To whom shall we go? 

Image from Foundry @ pixabay


John 6:68-69 - Simon Peter answered him, "Lord to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life and we have believed and have come to know that you are the Holy One of God."

 

This response from Peter comes after Jesus calls himself the bread of life and told his listeners that they must feed off this bread to have eternal life. As a result, many turned back and no longer walked with him (verse 66). Jesus asks his disciples if they too want to leave and Simon Peter answers in the above way.

 The question is one we all must ponder in our lives, do we stay with Jesus or do we walk away         when his teachings gets tough and are not what we expected? Many have searched for other places and investigated other religions, but they don't find a living God who has sacrificed his life for us by giving up his body on the cross for our sins in those places. Jesus is the bread of life. 

All the major religions require work from their followers. Islam, Judaism, Hinduism and Buddhism all require us to do the work of atonement, but what makes us worthy of being able to atone for ourselves? These religions offer rules, escapism, other false hopes... Jesus is the only one that rose from the dead and is a living God who through His Spirit is alive and active today in us. In verse 63 Jesus says It is the Spirit that gives life. 

In today's verse Simon Peter explains that the disciples have believed and have come to know that Jesus is the Holy One of God. They have seen his miracles, they have lived with him and seen He is without sin. They trust in what they have seen. This is why it is important for us to remember what the Lord has done in our lives so in tough times we can remind ourselves of His love and power. 

But after this proclamation Jesus calls one of the twelve disciples a devil. He is referring to Judas Iscariot, the one who will go on to betray him. It is easy to paint Judas as the villain in the gospel story but what I have been thinking about lately is how does someone who lived with Jesus, who saw his miracles, experiences his love, who believed He was the Messiah (after all he left his former life to follow Jesus), go on to betray Him? It shows that Satan will go after even those who are closest to Jesus. If he went after Judas, it should serve as a warning to us that we need to pray for protection and be wary of Satan's attacks on us. Ephesians 6:12 clearly tells us that we wrestle against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places. We need to take this warning seriously and pray and be alert against attacks from evil forces. These attacks can be subtle, and we might not recognise them, but anywhere discord is we should pray, we should pray over our families and households, we should pray over our days and nights. We need to response to Simon Peter's question To whom shall we go with a clear answer, Jesus, He is the only place to go. 


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