“Will you also go away?”

A lesson for those who would abandon Christ because they don’t understand everything…

John 6:59-71

• The “bread of life” teaching was hard for many to understand when Jesus gave it; and it has continued to be a stumbling block for would-be Christians ever since. Witness the plethora of those who have twisted it into the dogma of transubstantiation and opine that one cannot be saved without consuming their authorized wafers. Remember that Jesus gave us the key to understanding his metaphor in John 6:35, and that coming to him in faith is the eating and drinking that requires.
• If we fail to comprehend this truth, we are no better than his murmuring disciples and unlikely to understand his ascension back to heaven, much less the incarnation by which he came to earth (note that those who confusedly advance transubstantiation are the same ones who exalt Mary to a position of almost, if not in fact, deity—proving that misunderstanding the teaching of John 6 is a symptom of much greater misunderstanding).
• Not fleshly eating is intended; the teaching is spiritual.
• He repeats that “No man can come unto me except it were given unto him of my Father” (v. 65). Are you surprised to learn that those who misunderstand “the bread of life” also deny man’s ability to come to God at any time they will?
• From that time, many previous disciples walked no more with him (v. 66). Do you believe they stopped being religious? Let me suggest that they went on in their own religious imaginations, picking and choosing as they would, mixing truth and error in their vain attempts to please God.
• Would the 12 apostles leave Christ, too? Peter answers well, “Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life” (v. 68).
• Belief with certainty in the Messianic deity of Christ kept them.
• Except Judas, of course.

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