Sometimes we pick and choose between doctrines. We do not want to believe certain doctrines because the implications of those doctrines are so painful.
For example, we do not want to believe that God chooses because we do not want to believe that God sends people to hell.
But we have to believe that because that is what the Bible says.
We do not have to like it. We do not have to be comfortable with it (in fact, it would be callous and strange if we were comfortable with it.) Yet we must believe it because it is in the Bible.
Perhaps that is the number one thing to say about the implications of these doctrines we have been dealing with over the past few weeks. Why do we believe them? Because they are in the Bible. Because they are true.
We are useless without the Father’s enabling. The Holy Spirit is the one who gives life. If you do not have the Holy Spirit, then you will not have life.
Even if you have given the impression that you are a believer for many years, and yet then depart from Christ, we can compute such a thing happening because you never had the Holy Spirit. The Father did not enable you to come to Christ.
But we must never forget all the other things that have been said in this passage—the commands to come to Christ, the responsibility we have to trust in him, the promises that anyone who comes to Jesus will not be turned away.
Those promises still stand. They are not null and void.
Come to Jesus and you will not be rejected.
The point is that those who depart from Christ never really came to him. They gave the impression that they came to him, but they never trusted him. Again, that is what it comes down to. It gives an explanation to a hurting church who have to deal with people who betray them, and who have to deal with unbelievers who refuse to come to Christ…
This is the Father’s will. We do not know why. We do not know how. We do not understand. Yet it is true. We accept it because it is true. It is in the Bible.
Do not deny John 6:65: ‘No one can come to me unless the Father has enabled them.’ Or John 6:44: ‘No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws them.’
Let us not deny those verses. Let us accept them as reality and work from there.
