Chapter 2 - What Keeps Men from Christ? (8:16-22)

2 What Keeps Men from Christ? (8:16-22)

And when evening had come, they brought to Him many who were demon-possessed; and He cast out the spirits with a word, and healed all who were ill in order that what was spoken through Isaiah the prophet might be fulfilled, saying, “He Himself took our infirmities, and carried away our diseases.”

Now when Jesus saw a crowd around Him, He gave orders to depart to the other side. And a certain scribe came and said to Him, “Teacher, I will follow You wherever You go.” And Jesus said to him, “The foxes have holes, and the birds of the air have nests; but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay His head.” And another of the disciples said to Him, “Lord, permit me first to go and bury my father.” But Jesus said to him, “Follow Me; and allow the dead to bury their own dead.” (8:16-22)

After Jesus had healed the leper, the centurion’s slave boy, and Peter’s mother-in-law, Matthew reports that the crowd brought Him countless other people to be healed. Because these were brought to Him when evening had come, it is possible that the first three healings had been done on the Sabbath. Because of their religious leaders, many Jews were afraid to ask Jesus to heal on the Sabbath, and since it ended at sundown, they now felt free to bring many who were demon-possessed; and He cast out the spirits with a word, and healed all who were ill.

As He had done before (see 4:23-24) and many times afterward (see 14:14; Luke 5:17; 9:6; etc.), Jesus here performed mass healings, without regard to individual faith or circumstances. Whether the problem was spiritual, as with the demon-possessed, or physical, as with those who were ill, He healed all. He was giving evidence of His deity and messiahship, and everyone who came for healing was healed. As mentioned in the previous chapter, for all practical purposes Jesus banished sickness and disease from Palestine during the course of His earthly ministry.

Through His healing miracles Jesus participated in human pain and sorrow in that He Himself took our infirmities, and carried away our diseases. He participated first of all by sympathizing with man’s pain and sickness. Jesus knew men’s hearts and all of their inner feelings. He knew the agony, the bewilderment, the confusion, the despair, and the frustration that disease and sickness bring in addition to physical pain. Repeatedly the gospel writers tell of Jesus’ having compassion on those who came to hear Him teach and to experience His healing touch (Matt. 9:36; 15:32; Mark 1:41; Luke 10:33). Just as surely as then, He now knows the agonies of His children, “for we do not have a high priest who cannot sympathize with our weaknesses” (Heb. 4:15). It was not that Jesus carried away our diseases by contracting them, but by experiencing vicariously the pain they bring.

Second, Jesus took our infirmities, and carried away our diseases in the sense that He saw and felt the destructive power of their root cause, which is sin. Jesus did not weep over Lazarus’ tomb in remorse over the death of a dear friend, because He knew His friend would soon be raised from the dead. He wept because of the evil, sinful power that brought suffering and death to every man. He could not see the pain of sickness and death without feeling the pain of sin. Sin, sickness, and death are all inextricably tied to the curse. That is why Jesus asked rhetorically, “Which is easier, to say, ‘Your sins are forgiven,’ or to say, ‘Rise, and walk’?” (Matt. 9:5). Neither is easier or harder. The same cause is behind both sin and sickness, and only divine power can remove either.

Third, and most supremely, Jesus took our infirmities, and carried away our diseases in that His victorious redeeming work dealt with sin in such a devastating way that ultimately all sickness and disease will be carried away. The King was offering His kingdom and was previewing its marvelous and glorious elements, one of the most wonderful of which will be the removal of all illness and sorrow for all eternity.

Jesus healed because of His divine and loving compassion for those who were suffering and for their loved ones who suffered with them. He healed because He hated sickness and disease, which were never part of God’s plan for mankind and which came about because of sin. But He also healed in order to give a preview of His coming kingdom, in which there will be no more sin, no more death, no more sorrow, no more pain. Just as on the mount of transfiguration He pulled back the veil of His flesh and gave His three disciples a glimpse of His divine glory, through His vast healing miracles Jesus gave a vision of His glorious kingdom—when all disease and sickness would be banished, not in a small corner of the world or for a few brief years, but throughout the whole world and forever (see Rev. 21:1-4).

