Faith Bathes The Heart for Repentance

“When faith hath bathed a man’s heart in the blood of Christ, it is so mollified that it quickly dissolves into tears of godly sorrow; so that if Christ but turn and look upon him, oh, then with Peter he goes out and weeps bitterly. And this is true gospel mourning; this is right evangelical repenting”

(Edward Fisher’s Marrow of Modern Divinity).

Quoted by Horatius Bonar in God's Way of Holiness

Law and Gospel

As you read the New Testament there are times when it seems that the Law is viewed negatively and there are times when it seems to be viewed positively. 

We can use Paul’s letter to the Romans to make this point.  He sees the law as something under which the unbeliever is in bondage.  Those who come to faith in Christ are not under law but under grace (Romans 4:14, 7:6).  So in some sense the law is something from which we need to be delivered or set free.

However, Paul declares that the Law is holy, just and good (Romans 7:12, 16).  It is after all God’s law. 

Being from God the Law is indeed good.  The culprit in the problem of the law is not the law but sin.  Sin uses the law to its advantage.  

In Romans sin is presented as a kind of reigning monarch or at least a kingdom or dominion to which all who come from Adam are enslaved.  Sin’s representative within each of us is what Paul calls “the flesh.”   Sin is a larger reality than each one’s personal sinfulness.  Sin exerts it rule over human beings through death.  Death is a broad category that encompasses our spiritual deadness and separation from God, physical decay and bodily death and the death of eternal judgment.   Sin holds all its subjects under its tight and firm rule. 

When the holy, just and good law of God offers life to those who obey, sin will have none of it.  Its presence might lie almost dead like within the human breast but when the law is heard, sin springs into action and produces rebellious responses from within the heart of every unbeliever who hears the law.   Yet sin is so much a part of the soul and mind fabric of Adam’s descendants it is nevertheless the individual who rebels.  Adam’s descendants are slaves to sin and on one level want it that way. 

Yet in another way this was in part God’s design in giving first to the Jews the written law and from them passing it on to other people.   Sin is happy to remain undetected.  Many who are under its control do not see themselves as sinful, many others even deny that they are sinners.   Yet the Law also works on sin.  The law stirs sin up, agitates its activity and in this sense the law is a real mercy from God to expose sin’s ugly and death producing presence. 

Nevertheless, the law can also be a hard task master.  We need a little Bible history at this point, along with an understanding of the Bible’s teaching on a covenant.   Old Testament scholars give different definitions for the Bible’s teaching on how God uses covenants in the history of redemption.  For the most part what is clear is that even from the creation of humanity God has related to his image bearers in terms of a covenant. 

God establishes how he will relate to us based on a covenant.  It is an arrangement sovereignly administered by God that contains commands, promises and at times warnings.  There are basically two overarching covenants.  The first that God established with Adam was what some have called the covenant of works.  God created Adam and Eve, placed them in paradise under a kind of probation.  If they obeyed the Lord and were faithful to his commands, especially not to eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, they would continue in God’s presence forever.  Thus, it would be by their works that they would secure this relationship with God for themselves and for their posterity.  When Adam sinned death entered into human existence, yet with death came the reign of sin. 

From that time to this all human beings are born with original sin.  We are both guilty of sin and corrupted by our sinfulness.  We are mortal.  We do not have the capacity to love God.  We are totally unable to obey God.  We are under the curse, enslaved to sin and subject to death.  There is no way we can rectify this condition.  Sin will even blind us to this reality.  

God did not leave rebellious Adam and Eve in their sinful covenant bond to the devil. God then promised a new covenant.  It would be from the seed of the woman that a champion redeemer would come to destroy the devil and to remove the curse.   It would be by death that sin and death would be vanquished.   It was the Lord God that took life by shedding blood and hence clothed Adam and Eve of their nakedness before him.  This was God’s grace.

The covenant of Grace was further established with Abraham.  It was to be by faith in the promise of God’s deliverance that sinners would receive justification before God.  This covenant is what the Gospel is all about.  It promises life to all those who believe the promise.  This is underscored again by Paul.  He says in Romans and Galatians that Abraham believed God and it was credited to him as righteousness.   So it is those who are of faith who are sons of Abraham – who come to participate in the covenant of grace.  For God had planned that it would be through the Gospel that he preached to Abraham that he would also justify the Gentiles (Galatians 3:6-8). 

