None of Them Lost

Jesus has just told the crowd that He’s the bread of life. Then He tells them the hard part. They’ve seen Him, and they still don’t believe (John 6:36).

That’s worth sitting with. They saw the loaves multiply. They crossed a lake to find Him. They heard Him speak. Sight wasn’t their problem. A man can stand a few feet from Christ and stay as dead as a stone, because unbelief isn’t a lack of evidence. It’s a heart that won’t bow (John 5:39-40) (Luke 16:31).

John 6:37 — Who comes

So who does come? Jesus answers without hedging. Everyone the Father gives Him will come to Him (John 6:37).

Notice the order. The giving comes first, and the coming follows. The Father doesn’t look down the years to see who’ll choose His Son and then give Him those men. He gives them, and so they come (Ephesians 1:4-5) (Romans 8:29-30). This is election, and it’s personal. It isn’t a nation or a category. It’s men with names, written down before the world was made (Revelation 13:8) (2 Timothy 1:9).

And the coming is sure. Jesus doesn’t say they might come or will probably come. God isn’t waiting on a man’s permission to save him. He gives the man to His Son, opens his eyes, and the man runs home (Acts 13:48, 16:14).

Then the promise turns to the one who comes. Whoever comes to Him, Jesus will never drive away. That’s the same truth from the other side. No man who comes to Christ will find the door shut. The one who comes was given, and the one who was given won’t be turned out (Matthew 11:28) (Isaiah 1:18).

John 6:38-39 — The Father’s will

Why can Jesus promise that? Because He didn’t come down from Heaven to do His own will. He came to do the will of the Father who sent Him (John 6:38). The Son and the Father aren’t working against each other. The Father chose, the Son came to redeem, and the Spirit gives new birth to the same men (Ephesians 1:3-14) (Titus 3:5-6). And the Father’s will is that the Son loses none that are given Him, and that He raises them all on the last day (John 6:39).

That’s the security of the believer, and it doesn’t rest on the believer’s grip. It rests on the Son’s obedience to His Father. If one of the given were lost, Jesus would have failed the Father’s will. He won’t. He’ll later tell the Father that He kept every one, and the only one lost was the one doomed to destruction, who was never His (John 17:12) (1 John 2:19). No one can snatch His sheep out of His hand or His Father’s (John 10:28-29).

John 6:40 — Look and live

Jesus says the Father’s will one more way. Everyone who looks to the Son and trusts Him has eternal life, and Jesus will raise him up on the last day (John 6:40).

This is the side a man sees from the ground. He doesn’t read the Father’s book first. He looks to Christ and believes. The bronze serpent was lifted up, and the bitten man who looked lived (Numbers 21:8-9) (John 3:14-15). Election is never a reason to stay away. It’s the reason the man who comes is welcome.

And notice the end of it. Eternal life starts now, but it doesn’t stop at the grave. Jesus says He’ll raise him up, body and all (1 Corinthians 15:20-23) (1 Thessalonians 4:16). The same hands that received him will open his tomb.