But before He established His earthly kingdom that would be free of suffering and death, the Messiah Himself would have to suffer and die to redeem men from sin. He would be “pierced through for our transgressions, . . . crushed for our iniquities; the chastening for our well-being [would fall] upon Him, and by His scourging we [would be] healed” (Isa. 53:5). And before He suffered and died He would give evidence of His divine power by bearing our griefs and carrying our sorrows (v. 4). It is that verse to which Matthew refers when he says that Jesus healed all who were ill in order that what was spoken through Isaiah the prophet might be fulfilled, saying, “He Himself took our infirmities, and carried away our diseases.”

Disease and death cannot be permanently removed until sin is permanently removed, and Jesus’ supreme work, therefore, was to conquer sin. In the atonement He dealt with sin, death, and sickness; and yet all three of those are still with us. When He died on the cross, Jesus bruised the head of Satan and broke the power of sin, and the person who trusts in the atoning work of Christ is immediately delivered from the penalty of sin and one day will be delivered from the very presence of sin and its consequences. The ultimate fulfillment of Christ’s redeeming work is yet future for believers (cf. Rom. 8:22-25; 13:11). Christ died for men’s sins, but Christians still fall into sin; He conquered death, but His followers still die; and He overcame pain and sickness, but His people still suffer and become ill. There is physical healing in the atonement, just as there is total deliverance from sin and death in the atonement; but we still await the fulfillment of that deliverance in the day when the Lord brings the end of suffering, sin, and death.

Those who claim that Christians should never be sick because there is healing in the atonement should also claim that Christians should never die, because Jesus also conquered death in the atonement. The central message of the gospel is deliverance from sin. It is the good news about forgiveness, not health. Christ was made sin, not disease, and He died on the cross for our sin, not our sickness. As Peter makes clear, Christ’s wounds heal us from sin, not from disease. “He Himself bore our sins in His body on the cross, that we might die to sin and live to righteousness” (1 Pet. 2:24).

In some ways it is hard to understand why any person would fail to accept Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior after even once hearing Him speak or after seeing even one miracle of healing. It is still harder to understand why people continued to reject the incomparable, gracious, loving Son of God after hearing Him preach many times and seeing Him heal dozens, or perhaps hundreds, of people of every sort of affliction. It seems totally incredible, however, that God’s own chosen people—who were given His covenant, His law, His prophets, and His many special blessings - would reject the Son of their own God, the Messiah their own Scriptures prophesied, the very Deliverer whom they claimed to look and long for.

Yet as one studies the gospel accounts, that was exactly the response of most of the Jews. Their unbelief and rejection flew in the face of everything Christ said and did in their very midst. The proofs of His divinity, His power, and His goodness were obvious and beyond contradiction. Yet, as the evidence increased, so did resistance and rejection. At the beginning of his gospel, John prepares us for that response, telling us that “He came to His own, and those who were His own did not receive Him” John 1:11). From the beginning Jesus knew that rejection would exceed acceptance, and He said to those who sought to kill Him, “You do not have His word abiding in you, for you do not believe Him whom He sent. You search the Scriptures, because you think that in them you have eternal life; and it is these that bear witness of Me; and you are unwilling to come to Me, that you may have life” (John 5:38-40). Like the rebellious citizens in one of Jesus’ parables about the kingdom, those who rejected Christ said, in effect, “We do not want this man to reign over us” (Luke 19:14).

Those who rejected Jesus Christ even after witnessing His miracles were like a judge or jury who, after hearing an open and shut court case, makes a decision that is the exact opposite of what the evidence calls for. Jesus’ authority was evident, as the people recognized from the beginning of His ministry (Matt. 7:29). His teaching was unique, as the officers reported to the chief priests and Pharisees who had sent them to arrest Jesus. “Never did a man speak the way this man speaks,” they said (John 7:46). To the unbelieving Jewish leaders who questioned him about his healing by Jesus, the former blind man said, “Well, here is an amazing thing, that you do not know where He is from, and yet He opened my eyes. . . . Since the beginning of time it has never been heard that anyone opened the eyes of a person born blind. If this man were not from God, He could do nothing” (John 9:30, 32-33). When representatives from the Pharisees and the Herodians tried to entrap Jesus with a question about paying taxes to Caesar, He answered, “Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s; and to God the things that are God’s.” His answer was so astute that His questioners “marveled, and leaving Him, they went away” (Matt. 22:21-22). The Jews were amazed at His teaching in the Temple, saying, “How has this man become learned, having never been educated?” (John 7:15). Although many accusations were leveled against Jesus, no one could convict Him of falsehood or any other sin (John 8:46). When Jesus healed the paralytic, the multitude was “filled with awe” (Matt. 9:8), and after He cast out a demon they said, “Nothing like this was ever seen in Israel” (v. 33). When Jesus wept over the grave of Lazarus, the Jews said, “Behold how He loved him!” (John 11:36). Jesus’ composure was also beyond the human. When He stood before Pilate, who had the power to release Him or order Him crucified, Jesus would not give a single word in His own defense, “so that the governor was amazed” (Matt. 27:14).

