But these crowds were not willing. Two times Jesus says it. Verse 25, "You do not believe." Verse 26: "You do not believe." Jesus met with widespread unbelief in his own day just like he does today. And the reason was the same then as it is today: not primarily a lack of clear and worthy testimony ("I have told you . . . the works bear witness . . . of me"), but rather a deeply rooted spiritual unwillingness to love what Jesus loves. Do you remember John 5:44 where Jesus says, "How can you believe when you seek glory from one another and do not seek the glory that comes from the only God?" The chief hindrance to faith is not that Jesus' claims are obscure or insufficient, but that people "love the glory of men rather than the glory of God" (John 12:43). It is not primarily a problem of knowledge but a problem of pride. Like Jesus, Paul too traces unbelief back through ignorance to the heart which is hardened against the glory of God in Christ. He says in Ephesians 4:18, "They are darkened in their understanding, excluded from the life of God, because of the ignorance that is in them, because of the hardness of their heart." There is a kind of deadness to spiritual things which grips the heart of unbelievers. The affections of some are so completely enslaved to the things of this world that Jesus says they will not repent, even if one should rise from the dead (Luke 16:31), for it is not a problem of knowledge, but of what they love.