John 6:43-52 : Therefore Jesus answered them, “Don’t murmur among yourselves. No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him, and I will raise him up in the last day. 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. Not that anyone has seen the Father, except he who is from God. He has seen the Father. Most certainly, I tell you, he who believes in me has eternal life. I am the bread of life. Your fathers ate the manna in the wilderness, and they died. This is the bread which comes down out of heaven, that anyone may eat of it and not die. I am the living bread which came down out of heaven. If anyone eats of this bread, he will live forever. Yes, the bread which I will give for the life of the world is my flesh.” The Jews therefore contended with one another, saying, “How can this man give us his flesh to eat?”

We didn’t just choose to become Christians. Jesus says here that no one can come to Him unless the Father draws him. God chose us. From our perspective, we did willfully choose Christ, but it was actually God who was drawing us to Him. From other parts of the Bible we know that God didn’t choose us because of any particular quality. It says He chose us before the earth was even created:

Ephesians 1:4 : even as he chose us in him before the foundation of the world, that we would be holy and without blemish before him in love;

Jesus was seeking those His father was really giving to Him. He was not seeking the masses. God, the Father gives us the ability to understand Jesus. Only then can we believe. Listen to what the Jesus said about the masses in the book of Matthew:

Matthew 7:14 : How narrow is the gate, and restricted is the way that leads to life! Few are those who find it.

Jesus again said that He is going to give his life up for the world so that by His death the world can have the opportunity to live forever, just like God sent manna to Israel in the desert to keep them alive physically for a short time, Jesus was to give life to the spirit and to the body forever but through His body as a sacrifice. It is clear from the context that Jesus was saying that “eating” was analogous to “believing”. In order to hear Jesus message, one has to hear the spiritual message and not be distracted by the physical analogy.

It is God the Father who makes this clear to us so that we can believe. Clearly the Jews mentioned here didn’t have God the Father making it clear to them, and Jesus goes even farther with this analogy.