Will You Believe?
In John 6, we read the incredible miracle of Jesus feeding the 5,000 and then slipping away shortly afterward to be by Himself. After making His way to Capernaum miraculously through the night by walking on water, that same crowd realized He was gone and pursued Him by boat. When they arrived, Jesus quickly called them out on their motives for following Him.
“Jesus replied, ‘I tell you the truth, you want to be with me because I fed you, not because you understood the miraculous signs. But don’t be so concerned about perishable things like food. Spend your energy seeking the eternal life that the Son of Man can give you. For God the Father has given me the seal of his approval.’ They replied, ‘We want to perform God’s works, too. What should we do?’ Jesus told them, ‘This is the only work God wants from you: Believe in the one he has sent.’”—John 6:26-29 NLT
It sounds like these people were eager to follow Jesus, but they were actually more interested in the miracles He performed—and the things they could do with His power—than in simply believing He was the Son of God. The idea of doing for Him was exciting. But the act of simply accepting His love—to believe His words and follow them—was far more difficult than it sounds at face value.
They were eager to be fed again by Jesus and demanded more miracles from Him (manna, heavenly bread) in exchange for belief—even though they had just witnessed the breathtaking miracle of Him feeding an entire multitude with five loaves and two fish. Instead, this time, He told them that He was the bread of life and said that they must “eat his flesh and drink his blood” (verse 53). Of course, while we know today that this refers to communion, they did not yet have the context to understand what He meant. Because of this, many turned away from Him.
“Many of his disciples said, ‘This is very hard to understand. How can anyone accept it?’ Jesus was aware that his disciples were complaining, so he said to them, ‘Does this offend you?’… At this point many of his disciples turned away and deserted him. Then Jesus turned to the Twelve and asked, ‘Are you also going to leave?’ Simon Peter replied, ‘Lord, to whom would we go? You have the words that give eternal life. We believe, and we know you are the Holy One of God.’”—John 6:60-61, 66-69 NLT
There are a few things we can learn from the crowd who experienced Jesus’ incredible miracle of feeding the multitude but still chose to walk away:
More than Jesus wants us to do great things for Him, he simply wants us to believe in Him. That’s the most important thing.
Many of us spend years trying to earn our salvation through works—going above and beyond in good deeds—while missing the most important thing: experiencing Him for ourselves. When we love and believe in Him first, good works become a natural overflow of our relationship with Him. Trying to do good works in our own strength is exhausting and will never feel like enough, no matter how hard we try.
Jesus is hard to understand sometimes, but He asks us to trust Him anyway—and He has proven Himself trustworthy.
Just as the multitude didn’t have the context to understand that Jesus was describing communion, we often don’t understand the work He is doing in our lives without future context. We can look back on His faithfulness to build our trust in what we don’t yet understand. Will we choose to believe Him anyway, or will we walk away like many did that day?
Jesus didn’t need to prove himself to those people. He already had.
Would they take Him at His word? Would they believe He really is who He said He is?
What about us? While we don’t have the privilege of walking the earth with Jesus in the flesh as the multitude did, we do have the evidence of hundreds of fulfilled prophecies and the incredible historical accuracy of the Bible—along with the gift of hindsight and fuller context for Jesus’ words.
Will you believe Him?
This Christmas week, may we pause and stop striving so hard to earn love and approval from Jesus through our works. May we be still and remember His great love for us—that all He desires is for us to believe that He truly is the Son of God, the Word made flesh, who dwelt among us and made a way for us to become children of God.
“God saved you by his grace when you believed. And you can’t take credit for this; it is a gift from God. Salvation is not a reward for the good things we have done, so none of us can boast about it. For we are God’s masterpiece. He has created us anew in Christ Jesus, so we can do the good things he planned for us long ago.”—Ephesians 2:8-10
