“Now we know that You know all things, and have no need for anyone to question You; by this we believe that You came from God.” Jesus answered them, “Do you now believe? Behold, an hour is coming, and has already come, for you to be scattered, each to his own home, and to leave Me alone; and yet I am not alone, because the Father is with Me” (John 16:30–32).

It is somewhat humorous to see how the disciples proclaim their devotion to Jesus. As often as they do, Jesus bats it down. Here they declare, "We believe," to which Jesus questions, "Do you now believe?" Then He proceeds to predict that they would all scatter and leave Him alone.

A similar event happened earlier with Peter, who declared that he would even die for Jesus. But Jesus responded to him by predicting that Peter would deny even knowing Jesus three times that very night (cf. John 13:38).

The disciples thought they knew the inner working of their own hearts. So they confidently declared their faith and devotion to Jesus. Yet, they were shown to be totally wrong. They did not know their own hearts. They were quick to disown Jesus to save their own skins.

Friends, what makes you so sure of your own faith? I again confront those that adamantly hold to a conviction that they chose Jesus as an act of their own free will. You may be as self-deceived as these disciples were in their confident declarations of faith in Jesus. When will you understand that you did not choose Him, but He chose you? And it is not your faith that sustains you but the faith He has given you and continues to uphold in you. The soil that produces a harvest has been first fertilized by the Lord. Those who hear so as to believe have been given their ears to hear.

Yes, in a sense, you chose Jesus. There was an act of belief. But understand that the choice was not "free" and the act was not voluntary. A miracle had to occur before you could believe. Your eyes had to be regenerated so that you could see the glory of God in the face of Christ (cf. 2 Corinthians 4:4–6; John 3:3). Your mind had to be opened so that you could understand and accept the Gospel as truth and not folly (cf. 1 Corinthians 2:14; Luke 24:45). As Jesus declared, "This is why I told you that no one can come to me unless the Father has enabled them" (John 6:65). The reason that God had to initiate, sustain and perfect salvation - all of it - for us is because we were spiritually dead and ruled by Satan (cf. Ephesians 2:1–2). Apart from the Spirit regenerating us, we had nothing within us to desire God in any way (cf. Romans 3:10–18).

Friends, sometimes in our Christian walk we begin to imagine that we can now be righteous of ourselves. The bankrupt reasoning that caused the Jews to stumble over the necessity of a God-given faith in salvation (cf. Romans 10:1–3) can creep again into our minds to make us imagine that we can sustain our faith by the strength and freedom of our wills. But we must understand that every aspect of the faith that saves, whether we speak of justifying faith, sanctifying faith, or glorifying faith, is from God (cf. Ephesians 2:8–9). He is the one who began salvation in us, and He is the one who will complete it (cf. Philippians 1:6; 1 Thessalonians 5:23–24).

This does not mean that we do not try to be holy but that we recognize that we can never be holy so as to somehow "earn" our salvation at any point in our walk with God. Our boast from beginning to end must be in the LORD, and our confidence only and completely in Him. Thus, we are never initiating faith and obedience and always responding to His enabling grace. As Paul also wrote for us:

Therefore, my dear friends, as you have always obeyed—not only in my presence, but now much more in my absence—continue to work out your salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God who works in you to will and to act in order to fulfill his good purpose (Philippians 2:12–13).

AI-Expanded Reflection

The disciples’ declaration in John 16:30 sounds like a moment of settled understanding. Jesus answers by announcing the scattering that will soon expose the limits of their confidence. He does not simply deny every reality in their faith; he shows that their assessment of themselves is incomplete. The statement that the Father remains with him also prevents their coming failure from becoming the measure of his mission. Their loyalty will falter, but his relation to the Father and his obedience do not depend on their uninterrupted courage.

The surrounding promise of peace is important. Jesus tells them these things so that they may have peace in him, even amid tribulation (16:33). The exposure of weakness is therefore not intended to drive them into endless uncertainty about whether any profession can be trusted. It redirects the location of confidence. A disciple who discovers the inadequacy of self-reliance is invited to depend more deeply upon the Lord who already knows that inadequacy and nevertheless continues to instruct and keep his people.

