To Whom Shall We Go
At a Glance
Preaching the second installment of Westgate's series through the Gospel of John, David Kim carries forward last week's message on Jesus' welcome and turns to the hard pivot in John 6, where the same crowds who saw miracles now hear a teaching so hard they walk away. Kim argues that spiritual highs can inspire faith but cannot sustain it — only dying to self, and returning to Jesus after failure, can.
- Spiritual highs and miracles can inspire faith, but only a willingness to die to self sustains it through hard teaching.
- The teachings of Jesus that offend us most often reveal exactly where he wants to transform us.
- Faithfulness isn't never failing Jesus — it's returning to him again and again, as Peter did.
Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life.
Exposition
Scripture engaged
The argument
Miracles Inspire Faith But Cannot Sustain It
the pivot from wonder to hard teaching in John 6
Wonder can start a faith that only obedience through hard words can carry.
David Kim frames the hard teaching of John 6 against what came before it — the feeding of the five thousand, Jesus walking on water, a crowd riding a spiritual high. Then, without warning, 'Jesus stops performing miracles and he starts preaching' things that are difficult to hear, and the same eager crowd begins to walk away. Kim's point is not that miracles are unimportant but that they are insufficient: 'Spiritual highs, breakthroughs and miracles and awesome ways that we encounter God can inspire our faith but they cannot sustain it.' The deepest work of discipleship, he insists, happens not on the mountaintop but where Jesus' words confront our assumptions.
Life Is Born Through Death
eating Christ's flesh as an invitation to die to self
Receiving Christ's life requires surrendering the life you have been trying to control.
Kim reads Jesus' command to 'eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood' as foreshadowing his body and blood poured out — an invitation not merely to believe in Jesus' death but to be joined to it. He presses the distinction: 'The question is not merely, do you believe Jesus died for you... but also, are you willing to die to yourself? Are you willing to partake in that death?' Drawing on Galatians 2:20 and Philippians 3:10, he names this the defining pattern of discipleship — 'life is born through death' — and calls it a death to comfort, ego, and self-control, which is precisely why the teaching offended its first hearers.
Offense As Diagnostic
hard teachings expose our functional gods
The teaching you most want edited out of Jesus' mouth is likely the one aimed at your idol.
When the disciples grumble, Jesus does not retreat: 'Does this offend you?' Kim treats that question as permanently open — every disciple eventually meets a teaching that collides with a cherished assumption. 'The teachings of Jesus that offend us often reveal where Jesus wants to transform us most,' he says, citing Keller's line that a God who never disagrees with you may be an idol of your own making. Kim makes this personal, recalling a season he wanted to leave a difficult relationship and a whole church rather than forgive — until he sensed God asking whether he'd keep preaching forgiveness while refusing to practice it himself.
Discipled By Convenience
quitting culture and the illusion that changing context changes us
Changing your surroundings is not the same as letting Jesus change you.
Kim names a reflex he sees everywhere — quitting IKEA furniture, parallel parking, diets — and applies it to faith: 'We've been discipled by convenience. So when something becomes difficult, our reflex isn't to endure, it's to leave.' He warns that walking away from Jesus rarely looks dramatic; it can look like changing churches, relationships, or jobs while the actual issue — Jesus asking for change in us — goes untouched. 'You can change your context and never change,' he says, and adds that even reading Scripture more can become a way of learning without obeying: 'the issue isn't that we don't know what Jesus is saying. The issue is that we know and we don't want to do it.'
Faithfulness As Return, Not Perfection
Peter's confession and the difference between Judas and Peter
Maturity in following Jesus is measured by the return, not by the absence of failure.
When many disciples turn back, Jesus asks the Twelve, 'Do you want to leave too?' Peter answers, 'Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life.' Kim notices that Jesus warns Judas of his betrayal but never warns Peter of his coming denial — 'because Jesus knows something about Peter that Peter does not yet know about himself. Peter will fail Jesus, but he will always come back to him.' The good news of the passage, Kim says, is not a Savior looking for flawless disciples but one who receives those who keep returning: 'Where would we go? We've tried other places.'
Cross references
Devotional
Picture the crowd that once pressed in for bread and now backs away from a sentence. They had eaten until they were full, watched a body walk across water, called Jesus a king in their hearts — and then he opened his mouth again, and something in them recoiled. That is the strange rhythm of this passage: wonder gives way to offense, and offense becomes the doorway to deeper following. David Kim does not let his congregation stand safely outside that crowd. He asks what teaching of Jesus you have quietly wished were not in the Bible. The question does not accuse; it exposes. Every one of us edits Jesus somewhere, keeps a version we can manage, and calls it faith. Yet the force of John 6 is that the parts of Jesus that offend us are not obstacles to knowing him but the very places he intends to remake us. To eat his flesh and drink his blood is to stop treating him as a supplier of miracles and to let him become the ground of a different kind of life — one purchased, oddly, by dying. Peter does not resolve this tension so much as live inside it. He does not have the hard sayings figured out. He simply has nowhere else to go. That may be the truest faith available to any of us: not certainty, not mastery over every hard word, but a stubborn, repeated turning back toward the only one who has ever spoken life. Failure will come. So, mercifully, does the way home.
Reflection prompts
- What teaching of Jesus have you quietly edited or avoided because it costs you something you don't want to give up?
- Where have you changed your context — a church, a job, a relationship — hoping it would spare you from a change Jesus was actually asking of you?
- When you consider Peter's words, 'Lord, to whom shall we go?' — what would it look like for you to return to Jesus this week rather than walk away?
Closing prayer
Jesus, it is sometimes hard to follow you, to obey what you ask of us — we don't know how else to say it, but your words are difficult. Yet where else would we go? We have tried other places. We have come to believe and know that you hold the words of eternal life, that you are the Holy One of Israel. So we come back to you again and again as a church family. May we be marked not by perfect obedience — there is no such thing — but by people who say, over and over, Jesus, we have failed, but we come back to you. Let your grace and mercy sustain us. We will build our lives around you. Amen.
Formation
One thing to remember
Practicing 'I'm sorry, thank you, I bless you' is how dying to self stops being abstract and starts being obedience.
This week
This week, name one person you've been avoiding an honest word with, and say one of three things to them: 'I'm sorry,' 'thank you,' or 'I bless you.' Before you do, bring the hard one to Jesus in prayer and ask him for the honesty it costs.
Return to Galatians 2:20