Everything about Jesus was astounding, marvelous, and humanly unexplainable. It is no wonder that, when the people marveled at Him but would not accept Him, Jesus would Himself marvel at their unbelief (Mark 6:6). How can people witness God’s power over and over again, admit that it is marvelous and even divine, and yet refuse to accept and follow the One who does such wonderful things?

Jesus Himself explained that some people run from the truth because it exposes their sin, which they do not want to give up. “The light is come into the world, and men loved the darkness rather than the light; for their deeds were evil. For everyone who does evil hates the light, and does not come to the light, lest his deeds should be exposed” (John 3:19-20). Others are attracted to Jesus’ charisma and power. They marvel at the wonderful things He says and does, but they take nothing to heart. They follow Jesus from a distance, wanting to be thrilled but not changed, entertained but not saved. Often they are willing to be identified as a follower of Jesus Christ, but their commitment is superficial and they have no staying power.

In 9:18-22 Matthew shows us two of the things that often keep such people from genuine conversion: personal comfort and personal riches.

THE BARRIER OF PERSONAL COMFORT

Jesus and His disciples were on the western shore of the Sea of Galilee, and the crowd became so massive that He gave orders to depart to the other side. Though He was completely God, Jesus was also completely human. He needed occasional rest and respite from the never-ending demands of those who came to Him for help.

When Jesus decided to cross the lake, the issue of commitment was pressed for several men who apparently were reevaluating their relationship to Him. From Mark we learn that some of the crowd got into other boats in order to go across the lake with Jesus (4:36), but three men (a third is mentioned in Luke 9) obviously did not want to leave and they approached Jesus just before He departed.

The first man was a certain scribe, who said to Him, “Teacher, I will follow You wherever You go.” Since he did not ask Jesus a question or a favor, we can only guess at the man’s motive for making that statement to Jesus. As a scribe he would have broken with the majority of his fellow scribes had he become a dedicated disciple of Jesus. He knew such a decision would be costly, and perhaps he wanted to see how Jesus reacted to his declaration of allegiance.

The scribes were authorities in Jewish law, and were closely associated with the Pharisees. They were highly educated and were the scholarly class of Jewish society. They were fiercely loyal to the system of religious traditions that many of their forerunners had been instrumental in devising. Typically the scribes were teachers, not followers of teachers, and they were especially reluctant to follow a teacher such as Christ, who not only was not educated in a rabbinic school but actually denounced the traditions they held sacrosanct.

For a scribe to address Jesus as didaskalos (Teacher) was therefore a considerable concession in itself, and no doubt the crowd, as well as the inner circle of the twelve disciples, were impressed that the Lord was spoken to so favorably by one of the Jewish leaders. In his own mind the man no doubt believed what he said to Jesus was true, just as Peter was later convinced in his own mind that he would never forsake Jesus (Matt. 26:33, 35). But neither man knew himself as well as he thought. The scribe may have sincerely thought that Jesus was the greatest Teacher he had ever heard and the greatest miracle worker the world had ever seen. He probably sincerely recognized that Jesus’ teaching and power were from God and that He was in some uniquely special way God’s man for the hour. He found Jesus appealing and wanted to be associated with Him. I will follow You wherever You go, he said to Jesus.

Unlike many Christian churches and organizations today, who are eager to embrace any famous personality who makes a profession of Christ, Jesus knew that a strong profession does not necessarily reflect strong commitment. Even without knowing men’s hearts as He did, Christians today can benefit from taking that truth into account.

Jesus responded to the scribe’s statement by making a statement of His own. He did not verbally question the man’s sincerity but simply mentioned some demands of true discipleship the man had never considered. Jesus said to him, “The foxes have holes, and the birds of the air have nests; but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay His head.” At first glance Jesus’ words seem unrelated to the scribe’s affirmation. He was saying, in proverbial form, that in spite of His divine authority and miracle-working power, self-indulgence was not in His plan, and He had fewer physical comforts than many animals. Foxes have holes they can call their own, and birds of the air have nests to which they can return and rest.

