Verses 1-50
Chapter 12
12:1-8 Now six days
before the Passover Jesus went to Bethany, where Lazarus was whom he
raised from the dead. So they made him a meal there, and Martha was
serving while Lazarus was one of those who reclined at table with him.
Now Mary took a pound of very precious genuine spikenard ointment, and
anointed Jesus' feet, and wiped his feet with her hair; and the house
was filled with the perfume of the ointment. But Judas Iscariot, one of
his disciples, the one who was going to betray him, said: "Why was this
ointment not sold for ten pounds, and the proceeds given to the poor?"
He said this, not that he cared for the poor, but because he was a thief
and had charge of the money-box, and pilfered from what was put into
it. So Jesus said: "Let her observe it now against the day of my burial.
The poor you have always with you, but me you have not always."
We have seen on other occasions that many scholars believe that
certain parts of John's gospel have become displaced. Some suspect a
dislocation here. Moffatt, for instance, prints it in the order John 12:19-29; John 12:1-18 and John 12:30; John 12:31-42.
We have retained the order of the King James Version (and the Revised
Standard Version) for our studies, but if the reader will read the
chapter in the rearranged order he will see the connection of events and
thought more clearly.
It was coming very near the end for Jesus. To come to Jerusalem
for the Passover was an act of the highest courage, for the authorities
had made him in effect an outlaw (John 11:57).
So great were the crowds who came to the Passover that they could not
all possibly obtain lodging within the city itself, and Bethany was one
of the places outside the city boundaries which the law laid down as a
place for the overflow of the pilgrims to stay.
When Jesus came to Bethany they made him a meal. It must have
been in the house of Martha and Mary and Lazarus, for where else would
Martha be serving but in her own house? It was then that Mary's heart
ran over in love. She had a pound of very precious spikenard ointment.
Both John and Mark describe it by the adjective pistikos (Greek #4101) (Mark 14:3). Oddly enough, no one really knows what that word means. There are four possibilities. It may come from the adjective pistos (Greek #4103) which means faithful or reliable, and so may mean genuine. It may come from the verb pinein (Greek #4095)
which means to drink, and so may mean liquid. It may be a kind of trade
name, and may have to be translated simply pistic nard (Greek #3487).
It may come from a word meaning the pistachio nut, and be a special
kind of essence extracted from it. In any event it was a specially
valuable kind of perfume. With this perfume Mary anointed Jesus' feet.
Judas ungraciously questioned her action as sheer waste. Jesus silenced
him by saying that money could be given to the poor at any time, but a
kindness done to him must be done now, for soon the chance would be gone
for ever.
There is a whole series of little character sketches here.
(i) There is the character of Martha. She was serving at table.
She loved Jesus; she was a practical woman; and the only way in which
she could show her love was by the work of her hands. Martha always gave
what she could. Many and many a great man has been what he was only
because of someone's loving care for his creature comforts in his home.
It is just as possible to serve Jesus in the kitchen as on the public
platform or in a career lived in the eyes of men.
(ii) There is the character of Mary. Mary was the one who above
all loved Jesus; and here in her action we see three things about love.
(a) We see love's extravagance. Mary took the most precious
thing she possessed and spent it all on Jesus. Love is not love if it
nicely calculates the cost. It gives its all and its only regret is that
it has not still more to give. O. Henry, the master of the short story,
has a moving story called The Gift of the Magi. A young American
couple, Della and Jim, were very poor but very much in love. Each had
one unique possession. Della's hair was her glory. When she let it down
it almost served as a robe. Jim bad a gold watch which had come to him
from his father and was his pride. It was the day before Christmas, and
Della had exactly one dollar eighty-seven cents to buy Jim a present.
She went out and sold her hair for twenty dollars; and with the proceeds
bought a platinum fob for Jim's precious watch. When Jim came home at
night and saw Della's shorn head, he stopped as if stupefied. It was not
that he did not like it or love her any less; for she was lovelier than
ever. Slowly he handed her his gift; it was a set of expensive
tortoise-shell combs with jewelled edges for her lovely hair--and he had
sold his gold watch to buy them. Each had given the other all there was
to give. Real love cannot think of any other way to give.
(b) We see love's humility. It was a sign of honour to anoint a
person's head. "Thou anointest my head with oil," says the psalmist (Psalms 23:5).
