Bible Strands
John 6:60
On hearing it, many of His disciples said, “This is a difficult teaching. Who can accept it?”
Berean Standard Bible
Follow its threads on the canvas →
Study note
Setting — Jesus speaks in the Capernaum synagogue after describing His flesh as true food, and His statement prompts a direct verbal response from many of His followers.
The words — πολλοὶ (polloi) identifies the responding group as "many," while ἀκούσαντες (akousantes) denotes the completed act of "having heard" the preceding discourse.
The thread — This immediate reaction to a hard teaching reappears in John 6:66 when many disciples turn back and stop walking with Him, and aligns with the spiritual inability to receive Christ's message described in John 8:43.
Why it lands — The passage records a factual refusal to accept a difficult claim before establishing that enduring in Christ's word is the necessary marker of genuine discipleship.
Drafted by a language model from the text, its original words and its cross-references, then checked against them. It can still be wrong: open the verse in the app to report it.
The Greek words
King James Version
Many therefore of his disciples, when they had heard this, said, This is an hard saying; who can hear it?
Cross-references
- John 6:66 From that time on many of His disciples turned back and no longer walked with Him.
- John 8:43 Why do you not understand what I am saying? It is because you are unable to accept My message.
- John 8:31 So He said to the Jews who had believed Him, “If you continue in My word, you are truly My disciples.
- Matthew 11:6 Blessed is the one who does not fall away on account of Me.”
- John 6:41 At this, the Jews began to grumble about Jesus because He had said, “I am the bread that came down from heaven.”
- 2 Peter 3:16 He writes this way in all his letters, speaking in them about such matters. Some parts of his letters are hard to understand, which ignorant and unstable people distort, as they do the rest of the Scriptures, to their own destruction.
- Hebrews 5:11 We have much to say about this, but it is hard to explain, because you are dull of hearing.