John 6:37-38

“ All that which the Father gives me shall come unto me; and him who comes to me I will in no wise cast out; 38 for I am come down from heaven to do, not my own will, but the will of him who sent me. ”

By the words: All that which the Father gives me, Jesus strongly contrasts the believers of all times with these men to whom He had just said: You do not believe! The neuter πᾶν ὅ, all that which, indicates a definite whole in which human unbelief will be unable to make any breach, a whole which will appear complete at the end of the work. The extent of this πᾶν, all, depends on an act of the Father designated here by the term give, and later by teach and draw (John 6:44-45).

The first of these three terms does not, any more than the other two, refer to the eternal decree of election; there would rather be, in that case, the perfect has given. Jesus speaks of a divine action exerted in the heart of the believers at the moment when they give themselves to Him. This action is opposed not to human freedom, but to a purely carnal attraction, to the gross Messianic aspirations, which had, on this very morning, drawn these crowds to Jesus (John 6:26). It is that hunger and thirst after righteousness (Matthew 5:6) which the preparatory action of the Father produces in sincere souls. Every time that Jesus sees such a soul coming to Him, He receives it as as a gift of God, and His success with it is certain. I do not think that it is necessary to translate ἥξει (shall reach), as if it were ἐλεύσεται (shall come, advance towards); for ἥκω signifies: “I am come and am here;” comp. John 8:42 and Revelation 3:3; Revelation 15:4, where the substitution of ἔρχεσθαι (to come) for ἥκειν would certainly weaken the thought. Jesus means to say, not only that all those whom the Father gives Him will advance towards Him, will believe, but will reach the end. It will not happen to them, as to the present hearers of Jesus, to be shipwrecked on the way. The second part of the verse is parallel with the first. Commonly, an advance on the first is found here, by making the first words: He that cometh to me, the resumption of the last words of the preceding clause: shall come to me. (See Meyer, Weiss, etc.)

But two things seem to me to exclude this interpretation:

1. The substitution in this second sentence of ἔρχεσθαι for ἥκειν, which would be a weakening, since the former says less than the latter;

2. The parallelism of the two present tenses (δίδωσι, gives, and τὸν ἐρχόμενον him that comes), and that of the two futures (ἥξει, will reach, and ἐκβάλω, will cast out).

He that comes to me answers therefore to: All that which the Father gives me; they are the two sides, divine and human, of the inward preparation for salvation. Then: shall come to me answers to: I will not cast out; it is the accomplishment of the salvation itself in the positive and negative relation. Jesus seems to allude by this last term, to cast out, to the stern manner in which He had received this multitude which were so eager to come to Him, and had repelled them with a sort of harshness (John 6:26; John 6:36). He received them thus only because He did not recognize in them gifts of the Father; for never will any heart burdened with spiritual wants and coming to Him under this divine impulse be rejected by Him. These words recall those of the Synoptics: “ Come unto me all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest ” (Matthew 11:28).

The second clause has, therefore, fundamentally the same sense as the first; but it completes it, first by individualizing the πᾶν, all, of the first clause (he that), then by substituting the negative form, which excludes every exception (I will not cast out) to the simple affirmation (shall come). The certainty of this welcome full of love promised to believers is justified in John 6:38 by the complete dependence in which Jesus placed Himself with relation to the Father, when coming here on earth. Having renounced every work of His own, He can only receive whoever draws near marked with the seal of the Father. The term καταβέβηκα, I am come down, contains the affirmation of His pre- existence. On the expression “ my own will,” see at John 6:30. If Jesus had wished to accomplish here below a work for Himself, distinct from that of the Father, His reception or His refusals would have been determined, at least in part, by personal sympathies or repugnances, and would not have altogether coincided with the preparation due to the work of God in the souls. But, as there is nothing of this, and as He has no will except to make that of His Father at each moment His own, it follows that whoever comes to Him as one commended by the Father, is sure to be welcomed by Him; comp. the same idea of voluntary dependence in the discourse of chap. 5.