The Law of Moses as a covenant was a reaffirmation of the covenant of works.  In this sense the Law promised life to those who would keep it perfectly.  The Law offers a kind of righteousness that is secured by those who obey it.  The problem is that sin makes the doing of the law as a covenant of works impossible and thus all one can secure by trying to keep the law is its curse.  “Cursed is everyone who does not who does not abide by all things written in the Book of the Law to do them” (Galatians 3:10; Deuteronomy 27:26).   

To see the Law as what you do to secure your own righteousness with God is to come under bondage to the law and to its curse and condemnation.  Many in Paul’s day and even today think that they can secure such a law based righteousness.   To have this mindset means that one is ignorant of the righteousness of God.  It is to pursue one’s own righteousness rather than submitting to the righteousness of God that Jesus Christ by his obedience to the law secured for us and we receive only by faith.  (Romans 10:1-13).  

In this sense the Law gives us commands without the power to obey them.  We are powerless due to our sin to keep the law.  Our bondage is only intensified if we foolishly think that we can even forge if not a perfect obedience, a well-intended and sincere effort at obedience.   If you try to keep the law to secure acceptance with God you remain estranged from God and under bondage to both sin, the commands of the law without any help from the law to keep it and the curse and condemnation of the law. 

As we remain connected with Adam and under the rule of sin we have no real motivation or power to keep the law for the glory of God.   We are under both the guilt and corruption of sin and the powerlessness of the law that only condemns us.  From both we need to be delivered.   Yet, the law is not the problem and in God’s designed mercy the law will wail upon us so as to awaken a sense of true conviction and set us on course to become open for our need of God’s mercy. 

The Gospel (or the covenant of grace) is what sets us free from the reign of sin and the condemnation and weakness of the law due to sin. 

Christ’s established the covenant of grace (ratified it securely into operative existence) by obeying perfectly the covenant of works.  He obeyed where Adam disobeyed and he obeyed all the Law of Moses perfectly securing a righteous record and then he bore the curse of the Law by suffering and dying upon the cross.  You become a participant in the New Covenant (the Covenant of Grace) by faith in Jesus Christ and his obedient life, penal death and glorious resurrection. 

So what Christ does away with regarding the Law is the law as a covenant of works.  He does away with this covenant of works by fulfilling it completely.   You are delivered by Christ once and for all from any need to keep the law sincerely or perfectly to secured saving righteousness before God.   Every effort you made to do what the law commanded apart from being joined to Jesus and his saving work, only brought greater judgment.  

Granted some people think that they are keeping the law, while others know they are not but are under the burden of believing they must to secure acceptance before God.   Both are under the rule and reign of sin.  Only, those who cease from doing the works of the law to secure acceptance with God and flee to Christ and find security in his law keeping and judgment bearing death will be set free from the treadmill of law keeping works-righteousness. 

The problem with law keeping to secure righteousness is that it is all about you and that is what sin loves to promote.  You are striving to trust in you, in what you can do to secure acceptance with God.  As long as you remain with this mindset you are under the bondage of sin and of the law.  

Even for believers who have been delivered from the realm of sin and the law covenant of works, an ally of sin’s rule remains operative in our hearts.  As mentioned above this ally is called the flesh.  As a believer you have been given the Holy Spirit and the Law of God remains in place not as a covenant of works but as the Westminster Confession of Faith puts it as a rule of life informing us of the will of God and our duty to obey Him who in Christ is now our loving heavenly Father within whose peace and favor we have come to stand. 

The Gospel has so changed you that even though the flesh remains as a foe against whom you must be on your guard and put to death, you in your inner man delight in God’s law.   Now, when you sin, in one sense it is not the real you who sins but it is the flesh that dwells in you.   The Gospel will use the law to expose the operation of indwelling sin (the flesh) but it is by faith in the Gospel that you will be given the power (however not without conflict and resistance from the flesh) to have the desire and power to obey God by keeping the law.  Yet you no longer will pursue law keeping as the basis of your acceptance with God but because you have been accepted in Christ.  It is from the standing of gracious acceptance in Christ (justification) and the presence of the Holy Spirit that you pursue obedience to the Lord.  

The Westminster Confession of Faith 19:6 gives this helpful assessment of the relationship that the believer in Christ now sustains with the Law.

