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John 6:43-47 - Aggressive Gentleness

  • Writer: Chad Werkhoven
    Chad Werkhoven
  • Sep 16
  • 4 min read

Your Father is aggressively and gently drawing you to Him.



John 6:43-47 (NIV)


CONTEXT: This is the fifth time this year that we've come to this theologically rich sixth chapter of John's gospel, which begins with Jesus miraculously feeding 5,000 men and ends with many of his disciples turning back and no longer following Him because His teaching is hard. The Jews had begun grumbling here because Jesus claimed to be the bread that came down from heaven...


43 “Stop grumbling among yourselves,” Jesus answered. 44 “No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws them, and I will raise them up at the last day. 45 It is written in the Prophets: ‘They will all be taught by God.’ Everyone who has heard the Father and learned from him comes to me. 46 No one has seen the Father except the one who is from God; only he has seen the Father. 47 Very truly I tell you, the one who believes has eternal life.

Canons of Dordt

Point 4 - Irresistible Grace


Article 16: Regeneration’s Effect


  1. However, 

    1. just as by the fall 

      1. humans did not cease to be human, 

      2. endowed with intellect and will, 

    2. and just as sin, which has spread through the whole human race, 

      1. did not abolish the nature of the human race 

      2. but distorted and spiritually killed it, 

    3. so also this divine grace of regeneration 

      1. does not act in people as if they were blocks and stones; 

      2. nor does it abolish the will and its properties or coerce a reluctant will by force, 

      3. but 

        1. spiritually revives, heals, reforms, 

        2. and—in a manner at once pleasing and powerful—bends it back.

  2. As a result, 

    1. a ready and sincere obedience of the Spirit now begins to prevail 

    2. where before the rebellion and resistance of the flesh were completely dominant. 

    3. In this the true and spiritual restoration and freedom of our will consists. 

      1. Thus, if the marvelous Maker of every good thing were not dealing with us, 

        1. we would have no hope of getting up from our fall by our own free choice, 

        2. by which we plunged ourselves into ruin when still standing upright.


Summary


Jesus teaches a key lesson here on how to handle difficult conversations. It obviously upset those listening to Him here when He claimed to be bread from heaven, and most people would get sucked into the grumbling (John borrows this word from Moses' depiction of the Israelites during the exodus) and attempt to argue their way out of it.


But Jesus isn't most people. He tells those listening to stuff it, and keeps control of the conversation. He keeps the discussion point to that which is critically important: the salvation not just offered by, but completely worked out from start to finish by our sovereign God and Father.


Jesus here, no doubt with a tinge of holy frustration in His voice as He talks to this obstinate bunch, uses a strong word to describe how our Father saves people. Jesus says that the Father draws them to Jesus so that He can raise them up at the last day. One lexicon defines the verb Jesus uses as "to pull or drag, requiring force because of the inertia of the object being dragged—‘to pull, to drag, to draw.’"


In other words, God's sovereignty in our salvation is aggressive! Commentator Robert Mounce describes it this way: "God brings men to Himself although by nature they prefer sin... No one is able to come to the Father unless the Father draws him or her... In his sacrificial death, Jesus will draw to himself people of every cultural, social, and ethnic background (12:32), but unless a specific person is drawn, that person cannot come to Christ."



  Dig Deeper  


At first glance, the Canons summary of the Bible's teaching here seems at odds with Jesus' aggressive language. Jesus describes His Father using the same brute force in saving people we might use to compel a stubborn Jersey cow into the milking parlor for the first time. But the Canons use much gentler terms.


The Canons explain that this divine grace of regeneration does not act in people as if they were blocks and stones; There's no coercion of a reluctant will by force. Rather, our Father, through the Holy Spirit, spiritually revives, heals, reforms, and—in a manner at once pleasing and powerful—bends our will back.


But of course the Canons are not at odds with the authoritative words of our Savior! Calvin explains, "those persons are drawn whose understandings God enlightens, and whose hearts he bends and forms to the obedience of Christ... As to the kind of drawing, it is not violent, so as to compel men by external force; but still it is a powerful impulse of the Holy Spirit, which makes men willing who formerly were unwilling and reluctant."


This is the tension we must understand God's sovereignty in. On the one hand, it's aggressive and even forceful; What God has ordained will be accomplished! But on the other, our Father draws His children in such a way that is gentle and loving, so that nobody is forced or compelled into the Kingdom. Rather, God's grace is made to be irresistible to those whose hearts and minds have been sovereignly regenerated.



  • ACKNOWLEDGE WHO GOD IS: Our Father, who draws His children to Him;

  • ALIGN YOUR LIFE WITH GOD'S WILL: Pray that you will not resist as your Father draws more and more of your life into conformity to His holiness;

  • ASK GOD FOR WHAT YOU NEED:

Read the New Testament in a year! Today: 1 Timothy 4

 
 
 

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