Those The Father Has Given Me

Jesus replied, “I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never be hungry again. Whoever believes in me will never be thirsty. But you haven’t believed in me even though you have seen me. However, those the Father has given me will come to me, and I will never reject them.” John 6:35-37

“THOSE THE FATHER has given me will come to me.” As parents we can’t help but read this statement and wonder if our children fall into this blessed group. We want to know what we can do to make this happen. But we’re not really in this picture. We discover in this passage what God the Father has done, what our child must do, and what Jesus has promised to do. The Father has given, the sinner comes, and the Son receives.

Only God the Father can give our child to Jesus. He is sovereign over the work of our child’s salvation, and he will not let his ultimate purposes for anyone fail. He does not wait for his chosen ones to come to Jesus. If he did, they never would. He chooses them for his own, and he secures their coming. He draws them with his irresistible grace.

But our children must come. We simply can’t do it for them. They must take the Bread of Life offered to them in the person and work of Christ and eat. They must take the cup, believing that Jesus will satisfy the deepest part of them, and drink.

And what does Jesus do? He knows whom the Father has given to him, and he is watching with his arms outstretched for the first movement in the heart. And when they come to him, he keeps them. “I will never reject them,” he says. But really what he’s saying is stronger than that. It’s more like “I will never ever reject them” —not when he sees how weak our child’s faith is, not when our child is slow to change or grow, not when our child fails in some big way. When our child has been given by the Father and is being kept by the Son, he or she can never fall or be driven away.

Lord, your words shake us out of our self-reliant, self-determining, self-exalting, self-absorbed presumptions about what our reason, our wills, and our persuasion can do. We simply cannot provide the decisive impulse for ________ to come to Christ. Only you can give that. So we ask you to give it. Draw ________ to yourself in an unmistakable way. And help us to trust the path you take ________ on. Help us to trust your timing. Help us to trust your keeping power.