Although true believers be not under the law as a covenant of works, to be thereby justified or condemned; yet is it of great use to them, as well as to others; in that, as a rule of life, informing them of the will of God and their duty, it directs and binds them to walk accordingly; discovering also the sinful pollutions of their nature, hearts, and lives; so as, examining themselves thereby, they may come to further conviction of, humiliation for, and hatred against sin; together with a clearer sight of the need they have of Christ, and the perfection of His obedience. It is likewise of use to the regenerate, to restrain their corruptions, in that it forbids sin; and the threatenings of it serve to show what even their sins deserve, and what afflictions in this life they may expect for them, although freed from the curse thereof threatened in the law. The promises of it, in like manner, show them God's approbation of obedience, and what blessings they may expect upon the performance thereof, although not as due to them by the law as a covenant of works: so as a man's doing good, and refraining from evil because the law encourageth to the one, and deterreth from the other, is no evidence of his being under the law, and not under grace.

Nothing, either great or small—
Nothing, sinner, no;
Jesus died and paid it all,
Long, long ago.

When He, from His lofty throne,
Stooped to do and die,
Ev’rything was fully done;
Hearken to His cry!

Weary, working, burdened one,
Wherefore toil you so?
Cease your doing; all was done
Long, long ago.

Till to Jesus’ work you cling
By a simple faith,
“Doing” is a deadly thing—
“Doing” ends in death.

Cast your deadly “doing” down—
Down at Jesus’ feet;
Stand in Him, in Him alone,
Gloriously complete.

“It is finished!” yes, indeed,
Finished, ev’ry jot;
Sinner, this is all you need,
Tell me, is it not?

Talking to Mr. Law

To be dead to the Law means to be free of the Law. What right, then, has the Law to accuse me, or to hold anything against me? When you see a person squirming in the clutches of the Law, say to him: "Brother, get things straight. You let the Law talk to your conscience. Make it talk to your flesh. Wake up, and believe in Jesus Christ, the Conqueror of Law and sin. Faith in Christ will lift you high above the Law into the heaven of grace. Though Law and sin remain, they no longer concern you, because you are dead to the Law and dead to sin." Blessed is the person who knows how to use this truth in times of distress. He can talk. He can say: "Mr. Law, go ahead and accuse me as much as you like. I know I have committed many sins, and I continue to sin daily. But that does not bother me. You have got to shout louder, Mr. Law. I am deaf, you know. Talk as much as you like, I am dead to you. If you want to talk to me about my sins, go and talk to my flesh. Belabor that, but don't talk to my conscience. My conscience is a lady and a queen, and has nothing to do with the likes of you, because my conscience lives to Christ under another law, a new and better law, the law of grace."

Martin Luther

The Preciousness of Faith

Fides egregia est...

Wherein lies the preciousness of faith?  In its being the chief gospel-grace, the head of the graces. As gold among the metals, so is faith among the graces.  Clement of Alexandria calls the other graces the daughters of faith. In heaven, love will be the chief grace; but, while we are here, love must give place to faith. Love takes possession of glory, but faith gives a title to it. Love is the crowning grace in heaven, but faith is the conquering grace upon earth. 'This is the victory that overcometh the world, even our faith.' I John 5:5.     Thomas Watson

The Gospel: Dealing with The Pharisee's Carcass

Keeping the Gospel in front of you daily is even more important than making sure you eat three square meals a day.   Continually reminding yourself of your standing before God in Christ is essential if you are going to live as a disciple of Jesus Christ in such a way as to render loving obedience to Him.   All our striving to live according to the Law of God apart from a functional faith in the Gospel is both frustrating and fruitless.  

Yet a functional faith in the Gospel of Jesus Christ is not a reliance upon having faith.   A functional faith is a joyful reliance upon Jesus Christ and the benefits we received from him that secure our standing under grace before a holy God.  Don’t take any comfort from having faith.  Don’t assure your soul that because you have faith everything is okay with you.   Confidence before God in your possessing faith is to turn faith into the grounds of your salvation.  This can be a form of pride!  Rather faith boasts in the cross of Jesus Christ.  Faith looks outside of itself to its saving object Jesus Christ.   Drawing a sense of spiritual well being from having faith is like praising yourself for eating a lavish meal rather than praising the superb quality of the food and the one who cooked the meal.  

