Know

This morning we begin worship with:

John 6:66-69

After this many of his disciples turned back and no longer walked with him. So Jesus said to the twelve, “Do you want to go away as well?” Simon Peter answered him, “Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life, and we have believed, and have come to know, that you are the Holy One of God.”

At first it was easy to walk with Jesus.  He said pleasant words of blessing, healed many, and fed even more.  In fact our passage today is just after the feeding of the Five Thousand (John 6:1-14).

But in this chapter which is occurring at the time of the Passover (John 6:4) Jesus says for the first time “I am the Bread of Life” (John 6:35) and begins to speak of the eternal and the spiritual and many walked away with their focus on the temporal and the physical.

To His disciples He asks “Do you want to go away as well?”.  This not to encourage it, but rather to settle the question, for it was to these twelve that He was entrusting the words of eternal life.

Peter’s response reveals some of the internal questioning that occurred during their walk with Jesus.  They heard.  They believed.  But eventually they came to “know” (ginōskō) His were truly the words of eternal life.