Who Chooses Who?

"We have believed and have come to know that You are the Holy One of God." Jesus answered them, "Did I Myself not choose you,...?" (John 6:69-70)

There is something in these verses that highlights a very subtle problem that afflicts most Christians. We find it very easy to have a mindset that we have to work hard at being a Christian, that we must please God, that we must do what is right, that we must be diligent to eliminate all sin out of our lives by refining and perfecting our behavior. We are prone to look to rules, to commands, to traditions, to church expectations to keep us in line so that we can present the appearance of being a good person. And just ask about anyone you meet as to the requirements for getting into heaven and most people, if they are really honest, will include the idea of being good enough.

When we invite people to accept Jesus as their Savior, and many Christians phrase this by saying one should “get saved”, the idea is that we have to enter into belief in such a way as to impress God with the authenticity of our belief so that He will then forgive us and do something to our records in heaven so that we can then live in heaven after we die. Nearly all of our theology revolves around what we think it takes to get saved, which in most people's thinking means being guaranteed a place in paradise.

But notice something about nearly everything we talk about in religion. Isn't our focus almost exclusively centered around having ourselves saved from some dire alternative? Many Christians think that the alternative to escape is suffering the terrible torture of an angry God who is hell-bent on making rejectors of His grace regret for all eternity that they didn't agree with Him or keep His rules well enough. But whatever your beliefs about hell may be, it is still the case that nearly all religion focuses on what we have to do to get right with God and there is almost no consideration given at all to the controversy going on involving God's reputation in this universe.

Jesus here had just stated more than once that some of His disciples did not believe even though they had plenty of evidence to do so. This whole discussion revolved directly around the issue of belief and Peter had not missed that point. When Jesus mentioned that some of them did not believe in spite of everything He was doing to encourage belief, Peter and probably some of the others began to feel that Jesus maybe was beginning to doubt their loyalty to Him. Their positions in the coming kingdom they were sure He was going to set up were possibly in jeopardy and they felt compelled to assure Jesus that they intended to stick with Him even though others were too offended to stay around. “Though all forsake thee, still I will follow” was their theme song for the moment.

But this mindset has a very subtle danger to it that Jesus did not want them to entertain; for to believe that salvation is primarily dependent on our initiative and our belief rather than seeing the initiative of God is to embrace one of Satan's counterfeit concepts of religion. If we think that our salvation is dependent on us believing hard enough rather than recognizing the great passion of God in pursuing us at all cost to Himself, then we leave place in our relationship with God for pride to come in that will inevitably contaminate that relationship.

Jesus immediately addressed this misconception in Peter's statement by correcting him and asserting the truth of their relationship. It is a truth that is very easy to overlook, but to do so will produce very debilitating consequences. Later on Jesus reasserted this truth even more clearly as He talked with His disciples just before His death.

You did not choose Me but I chose you, and appointed you that you would go and bear fruit, and that your fruit would remain, so that whatever you ask of the Father in My name He may give to you. (John 15:16)

Why is it so important that we come to really embrace this truth about God choosing us and see the fallacy of thinking that our faith is what saves us?

It would take too much time to explain this in full, but nevertheless it is vitally important that we become aware of the dangers of thinking that we are somehow co-authors of our remedy and rescue from sin. We in no way can contribute to our salvation; all we can do is to respond and accept and embrace the truth about God that Jesus came to reveal, for that is the real 'good news' that constitutes the gospel. As soon as we begin to entertain any notions that we somehow are contributing to God's arrangement to save us we seriously obscure the real issues being contended in the great cosmic war we find ourselves in.

Contrary to popular opinion and religious assumptions, we are not the primary focus of the war between good and evil. Getting us into heaven is not the critical issue in this war though God makes our restoration very high on His agenda. There are far greater issues involved in this war that we fail to take into account much of the time and that too many Christians are completely ignorant of unfortunately. And until we begin to open our minds to the larger picture and begin to see God's true purposes in the plan of salvation that go far beyond our being saved in heaven, we are going to be very vulnerable to the ideas planted by the enemy that our works or even our self-generated faith somehow earns us credit with God to help us gain access into heaven.