Faith certainly serves an important function in the Christian life.  You can’t be a Christian without faith, just like you cannot be healthy without eating and drinking.   Yet the nutrients from the food and the water or milk are what bring health to your body.  Likewise it is Jesus Christ who sustains you spiritually.   Faith is not the power of salvation, the Gospel is.  Faith is simply the empty hands that are opened to receive Christ.   However, just like eating and drinking we must continue to look to the Gospel in faith.   The Gospel is as necessary for us to live out the Christian life as it is to begin the Christian life.   The Gospel not only justifies us and reconciles us to God and is what guarantees eternal life, the Gospel is necessary if we are to mature and grow daily.   The Gospel is the good news we need to hear daily so we might be encouraged, lifted up and strengthened to resist temptation and to press through with obedience to the Father.  This is why we need to proclaim it to ourselves daily.

Do you know how to preach the Gospel to yourself?   Do you know why this is so important?    Many of us theoretically believe that by trusting in Christ we have been forgiven and justified before God.  Yet, most of us as Christians still carry the carcass of the Pharisee around in our hearts.   A Pharisee basically is one who functionally believes that it is by his or her performance that God’s favor and love are secured and maintained.   Some Pharisees actually believe (like the believer who trusts in his or her faith) that they perform well.  They comfort their hearts before God by looking at how well they live their lives (or think they are living their lives).  Their boast to themselves and others and even to God is found in their performance.  Christian Pharisees give a kind of lip service to justification.   “Oh, yes Jesus saved me and I am forgiven and accepted before God by what He has done.”  Yet underneath, in their heart their reliance is really upon themselves.   The problem with the self-confident Christian Pharisee is they really do not see themselves in light of the Law of God.   This in part is due to the fact that they look merely to the letter of the Law and not to the spirit.  This was the problem with the rich young ruler who declared to Jesus after he listed the commandments, “All of these I have kept from my youth.”  

You see, the Gospel really does not go deep enough into one’s heart and mind unless it is preceded by a robust and thorough understanding of the doctrine of sin, particularly the Bible’s teaching on total depravity and total inability due to original sin.   Without an understanding of sin then all one gets is “gospel light” at best and no Gospel in the worst case.   The Pharisees of Jesus day diminished the full scope of the law and hence failed to see just how sinful and needy they were.  Sadly, many professing Christians do the same thing.

On the other end of the spectrum is the defeated Pharisee.   This is the guy or gal who still believe that when push comes to shove, it is their performance that will either secure God’s favor or lose God’s favor.   They confess faith in Christ but at the end of the day they remain looking at how well or how poorly they have performed.   There may be a few days when they see their commitment to the Lord as working well.  During these brief episodes they may have some comfort, some assurance that God really loves them.  Yet sooner or later, they will mess up and they dive into despair and fear for certainly they have lost God’s love.  How could God love them after what they did and did again for the umpteenth time?   They are still Pharisees, just defeated ones who still hope (but they lose a bit more of it every time they sin) that they can one day perform well and consistent enough for God to love them.

The Gospel really, really, really humbles you.  You cannot truly believe the Gospel and think for a moment that you perform well enough to either secure God’s favor on your own or buttress the work of Christ, so at least in part, God’s accepts you for what you have done.   No, the Gospel pulls the foundation of all self-confidence and self-righteousness out from under our feet.   The Gospel tells us that unless we stand on Christ alone we do not stand at all before God.   Yet, the Gospel really, really, really comforts and encourages you.  It proclaims that having been justified by faith you have peace with God through Jesus Christ through whom we have also obtained access by faith into this grace in which we stand (Romans 5:1-2).   It is not your performance even after coming to Christ that secures you this standing in grace but it is Christ’s performance.  

Jesus Christ propitiated the wrath of God by his perfect life sacrificed upon the Cross.  The infinite benefit of him doing this becomes yours through the gift of justification.  Once you rest in Christ by faith God’s wrath is forever removed from you.  There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.   This is true even when you sin!   For the believer God is indeed no longer angry because the believer in Jesus Christ has become a justified, restored and adopted child of God who is dearly and forever loved by the Father. 

Now holding to this Gospel by preaching it to yourself daily has as its aim your personal holiness.  It is actually by believing the Gospel that you will find motivation and power not to sin but to live a life of love for God that moves in the trajectory of obedience.   This does not mean that you will not sin but it means that even when you do and feel sorry for it and confess your sin, you have not lost God’s love by your sin, nor have your restored God’s love by your repentance.   It is just that amazing.   The more you see this the more of the Pharisee's carcass you lose - good riddance!  

