Bible Studies

A DIVINE PARTNERSHIP

by Luella Campbell
01/20/14
Not For Sale
Author requests article critique

  Message Writer
  Hire Writer

Tweet

A DIVINE PARTNERSHIP

"At this the Jews there began to grumble about Him because He said, 'I am the bread that came down from heaven.' They said, 'Is this not Jesus the son of Joseph, whose father and mother we know? How can He now say, 'I came down from heaven?' '

"'Stop grumbling among yourselves,' Jesus answered. 'No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws them, and I will raise them up at the last day. It is written in the Prophets: "They shall all be taught by God." No one has seen the Father except the one who is from God; only He has seen the Father. Very truly I tell you, the one who believes has eternal life.'" John 6:41-47 (NIV).

The plot thickens!

Jesus' assertions were stirring up the same old antagonism that got the people of Nazareth going against Him. The people of Capernaum could also not get past what they believed to be His ancestry -- Joseph and Mary, the village couple from Nazareth. Here was a man, a flesh-and-blood man who stood before them making outrageous claims about Himself which were either dangerously blasphemous or true and they had to decide.

He held out the offer of eternal life and they had either to believe what He said or reject Him and His words. But that was not enough. If He were nothing but a deranged man or a liar, they had to get rid of Him because people were taking Him seriously and following Him because of the miracles He was doing, and they had no answer for that.

It was a tough choice for them to make. Were they to believe Him and risk the wrath of the religious leaders who had already made up their minds about Him, or were they to ignore His compelling works and words and reject Him as a phoney? What could they make of His claim, 'I came down from heaven'? If that were true, then He would be saying that He already existed with God before His entry into the world as a human being. That would make Him God. Exactly! But how could a man be God?

Then He spoke of the Father as though He knew Him; as though He worked with Him in partnership and unity and as though He shared His power and authority. But that was exactly it, and they could not fathom how this could be!

Slowly but surely Jesus was building a case for His identity as the Son of God. He had to demolish their misunderstanding and prejudice and get past their fixed ideas and expectations about the Messiah and bring them to a willingness to watch and listen and weigh up the evidence.

This was not about inviting them to join a cause. This was about convincing them that He was the Son of God. Only on that basis would they believe in Him and give themselves unreservedly to Him, follow Him and receive from Him a new life which would catapult them into a kingdom and under an authority that would utterly transform their lives.

Jesus was intimating that He had a partnership with God, whom He called His Father that was so close that they worked together in perfect unity. It was the Father who drew them fo the Son and it was the Son who would give them resurrection life. According their revered prophets, there would be a time when His people would be personally instructed by God. Was He telling them that the time was now; that He, Jesus was actually God and that He was teaching them the truth from God?

As the one who was sent from God, He had seen the Father; implying not so much God's visible image, for God is spirit, but seeing and understanding Him in the inner depths of His being because, according to John, He was with God from the beginning.

It is faith that opens the door to "sight", not the other way around. If they took Jesus' word seriously and put their trust in Him, they would have 20/20 vision in the realm of the useen which would propel them beyond struggle and mere existence into life where they would experience ever-increasing wholeness in the realm of God's perfection.