The Messiah is first referred to as the Son of Man in Daniel 7:13. Jesus is called by that title over eighty times in the gospels and it was the most common name that He used for Himself. It was a term of His humiliation, and was especially appropriate in the figure of His having nowhere to lay His head. In His humiliation He did not even have the basic comforts of life. Jesus had no place of His own—no house or property, not even a tent. After the dispute about Jesus’ healing of the blind man, “everyone went to his home,” John tells us: “But Jesus went to the Mount of Olives” (John 7:53-8:1). Whereas others went home to spend the night, Jesus spent it alone under the stars, in prayer with His Father. We are told of His often spending time in the home of Peter in Capernaum and of Mary, Martha, and Lazarus in Bethany, but we are never told of His spending even an hour in His own house, because He had none.

Jesus’ purpose in making such a statement was obviously to make the scribe take stock of the genuineness of his commitment. Impressive words of affirmation are easy to make, especially when one does not know the cost of commitment involved. The Lord knew that the initial declared faith of many of His followers was shallow and superficial. When Jesus was in Jerusalem during the first Passover after He began His ministry, “many believed in His name, beholding His signs which He was doing.” Yet, John goes on to say, “Jesus on His part, was not entrusting Himself to them, for He knew all men, and because He did not need anyone to bear witness concerning man for He Himself knew what was in man” (John 2:23-25). The Lord had no faith in their faith because He knew it was not genuine. Those people were only committed to the wonder and excitement that accompanied His work, not to Him as Lord or to the work of the gospel itself. Jesus repeatedly refused to take advantage of temporary popularity, which He knew would soon turn to permanent rejection.

In the parable of the sower, Jesus gives a vivid illustration of such people. They are the rocky places that do not have much soil. The seed immediately springs up and gives the appearance of a strong and healthy plant. But because it has no root it is soon scorched by the sun and withers. “This is the man,” Jesus says, “who hears the word, and immediately receives it with joy; yet he has no firm root in himself, but is only temporary, and when affliction or persecution arises because of the word, immediately he falls away” (Matt. 13:5-6, 20-21).

Jesus knew human nature is fickle, unstable, and self-centered, and that many people are attracted to Him by excitement, glamor, or the hope of personal benefit, such as being healed or fed. They are quick to jump on the bandwagon when things are going well, but as soon as the cause becomes unpopular or demands sacrifice they want to jump off. At first they look as if they are alive for Christ and often give glowing testimonies, but when their association with Him begins to cost more than they bargained for they lose interest and are never seen again in the church or in Christian work. As the Bible commentator R. C. H. Lenski observes, such a person “sees the soldiers on parade, the fine uniforms, and the glittering arms and is eager to join, forgetting the exhausting marches, the bloody battles, the graves, perhaps unmarked” (The Interpretation of St. Matthew’s Gospel [Minneapolis: Augsburg, 1961], pp. 338-39).

Jesus knew the scribe was too eager to declare his allegiance. He did not count the cost of discipleship, which involves self-denial, sacrifice, and quite possibly suffering. Jesus’ proverb about the foxes and birds represented the relatively minimal sacrifice of being homeless—yet even that cost was obviously too high, because the scribe simply disappears without another word said by or about him. The Lord’s words hit him where he was weak and unwilling, and his true loyalty only to his own comfort was quick to show itself.

Sugarcoating the message of the gospel, trying to make it appear to be less demanding than it is—or even not demanding at all—not only compromises God’s Word and does disservice to the Lord but also does disservice to those to whom we witness. Jesus did no such thing. He warned His disciples with sobering candidness, “Behold, I send you out as sheep in the midst of wolves” (Matt. 10:16). He then continued to tell them, “And brother will deliver up brother to death, and a father his child; and children will rise up against parents, and cause them to be put to death. And you will be hated by all on account of My name, but it is the one who has endured to the end who will be saved.… A disciple is not above his teacher, nor a slave above his master. It is enough for the disciple that he become as his teacher, and the slave as his master. If they have called the head of the house Beelzebul, how much more the members of his household!” (vv. 21-22, 24-25).

