John 6:66

His saying was "hard" to them; but where did its hardness lie? In that it cut at the roots of their national religious pride. To be told, "You have no life in you" unless there was this eating and drinking, was intolerable to them. Why, they took it for granted that life was theirs, since they were the nation owned by God. They had not given up that idea, even though they thought they had found the promised Messiah in Jesus.

They had looked for a King, and there stood a carpenter's Son! In the synagogue discourse He had spoken of giving His flesh for the life of the world. Most of them completely failed to understand what this might mean. But the words made it plain enough that their cherished visions of earthly glory would never come true. And so they stumbled.

And many of the disciples went away, and the branches of the vine were broken off. These were people who only professed to be His. So a man might be a disciple without having new life, as far as following after Him goes.

The seed had fallen on the rock. They had not understood the Word. When it came home to their unspiritual hearts in its true character, it set before them the cross as the only way of salvation. Then they discovered that the Word had never taken root, and so it withered away.

He had brought out His incomparable grace. He had brought out a truth infinitely deeper than if He had brought in the kingdom and given them the seats at His right hand and His left. Suppose it had been possible for every one of them to have the best place. What was that compared with His coming down and dying for sinners, giving eternal life, and raising them up at the last day?

Now we are not told what became of these deserters, or whether they were saved or not. No such question is raised. We are simply told that they abandoned Christ, and no longer stood in public with His name and His cause. It is one thing to profess to be a disciple of Christ. It is quite another to stand with firm purpose of heart on the ground of public testimony for His name, in full identification with a rejected Lord... Applying the teaching of the cross very quickly thins the ranks of those who only profess.

His words are certainly meant to search and sift, to reveal who is really His and who is not. How different this pure faithfulness of the Lord of glory is from the smooth words of religious misleaders! He sought no mere followers, but only those true in heart.

So the warnings of the Lord hasten the departure of unbelievers. At the same time they bind the faithful more closely to Himself, and bring out their sense of what He is to their souls. The cause lay in their own will, which gave Satan power.

Faith in Simon Peter answered for the rest — there was no other to whom to go: it was, and so it has remained, Christ or none at all! And for those who find it so, there are "words of eternal life" with Him. They are His words all the more surely because unspiritual men find them unacceptable.