on human ability, on their own good judgment. They were trusting in their own sound reasoning. And look where it got them. They had chased Jesus all over the countryside. They had no doubt sensed something in Him for which their souls longed. But the clearer He got about who He was, where He had come from, and what He had come for, the fuzzier their thinking got. And they chose to sail against the wind.

You can see it happening in verses 60 and 61. ‘When many of his disciples heard it’—heard what? Heard the claims Jesus was making for Himself, that He is ‘the bread of life,’ that He has ‘come down from heaven,’ that the bread He will give for the life of the world is His flesh—when they heard this, ‘they said, “This is a hard saying; who can listen to it?” Who can listen to this stuff? ‘But Jesus, knowing in himself that his disciples were grumbling about this, said to them, “Do you take offense at this?”

We will take offense at this if we rely on the flesh, if we depend on our own unaided reason, our best judgment. If we rely on the flesh, we will place ourselves above Jesus, pass judgment on Him, and take offense at the claims He makes. Many do still to this day. Insist that Jesus is the only way to God, the only door to the sheepfold, the only One who has the words of eternal life, and people will take offense. “It is unreasonable,” they say. “It is unfair.” And they are thinking—they are relying on the flesh, on the purely human capacity to discern what is true and what is not. And they wind up placing themselves above Jesus.

But if we rely on the Spirit—if we sail with the wind—we will place ourselves below Jesus. Our Lord asks in verse 62, “What if you were to see the Son of Man ascending to where he was before?” Some would see that. The opening chapter of Acts recounts how the apostles—Peter and the rest—witnessed our Lord’s ascension. But what if the unbelieving world could see it? Would they then believe? No. They would rationalize it away because they rely on the flesh, on human ability. ‘It is the Spirit who gives life,’ Jesus says; ‘the flesh is no help at all.’ But when the Spirit breathes life into you, you grasp who Jesus is. You believe. You come to know. He is the Holy One of God. And you place yourself under Him.