Am I remembering that no one can believe in Jesus unless God first opens their spiritual eyes?

60 On hearing it, many of his disciples said, “This is a hard teaching.  Who can accept it?” 61 Aware that his disciples were grumbling about this, Jesus said to them, “Does this offend you? 62 What if you see the Son of Man ascend to where he was before! 63 The Spirit gives life; the flesh counts for nothing. The words I have spoken to you are spirit and they are life. 64 Yet there are some of you who do not believe." For Jesus had known from the beginning which of them did not believe and who would betray him. 65 He went on to say, "This is why I told you that no one can come to me unless the Father has enabled him."66 From this time many of his disciples turned back and no longer followed him.

INSIGHT:  Is it a coincidence that this verse is 6:66? There had just been a falling away of many disciples who were offended by his “eat my flesh and drink my blood” sermon.  They had come to Jesus for carnal reasons, not because they understood the truth of their desperate need to be saved from the penalty of their sins, nor of His love to do so.  

When hard teaching or the threat of persecution came, they fell away just like Jesus taught about the 3rd seed in Mat 13:21.  This scripture, along with the cross references, make it so clear that God must pursue us before we can pursue Him.  We can plead with a person about Jesus until we are blue in the face (and to my own humiliation I have done so many times), but until and unless God decides to open their spiritual eyes, our words will fall on deaf ears, or they will come to Jesus with wrong motives. 

If you’ve been given eyes to see, be so grateful, and perhaps less judgmental, about those whose eyes God may never open (Rom 9:10-23).  Some people have a real problem with the idea of predestination because it doesn’t fit with our carnal minds and it offends our sinful pride, which truly desires God only on our own terms.  Predestination may be very hard to understand, but we must trust God’s word, as little children, and rest by faith in His Sovereign election.  There are better men and teachers than me who would disagree with me, but I believe that predestination, in large part, is God’s omniscience being able to see into the future, already knowing who would believe in Him and who would not.  In other words, when God says he loved Jacob, but “hated” Esau, I believe it was because God knew in advance (just like all the other things God predicted in his Word that men would do), that Esau was a godless man, who would give up his spiritual birthright, all for a bowl of stew (Heb 12:16).

Perhaps the strongest Biblical case I can make for my doctrinal position on this comes from Jesus own words in v. 64 of today’s passage, where it says, Jesus had known from the beginning which of them did not believe and who would betray him.

Above all things, with the Spirit’s help, we must allow Scripture to shape our view of God’s ways, rather than trying to shape it to match our image of them.  In the case of predestination, we must remember that unless God speaks to us personally about someone’s spiritual state, only He knows who is predestined, so we should act as if everyone is, and share our faith in Christ whenever that door opens!

But then, we must let the results lie with Him and avoid trying too hard.  Because of my unique calling, and passion about God’s truth and people’s souls, I have fallen into the trap of trying way too hard, and for way too long, to get the blind to see.   It has been my greatest weakness in all these years of ministry.  Let’s remember, “not by might, not by power, but by my Spirit”, says the Lord (Zec 4:6) and that the Spirit Himself blows wherever He pleases (John 3:8)

I have had to remind myself often that even if you shine a thousand bright flashlights into the eyes of a blind man, he will still NOT be able to see the light, no matter how powerful that light is.