.
• John 6:37 . . those the Father has given me will come to me
• John 6:39 . . this is the will of God, that I should not lose even one of all those he
has given me
• John 8:29 . . I do always those things that please Him.
I take it from those passages that were Jesus to lose even one of the sheep that
the Father gave him, he would fail to comply with God's will.
In other words: Jesus would have to tone down his statement a bit by claiming to
please God most of the time, but certainly not always because in order for his
keeping of the sheep to be always pleasing, he would need a 0.0 percent failure
rate.
FAQ: What about the sheep's free will? Don't they have some say in whether to
stay with Jesus or go away?
A: No; God's free will trumps everybody else's free will. It is His will that Jesus not
lose sheep: not even one. In other words: the safety of the sheep depends upon
Jesus' respect for his Father's will. The sheep's will is secondary in importance to
the arrangement between Jesus and his Father.
NOTE: When people insist that it's possible for Jesus to lose some of the sheep that
his Father gave him; they are actually casting a vote of no-confidence in the
reliability of his faithfulness to God's will, i.e. they are saying he is an adequate
shepherd, but not really the good shepherd he claims to be.
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