To Whom shall we go!

“Then said Jesus unto the twelve, Will ye also go away? Then Simon Peter answered him, Lord to whom shall we go, thou hast the words of eternal life. And we believe and are sure that thou art that Christ, the Son of the living God.” John 6: 67-69

I awoke several mornings ago with this verse in my mind. I had been reading Galatians when I went to bed but here is where my thoughts were when I woke. It is a comforting verse, one being that I don’t desire to go elsewhere, Christ alone has the words of eternal life and I believe and I am sure that He is the Christ, the Son of the living God. Christ told His disciples that no man could come to Him except it be given unto him of the Father and that statement caused many to go back and walk with Him no more. You see, it cuts to the heart of the issue of man and his desire to come to God on his own terms and to bring to God something, anything of his own, especially his own righteousness. They were offended at the words of Christ and so literally ‘they returned to the things behind’; their old ways, their old teachers, the Pharisees, the law and their own righteousness.

Those who turned back from the truth were not sheep; they did not hear His voice. There are sheep and there are goats, God alone has made that determination, and the determination is that only His sheep will hear His voice, come to Him and believe Him. He is sovereign over the souls of men. Those who believe in the free will of man, of course, think that they can decide themselves, exalting man over God. No one can place themselves in union with Christ as that was accomplished before the foundation of the world by God Himself. Ephesians 1:4 

He chose a people before the world began, before the world was created, a people who were to be redeemed by the precious blood of His Son, Jesus Christ in time. His people have always been sheep; we weren’t goats that became sheep, for a sheep is a sheep is a sheep. We may have walked like goats for a time and talked like goats for a time, we lived in sin & unbelief until regeneration and conversion but we were lost sheep and now we are found and we are found in Christ, not having a righteousness of our own but having His righteousness. (Philippians 3:9)

We were never hated by God for we have been loved with an everlasting love. 

“The LORD hath appeared of old unto me, saying, Yea, I have loved thee with an everlasting love: therefore with lovingkindness have I drawn thee. Jeremiah 31:3

It is precisely because of His everlasting love and the evidence of it that He draws us unto Christ in all His fullness. At the appointed time for each of us He comes and by the power of the Holy Spirit imparts to us new life in Christ. We are regenerated, converted, given faith and repentance in the new man and the knowledge of Grace, Christ’s perfect merit that has been imputed to us. This love has always been and will always be and nothing can separate us from it. And so we do, we come, not in our own power but in the power of God alone. 

To whom shall we go……………..to thee only O Lord, for you have the words of eternal life!