Blogging in Christ — Issue 16

No One Can Come Unless

The writer who sets out to gather readers soon learns a temptation dressed as diligence. If only the opening were sharper, the subject better chosen, the voice more winning, then readers would come. The work becomes a kind of magnetism, and the measure of a piece becomes the crowd it pulls. The writer studies what people want, shapes his words to fit that want, and calls the result faithfulness. The crowd may even arrive. Yet the question remains whether he has done the work given him, or taken up a work that was never his.

The sentence that settles the question leaves no room for magnetism. "No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him; and I will raise him up in the last day." (John 6:44) No one can come. The word names an inability, not a reluctance that a better presentation could overcome. Unless the Father draws him. The drawing comes first, and the coming follows. The order cannot be reversed by craft. A writer cannot draw in the Father's place, and no technique stands in for the drawing.

The Lord says the same thing a second time, so that no reader can mistake it for a figure of speech. "For this cause I have said to you that no one can come to me, unless it is given to him by my Father." (John 6:65) Coming is given. It is not coaxed out of a man by the right arrangement of words, nor earned by skill in holding attention. What is given by the Father arrives; what is not given does not arrive by being better advertised. The writer who believes this is freed from the one burden he cannot carry, and bound to the one work he can do: to speak the word truly and leave the coming to the Giver.

For the drawing has a shape, and it is not the shape of attraction. "It is written in the prophets, 'They will all be taught by God.' Therefore everyone who hears from the Father and has learned, comes to me." (John 6:45) The Father draws by teaching. The chain runs from the Father's teaching to the hearer's learning to the coming to the Son. Nothing in that chain is supplied by the writer's appeal. He may repeat the teaching faithfully, but he cannot make a man hear or learn. Hearing and learning belong to the same drawing that brings the man to Christ.

This is why the failure of a piece to gather a crowd proves nothing against its truth, and why a crowd proves nothing for it. The same Lord who declares that no one can come unless drawn also names the refusal plainly. "Yet you will not come to me, that you may have life." (John 5:40) Will not, and cannot, stand together in the same mouth. The man who does not come is not a neutral observer waiting for a better offer. He is unwilling, and his unwillingness is part of the inability the drawing must overcome. The writer therefore cannot treat the reader as a customer whose resistance is a problem of presentation.

Nor does the writer need to manufacture the certainty that the drawing supplies. "All those whom the Father gives me will come to me. He who comes to me I will in no way throw out." (John 6:37) All those given will come. The Son receives what the Father gives, and keeps what He receives. The writer's part is not to secure the arrival, nor to hold the reader once he has arrived. The Son secures and keeps.

The same order appears in the figure of the sheep. "My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me." (John 10:27) "I give eternal life to them. They will never perish, and no one will snatch them out of my hand." (John 10:28) Sheep follow because they hear a voice they know, not because the shepherd has learned to sound attractive. A writer who tries to make his own voice the attractive sound has reversed the figure. His voice is not the Shepherd's voice. At best it repeats the Shepherd's words, and no polish on the repetition turns the writer's voice into the Shepherd's.

Lydia shows what this looks like in a single hearing. "A certain woman named Lydia, a seller of purple, of the city of Thyatira, one who worshiped God, heard us. The Lord opened her heart to listen to the things which were spoken by Paul." (Acts 16:14) Paul spoke, and Lydia heard. But between the speaking and the hearing stands a work Paul did not do. The Lord opened her heart to listen. The writer cannot open a heart by the force of his opening paragraph. He can speak distinctly and truly, and the opening, when it comes, is the Lord's.

Therefore the writer's work takes its proper, smaller shape. "The farmer sows the word." (Mark 4:14) He sows, and sowing is not attracting. The farmer does not summon the seed to grow, nor persuade the soil to receive it. "I planted. Apollos watered. But God gave the increase." (1 Cor 3:6) "So then neither he who plants is anything, nor he who waters, but God who gives the increase." (1 Cor 3:7) Planting and watering are real work, and they are nothing in the order of increase. The writer who counts his plantings as though they were the increase has confused his station.

The command given to the writer points outward, not toward a crowd to be gathered to himself. "Go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit," (Matt 28:19) Go. The herald goes to where men are; he does not set a trap and wait for men to come to him. The record of the early assembly keeps the same order. "praising God and having favor with all the people. The Lord added to the assembly day by day those who were being saved." (Acts 2:47) The Lord added, day by day, not by campaign.

This is not an excuse for careless writing, nor a reason to write obscurely and call the obscurity faithfulness. The word must still be spoken plainly, because the word itself does the work when it is heard. "so is my word that goes out of my mouth: it will not return to me void, but it will accomplish that which I please, and it will prosper in the thing I sent it to do." (Isa 55:11) It does not prosper because the writer packaged it well; it prospers because it is the Lord's word. The writer's diligence lies in not corrupting the word on its way out: no softening, no invented connection, no quotation from memory, no truth bent to fit a hoped-for reader.

And the writer's cleverness, trusted as a means of life, is named for what it is. "It is the spirit who gives life. The flesh profits nothing. The words that I speak to you are spirit, and are life." (John 6:63) A sharper hook, a warmer tone, a subject tuned to the season: all of it is flesh when trusted to give what only the Spirit gives. The words of Christ are spirit and life. The writer's words have life in them only insofar as they carry His words truly.

Let the practice follow the doctrine, then, and be plain. Write to the Lord first, and to yourself second, because you are the first learner the piece must teach. Write for whoever God sends third, without shaping the piece to a reader you have imagined and without measuring it by readers who never came. Do not ask, before writing, what will attract. Ask what the text says, and say it as truly as you can. Do not ask, after writing, how many came. Ask whether the piece is finished, whether its quotations are verified, whether its connections are real.

No one can come unless the Father draws him. The writer is not the drawer. He is the herald who stands in the field with the seed in his hand, sowing the word where he is sent to sow it. The drawing is God's, the coming is God's gift, the keeping is the Son's, and the increase is God's alone. That order is not a discouragement to the work. It is the only ground on which the work can be done without despair and without pride: sow truly, and leave the harvest to the Lord of the harvest.