Jesus made it explicitly clear that it was His choice to draw these men to Himself and offer to train and mentor them. It is true that they had to respond to His invitation and keep following Him, but in no way were they to begin slipping into the idea that this saving relationship was something they could contribute to in any substantive way. All they could do was to respond to the initiative of God and allow Him to transform their distorted ideas about God to the point where they could come to trust Him with their hearts.

I grew up with a great deal of confusion about this issue. I still find myself, like so many others, feeling like there is something I must do to be saved. Others asked Jesus that same question because this is such a universal misunderstanding. We have been led to believe that there is something we have to do to help earn our salvation. This issue is sometimes quite blatant but many times it is so subtle we don't even realize we are thinking it. But the righteousness that Jesus offers us has not one thread of our own devising in it. And while it is vital that we must have on that robe before we can be allowed into the presence of God safely, we can do nothing to help construct it, not even in the act of believing itself.

It has taken me many years to begin to really grasp this vital truth and even yet I come under frequent conviction of various ways I might be subconsciously trying to earn credit points with God. But God does not offer us salvation based on anything at all we do, not even the level of faith we may be able to muster up. And part of the reason for this can only be seen when we begin to understand the bigger issues involved in the war between Christ and Satan. The bottom line in this controversy is not how good or bad or worthy or worthless we are but how trustworthy and good God is. And while we easily say that, of course God is righteous and good and worthy of trust, when it comes to our everyday existence and the pressures of life cause us to question how much He is ready to take care of us, the real beliefs of the heart begin to emerge and we are then faced with whether we are going to follow Him still or whether we are just going to keep up religious appearances while failing to believe the real truth about God as revealed in Jesus Christ and in the Word of God.

I want my own heart to grasp much more deeply the truth about Jesus choosing me rather than basing my experience on any supposed value of my choice to follow Him. I sense that if God allowed me to remain under the allusion that it is my determination to follow Him that counts the most, then when the pressure becomes strong enough for me to lose that determination and I see that it will not prove sufficient, I would crash and burn and become totally despondent. But when I realize that it is God's choice to draw me into close relationship with Him alone that is the strength of our relationship and all I have to do is simply keep responding to that drawing, then even if I crash and burn spiritually, God's choice to draw me still remains and I simply have to trust His heart to not condemn me but to use those experiences to grow me up and come even closer to Him.

Belief and Betrayal

"But there are some of you who do not believe." For Jesus knew from the beginning who they were who did not believe, and who it was that would betray Him.

"We have believed and have come to know that You are the Holy One of God." Jesus answered them, "Did I Myself not choose you, the twelve, and yet one of you is a devil?" (John 6:64, 69-70)

I see an underlying pattern in this passage that emerges as a warning for me, one who calls himself a disciple of Jesus. When Jesus said to His listeners that some of them did not believe, His own disciples, the twelve that followed Him most closely began to feel threatened. The biggest thing on their agenda the whole time they walked with Jesus up to the time of His death was the ongoing issue about which of them was the most loyal disciple. The record shows that repeatedly Jesus found them arguing about who was the greatest. It is easy for us to miss the real meaning of this phrase unless we grasp the context of what their perspective was and part of the reasons they followed Jesus.

It might be easy to think that when they argued about who was the greatest that they were talking about who had the most clout, who was closer to perfection than the others or who was the cleanest in terms of sin in their life. But this thinking has more to do with the filters that we have and misses the fact that these disciples primarily began following Jesus because in their minds He represented their best hope for relief from the hated Roman occupation that made their whole existence so miserable. Nothing else riveted the attention of the Jews more than the gall and bitterness and resentment that they felt everyday as the Romans exercised despotic control over every aspect of their lives. The Romans could get away with almost anything, any act of violence, cruelty, torture, injustice, even at a whim and with no seeming accountability. This enraged the Jews, as it was intended to do so, for the Romans fully subscribed to the satanic principle of dominance by intimidation and raw power.

