MARTIN CAREY
Jesus has always been able to draw a crowd. When He fed more than 5000 by the Sea of Galilee, the excited crowds followed him everywhere. This was the kind of Messiah they had been waiting for.
“When the people saw the sign that he had done, they said, ‘This is indeed the Prophet who is to come into the world!’” (John 6:14).
They had seen the amazing signs He performed; they marveled at His authority, and now they wanted something more. They were right in thinking that He was the Prophet that Moses spoke of in Deuteronomy 18. They wanted to make Jesus into their kind of king. But Jesus knew what was in their hearts and would have none of it:
“Perceiving then that they were about to come and take him by force to make him king, Jesus withdrew again to the mountain by himself” (vs. 15).
The crowd pursued Jesus across the lake in boats the next day and surrounded Him. Jesus told them,
“Truly, truly, I say to you, you are seeking me, not because you saw signs, but because you ate your fill of the loaves” (vs. 26).
They needed to seek Him, not for physical bread, but for the eternal life He offered. But they pressed Him with more questions. “What must we do, to be doing the works of God?” Jesus answered, “This is the work of God, that you believe in him whom he has sent” (Jn. 6:29).
That wasn’t what they wanted to hear from their king. They wanted more bread and another sign from Him so they could believe in Him. He replied,
“I am the bread of life; whoever comes to me shall not hunger, and whoever believes in me shall never thirst. But I said to you that you have seen me and yet do not believe” (vs. 35-36).
Jesus knew that although many “believed” after seeing His miracles, their faith was not genuine. They wanted to follow this powerful person and make Him their king. He was not their kind of king, so He offers Himself as God’s gift of eternal life, and uses a shocking, offensive metaphor:
“Truly, truly, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you” (vs. 53).
When the crowd expresses shock and doubt, Jesus uses more graphic language that He knew would offend them. He also gives some wonderful promises to those who believe and follow Him:
“All that the Father gives me will come to me, and whoever comes to me I will never cast out” (vs. 37).
From that point on, many of those following Jesus turned away from Him (vs. 66). Their belief was not genuine saving faith in the person of Jesus. They wanted a different kind of Jesus. They were not His true disciples. Great crowds were impressed by His miracles, loved His displays of divine power, and were eager to receive more blessings. There were three groups that Jesus encountered: false disciples who did not profess belief, false disciples who made a pretense of faith, and thirdly, His true disciples. Jesus always knew who His true disciples were.
Along with the great truths and promises Jesus gives us here, there is also a warning. Those false believers and fake disciples are given as a caution for us. Instead of following a Jesus that we imagine from our desires, we need to test our faith against Jesus’ own words. We need to ask who Jesus’ true disciples are and how we know that we are among them.
You might find this disturbing or even discouraging. As Adventists, we struggled with a lack of confidence in our salvation and wondered if our faith was real, and whether we were actually making progress towards salvation. When we have those doubts and questions, we must press into His words. The gospel isn’t complicated, and there are real answers and real life there. Let’s look at the words of Jesus.
In John 8 another group came to Jesus with a certain kind of “belief.” He knew that many of them did not possess saving faith.
“So Jesus said to the Jews who had believed him, “If you abide in my word, you are truly my disciples, and you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free” (John 8:31-32).
True disciples abide in His word. What does that mean? First, we find liberating truth in His word. We don’t look to others who claim inspiration or more recent light for “present truth.” We have the most truth-filled words from an ever-present person, Jesus. And what does He mean by “my word?” From Jesus’ other sayings we see that His word is the totality of what He said. His words will “never pass away” (Matt. 24:35). He is the Father’s beloved Son, so we “listen to Him” (Luke 9:35). From His words were learn who He is, what He has done, and will do for us:
“I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep” (John 10:11).
“Whoever believes in the Son has eternal life” (John 3:36).
“My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me. I give them eternal life, and they will never perish, and no one will snatch them out of my hand” (John 10:27-28).