The original interprets this dependence through a particular account of regeneration and election. Its insistence that grace excludes boasting is shared broadly across Christian traditions, although those traditions explain the relation of grace and willing differently. Even within Reformed theology, an effectual call is ordinarily described as renewing the will so that the person willingly believes, rather than making faith an involuntary act like a reflex. The distinction matters because divine initiative need not be described as the destruction of meaningful personal response.

Philippians 2:12–13 gives the practical relation a form that should remain intact. Believers are told to work, precisely because God is at work in both willing and acting. Paul does not say that effort proves independence, nor that dependence makes effort unnecessary. The two verses resist alternating between self-sufficient achievement and passive resignation. The grace that begins salvation also forms real obedience, with repentance when that obedience fails. The believer’s activity is responsive and dependent, but it is not imaginary.

This provides a better use of the disciples’ failure than repeatedly asking how anyone can be sure of anything. We can take promises seriously without boasting about how we would behave under every possible trial. We can make commitments while seeking prayer, accountability, and the practical means of keeping them. When we fail, confession and return are more fitting than either denial or despair. Christ’s foreknowledge of the scattering shows that he was not deceived by an inflated declaration of loyalty. His continuing ministry to these disciples shows that their weakness was not the end of his purpose. Christian assurance grows as confidence becomes increasingly attached to his faithfulness and increasingly honest about our continuing need for grace.

"Sanctify them in the truth; your word is truth" (John 17:17).

Today I happened to hear a message by Conrad Mbewe, pastor of a Reformed Baptist church in Zambia, delivered at the Strange Fire Conference hosted by Dr. John MacArthur. I appreciate that the whole conference is offered free for anyone to listen to.

Pastor Mbewe spoke about what he sees as the harmful influence of the charismatic movement in Africa, and how, in his view, it is marginalizing biblical authority and replacing the true Gospel with a different message. Normally Christians should celebrate church growth, but he insists that the kind of church growth led by the charismatic movement in Africa is bad news for biblical Christianity on the continent.

I encourage you to listen to his message on the African charismatic movement.

AI-Expanded Reflection

John 17 is often called Jesus' "High Priestly Prayer," prayed on the night before His crucifixion. The verse the comment quotes sits at the center of His prayer for His disciples. Jesus asks the Father to "sanctify them" — to set them apart for God — "in the truth," and immediately defines that truth: "your word is truth." He then adds, "for their sake I consecrate myself, that they also may be sanctified in truth" (17:19). The holiness of believers flows from Christ's own self-offering, applied through the word.

The prayer continues beyond the first disciples: He prays not only for them but also for those who will believe through their word, "that they may all be one" (17:20–21). Truth and unity are joined in the same prayer. That pairing is relevant to the comment's subject. Christianity in Africa has grown dramatically over the past century, and much of that growth has been Pentecostal and charismatic. Christian leaders — African and Western, charismatic and non-charismatic — have raised concerns about prosperity teaching and abuses in parts of that movement; others point to the genuine faith, biblical preaching, and social transformation found in many African Pentecostal churches. Jesus' prayer in John 17 holds out the standard for all: sanctification by God's word, and unity rooted in that truth, "so that the world may believe" (17:21).

John 16:23–24 records Jesus saying that in that day they will ask nothing of Him, and that whatever they ask of the Father in His name He will give them — until now they have asked nothing in His name; ask, and you will receive, that your joy may be full.

What a remarkable statement. He is speaking to His disciples, saying that when they see Him again after the resurrection they will ask nothing of Him — and they did not.

The promise has a condition attached: our will must match God's will. If we are concerned mainly with fixing the flesh — health, attitudes, finances — I do not think we will find God in agreement. We are called first to seek the kingdom and then to make disciples. When Jesus walked among people He would say that this man did not sin, or that this occurred so that God may be glorified and that you may believe.