 

Believing in the Risen Christ Upon the Testimony of Reliable Witnesses: Musings on John 20:24-31

The witness of the New Testament is clear.  The central person of the twenty seven books is Jesus the Messiah.   All the New Testament is based on eye witness testimony about the person and work of Jesus Christ including his resurrection from the dead.   In addition all the particular works of the New Testament: Gospels, Acts, the letters and Revelation were completed before the end of the first century and all were written by the Apostles or by men who were under the oversight or direction of the Apostles.   

Those who wrote the texts that form the New Testament claim to be reporting the truth or the facts about the person of Jesus of Nazareth.   In other words what they claimed was open to scrutiny and investigation.   This is true of all that concerned Jesus Christ: his birth, life, ministry, death and especially his resurrection from the dead.    For example it is clear that the Gospels and Acts purport to be historical accounts (no doubt materials were chosen and edited to fit the purpose of the particular writer) of the origins of Jesus and his life, work, death and resurrection.   They contain summaries of his teaching and narratives of his miracles and interaction with his disciples and opponents.  All of them give similar accounts (but no doubt from different eye-witness perspectives) of his death and resurrection.   The point is that the New Testament will not allow us to pick and choose what we find in its pages concerning Jesus.   Paul goes so far as to say that if the accounts of Christ's resurrection were merely fabricated myths then nothing of Christianity or the Gospel can stand or is worth affirming (1 Corinthians 15).    For example, you can't hold to Jesus' teaching and deny his miracles, including his resurrection and still have the Jesus of the New Testament.   For the writers of the New Testament it is all of Jesus or none of Jesus and those who are honest will at least admit this.   Christianity is not worth holding onto or affirming if the BIG CLAIMS about Jesus are tossed aside and such big claims and affirmations are woven into the fabric of the New Testament texts - they comprise the fabric of the New Testament!

The post resurrection accounts of Jesus found in the Gospels, Acts and the Letters report both the fact of Christ's resurrection and also the theological assessment of its meaning and importance.   These accounts are based on eye-witness testimony.   Of course these are not accounts where those who include them are cool and detached from what is being reported.   The purpose of the Gospels (indeed the entire New Testament) is summed up well by John who gives his readers the reason that he took certain eye-witness accounts and brought them together to support his opening declaration that "The Word was God and the Word became flesh and dwelt among us filled with grace and truth so that all who receive him, who believe in his name he gives the right to become children of God" (John 1:1, 12, 14).    At the end of his account John says: ^"Now Jesus did many other signs in the presence of the disciples, which are not written in this book; but these are written so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name" (John 20:30-31).

The purpose of John writing his Gospel based on the selected signs (works, deeds and teachings) that Jesus did in the presence of his disciples (who are the reliable witnesses) was so that those who read might come to believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God and by believing have life in his name.   John certainly is not a neutral observer but neither is he a deluded observer and this is the case of all those whose witness he included in his Gospel.   The New Testament indeed has an agenda and that is to hold fourth the good news about Jesus Christ.  Nevertheless this good news according to the New Testament is historical to the core.   The New Testament is not calling people to believe without evidence but to believe because of the evidence.  

The object of belief is Jesus Christ.   The New Testament eye witness accounts give you the historical Jesus Christ and call you to respond to him by faith.    Such faith in Christ begins with belief that all the New Testament presents about him is historically true - even his resurrection from the dead.  Yet, this is not enough for such belief in the historical validity of Christ and his resurrection leads to trust in the risen Lord Jesus Christ.  

Thomas upon hearing that his fellow disciples had seen Jesus and that this meant that Jesus was raised from the dead was more than incredulous; he was adamant that he would not be convinced unless he could see and probe his wounds.   Now what John wants his readers to understand is that this narrative of Jesus appearing to Thomas before the other disciples is an historical event.   Yes, it is thoroughly supernatural for it is the risen Christ who appears to them but it is nonetheless a true account - if you had been there you would have seen the same thing that John now records as testimony to Christ's resurrection.  

Jesus calls Thomas to carry out his desired investigation by showing him and the others his wounds.   In doing this he urges Thomas to stop doubting and believe.   He is doing more than urging him to believe in the fact of the resurrection but he is urging him to entrust his life to the Risen one who bears these scars.   It is not enough to believe that Jesus Christ rose from the dead or to give assent to this fact.  This will make no difference in one's life.   Jesus died for a reason and his resurrection made that reason valid.  Paul put it this way: He was delivered over for our trespasses and he was raised for our justification (Romans 4:25).   Thomas' response shows that his belief went further than the laying aside of his skepticism - "okay, I see that I was wrong - wow you really rose from the dead - imagine that."   Rather his response was an intensely intimate and personal confession of faith in the sovereign Lordship and Deity of Jesus Christ:  My Lord and My God!

