How Did I Get Here?
7 min read
65 He went on to say, “This is why I told you that no one can come to me unless the Father has enabled them.”
66 From this time many of his disciples turned back and no longer followed him. 67 “You do not want to leave too, do you?” Jesus asked the Twelve.
68 Simon Peter answered him, “Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life. 69 We have come to believe and to know that you are the Holy One of God.”John 6:65-69
Verse 65 is one of the most difficult verses for me in the Bible because it seems to clearly go against my conviction that God has given us free will to believe in Christ or not. The free will that we have, I believe, comes from the image of God inside of every human being (imago dei). And even though God knows the end from the beginning, the free will that He has granted to humanity is not an illusion. It is real. That’s my conviction.
However, the free will that we have operates within the boundaries of our present and past reality, as well as the future destiny that God has established for each and every soul. So we have the free will to make choices that determine our future, but at the same time, we cannot change what our final destiny will be.
God’s sovereignty boggles the mind.
So how does someone who thinks the way I do about free will deal with verse 65? First and foremost, I have to acknowledge that my understanding is limited and that I may be completely wrong. Maybe free will is an illusion, but how depressing is that prospect?
On the other hand, some people say that some of the language of the Bible (including the language of Christ) is “phenomenological.” That is, the language explains phenomena that we cannot grasp from within the confines of space-time. And so the language attributes the phenomena to the direct action of God. Basically, that way of thinking says, “We see it. But we don’t understand it. Yet God does.”
Another way I might deal with verse 65 is to look at the details of the original grammar. I have to be cautious here because I am not a Greek grammar expert by any means. I know just enough to be dangerous, which is why I offer caution with my interpretation.
With that, a strictly literal translation of what Jesus said goes “… unless perhaps it is being granted from the Father.”
My literal translation is much softer than how the NIV, ESV, CSB, or NASB translate the verse, although, the CSB is close to it. But then, how is my translation softer than the NIV, or other translations?
Well, it’s different because the NIV’s “unless the Father has enabled them” has a more deterministic sense than my translation. In other words, the sense of the NIV is that either the Father has enabled someone to come to Jesus or He has not—case closed. But my translation (a more literal translation)—“unless perhaps it is being granted from the Father”—is more open to the possibility that a person might come to Jesus at some future time.
Like I said, my translation must be offered with caution, because the Bible translators are obviously way more knowledgeable than I am. All I know is that I have had multiple opportunities before I was saved to come to Jesus, but I didn’t. Then, by God’s sovereign grace, the Father granted me the experience of the power of prayer, the power of worship, and the power of Christian fellowship so that I decided to follow Jesus.
Father, Your ways are high above our ways, Your thoughts than our thoughts. But I know that You have saved me. And I know that it is your desire that all should be saved. Enable to be Your witness for Your glory. In Jesus’s name. Amen.
