John 6:38--40

"For I have come down from heaven, not to do My own will, but the will of Him who sent Me.  This is the will of Him who sent Me, that of all that He has given Me I lose nothing, but raise it up on the last day.  For this is the will of My Father, that everyone who beholds the Son and believes in Him will have eternal life, and I Myself will raise him up on the last day."

v. 38  For the Lord Jesus, the will of His Father was supreme.  He said that He "must be about His Father's business" when only a lad, an expressed awareness of His Sonship and mission.   During in His ministry He said, "My food is to do the will of Him who sent Me and to accomplish His work."  Uppermost in His priority system was the desiring, delighting in, and doing of the will of the One who sent Him.  Everything He thought, said, left unsaid, and did were in perfect submission to the Father's will.  In the last days of His time on the earth, He prayed, "I glorified You on the earth, having accomplished the work which You have given Me to do," (John 17:4).  Only God personified could have done such a thing.

v.39  A second aspect of His being sent by the Father related to those whom the Father had given Him for salvation.  Such salvation was "according to His own purpose and grace...granted us in Christ Jesus from all eternity," (II Timothy 1:9).  Therefore, this transaction did not occur in time (as some have taught), but before there was time, in the triune counsel of the Godhead.  The Father marked out (the essence of the term "elect") and set His heart upon ("predestined") those whom He sovereignly determined to save.  These He gave to the Son, Who would come to earth for the purpose of giving eternal life to this multitude (John 17:3).  How?  By taking their place on the cross, enduring the Father's judgment against sin, shedding His atoning blood (Lev. 17:11) that they would then receive no condemnation (Romans 8:1).  

v. 40  In so doing, the Lord Jesus utterly insured the salvation (eternal life) of all whom the Father had given Him in eternity past.  The proof of His deity, the assurance that His promises are all true, and the validation of all His claims were epitomized in His rising from the dead.  And, as Paul asserts clearly in the 15th chapter of I Corinthians, the Lord Jesus' resurrection is the guarantee of the raising of the ones given Him by the Father.  Comforting, too, that this raising of the elect is not to be assigned to an angel, or accomplished by some other celestial being, but the Lord Jesus Himself will raise His own on the last day!  And thus, we shall always be with the Lord, praise to His gracious Name!