But Mary would not look so high as the head of Jesus; she anointed his
feet. The last thing Mary thought of was to confer an honour upon Jesus;
she never dreamed she was good enough for that.
(c) We see love's unselfconsciousness. Mary wiped Jesus' feet
with the hair of her head. In Palestine no respectable woman would ever
appear in public with her hair unbound. On the day a girl was married
her hair was bound up, and never again would she be seen in public with
her long tresses flowing loose. That was the sign of an immoral woman.
But Mary never even thought of that. When two people really love each
other they live in a world of their own. They will wander slowly down a
crowded street hand in hand heedless of what other people think. Many
are self-conscious about showing their Christianity, concerned always
about what others are thinking about them. Mary loved Jesus so much that
it was nothing to her what others thought.
But there is something else about love here. John has the
sentence: "The house was filled with the fragrance of the ointment." We
have seen that so many of John's statements have two meanings, one which
lies on the surface and one which is underneath. Many fathers of the
Church and many scholars have seen a double meaning here. They have
taken it to mean that the whole Church was filled with the sweet memory
of Mary's action. A lovely deed becomes the possession of the whole
world and adds to the beauty of life in general, something which time
cannot ever take away.
(iii) There is the character of Judas. There are three things here about him.
(a) We see Jesus' trust in Judas. As far back as John 6:70-71,
John shows us Jesus well aware that there was a traitor within the
ranks. It may well be that he tried to touch Judas' heart by making him
the treasurer of the apostolic company. It may well be that he tried to
appeal to his sense of honour. It may well be that he was saying in
effect to him: "Judas, here's something that you can do for me. Here is
proof that I need you and want you." That appeal failed with Judas, but
the fact remains that often the best way to reclaim someone who is on
the wrong path is to treat him not with suspicion but with trust; not as
if we expected the worst, but as if we expected the best.
(b) We see one of the laws of temptation. Jesus would not have
put Judas in charge of the money-box unless he had some capabilities in
that direction. Westcott in his commentary said: "Temptation commonly
comes through that for which we are naturally fitted." If a man is
fitted to handle money, his temptation may be to regard money as the
most important thing in the world. If a man is fitted to occupy a place
of prominence, his temptation may be to think first and foremost of
reputation. If a man has a particular gift, his temptation may be to
become conceited about that gift. Judas had a gift for handling money
and became so fond of it that he became first a thief and then a traitor
for its sake. The King James Version says that he bare the bag. The
verb is bastazein (Greek #941);
bastazein does not mean to bear, or carry, or lift. But in colloquial
English to lift a thing can also mean to steal it. We talk, for
instance, of a shop-lifter. And Judas did not only carry the bag; he
pilfered from it. Temptation struck him at the point of his special
gift.
(c) We see how a man's view can be warped. Judas had just seen
an action of surpassing loveliness; and he called it extravagant waste.
He was an embittered man and he took an embittered view of things. A
man's sight depends on what is inside him. He sees only what he is fit
and able to see. If we like a person, he can do little wrong. If we
dislike him, we may misinterpret his finest action. A warped mind brings
a warped view of things; and, if we find ourselves becoming very
critical of others and imputing unworthy motives to them, we should, for
a moment, stop examining them and start examining ourselves.
Lastly, there is here one great truth about life. Some things we
can do almost any time, but some things we will never do, unless we
grasp the chance when it comes. We are seized with the desire to do
something fine and generous arid big-hearted. But we put it off--we will
do it tomorrow; and the fine impulse goes, and the thing is never done.
Life is an uncertain thing. We think to utter some word of thanks or
praise or love but we put it off; and often the word is never spoken.
Here is one tragic instance of how a man realized too late the
things he had never said and done. Thomas Carlyle loved Jane Welsh
Carlyle, but he was a cross-grained, irritable creature and he never
made life happy for her. Unexpectedly she died. J. A. Froude tells us of
Carlyle's feelings when he lost her. "He was looking through her
papers, her notebooks and journals; and old scenes came mercilessly back
to him in the vistas of mournful memory. In his long sleepless nights,
he recognized too late what she had felt and suffered under his childish
irritabilities. His faults rose up in remorseless judgment, and as he
had thought too little of them before, so now he exaggerated them to
himself in his helpless repentance . . . 'Oh!' he cried again and again,
'if I could see her but once more, were it but for five minutes, to let
her know that I always loved her through all that. She never did know
it, never.'" There is a time for doing and for saying things; and, when
it is past, they may never be said and never be done.