Toward the end of His ministry the Lord said to His disciples, “They will make you outcasts from the synagogue, but an hour is coming for everyone who kills you to think that he is offering service to God” (John 16:2). Paul assures us that “all who desire to live godly in Christ Jesus will be persecuted” (2 Tim. 3:12). After presenting the long list of faithful Old Testament saints, the writer of Hebrews says of them that some “were tortured, not accepting their release, in order that they might obtain a better resurrection; and others experienced mockings and scourgings, yes, also chains and imprisonment. They were stoned, they were sawn in two, they were tempted, they were put to death with the sword; they went about in sheepskins, in goatskins, being destitute, afflicted, ill-treated (men of whom the world was not worthy), wandering in deserts and mountains and caves and holes in the ground” (11:35-38).

The scribe who came to Jesus on the shore of the Sea of Galilee was not willing to pay any such price for his faith. He merely wanted to add excitement to his life, have the prestige of being identified with a popular leader, or some other equally self-centered objective.

An explorer may have many volunteers to go with him on an expedition—until he explains that the team will be working in scorching heat, sub-zero cold, or sweltering swamps, with only subsistence rations, few chances to take a bath, and little contact with the outside world for months at a time. A young athlete may dream of winning a gold medal in the Olympics—until he learns about the rigorous training, strict diet, limited social life, and fierce competition he would have to face for many years.

There is no thrill like the joy of knowing and following Christ, but it is not a thrill that the world can understand or appreciate. Jesus Christ gives great peace to those who belong to Him, but His peace is not the kind the world gives or seeks (John 14:27). His joy and peace come by the way of ridicule, suffering, and the cross, which His disciples must take up when they follow Him. “If anyone wishes to come after Me,” He said, “let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow Me” (Matt. 16:24). The Christian life is not adding Jesus to one’s own way of life but renouncing that personal way of life for His and being willing to pay whatever cost that may require.

THE BARRIER OF PERSONAL RICHES

And another of the disciples said to Him, “Lord, permit me first to go and bury my father.” (8:21)

This man, like the scribe of verse 19, was one of Jesus’ disciples in the sense of being a follower who was unofficially identified with Him. He was not one of the twelve, but a hanger-on who had perhaps followed Jesus about the countryside for a few weeks or months.

Like the scribe, he assumed that his relationship to Jesus was all it should be, and he made what seems to have been a reasonable request: Lord, permit me first to go and bury my father. Since the Jews did not practice embalming, a dead body had to be quickly prepared and buried. Not only that, but Jewish tradition required that a person mourn for his deceased father or mother for a period of thirty days. The final act of devotion to parents was seeing that they were properly buried. Since Jesus was about to go to the other side of the Sea of Galilee, a burial obviously could not wait until His return.

The man’s asking for permission to bury [his] father, however, did not mean that his father was already dead. The phrase was a common Near Eastern figure of speech that referred to a son’s responsibility to help his father in the family business until the father died and the inheritance was distributed. Obviously such a commitment could involve a long period of time, thirty or forty years or more if the father was relatively young.

The expression is still used in parts of the Middle East today. A few years ago a missionary asked a rich young Turkish man to go with him on a trip to Europe, during which time the missionary hoped to disciple the man. When the young man replied that he must bury his father, the missionary offered his sympathy and expressed surprise that the father had died. The man explained, however, that his father was alive and healthy and that the expression “bury my father” simply meant staying at home and fulfilling his family responsibilities until his father died and he received his share of the inheritance.

Since a man’s inheritance was customarily lost or reduced if he did not fulfill his expected responsibilities to the family, the phrase “I must bury my father” was frequently equivalent to “I want to wait until I receive my inheritance.”

This second superficial disciple did not want to risk losing his inheritance by committing himself fully to Jesus. He wanted to be associated with Jesus in name, but the focus of his life was on his personal prosperity and well-being, not on serving the Lord. Jesus therefore said to him, “Follow Me; and allow the dead to bury their own dead.” Like “foxes have holes, and the birds of the air have nests” (v. 20), the seemingly nonsensical expression allow the dead to bury their own dead was a proverbial figure of speech. It meant, “Let the world take care of the things of the world.” The spiritually dead can take care of their own things.

In his parallel account of this story, Luke adds Jesus’ further instruction, “As for you, go and proclaim everywhere the kingdom of God” (9:60). The man’s primary responsibility as a disciple of Jesus Christ would be to proclaim the gospel, to bring the good news of eternal life to the spiritually dead. The Christian’s responsibility is not to follow and mimic the world but to be a witness to the world in Christ’s name and power. His citizenship is in the living, eternal kingdom of God, not in the dead and decaying realm of this world.