Now all those first witness came to believe that Jesus had indeed been raised from the dead in the same way - personal investigation.  So we must not be too hard on Thomas.  Since that time all who have come to believe that Jesus indeed was raised from the dead and that his resurrection affirms all that the New Testament claims about him come to such faith on the basis of credible and reliable testimonies of witnesses - like Thomas.    Of course coming to such faith is also a work of God's grace and the inward testimony of the Holy Spirit.   Thomas, by God's grace, came to believe not only in the resurrection of Christ but in the risen Christ by means of Christ's historical encounter with him.   Now all those who believe do so by God's grace in the witness accounts of the New Testament.  

In other words the New Testament never calls you to believe in what is impossible apart from evidence - but it does call you to believe in what is true (what is possible only for God) apart from sight.  Yet it is a call to believe both in the facts concerning the person of Jesus Christ including his resurrection and in the significance of who he is.   It calls you to trust Christ and to abandon the control of your life over to him.   This is why Jesus showed his wounds to Thomas.   The New Testament claims that Jesus Christ laid down his life for sinners and his resurrection secured the benefits of his death.   To trust in Christ is to receive forgiveness and life (spiritual life now and eternal life to come).    So what about you?  Have you investigated the testimony of the New Testament witnesses concerning the resurrection of Jesus Christ and the Risen Christ?  You are urged like Thomas to stop doubting and believe - for Blessed are those who have not seen but have believed - but have believed on the evidence of the testimony of these witnesses.  

The Status of Indwelling Sin Within The Justified

Peccatum furit sed non regnat

A justified person is redeemed a dominio, (from the master) from the power and regency of sin, though not from the presence. Sin may furere, (to rage) but not regnare (to reign); it may rage in a child of God, but not reign. Lust raged in David, and fear in Peter, but it did not reign; they recovered themselves by repentance. 'Sin shall not have dominion over you.' Rom 6:14. Sin lives in a child of God, but is deposed from the throne; it lives not as a king, but a captive.  

Thomas Watson 

Is Jesus Enough?

Jesus had just miraculously fed over five thousand people from a boy's lunch of five barley loaves and two cooked fish.  This along with his miracles of healing John calls, in his Gospel, "signs."  They were signs of the presence of God's Kingdom coming into the world in the person of the Jesus Christ.  As such they were pointers to his deity and to his work as God's appointed Messiah.  

That work was to establish in fallen and rebellious humanity the Gospel of God's grace of salvation.  This salvation is salvation from the just and holy wrath of God due to human sin and rebellion against God.  To be under the wrath of God due to our sinful guilt means that we are also estranged from God and cut off from the source of life, hence we are spiritually dead, we will experience physical death and we will suffer the punishment of eternal destruction.   Jesus came to save us from this and restore us under God's rightful reign so that we would by the Holy Spirit be given the grace to live as obedient citizens of His kingdom. 

The miraculous signs that Jesus did pointed to Him as God's appointed Deliverer and King.  Yet his Kingdom was not of this world.   After the crowd had eaten and was thoroughly satisfied they respond to the sign by declaring that Jesus was indeed the Prophet who was to come into the world.  Yet, they completely misunderstood what this Prophet (expected Messiah) was to do in the world.  They had a completely earthly, temporal and this-life-agenda through which they interpreted the sign.   They were indeed enamored with Jesus.  They really liked what he had done for them.  Yet, they did not see beyond their stomachs.  The party ended when Jesus perceiving that they were going to "take him by force to make him king" sent his disciples back to Capernaum by boat and withdrew to the mountain by himself.  

The next day when the crowd awoke and did not find Jesus (he had walked on the Sea of Galilee, catching up with his disciples who had rowed in the storm three to four miles and they all arrived in Capernaum) they hurried to find Him.   The text states that they were seeking Jesus (6:24).   They were really interested in Him, more particularly they were really interested in what they believed he could do for them.   Upon finding Him Jesus says something that seems to contradict what John stated in 6:14: "when the people saw the sign (feeding over five thousand people from a few loaves of bread and some fish) that he had done."   In 6:26 Jesus is recorded as saying to them: "Truly, truly, I say to you, you are seeking me, not because you saw the sign."  So which is it?   Did they see the sign or did they not see it?  Yes and no.   They saw it on one level yet on another level they were completely blind to the design of the sign.  It was as though they got stuck on looking at the sign and failed to see where it pointed them.   They were seeing the sign only with their stomachs and not with hearts of faith.   The reason they did not really seeing the sign was this: "You are seeking me not because you saw the sign but because you ate your fill of the loaves." 