Some circumstances are allowed so that people are brought to a higher station; a quick fix in the present may not be what is needed. Healing and peace may not be what God is calling for in a given moment; refining may be.

AI-Expanded Reflection

The observation about John 16:23 is a genuine one: Jesus does say that in that day they will ask nothing of Him, and the Gospels record no further requests of that kind after the resurrection.

Two things need qualifying, and both concern how this lands on someone reading in difficulty.

First, on unanswered prayer as evidence of insufficient abiding. Scripture does connect abiding and asking, but it does not permit the inference in reverse. Paul asked three times for the thorn to be removed and was told no; the answer was not a diagnosis of his spiritual condition. Jesus asked in Gethsemane for the cup to pass and it did not. Treating an unanswered prayer as a verdict on the one praying adds a burden to people already carrying one, and the clearest biblical examples run the other way.

Second, on the illustration that has been set aside. The theological instinct behind it — that God's purposes may run through suffering, and that we are not owed an explanation — is scriptural and this project has affirmed it repeatedly. What Scripture does not license is the further step of assigning a purpose to a particular loss, especially someone's child, and especially as an instrumental benefit to a third party. When the disciples proposed a cause for a man's blindness, Jesus refused both options they offered. Job's friends had a defensible theology and were rebuked for applying it confidently to a case they could not see into. And Jesus wept at a grave He was about to empty, which is the response the New Testament actually models in the presence of a death.

Submission to God's will in the abstract is one thing. Constructing the reason for a specific death, while the person is alive and while other readers are grieving ones of their own, is a different thing, and it is where the strongest providence language in Scripture consistently falls silent.

They will put you out of the synagogue; in fact, the time is coming when anyone who kills you will think they are offering a service to God (a reference to John 16:2). I have much more to say to you, more than you can now bear — but when the Spirit of truth comes, He will guide you into all the truth; He will not speak on His own, but will speak what He hears, and will tell you what is yet to come (a paraphrase of John 16:12–13). A time is coming, and has come, when you will be scattered, each to your own home (a reference to John 16:32).

I posed a question yesterday which I ask again: who is Jesus talking to in John 16? Is it not His eleven disciples? In the first and last of those verses He says the people He is addressing will be put out of the synagogue and scattered to their own homes. Does He mean all believers? Do you know where your nearest synagogue is? Do you feel you are scattering, running home, on account of Jesus? Of course not.

When we can so readily recognize that those verses do not apply directly to us, how is it that we so quickly apply the others in the same chapter as though they were spoken to us? I chose the middle passage because it speaks of the Spirit guiding into all truth and telling what is to come. Is that a promise for every Christian, or is it also spoken to the eleven?

I have applied it to all believers in the past without a second thought, and many preachers still do. Proper interpretation requires first asking who the audience is.

AI-Expanded Reflection

The method the comment presses for is sound and underused, and the argument it makes is genuinely hard to answer: a reader who instinctively recognizes that "you will be put out of the synagogue" was not addressed to them has already conceded the principle, and consistency requires applying it to the adjacent verses too.

Worth adding the qualification that keeps this from proving too much. Recognizing a promise as given first to a particular audience does not always mean it has no bearing beyond them — the New Testament repeatedly applies material originally spoken to Israel or to the apostles to the wider church, and does so deliberately. Peter applies covenant language from Exodus to scattered Gentile congregations. The question is not whether a text can extend, but on what grounds, and the honest answer is that the grounds have to be argued rather than assumed.

On John 16:13 specifically: the promise that the Spirit would tell them what is to come is one of the passages the church has historically read as underwriting apostolic authority and, by extension, the New Testament writings themselves. That is a substantial claim about the verse's scope, and it is closer to the comment's own instinct than to the devotional use it is criticizing.

Jesus tells the disciples the Counselor will come to them after His death. He is going to the One who sent Him, and though they are filled with grief, it is for their good that He goes — unless He goes, the Counselor will not come, but if He goes, He will send Him. When He comes He will convict the world concerning sin, righteousness, and judgment: concerning sin, because they do not believe; concerning righteousness, because Jesus goes to the Father where they will see Him no longer; and concerning judgment, because the prince of this world stands condemned (a paraphrase of John 16:5–11).