As is always the case, the natural human response to intimidation and control through force and fear is a desire for a similar power to assert similar methods to overcome the forces of the enemy. Our natural reaction to abuse of power is a desire to abuse our abusers and get vengeance on our enemies by inflicting at least as much pain and suffering on them as they have caused us. This has always been the desire of victims and has infected the emotions and thoughts of humans all through the ages. The powerless long for power to overcome the power of those who dominate them.

Because of this natural desire for revenge (almost always termed as justice), those who suffer under abusive control of others are constantly looking for anyone who might come to their rescue, someone who will deliver them from the power of their adversaries. The Bible and much of the literature of earth is filled with such language. We chaff under oppression and injustice and we long for someone to free us from all the pain we suffer as a result. But we also usually have a deep desire to return the abuse, at least to some extent, on those who seem to have gotten away with such activity without suffering like those they have exploited for so long. The desire to get even, to get revenge on those who have hurt us is almost basic to the human existence.

Those living under intense oppression and the constant threat of pain and even death are the most keen to look for a deliverer, a savior who will come to champion their cause and save them from their predicaments and weakness. The Jews in the days of Jesus were under just such a circumstance and they were desperate to have a mighty Messiah, a superhero sent from the supernatural who would come to wreak vengeance on their enemies and restore their nation to the glory days of Solomon. They promoted this view through their interpretations of the prophecies of the coming Messiah in the Old Testament writings but they ran every passage through their filters of what they longed for this Messiah to do for them.

Of course, whenever we allow our current passions and desires and circumstances to become the primary context through which we view God's words to us, it is extremely likely that we will misunderstand and maybe miss altogether the real intent and meaning of those words. In our fixation to make everything God says fit our preconceived desires and opinions, we fail to see the much larger picture of the real war taking place of which our circumstances are only a microcosm. When we fail to take into account the challenge against God's government and the wild accusations against His character that is at the center of the real war, we then take God's statements of how He is going to overcome the false charges against Himself and twist them to mean things completely out of context and primarily for our own benefit.

This is where almost all the Jews of Jesus day were in terms of their thinking about the coming Messiah that was to show up. And it is not much different than similar misconceptions about prophecies for our day. The disciples of Jesus had decided that they were going to cast their vote with Jesus as the clear winner when it came to deciding on who was to be the true Messiah for the Jews. They were expecting one to show up around that time for the prophecies had indicated such. In addition many people had been claiming to be the Messiah already and had garnered followers to join them in rebelling against the Romans. But this man seemed to have much more promise than any other that had come along and these twelve men decided that they were going to bank everything on this being the right pick.

Given that context and mindset, it was vitally important that they be seen as fiercely loyal to their choice of who was the right Messiah. Loyalty was crucial, at least in their thinking, and they assumed that it would be the chief factor in deciding who would have the greatest positions of power and influence in the new government that was surely going to emerge from this Messiah's activities. They were confident that sooner or later Jesus would set up His kingdom on earth and exalt the Jewish nation to supreme power over all the other nations just as their religious leaders had taught them to believe. So the sooner one could attach one's self to this successful leader and establish their strategic position of loyalty in His mind, the more likely it would be that they would be selected to hold the highest offices of authority in His new government.

So when Jesus stated to His disciples that He knew there were some of them who did not believe, their minds suddenly set off intense alarm bells and they felt very threatened that maybe He was doubting their loyalty to Him. If He was saying that He doubted their loyalty, that He was thinking they didn't believe He was the right Messiah they were pinning all their hopes on, then their future positions in His kingdom would be in serious jeopardy and this is what likely frightened them the most.

All of Jesus' disciples were confused by the strange words He was speaking that day and likely all of them found these words at least somewhat offensive; Jesus even pointed that out when He asked if His words caused them to stumble. Yes, they had found themselves grumbling, if not outwardly then at least they had been thinking about it. But when many of His followers that day were so offended that they walked away and refused to trust in Him anymore because His descriptions of the kingdom too out of harmony with their established beliefs, His immediate disciples began to get nervous that their strategic relationship might be threatened when Jesus said that there were some among them who did not believe. He even asked them if they were thinking about leaving Him like so many others were doing.

