{"id":4657,"date":"2022-08-01T08:00:48","date_gmt":"2022-08-01T00:00:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.jeffangiegoh.com\/?p=4657"},"modified":"2022-05-04T05:42:19","modified_gmt":"2022-05-03T21:42:19","slug":"199-why-god-only-saves-some","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.jeffangiegoh.com\/?p=4657","title":{"rendered":"301. Why God only saves some?"},"content":{"rendered":"

35\u00a0<\/sup>Jesus said to them, \u201cI am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never be hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty.\u00a036\u00a0<\/sup>But I said to you that you have seen me and yet do not believe.\u00a037\u00a0<\/sup>Everything that the Father gives me will come to me, and anyone who comes to me I will never drive away;\u00a038\u00a0<\/sup>for I have come down from heaven, not to do my own will, but the will of him who sent me.\u00a039\u00a0<\/sup>And this is the will of him who sent me, that I should lose nothing of all that he has given me, but raise it up on the last day.\u00a040\u00a0<\/sup>This is indeed the will of my Father, that all who see the Son and believe in him may have eternal life; and I will raise them up on the last day.<\/strong>\u201d<\/span> [John 6:35-40<\/span>, NRSV<\/em>]<\/span><\/p>\n

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A friend in coffee-corner discussion wrote and sought clarifications. On his reading, the Father only gave a limited number of people \u2013 \u201ca select few\u201d – to Jesus the Son and of these he would not lose any for eternal salvation. His question, then, was: \u201cSince God created all of us, why does He only pick some of us to go to heaven and not the rest?\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

We wrote him back:<\/span><\/p>\n

It is interesting that the reference to your quote is from John 6 which famously features, among other things, the Bread of Life discourse. More precisely, it comes from the section of John 6:38-40. The Gospel of St John, one must know, has a very clear schema: The Son is sent by the Father to do some work, after which he will return to the Father. He came down from above (descent<\/em>) on a mission; after finishing what he was sent to do, he returned to the Father (ascent<\/em>). One must read this decent-ascent schema very positively, that is, the Son came down from heaven <\/em>into this lower world, \u201cnot to do mine own will<\/em>\u201d or to seek any separate interest or glory of my own, \u201cbut the will of Him that sent me<\/em>\u201d Who is loving to everyone, and wills not the death of a sinner.<\/span><\/p>\n

And this really <\/em>is the Father\u2019s will<\/em>\u00a0<\/em>\u2014 that ALL may be saved. And so the revelation is to be read and understood as that of all whom my Father has given me, I should lose none<\/em>. To Jesus, then, it is the will of the Father that everything necessary be done, both for the conversion of sinners and for the preservation of those on the paths of righteousness who are already converted. Willing \u201call men\u201d to be eternally saved, He wishes the whole of humanity to\u00a0come to the knowledge of the truth,<\/em>\u00a0<\/em>and to persevere in living it. But, and here\u2019s the difficulty when we talk about salvation \u2013 as we have written on the 2016 December 16th<\/sup> post on this website, salvation is not entirely the business of God\u2019s. Rather, human subjects, in freedom, have a most serious role to play as well. We are given the freedom; we must, in this sense,\u00a0will<\/em> our salvation and actively and positively\u00a0\u00a0collaborate<\/em> with God in Christ on our life journey. It was God who initiated the scheme of salvation for human creatures through Jesus Christ. But God the Father wills these things conditionally<\/em>, and not absolutely: humanity, through the grace of God universally available to them, must repent, and bring forth fruits of repentance.<\/span><\/p>\n