I do not have to meditate on this and try to understand it.
I understand the truth of salvation through faith in the risen Christ.
You do seem to have a problem understanding that.
I would not be guilty of accusing you of not understanding that salvation is by grace through faith in the finished work of Jesus Christ on the cross and it is available to everyone who hears and believes it. You do have a problem understanding that the Bible has structure and division that must be honored.
The bible is quite clear if you will just believe it.
I believe it. But your following quotes are all from the NT and are post resurrection. Jesus Christ can not and did not save anyone on the front side of his coming into the world. He could not. The penalty for sin is death. Jesus died in our place. He died for me and he died for you and he died for these Calvinists who misuse and abuse John six. He did not die for every one of us individually, he died one time for all of us. But his death was not effective for us just because he died and rose again as the perfect sacrifice, his death was accepted by God the Father, the Judge of all the earth, the offended party, because God the Father said he would make his offering for sin efficacious for all that are guilty. That is all of us. He said there is none righteous, no not one.
Those Jews to whom Christ was sent were not saved in John 6 because they were drawn to Christ by the Father. Not one single man or woman in the gospels account were saved, if being saved required a man believe in the shed blood of Jesus Christ on the cross and his bodily resurrection from the dead.
Rom 1:16 I am not ashamed of the gospel, because it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes,
1Co 15:3 For what I received I passed on to you as of first importance: that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures,
1Co 15:4 that He was buried, that He was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures,
Eph 1:13 And in Him, having heard and believed the word of truth—the gospel of your salvation—you were sealed with the promised Holy Spirit,
Eph 2:8 For it is by grace you have been saved through faith, and this not from yourselves; it is the gift of God,
Eph 2:9 not by works, so that no one can boast.
Rom 10:13 for, “Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.”
All these verses say that one must believe the gospel to be saved from their sins. The gospel is clearly defined by the apostle Paul in words that are not at all ambiguous. Here is how this was presented when these things were written.
1 Cor 15:1 Moreover, brethren, I declare unto you the gospel which I preached unto you, which also ye have received, and wherein ye stand;
2 By which also ye are saved, if ye keep in memory what I preached unto you, unless ye have believed in vain.
3 For I delivered unto you first of all that which I also received, how that Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures;
4 And that he was buried, and that he rose again the third day according to the scriptures:
5 And that he was seen of Cephas, then of the twelve:
6 After that, he was seen of above five hundred brethren at once; of whom the greater part remain unto this present, but some are fallen asleep.
7 After that, he was seen of James; then of all the apostles.
8 And last of all he was seen of me also, as of one born out of due time.
Now this is important because it has to do with the resurrection. Denying the resurrection by suggesting it is not necessary for salvation to occur or to plain out deny it happened is what is meant by believing in vain.
12 Now if Christ be preached that he rose from the dead, how say some among you that there is no resurrection of the dead?
13 But if there be no resurrection of the dead, then is Christ not risen:
14 And if Christ be not risen, then [is] our preaching vain, and your faith [is] also vain.
15 Yea, and we are found false witnesses of God; because we have testified of God that he raised up Christ: whom he raised not up, if so be that the dead rise not.
16 For if the dead rise not, then is not Christ raised:
17 And if Christ be not raised, your faith [is] vain; ye are yet in your sins.
18 Then they also which are fallen asleep in Christ are perished.
19 If in this life only we have hope in Christ, we are of all men most miserable.
No one before the cross was saved from their sins. Without the death, burial, and resurrection there is no possibility of salvation from sin. There is justification where God counts a man's faith for righteousness but he cannot be cleared from his sins without the shedding of Christ's blood. What did justified man believe before the cross? They believe what God said to them at the time he said it. All men everywhere was responsible to believe whatever God made known to them. In the case of John 6, these Jews were called upon to believe that Jesus was the Christ, the son of God. This is exactly the two things they refused to believe and they were condemned for their unbelief.
If you read Heb 11 you will see that different men were called upon by God to believe different things he said but they were not called upon to believe Jesus died for their sins and three days later rose from the dead. One man was called on to build an ark and save his family. Another was called on to believe that his aged wife would conceive and bear a son. And on and on and the point is they were justified by their faith but they were not cleared from their sins. The same thing justified all these men in the eyes of the Judge, their faith in his words he spoke to them.
Ex 32:5 And the LORD descended in the cloud, and stood with him there, and proclaimed the name of the LORD.
6 And the LORD passed by before him, and proclaimed, The LORD, The LORD God (Adonay Jehovah - this is Jesus in the OT scriptures)), merciful and gracious, longsuffering, and abundant in goodness and truth,
7 Keeping mercy for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, and that will by no means clear the guilty; visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children, and upon the children s children, unto the third and to the fourth generation.
Heb 9:22 And almost all things are by the law purged with blood; and without shedding of blood is no remission.
No one believed or understood the resurrection in the gospels and they did not believe it even when they were tole by an eye witness. What convinced them to believe it was the physical Jesus Christ standing and preaching to them after he had risen from the dead. There is not a word about drawing.
Joh 20:31 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.
The way you write it seems that you think the means of salvation is some mysterious code we have to decipher. But as you can see from the verses I posted it is not.
I try to interpret the scriptures as if they make sense, because they do. Salvation would be a mysterious code if sinners were getting saved before the death, burial and resurrection of Jesus Christ who paid for my sins and rose again for my justification.
John wrote his gospel account 60 years after the events. He chose seven signs or miracles to validate the deity of Jesus Chait. He is the 7 I AM's
1. I am the Bread of Life
2. I am the Light of the world
3. I am the Door of the sheep
4. I am the Good Shepherd
5. I am the Way, the Truth and the Life
6. I am the Resurrection and the Life
7. I am the True Vine and my Father is the husbandman
May the Lord be exalted by this post. Amen!
