After Jesus had, at least to our human way of thinking, very deliberately not avoided offending the listening Jews by telling them, “Unless you eat the flesh of the Son of man, and drink his blood, you cannot have life in you” (John 6:53), many of his disciples walked away saying, “This is a hard saying; who can listen to it?” (John 6:60) Jesus then turned to the twelve asking, “Do you also wish to go away?”, and Peter answered on their behalf saying, “To whom shall we go Lord? You have the words of eternal life. We have believed, AND HAVE COME TO KNOW that you are the Holy One of God.” (John 6:68-69)

    Now remembering that“All the promises of God are ‘Yes’ to us in Christ Jesus, and through him we say ‘Amen’ to the glory of God,” (2Cor 1:20) we see here how Peter and the others continued to “stand firm” in their faith in who Jesus was, because they no longer just believed but now knew who he was by their personal experience of living with and listening to him, and so they proceeded to “take action” by remaining faithful to the Lord in the face of the a mass desertion by others. It was a bit of a jolt to me personally when the Spirit made me realise that Judas had heard the startling claim which Jesus had just made, and yet he had not walked away, but had, by his presence, led Peter and the others to believe that he also knew that Jesus was the “Holy One of God”, and that he too stood firm and took action with them.

    But for me, one of the most sobering things about this incident is that while Judas Iscariot appeared to be included in that statement of Peter’s, the Lord Jesus continued by saying, “Did I not choose you, the twelve, and one of you is a devil?” He spoke this of Judas, the son of Simon Iscariot, for he, one of the twelve, was to betray him.” (John 6:70-71) It is an alarming thing to realise that when believers are gathered together Satan may very well have a representative present, and it highlights the absolute necessity of having the Holy Spirit’s gift of discernment of spirits present with us as we meet together. Otherwise how are we to know when Satan’s agents are among us, often showing great signs and wonders, as we read in Matt 24:24 & 2Cor 11:12-15, among many other places in the scriptures.