Notice that His sheep hear Him, believe in Him, and follow Him. He knows them, leads them, and gives them eternal life. Hearing Him means that they listen to, and abide in, His words. All His words point to Him, and are designed to build our faith in Him. His sheep are able to listen and follow Him because He has called them and keeps them safe from being lost or destroyed. That’s His promise to His sheep, His disciples.
What does Jesus mean by “abide in my word?” To abide is to live somewhere and remain there. Your abode is where you live, eat your daily food, get your daily rest, store your treasures, and find safety. Abiding in Jesus’ word gives all those things: spiritual food, rest, the best treasure, and safety from our worst fears. Trusting in Him as the Shepherd who gives us eternal life and keeps us with Him is the only real safety.
After many of the crowd abandoned Jesus, He asked the 12 disciples, “Do you want to go away as well?”Simon Peter answered him, “Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life” (John 6:67-68).
Who Are His Disciples?
So who are Jesus’ true disciples? They are ordinary people who live in and abide by His words. Unfortunately, this is where many of us have been confused by bad teaching on this topic. There is a legalistic kind of discipleship that many of us were taught as Adventists. This legalism is very subtle, such as we see in the book, Steps to Christ. Ellen White talks about gospel grace and trusting in Jesus, but then confuses God’s work with human effort and the human will. She states,
“The knowledge of your broken promises and forfeited pledges weakens your confidence in your own sincerity, and causes you to feel that God cannot accept you; but you need not despair. What you need to understand is the true force of the will. This is the governing power in the nature of man, the power of decision, or of choice. Everything depends on the right action of the will” (Steps to Christ, 47).
For Mrs. White, when we lack confidence in our sincerity and God’s acceptance of us, we need to focus on the power of our will.
For Mrs. White, when we lack confidence in our sincerity and God’s acceptance of us, we need to focus on the power of our will. “Everything depends on the right action of the will.” The “governing power” of the human will is a key element in understanding Ellen White’s theology of discipleship, and her entire theology of the great controversy. The force of the will becomes very important when, as White teaches, we must maintain our salvation by focusing on keeping the Ten Commandments. Law keeping is what keeps us safe and “saved” as one of Jesus’ sheep. Law-keeping as salvation-maintenance can be made to sound very pious and Biblical but is a most pernicious form of legalism. Legalism constructs a barrier to faith that discourages people from trusting in Jesus. As He said,
But woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you shut the kingdom of heaven in people’s faces. For you neither enter yourselves nor allow those who would enter to go in” Matthew 23:15,
When we trust the real Jesus of the gospel of His death and resurrection for the forgiveness of our sins, we are born again. We can see the kingdom of God and have eternal life, and that remains a fact that cannot be changed. We also accept Jesus as our Lord, and because we already have salvation in Him, we want to obey His commands. The commands of Jesus are to trust in and love Him, and to love one another. For a helpful study on what Jesus’ commands us to do, see Richard Fosters’ article, “What Does Jesus Command” (Source).
Our obedience flows from our having the Spirit dwelling within us and never leaving us. We love Jesus and each other because the Spirit opens our hearts to the truth that we have already crossed from death to life (John 5:24). We don’t “maintain” our salvation by law, or any human willing or doing. As Dale Ratzlaff has well stated,
“This obedience, as we stated at the beginning, is not meritorious: it does not ‘keep us saved.’ Rather, this obedience is how we experience spiritual growth and maturity. It is the result of having God’s spirit in us, not the cause of His indwelling.” (Source)
In Christ we have died to the law and are now married to another. Trying to keep our salvation by keeping the Law is spiritual adultery, an offense to God (Romans 7:3-4). When we trust in Jesus as both Savior and our Lord, we have eternal life, we have His Spirit to make us spiritually alive, and we have a new heart that want to live by the law of Christ (1Corinthians 9:21). We are his true and loving disciples from that point on. Discipleship and obedience to Christ comes from having confidence in eternal life that is kept for us in Christ. When you feel discouraged, flee to His words and make your home there. †
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We humans constantly need, and also cherish, these Wonderful Words of Life. Thank you !!