Again like the scribe, this second of the disciples who approached Jesus on this occasion also disappears without further mention. Apparently neither man wanted to discuss the matter further. Jesus’ demands were too high, and the appeal of discipleship vanished. Like the rich young man who asked Jesus what good thing he must do to inherit eternal life (Matt. 19:16-22), when this professing disciple heard Christ’s answer, he lost his enthusiasm for the things of the Lord.

For Jesus to say, Follow Me, is for Him to say, “Deny yourself and take up your cross” (Matt. 16:24). It is not that any amount of self-denial or sacrifice can earn salvation, but anything that is held more dearly than Christ is a barrier to Christ and will stand between the unsaved person and salvation.

Luke tells us of a third man who came to Jesus on this occasion and made a profession of discipleship. “I will follow You, Lord,” he said; “but first permit me to say good-bye to those at home” (9:61). As with the other two men, this man’s statement seems perfectly reasonable. It would take but a few days, or a few weeks at the most, for him to pay his parents the simple courtesy of saying good-bye.

But Jesus knew the man’s heart and that his motivation was weak and his loyalty divided. He was not yet ready to give himself wholeheartedly to Jesus as Lord. He was still tied to his parent’s apron strings and was under their dominance and control. The decision to follow Jesus Christ is the most uniquely personal decision that can be made. It is wonderful when friends and relatives encourage someone to decide for Christ, and it is tragic when they advise against Christ. But whatever the outside influences may be, the commitment is the individual’s alone to make. Jesus therefore replied, “No one, after putting his hand to the plow and looking back, is fit for the kingdom of God” (v. 62). These words were perhaps adapted from a proverb attributed to the famous Greek poet Hesiod, who lived around 800 B.C.—”You can’t plow a straight furrow when looking backward.” A person cannot satisfactorily do the job at hand if he is continually looking back to his past work and loyalties. A person cannot follow Jesus Christ if he still longs for the ways of the old life.

Of these three men who came to Jesus and then disappeared, William MacDonald aptly says, “They left Christ to make a comfortable place for themselves in the world and to spend the rest of their lives hugging the subordinate.”

Jesus made it clear that commitment to Him is total and unreserved or it is not commitment at all. “Do not think that I came to bring peace on the earth,” He said. “I did not come to bring peace, but a sword. For I came to set a man against his father, and a daughter against her mother, and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law; and a man’s enemies will be the members of his household. He who loves father or mother more than Me is not worthy of Me; and he who loves son or daughter more than Me is not worthy of Me. And he who does not take his cross and follow after Me is not worthy of Me” (Matt. 10:34-38). If a person allows anything to hold him back from full allegiance to Christ, he is not worthy of the kingdom of God. Jesus is not here talking about Christian service but about salvation. God will save no one who comes to Him with strings attached.

Throughout the centuries many people have marveled at Jesus, acclaiming His authority, His love, His wisdom, His purity, His power, His provision, His healing, and even His deity—but have failed to give themselves to Him. They praise and profess Jesus, and then walk away. Bishop J. C. Ryle wrote, “The saddest road to hell is the one that runs under the pulpit, past the Bible, and through the middle of warnings and invitations.”

Jesus’ response to the three men who came to Him on the shore of Galilee seems to contradict His promise that “all that the Father gives Me shall come to Me, and the one who comes to Me I will certainly not cast out” (John 6:37). Those men personally came to Christ, and they seemed to come positively, speaking well of Him and proclaiming their desire to follow Him. But Jesus’ further words in John 6 explain why so many people who profess to come to Christ do not really come to Him at all. He said, “He who eats My flesh and drinks My blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day” (v. 54). In other words, belief in Jesus Christ is total identity with Him. There is no such thing as partial belief or partial salvation. A person who does not totally commit himself to Christ disbelieves in Him, no matter how many positive things he may have to say about Him. Jesus therefore went on to say, “There are some of you who do not believe,” and shortly after that we are told that “as a result of this [that is, of all of the hard sayings Jesus had just given], many of His disciples withdrew, and were not walking with Him anymore” (vv. 64, 66).

Coming to Jesus Christ is coming on His terms, not our own. The person who comes to Christ comes in humility, meekness, a needy beggar in spirit who hungers and thirsts for God’s righteousness, who cries for mercy, and is willing to be hated, reviled, and persecuted for the sake of his Lord (Matt. 5:3-12). The Lord may not take away comforts, money, or relationships with others, but all of those things—and everything else besides—must be given over to Him, to do with as He pleases. Otherwise He is not Lord, no matter how much allegiance to Him is professed.