It was Judas' ill-natured complaint that the money which that
ointment could have raised should have been given to the poor. But as
scripture said: "The poor will never cease out of the land; therefore I
command thee saying, You shall open wide your hand to your brother, to
the needy and to the poor, in the land" (Deuteronomy 15:11).
To help the poor was something that could be done any time. To show the
heart's devotion to Jesus had to be done before the Cross on Calvary
took him to its cruel arms. Let us remember to do things now, for the
chance so often never comes again, and the failure to do them,
especially the failure to express love brings bitter remorse.
12:9-11 The mob of the
Jews knew that Jesus was there; and they came, not only because of
Jesus, but to see Lazarus, whom he had raised from the dead. The chief
priests plotted to kill Lazarus too, because many of the Jews were
withdrawing from them because of him and were coming to believe in
Jesus.
For the leaders of the Jews things were getting into an
impossible position. This was specially the case for the Sadducees, to
which party belonged all the priests, for them the position was doubly
threatening.
First, it was threatening from the political point of view. The
Sadducees were the wealthy aristocratic class and they worked in close
collaboration with the Roman government. Their aim was to ensure their
own wealth and ease and comfort. So long as they were allowed to retain
the ruling places in the government they were quite prepared to
collaborate. The Romans allowed their subject kingdoms a large amount of
freedom. Broadly speaking, under a Roman governor, they allowed them to
govern themselves, but at the slightest outbreak of civil disorder
Rome's hand came down heavily, and those who were responsible for good
government and had failed to produce it were summarily dismissed. The
Sadducees saw Jesus as the possible leader of a rebellion. He was
stealing away the hearts of the people. The atmosphere was electric; and
the Sadducees were determined to get rid of him in case there should be
an uprising of the people and their own case and comfort and authority
be threatened.
Second, they regarded it as theologically intolerable. Unlike
the Pharisees, the Sadducees did not believe in the resurrection of the
dead; and, here they were confronted with Lazarus who had been raised
from the grave. Unless they could do something about it, the foundations
of their power, their influence and their teaching, were slipping from
beneath their feet.
So they proposed to destroy the evidence by doing away with
Lazarus. H. G. Wood tells of a remark of two old ladies in the days when
Charles Darwin had made public the conception of evolution and when it
was thought that that meant that man was sprung from and akin to the
beasts. They were heard to say: "Let's hope it's not true, and, if it
is, let's hush it up!" When a man has to support a position by
destroying the evidence which threatens it, it means that he is using
dishonest methods to support a lie--and knows it.
The Sadducees were prepared to suppress the truth to further
their own self-interest. For many people self-interest is the most
powerful motive in life. Many discoveries which might produce cheaper
goods never see the light of day because the patents are bought up and
rendered inoperative by those whose products they threaten.
Self-interest dictates policy and action.
In order to maintain their own place and their own influence the
priests and the Sadducees were prepared to destroy the evidence for the
truth. A man has come to a sorry pass when he is afraid of the truth
and sets his personal prestige and profit before it.
12:12-19 On the next
day the great crowd that was coming to the Feast heard that Jesus was on
his way to Jerusalem. They took the branches of palm trees and went out
to meet him. They kept up a shout: "Hosanna! Blessed is he who comes in
the name of the Lord, he who is the King of Israel!" Jesus found a
young ass and sat on it, as it stands written: "Fear not, daughter of
Zion. Look! Your King is coming sitting upon an ass' colt." At first the
disciples did not realize the significance of these things; but when
Jesus was glorified then they remembered that these things were written
about him, and that they had done these things to him. The crowd who
were with him testified that he had called Lazarus from the tomb, and
had raised him from among the dead. It was because they had heard that
he had performed this sign that the crowd went out to meet him. So the
Pharisees said to each other: "You can see that all the steps you have
taken have been completely ineffective. See! The whole world has gone
off after him!"