The Counselor is the person of the Trinity most are least familiar with. God is triune — Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, three persons who are distinct yet one God. The Holy Spirit dwells within all Christians. What an amazing transformation from the Old Testament, when only the high priest could enter God's presence, and only once a year, to God now dwelling within His people. That separation was due to sin. Because Christ's death dealt with sin, we can be with God and He with us.

Jesus says that only when He goes away will the Counselor come. The Spirit's arrival is a testimony to the truth of what Jesus said.

AI-Expanded Reflection

The statement that it is to their advantage that He go is one of the more striking claims in the Gospels, and it is worth feeling the difficulty. Jesus is telling men who have spent three years with Him that they will be better off without His physical presence. That is not consolation offered to soften a loss; it is a claim that what is coming is genuinely better than what they have.

The reason implied by the context is one of scope. A physically present teacher can be in one place. The Spirit Jesus describes will indwell all of them and, by the end of Acts, people in places none of them had yet visited. What the disciples experienced as subtraction, John presents as the necessary condition for something considerably larger — which is also why John places this discourse immediately before the arrest, where the loss would have felt most total.

Just my thoughts in relation to the 2nd question and your response. I truly understand what you are saying and wanted to share a few anecdotes about such.

First is the day that I was saved and accepted Jesus as my Savior. I can recall it vividly, like it was yesterday, even though it was nearly 30 years ago. There was a light in my heart, an overwhelming sense of emotion, power, strength, and desire. That power is what drew me to pray with the minister, profess my faith, and accept Jesus. After reading your explanation this week of God actually calling people to him versus people simply accepting Jesus, it made perfect sense (as does your explanation below). If God hadn’t filled my heart with this power, would I have accepted Jesus? Would I have known I should? I am certain that I wouldn’t. I might have simply called it heartburn or something. But evidently the time was right for God to enter my life, and when he called, I answered the call. Therefore, I can see that there would be some people who do not understand or answer God’s call and would struggle with it for their entire lifetimes and not ever know what that power is. I also have gained a better understanding among those who do not believe and why they may never believe.

But reflecting on that power that entered my heart, that light, there is one word that describes this feeling I had, though I didn’t truly know what it was at the time. Only later did I find out what this word was. Today, I know that power as love. I feel that love on a daily basis when I think of my wife. I feel that love when I reflect on God’s words and your teachings. I try to walk in my life as a vessel of that love/light and let it shine as a beacon to others. I know I succeed when people notice how I “light up” when I mention my wife and family. While I seldom openly share my testimony (unless specifically asked, which no one has), I do let people know that I try to be guided by faith.

AI-Expanded Reflection

Aaron's recollection emphasizes that conversion was experienced as an awakening rather than a detached intellectual decision. Desire, conviction, and a sense of being addressed drew him toward confession of faith. The testimony is valuable precisely as testimony: it describes how grace became personally recognizable in his life. It need not become a universal psychological pattern that every other believer must reproduce.

The later identification of that experience with love adds an important dimension. Christian faith matures as the received gospel shapes relationships, not merely as the intensity of an initial moment is remembered. First John connects love with God's prior action in sending his Son and with the obligation to love one another. Affection for family can become one sphere in which gratitude for that gift is embodied. Read 1 John 4:7–12, 19.

The testimony should nevertheless distinguish the assurance of Christ's promise from the return of a particular feeling. Some conversions are emotionally vivid; others are gradual or quiet. A believer who cannot identify an equally dramatic experience is not therefore excluded from grace. Conversely, an intense moment must be interpreted through the truth confessed and the continuing direction of the life, rather than treated as self-authenticating proof.

Aaron also notes that he seldom shares the story directly. A life shaped by love matters, and words can help others understand its source. Witness need not begin with a polished theological explanation or a dramatic public presentation. It may consist in a simple, truthful account of Christ's mercy offered when a conversation permits. The remembered gift then becomes something shared, while the speaker remains humble about the different ways God may bring another person to faith.

