John 6:71

He spake of Judas Iscariot the son of Simon: for he it was that should betray him, being one of the twelve.

He spake of Judas Iscariot the son of Simon: for he it was that should betray him, being one of the twelve. These explanatory remarks constitute one of the many striking characteristics of this Gospel-as observed in the Introduction to it.

Remarks:

(1) We have seen how, in John 5:1, our Lord teaches the essential Unity of the Father and the Son, and yet the Distinction of the Persons, and the Relations of Each to the Other-both in Their own Nature and in the economy of Redemption. Let us now see how the same things are here taught under new aspects. The essential divinity of the Son is so obviously implied in the following statements, that without it they either are so many turgid nothings, or they are blasphemous assumptions: "I am the Bread of Life" - "The Bread which I will give is My flesh, which I will give for the life of the world." "If any man eat of this Bread, he shall live forever" - "He that cometh to Me shall never hunger, and he that believeth on Me shall never thirst" - "Except ye eat the flesh and drink the blood of the Son of man, ye have no life in you" - "Whoso eateth My flesh and drinketh My blood hath eternal life, and I will raise him up at the last day." That His death should be the world's life, and men believing on Him-or drawing from Him thereby the virtue of His death-should never hunger and never thirst, but have in them even now an eternal life, and be by Him raised up at the last day, is what no other man ever ventured to affirm of himself, and no creature could affirm without absurdity.

But Christ here affirms and reiterates it in every possible form. Nor, in doing so, does He go beyond what He taught to the woman of Samaria, what He taught afterward in the streets of Jerusalem, regarding the living water (; John 4:13; John 7:37), and what He taught in His great proclamation of Rest for the weary (Matthew 11:28). But while asserting these claims to what is essentially divine, how careful is our Lord, in those very statements, to intimate that His consecration, and mission from heaven to earth, to discharge these great functions for the world, was all of God, and that He is but the Father's voluntary Agent in every step of man's salvation: "The Son of man shall give unto you the meat that endureth to everlasting life, for Him hath God the Father sealed" - "My Father giveth you the true bread from heaven" - "This is the Father's will which hath sent Me, that of all which He hath given Me I should lose nothing, but should raise it up again at the last day" - "Every man that hath heard and learned of the Father cometh unto Me." But this introduces a new and still more striking expression both of the proper divinity of the Son and of the ineffable harmony with which the Father and the Son cooperate in every step of man's salvation.

After representing it as the very work of God that men should believe in Him whom He had sent, He says, "No man can come to Me except the Father which hath sent Me draw him." What creature could possibly say either of these things-that the work of works which God demands from every man is to believe on him, and yet, that this cannot be done by any man without a special divine operation upon his heart? But the glory of Christ's proper divinity shines, if possible, yet brighter in such statements as these-that it is the express will of His Father, which He came down to do, that of all that which He had given Him He should lose nothing, and that everyone that beholdeth the Son and believeth on Him should have everlasting life, and He should raise him up at the last day. Who could possibly credit this of a creature? And what creature? And what creature, on the faith of it, would come to a creature to get eternal life? Even if he could hope thus to get it, how could he possibly be sure in coming to Him, that Christ would know that he had come, or would know when he came, so as not to cast him out? And what insufferable presumption would it be in any creature to say to any other creature, 'If you come to me for eternal life, I will not cast you out?' In short, He that can say without falsehood and without presumption to the whole world-`If any man come to Me, I will give unto him eternal life, and him that cometh I will in no wise cast out, since all that the Father hath given Me shall come to Me; I have gotten charge from Him accordingly to receive them, to lose nothing and none of them, but to give them even now eternal life, and to raise every one of them up at the last day'-He must be essentially and properly divine, personally distinct from, yet in absolute harmony with the Father about the matter of man's salvation in general, and every individual's salvation in particular; nor will, nor can any soul, on the faith of such words, come to Jesus and surrender itself into His hands for salvation accordingly, unless in the perfect assurance, that He knows the fact of his doing so-knows when he does it-knows "that He is able to keep that which He has committed unto Him against that day" (see the note at ).

(2) See here the double view of faith ever presented in Scripture-as at once a duty comprehensive of all other duties, and a grace, of special divine communication. It is the duty of duties; because "This is the work of God, that ye believe in Him whom He hath sent:" and it is a grace comprehensive of every other; for though "him that cometh to Me I will in no wise cast out," yet "no man can come to Me except the Father which hath sent Me draw him" - "Every man that hath heard and hath learned of the Father cometh unto Me" - "Therefore said I unto you, that no man can come to Me except it were given unto Him of My Father." Pity that, in the attempts to reconcile these, so much vain and unsavoury controversy has been spent, and that one of them is so often sacrificed to the other; because then they are not what Jesus says they are, but rather a caricature of them. The link of connection between divine and human operation will probably never be reached on earth-if even in heaven. Let us, then, implicitly receive and reverentially hold both; remembering, however, that the divine in this case ever precedes, and is the cause of, the human-the "drawing" on God's part of the "coming" on ours; while yet our coming is as purely spontaneous, and the result of rational considerations presenting themselves to our minds, as if there were no supernatural operation in the matter at all.

(3) What bright marks of truth does the concluding scene of this chapter exhibit! The last thing that would occur to any biographer of a mythical Christ-or even filling up from his own fancy a few meager fragments of real history-would be the entrance of doubts into the innermost circle of those who believed in Him. Or, if even that be conceivable, who would ever have managed such a thought as it is here? The question, "Will ye also go away?" is not more the affecting language of wounded feeling-springing from conscious desert of other treatment-than is the reply of Peter the expression of a state of mind too profoundly natural and pregnant ever to have been conceived if it had not been actually uttered. And the answer to this again-to the effect that what Peter expressed would be all that could be desired if it were the mind and feeling of them all; but that, so far from this, out of only twelve men whom He had chosen one would be found a devil-this has such originality stamped upon it as secures its own reception, as true history, by every intelligent and guileless reader.

(4) There are seasons when one's faith is tried to the utmost, particularly by speculative difficulties; the spiritual eye then swims, and all truth seems ready to depart from us. At such seasons, a clear perception, like that of Peter here, that to abandon the faith of Christ is to face blank desolation, ruin, and death; and, on recoiling from this, to be able to fall back, not merely on first principles and immovable foundations, but on personal experience of a Living Lord, in whom all truth is wrapt up and made flesh for us-this is a relief unspeakable. Under that blessed Wing taking shelter, until we are again fit to grapple with the questions that have staggered us, we at length either find our way through them, or attain to a calm satisfaction on the discovery that they lie beyond the limits of present apprehension.

(5) The narrowness of the circle of those who rally around the truth, and the unpopularity of their profession, are no security that all of them are true-hearted; for one even of the Twelve was a devil. And the length of time during which Judas remained within the innermost circle of Christ's followers, without discovering to his brethren his real character, or probably being aware of it himself, and the fact that when it did come out, it was drawn forth, as appears, quite casually, and then was matured with such frightful rapidity-do not these things cry aloud to all who name the name of Christ, "Rejoice with trembling!" "Let him that thinketh he standeth, take heed lest he fall"! "Watch and pray, that ye enter not into temptation"!