John 6:68

Simon Peter answered him, Lord, to whom shall we go? thou hast the words of eternal life.

Here, in Peter's answer, was the secret of why many defected that day, and a few did not. It was not that God in some imperial, inscrutable election, before all time and eternity, had decreed that some should go and others stay. Far from it! Peter had regard to the word of God which Jesus was teaching; and that word was the anchor that held Peter, despite the fact that the metaphor must have shocked him as much as it did the multitude. Those who defected were not taught of God, due to their own character, and not for any lack of opportunity; therefore they were not drawn of God, being drawn instead by their own carnal preferences.

TO WHOM SHALL WE GO?

I. Peter's question carried the implication that all men require someone to whom they can go. It is not in man that walketh to direct his steps; he is never free to order his own affairs but is always the slave of the philosophy he accepts. Man's constitutional nature is such that he is free only to choose a master, a choice that narrows down to God or Mammon. This explains man's irrevocable commitment to religion. He may have the true religion, or any one of a thousand false religions; but religion he must have. For example, dialectical materialism is nothing but a godless, anti-Christian religion, the same being also true of many other systems and "-isms."

II. Peter's reply carried also the implication that human loyalties are inherently directed to a person, rather than to some philosophy, system, or ethic. Peter did not ask, "To what shall we go?" but rather, "To whom shall we go?"

Since the world was, man has never been able, among ten thousand faiths, to have a religion without a personality enshrined at the heart of it. It may be questioned if to an abstract principle men have ever yet, since the world was, built one solitary temple, reared a single altar, offered a single sacrifice, or breathed a single prayer.[23]

III. This need for going to someone is inherent in the helplessness of humanity. Peter's reply made mention of "eternal life," and therein is the admission that the present existence is mortal and ephemeral. Man's mortality, ignorance, and sin are components of his need, which, like an open wound uncovered, sends him to another.

IV. "Thou only hast the words of eternal life ..." Peter had already found the Lord to be food and drink for his soul; and although Peter, like the others, was no doubt shocked by Jesus' metaphor, nevertheless, the meaning of it he already knew. Of all the teachers who ever instructed the human race, only Jesus Christ delivered a convincing body of truth regarding eternal life and the procurement of it by men. To turn away from Jesus our Lord is to turn into darkness and despair. Mankind is like one lost in a lifeboat on the sea in a storm at midnight; and across the boundless ocean only one beacon penetrates the vast darkness that engulfs him, and to turn away from the only light is to choose darkness and death. Jesus is the world's only light.