It is so important that you really come to understand what Jesus is teaching in John chapter six.  You need to be clear on what exactly it is that Jesus has come to do and what he offers you based on his work.   The bread with which He miraculously fed the five thousand was real bread, it was earthly, tangible, filling-one's-empty-stomach bread.  Jesus was moved due to their physical hunger to perform this miracle and to sustain them but in doing this He was also pointing them to a more necessary kind of bread, what he calls the true bread.   They got all preoccupied with the sign that they did not see where the sign pointed them.  Not one of them was so overwhelmed by the miraculous provision that they became more drawn to Jesus than to the bread.   They liked what Jesus did for them so much that they completely missed who Jesus is!   That is the point.   That is the danger we all face even today. 

Jesus will go on in the chapter to teach about the nature of the true bread which he is and how only those who by faith feed on him will experience real life in this age and the age to come.   In this way Jesus sets up a contrast for us between the bread of this life (earthly necessities and niceties, both things we need and things we want) and Himself as the true bread.   Jesus is stressing that He must have the priority over our heart's desires.  He is the one who, as our sovereign Lord, provides us with what we need to live in this age, yet these gifts must not become our reasons for looking to him.  Jesus alone must be the end our faith and not the means to the bread of this life.

What Jesus is calling you to do is to continue to feed on Him (6:54-58) by believing the Gospel.  That is believing who he is for you (Savior and Lord) and what he has done for you (saved your from the wrath of God, secured your justification and reconciliation with God) supplies you with the true sustenance you need.  These realities feed your soul and give you joy, encouragement, life, hope and peace.   You are not seeking Jesus for earthly bread: money, prosperity, health, good self-esteem or even "your best life now."   You are seeking Jesus for Jesus - he is enough!  Then you are taking steps to respond to your circumstances (good or bad, hard or easy) and to the people in your life in a righteous, loving and God-glorifying way.  Feasting on the Bread that is Jesus enables you to live as a disciple of Jesus by calling him Lord and then doing what he says, while trusting that your heavenly Father does in fact know your earthly and daily needs.   

Faith that Justifies the Ungodly Is Not In Itself Meritorious

Faith does not justify as it is a work, which would make a Christ of our faith; but faith justifies, as it lays hold of the object, viz. Christ's merits. If a man had a precious stone in a ring that could heal, we should say the ring heals; but properly it is not the ring, but the precious stone in the ring that heals. Thus faith saves and justifies, but it is not any inherent virtue in faith, but as it lays hold on Christ it justifies.

Faith does not justify as it exercises grace. It cannot be denied, that faith invigorates all the graces, puts strength and liveliness into them, but it does not justify under this notion. Faith works by love, but it does not justify as it works by love, but as it applies Christ's merits.

Thomas Watson

The Moral Influence of the Gospel

The apostles evidently had great confidence in the gospel. They gave it fair play, and spoke it out in all its absolute freeness, as men who could trust it for its moral influence, as well as for its saving power, and who felt that the more speedily and certainly its good news were realized by the sinner, the more would that moral influence come into play. They did not hide it, nor trammel it, nor fence it round with conditions, as if doubtful of the policy of preaching it freely. “Be it known unto you,’ they said, “men and brethren, that through this Man is preached unto you the forgiveness of sins, and by Him all that believe are justified” (Acts 13: 38,39).

They had no misgivings as to its bearings on morality, nor were they afraid of men believing it too soon, or getting too immediate relief from it. The idea does not seem to have entered their mind, that men could betake themselves to Christ too soon, or too confidently, or without sufficient preparation. Their object in preaching it was, not to induce men to commence a course of preparation for receiving Christ, but to receive Him at once and on the spot; not to lead them through the long avenue of a gradually amended life to the cross of the Sin-bearer, but to bring them at once into contact with the cross, that sin in them might be slain, the old man crucified, and a life of true morality begun. As the strongest motive to a holy life, they preached the cross. They knew that, “The cross once seen is death to every vice,” and in the interests of holiness they stood and pleaded with men to take the proffered peace.

Horatius Bonar from God's Way of Holiness