Prayer
Briefly prepare your heart in silence, and ask the Holy Spirit to awaken your sense of anticipation that God is about to speak to you through His Word. Then, before you read, I invite you to pray this prayer based on Psalm 23:3-4
Lord, as I approach Your Word today:
Guide me along the right paths
for Your name’s sake.
Then, even though I walk through the darkest valley,
I will fear no evil,
for You will be with me;
Your rod and staff will comfort me.
Amen.
Reading
If we needed confirmation that Jesus was speaking spiritually when He said, “The one who feeds on me will live because of me” (v.57), He gives it to us in verse 63-64:
63 ‘The Spirit gives life; the flesh counts for nothing. The words I have spoken to you – they are full of the Spirit and life. 64 Yet there are some of you who do not believe.’
Jesus had been inviting them (and He invites us) to trust Him enough to surrender to His Lordship and His life-giving ministry, and He had promised (in deeply symbolic terms in John 6) that if they would do this, then, after His resurrection and ascension, He would return to them to live within them by His Holy Spirit.
This teaching was so new and so confusing to them that many sincere disciples declared, ‘This is a hard teaching. Who can accept it?’ (v.60) The Greek word used there for “hard” is “skleros“. It does not mean “difficult to understand”, it means “difficult to accept”. They understood what Jesus was saying, but they were not sure they could accept it and surrender to it.
Today we also often struggle to surrender to the teaching of Jesus. It’s not that we can’t understand how He teaches us to live, it’s just that it is so out of step with the spirit of our age and the culture, norms and morality of the world around us. There is so much pressure to conform to the world and society and to “fit in” with the majority, that to follow Jesus in a way that sets us apart as different is “skleros” – hard to accept and surrender to.
But today, Jesus reminds us again that His Way is the Way to Life. His Spirit brings Life, and His words are full of the Spirit and Life. Submitting to Him, accepting His teaching, and following in His Way is the one and only way to the abundance of eternal life that He came to give us.
Like Simon Peter in v.68, we need to truly believe and accept that Jesus “has the words of eternal life”, and therefore to commit ourselves wholeheartedly to walking in His Way of Life-in-the-Spirit.
Contemplation
Please take time to ponder what Jesus has commanded us. Turn this declaration over and over in your mind. Keep it in mind throughout the day and live in step with Your King, Jesus.
As a disciple of Jesus Christ:
- I will accept Jesus’ teaching by faith and trust Him enough to follow Him on the Way of Life, no matter how different His Way seems to the world around me.
Lord Jesus, come to me, dwell in my heart by faith, and lead me in Your everlasting Way. Amen.
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