Friends, the topic of election has stirred some discussion among our members. I am thrilled. They have brought some probing questions, which cause me to rejoice, because they are seeking the truth in God's Word. I send these to you because I believe they may be instructive for you. Here are the two questions. I will present the questions just as they were asked, and then give my answers after them:

The first question:

I am so glad you wrote on "election". I continue to struggle with this concept and pray you can answer my questions. Throughout scripture, God has chosen...... He chose the Jews, He chose the disciples, and He chose the prophets of the Old Testament. But beyond that I believe scripture confirms that salvation is open to all. 2 Peter 3:9...."The Lord is not slow in keeping his promise, as some understand slowness. Instead he is patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance. " The Old Testament is filled with writings of God being filled with anguish over the evil done by people and the desire for the lost to come to Him. Hence my dilemma.. The Word says that none shall come to the Father except He draw them which seems like a contradiction of 2 Peter 3:9 where God desires all to come to Him. If that's his desire, then why not draw everyone to Him? I hope I'm making sense. Can you please shed some light on this? Thanks in advance for your response.

AI-Expanded Reflection

The question identifies a real interpretive task rather than a failure to accept a difficult doctrine. Scripture speaks of God's initiative in drawing people and also of his patience, compassion, and summons to repentance. A responsible account must attend to both sets of passages. It is not enough to quote one while treating the other as an embarrassment to be explained away.

Second Peter 3 addresses scoffers who interpret delay as evidence that the promise of Christ's coming is unreliable. Peter answers by placing the delay within God's patience and the opportunity for repentance. The direct addressees are believers, but interpreters differ over whether “any” and “all” are restricted to the elect represented within that address or express a wider saving desire. The pronouns matter, yet the scope of the sentence must be argued from the whole context. Read 2 Peter 3:3–15.

The question also concerns how different kinds of divine willing relate. Reformed, Arminian, and other Christian traditions distinguish God's commands, desires, purposes, permission, and effective action in different ways. Merely naming “God's will” does not eliminate those distinctions. The reader is asking how they can be held together without making either mercy or sovereignty unreal.

The pastoral direction of Peter's passage should remain audible throughout the discussion. Divine patience is a reason to pursue holiness and regard the delay as salvation, not a reason for indifference to people who have not repented. A person wrestling with election can keep receiving the invitation to trust Christ while studying how the texts fit together. The difficulty of a theological synthesis does not suspend the clarity of the gospel's call.

In John 17, Jesus prays His most detailed and lengthy prayer to the Father. Have you noticed how thoroughly God-centered it is — including how often Jesus refers to believers as those God has "given" Him (seven times; cf. John 17:2, 6, 7, 9, 24)? This echoes His earlier teaching that we didn't choose Him, but He chose us (cf. John 15:16), and even earlier, that no one can come to Him for salvation unless drawn by the Father (cf. John 6:44). Recognizing that we were set apart for salvation by God should leave us thoroughly humbled before Him. And recognizing that only those God has chosen will be saved should free us from both anxiety and presumption — anxiety, because we can trust God has already chosen those who'll be saved, and our living faith assures us we're among them; presumption, because we won't confuse our witness for God's power, since our role is obedience, while salvation itself is entirely God's work.

2011 addition: Reflecting on comments I made exactly a year ago today, I remain open to changing my views, but a further year of studying God's Word has only confirmed certain convictions further, including this one. I noted last year the repetition of the phrase "given to Him" — repetition usually signals importance, and a seven-fold repetition may signal especially chief importance. Today, I want to look specifically at John 17:2–3, where Jesus describes the authority God gave Him over "all flesh," so that He might give eternal life to as many as the Father gave Him — eternal life being defined as knowing God, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom He sent (a paraphrase).

Jesus prays here about the work God gave Him to do. Notice His God-given authority is described over "all flesh" (NKJV; the NIV simplifies this to "all people"), an expression that includes literally everyone, as opposed to language that might mean merely "people from every group" — we're talking about all without exception, not just all without distinction.

