The living bread wants to save us.

John 6.35-40.

You’re gonna find today’s passage translated a bit differently in other bibles. It’s because Jesus is using a lot of conditional verbs. Grammarians call this “the subjunctive mood,” and it refers to things which should happen, ought to happen; things which Jesus wants to happen. Since he sits at the Father’s right hand, he has the unlimited power to make ’em happen. But they might not happen.

Because they’re conditional. There’s a variable which first has to be met. It’s not Jesus; he wants all this stuff to happen. It’s us humans. We have to abide in Jesus. Jn 15.4 We have to come to him, to trust him, to follow him. If we don’t, the conditions aren’t met. Jesus might grant us eternal life—but if we don’t trust him, he might not.

So why do bible translators regularly render these verbs as unconditional; as if they will happen? Well, commentators and translators don’t say. All of ’em are just following custom. Other bibles translate ’em as unconditional, definitive statements, and so do they.

Going all the way back to the first bible translations. When the New Testament was translated into Latin, which has no subjunctive-form verbs—where you have to recognize these statements are conditional by their context, same as English—Jesus’s conditional statements weren’t translated into Latin as conditional statements.

Most of us have commonsense and basic reading skills, and recognize Jesus must be speaking only of the people who come to him. Jn 6.37 But—no surprise—there are always exceptions. Universalists will insist this is proof Jesus is gonna save everybody, even antichrists. Certain determinists will insist this is proof if the Father chooses us for salvation, his will is paramount and must prevail, and these people will come to Jesus, whether they want him or not. It’s a really iffy interpretation of this passage… but it’s mighty popular among some Christians who really want their pagan loved ones to be saved.

Well. Whether you can deduce the conditional nature of this passage or not, I decided to translate all the conditional verbs as conditional verbs, and make it nice ’n obvious. Here ya go.

John 6.35-40 KWL

35Jesus tells them, “I’m the living bread.

One who comes to me ought not hunger.

One who trusts in me ought not thirst.

36But I tell you² that you² also saw me—

and you² don’t trust me.

37Everyone the Father gives me

will come to me.

I ought never throw out

one who comes to me.

38For I came down from heaven

not so I might do my own will,

but my Sender’s will,

39and this {the Father} my Sender’s will:

That I might lose none of everything he gave me,

but I might resurrect it on the Last Day.

40For this is my Father’s will:

Everyone looking to the Son,

and trusting in him,

might have life in the age to come

and I might resurrect them¹ on the Last Day.”

As you can see, Jesus isn’t the variable. He wants to save us. He’s never unable, never unwilling; the whole reason he came into the world was to save it. Jn 3.17 But we humans were granted free will, which means we can misuse it and reject God’s salvation. He 2.3 And no small number of us will, for bitter or wrongheaded reasons, do so.

Your free will doesn’t save you. Might unsave you though.

One of the screwier interpretations of this passage is way Pelagians do it. Pelagianism is a popular Christian heresy which claims there’s no such thing as human depravity; humans are inherently good, not inherently selfish. And since we’re good, all we gotta do is stay good, and God’s gotta accept us into his kingdom, because we deserve it. We have the good karma.

For Pelagians, this passage “proves” we have a role in our own salvation—because one of the good deeds we did to merit salvation, was choose Jesus. We could have not chosen him, and that’d be evil; but we did choose him, and that’d be good! We did the right thing and earned our spot in heaven.

Which is as silly as claiming I saved myself from a heart attack by calling an ambulance.

If, God forbid, I ever do have a heart attack, there’s no way I’m able to save myself. I gotta call for help. I gotta let the paramedics and doctors work on me, and not resist anything they’re doing. Any involvement I have is entirely passive. I do nothing. Same with salvation: Jesus does all the saving. I just trust him, stand back, and let him do his thing.

My involvement is only active if I stop my salvation. If I tell the paramedics, “No! Get off me! Get those paddles away! I wanna die!” and fight ’em, I did actively unsave myself. And it’s the same deal with Jesus. I’m in no position whatsoever to save myself from sin and death; you can’t do it either. But I certainly can doom myself. I can foolishly decide to stop abiding in Christ; I can foolishly reject him. It’s a frightening idea, but the whole reason the scriptures warn us to not reject him, is because we can.

And if I choose to doom myself, Jesus will go along with it—even though he totally wants the opposite. He can save us if we let him. He absolutely wants to. It’s the Father’s will! The Father totally wants me, and every other human in our solar system, saved. 1Ti 2.4 But Jesus isn’t gonna force this act of grace upon us—because then it stops being grace.

There are those who insist we can’t quit Jesus; that since we don’t achieve our own salvation, we can’t achieve our un-salvation either. Salvation and un-salvation aren’t equivalent things, y’know. It’s kinda like saying, “I don’t have the power to fly; therefore I don’t have the power to fall.” Nope; everyone has the power to fall. But Jesus is offering you a (metaphorical, of course) jetpack. Take the jetpack!

And Jesus is offering this to everyone. Calvinists, who believe in limited atonement, claim the Father doesn’t call everyone, Jesus hasn’t saved everyone, and Jesus’s statement “everything he gave me” only applies to a very limited number of elect. Whereas everybody else goes to hell, ’cause God didn’t choose them, and didn’t give ’em to Jesus. Let me simply say this is rubbish. The Father gave the Son the world. “For God so loved the world,” remember? Jn 3.16 The living bread, which Jesus is, gives life to the world. Jn 6.33

Calvinists often insist “world” in the bible only means “the Christian world.” They kinda have to redefine “world” in the scriptures, because when they don’t, the scriptures undo everything they claim about limited atonement. Jesus was sent to take away the world’s sin, Jn 1.29 and conquer the world, Jn 16.33 and now the world just has to accept him. It doesn’t; Jn 1.10 not all of it. Some do. He’s still king of the world though. At the End, everything bows to him and calls him Lord, Pp 2.10-11 not just the willing followers. But why be unwilling? He’s here to give us life!

So if you ever get the idea God doesn’t want you, or might cut you off ’cause you’re not good enough, or gave up on you: Totally false. A lie from the devil. Despair has no basis in God’s plan. God wants us saved. No exceptions.