In this seeming inference by Jesus implying doubt about their loyalty to Him and their fears that this would in turn threaten their hoped-for place in His coming kingdom, the twelve disciples may have begun scrambling for some way to counter the doubts they thought might be in the mind of Jesus about their loyalty. Peter, ever the one who had to speak first to defend himself, immediately responded by trying to assure Jesus that they fully intended to remain loyal to Him even though they were very puzzled by His strange words at times. But it seems that they were far more intent on convincing Jesus that they were still fiercely loyal to Him than they were on seeking to better understand the deeper meaning of the words He was saying to them. They wanted Jesus to know that He could trust them to stick with Him all the way to His glorious kingdom announcement even though they were certain there would be tough times before then.

Unfortunately, Peter inadvertently expressed to some extent the very spirit that would undermine their ability to remain fully loyal to Jesus. They were missing most of what Jesus was trying to convey to them about the much greater issues at stake in the controversy He had come to earth to win against His great accuser. All that Peter and his companions could think about was their desire to be delivered from their political problems while Jesus was intent on delivering people from their sins and vindicating the reputation of His Father. Peter was actually expressing to some extent an attitude of pride. He was stating that this select group could be counted on to believe in Jesus even if everyone else turned away from Him. Like the Israelites at Mount Sinai who quickly exclaimed, “All that You have said we will do”, Peter exclaimed, “We have believed and have come to know that You are the Holy One of God.” In essence he was protesting that Jesus didn't really understand them and that they could be trusted.

Jesus knew full well that Peter and the others had little clue as to what His words really meant or even their own assurances. But Jesus came to work with who He had and did not expose their true condition of confusion and mistaken notions about the Messiah. Instead, He chose to address the deeper problem that would cause them the most harm if left unchecked. He chose to speak words that could check the pride that filled the hearts of His disciples by sharing with them that He already knew that at least one of them would betray Him.

This knowledge would serve as a permanent caution to them to question their own hearts and lead them to self-examination of their motives. By not telling them who it was who would betray Him, He allowed the lingering question to always be present in hopes that they would each apply it to themselves and examine their own motives each time the issue arose. But unfortunately they often used this statement as a means of looking for faults and weaknesses in the others and seeking to compare themselves with each other to prove their loyalty to Jesus. Instead of examining their own motives and seeking to know Jesus and His words more clearly, they often turned to fighting with each other as to who should be perceived by the majority as to who was the most loyal and who might be the traitor.

It must have been a constant source of sadness for Jesus to so often try to share stupendous truths with humans who were so obsessed with their own agendas that they missed most of what He was trying to share with them. But I suspect that little has changed in our day. How often do I read the words of Jesus or find myself in discussions with others when my own sense of self-defense rises up to justify my loyalty to Him instead of searching my own heart to see how I might be betraying Him. The very pride that causes me to react in defensiveness is the seed of betrayal itself. Unless I allow Jesus to show me those roots of bitterness, those false beliefs about His kingdom that skew my perceptions of His Word and of prophecy, I too will be in danger of missing the most important things that Jesus wants me to grasp.

One thing that I get out of this passage as a warning for me is that to not enter into the kind of real belief in Jesus that He desires for me, to allow His words to have their intended effect in my life, this unbelief sets me up to someday be liable to betray Him. It is unbelief, or rather believing insistently things that I want to believe rather than what God seeks to reveal to me in His Word – it is this condition of choosing my ideas rather than God's agenda that will lead me to someday betray what God really is all about. Do I put my needs and desires and opinions and beliefs ahead of humbling myself to perceive His thoughts and ways and issues? They are often radically different than what I have always thought most of the time. If I do so, I am bound to be exposed during a crisis someday and find myself on the wrong side of the fence, out of harmony with God's ways of doing things. Like the disciples who all fled and forsake Jesus when the chips were down, like Peter and Judas who both betrayed Jesus though in different ways, I am just as vulnerable to missing the main point of what Jesus is trying to teach me if I allow my own preconceived opinions and my pride to block what His Spirit seeks to reveal to me.

Jesus, open my eyes and my mind and my heart to believe the way You want me to believe. Cleanse me of pride and spiritual arrogance and lead me by Your Spirit in Your ways – for Your reputation's sake.