After this universal reference, we read that Jesus would give eternal life specifically to "as many as You have given Him" — meaning God has chosen a specific group, out of all humanity, for eternal life. This seems the most direct, plain reading of the text.

Reading further, this eternal life includes actually knowing God and Jesus — meaning only those God has chosen and given to Jesus can know God and Jesus in the way that leads to eternal life.

We also know Jesus means more than just the Eleven here, since He uses this deliberately expansive phrase, "as many as You have given Him" — He wouldn't use such broad language if He only meant His closest disciples. This phrase is distinct from "the men you have given Me out of the world" in John 17:6, where He begins focusing specifically on the Eleven (the Twelve minus Judas, cf. John 17:12). And in John 17:20, Jesus clearly has other believers in mind too, praying not only for the Eleven, but also for those who'll believe through their word.

So we get a clear outline of the prayer: John 17:1–5 prays for every believer generally; 17:6–19 focuses on the Eleven specifically; 17:20–23 focuses on those who'll believe through the Eleven's preaching; and 17:24–26 offers a final blessing uniting the Eleven with those who'll believe because of their witness.

Anyone holding to "free will" in salvation has to reckon with passages like this, which clearly teach that people only come to know Jesus because God first gave them to Him. Just as some public figures have rejected a literal hell because they can't fathom a God who would eternally punish anyone, those who reject God's sovereign choice in salvation may do so for a similar reason — because they can't fathom a God who would choose some and not others. But believers hold to both a literal hell and God's sovereign choice in salvation not because these ideas are comfortable, but because Scripture teaches them.

Let me stress how important this view actually is — it isn't merely academic. It shapes your view of God and humanity, your motivation and expectations in witnessing, and either guides or misguides your perspective on the calamities we see throughout the modern world.

Friends, in light of this, think deeply, and search the Scriptures diligently.

AI-Expanded Reflection

As with a similar comment earlier in this project on Psalm 106, this is a forceful, sincerely argued case for a Reformed or Calvinist reading of election, one strand within a much longer, genuinely unresolved conversation among faithful Christians. Other careful readers of this same prayer point out that Jesus also prays, just a few verses later, for "those who will believe in Me through their word" (John 17:20) as a category still open at the time He's praying — read by some as evidence that the circle of "those given to Him" isn't a fixed, closed number decided in isolation from anyone's actual response, but includes future believers precisely as and when they come to faith. This remains one of historic Christianity's most substantial and long-running internal debates, not a matter where one side has simply failed to read the text carefully enough.

God lets us know we'll continue to face hardships, but we can have His peace in the midst of them. I was listening to a CD my mother gave me, which described this same peace in different terms. We'll experience pain, disappointment, and hardship — but if we experience these in light of Christ, there can be joy in our spirit, even while our body and soul ache.

Joy, because it reinforces and requires recalling God's sovereignty. God said there would be hardships, so when they come, I have a reason for hope — He said all things will pass. In a season requiring endurance, I can take the attitude James 1 points toward — this is a time for growth, so let it grow! My troubles aren't moments where I'm failing, wasting my life, or simply suffering pointlessly — I'm free from those ideas. I'm enduring these things to grow. I'm bearing witness that what God has said about such moments is true. By not giving up on the Way, I'm bringing glory to God. We can have this peace God offers.

AI-Expanded Reflection

The distinction this comment draws — enduring for growth versus merely surviving pointlessly — is precisely the shift James makes explicit right at the start of his letter: he tells believers to consider it pure joy facing trials, not because the trials themselves are pleasant, but because testing produces perseverance, and perseverance, allowed to finish its work, produces genuine maturity (a paraphrase of James 1:2–4). The word translated "let it grow" or "let perseverance finish its work" carries the sense of not cutting the process short — this comment's own instinct not to see hardship as wasted time is really just refusing to interrupt exactly the process James describes, before it's had the chance to do what it's meant to do.