John 6:64,65

“ But there are among you some that believe not. For Jesus knew from the beginning who they were that believed not, and who it was that should betray him; 65 and he said: For this cause have I said unto you, that no man can come unto me, except it be given him by my Father. ”

To the exclamation: This saying is a hard one, Jesus had replied: “It is hard only so far as you wrongly understand it.” And now He unveils the cause of this want of understanding. Even among them, His disciples, apparently believers, there is a large number who are not true believers.

The expression τινές does not so far limit the number of these false believers as the French [or English] word some; comp. Romans 3:3; Romans 11:17, and Hebrews 3:16, where this pronoun is applied to the whole mass of the disobedient and unbelieving Jewish nation. The word τινές designates any part whatever, whether great or small, of the whole. The evangelist by means of a fact gives the reason, in the second part of the verse, for the declaration pronounced in the first; this fact is that Jesus knows them even to the foundation, and this from the beginning. The word ἀπ᾿ ἀρχῆς, from the beginning, applies undoubtedly, as Lucke, Meyer, Westcott think, to the earliest times of Jesus' ministry, when He set Himself to the work of grouping around Himself a circle of permanent disciples (John 15:27; John 16:4; Acts 1:21-22), or, what amounts nearly to the same thing, to the beginning of the relation of Jesus to each one of them (Tholuck, Westcott, Keil); He discerned immediately the nature of the aspirations which brought them to Him (John 2:22-23). Lange and Weiss think that the term beginning designates the first appearance of the unbelief itself. Chrysostom and Bengel apply it to the moment when the hearers had begun to murmur on this very day. These last explanations are quite unnatural. Καί, and: and even, or: and in particular. The expression: who it was who should, is written, not from the standpoint of a fatalistic predestination, but simply from that of the accomplished fact (John 6:71).

It follows undoubtedly from this word of John that Jesus did not choose Judas without understanding that, if there was to be a traitor among His disciples, it would be he; but not that He had chosen him in order that he should betray Him. He might hope to gain the victory over the egoistic and earthly aspirations which brought this man, like so many others, to Him. The privileged place which He accorded to him might be a means of gaining him, as also it might end in a deeper fall, if he trampled this grace under foot. As Keil says, “God constantly puts men in positions where their sin, if it is not overcome, must necessarily reach maturity. And God uses it then to serve the accomplishment of His plan.” Still more, shall we not go so far as to say that the very fall in which this relation was to end might become the terrible means of finally breaking down the pride of this Titanic nature? The moment when Judas, receiving the fatal morsel from the hand of Jesus, must have felt all the greatness of his crime, might have become for him the moment of repentance and of salvation. “If,” says Riggenbach (Leben des Herrn Jesu, p. 366), “in that night of prayer when the choice of the Twelve was prepared for (Luke 6:12), the thoughts of the Lord Jesus were again and again brought back to this man, and if, while very clearly discerning his want of uprightness, He was obliged to recognize in this the signal from the Father, what shall we have to say? Literally the narrator says: “For He knew... who they are who do not believe and who is he who shall betray Him;” so far does he carry himself back with vividness to the moment when all this occurred.

The καὶ ἔλεγεν, and he said, leads us to suppose a moment of silence here, filled with the sorrowful reflection which the evangelist afterwards communicates to us. The διὰ τοῦτο, for this cause, refers to the expression: some who do not believe. “It is precisely to this that I wished to turn your attention when I said to you.” A man may declare and believe himself His disciple without truly believing, because he joins himself to Him under the sway of motives which do not proceed from the teaching of the Father (John 6:45).

Without this divine and inward preparation, even in the most favorable position faith remains impossible. The quotation is not literal, any more than in the other cases where Jesus quotes Himself (John 6:36). In John 6:37, it was the coming believer who was given to Jesus; here it is given to him to come. Westcott observes correctly that the two elements, divine and human, appear here, the first in the word is given, the second in the word come. This saying of Jesus was a farewell; those to whom it was addressed understood it. Even after the day when the popular enthusiasm had reached its culminating point, the Galilean work of Jesus seemed as if destroyed; it presented the aspect of a rich harvest on which a hail-storm has beaten.