Passover, Pentecost and Tabernacles were the three compulsory
festivals of the Jews. To the Passover in Jerusalem Jews came from the
ends of the earth. Wherever a Jew might live it was his ambition to
observe one such Passover. To this day, when Jews in foreign lands
observe the Passover, they say: "This year here; next year in
Jerusalem."
At such a time Jerusalem and the villages round about were
crowded. On one occasion a census was taken of the lambs slain at the
Passover Feast. The number was given as 256,000. There had to be a
minimum of ten people per lamb; and if that estimate is correct it means
that there must have been as many as 2,700,000 people at that Passover
Feast. Even if that figure is exaggerated, it remains true that the
numbers must have been immense.
News and rumour had gone out that Jesus the man who had raised
Lazarus from the dead was on his way to Jerusalem. There were two
crowds, the crowd which was accompanying Jesus from Bethany, and the
crowd which surged out from Jerusalem to see him; and they must have
flowed together in a surging mass like two tides of the sea. Jesus came
riding on a ass' colt. As the crowds met him they received him like a
conqueror. And the sight of this tumultuous welcome sent the Jewish
authorities into the depths of despair, for it seemed that nothing they
could do could stop the tide of the people who had gone after Jesus.
This is an incident so important that we must try to understand just
what was happening.
(i) Certain among the crowds were simply sightseeing. Here was a
man who, as rumour had it, had raised a man from the dead; and many had
simply gone out to gaze on a sensational figure. It is always possible
to attract people for a time by sensationalism and shrewd publicity; but
it never lasts. Those who were that day regarding Jesus as a sensation
were within a week shouting for his death.
(ii) Many among these crowds were greeting Jesus as a conqueror.
That, in fact, is the predominant atmosphere of the whole scene. They
greeted him with the words: "Hosanna! Blessed is he who is coming in the
name of the Lord!" The word Hosanna (Greek, Greek #5614) is the Hebrew (Hebrew #3467 and Hebrew #4994) for "Save now!" And the shout of the people was almost precisely like that of the British people: "God save the King!"
The words with which the people greeted Jesus are illuminating. They are a quotation from Psalms 118:25-26. That psalm had many connections, which were bound to be in the minds of the people. It was the last psalm of the group (Psalms 113:1-9; Psalms 114:1-8; Psalms 115:1-18; Psalms 116:1-19; Psalms 117:1-2; Psalms 118:1-29) known as the Hallel. The word Hallel (Hebrew #1984)
means Praise God! and these are all praising psalms. They were part of
the first memory work every Jewish boy had to do; they were sung often
at great acts of praise and thanksgiving in the Temple; they were an
integral part of the Passover ritual. Further, this particular psalm was
intimately connected with the ritual of the Feast of Tabernacles. At
that feast worshippers carried bundles made up of palm, myrtle and
willow branches called lulabs. Daily they went with them to the Temple.
On every day of the feast they marched round the great altar of the
burnt offering--once on each of the first six days, seven times on the
seventh--and as they marched they triumphantly sang verses from this
psalm and especially these very ones. In fact it may well be that this
psalm was written for the first celebration of the Feast of Tabernacles
when Nehemiah had rebuilt the shattered walls and city and the Jews came
home from Babylon and could worship again (Nehemiah 8:14-18). This was indeed the psalm of the great occasion--and the people knew it.
Further, this was characteristically the conqueror's psalm. To
take but one instance, these very verses were sung and shouted by the
Jerusalem crowd when they welcomed back Simon Maccabaeus after he had
conquered Acra and wrested it from Syrian dominion more than a hundred
years before. There is no doubt that when the people sang this psalm
they were looking on Jesus as God's Anointed One, the Messiah, the
Deliverer, the One who was to come. And there is no doubt that they were
looking on him as the Conqueror. To them it must have been only a
matter of time until the trumpets rang out and the call to arms sounded
and the Jewish nation swept to its long delayed victory over Rome and
the world. Jesus approached Jerusalem with the shout of the mob hailing a
conqueror in his ears--and it must have hurt him, for they were looking
in him for that very thing which he refused to be.
(iii) In such a situation it was obviously impossible for Jesus to
speak to the crowd. His voice could not have reached that vast assembly
of people. So he did something that all could see; he came riding upon
an ass' colt. Now that was two things. First, it was a deliberate claim
to be the Messiah. It was a dramatic enactment of the words of Zechariah
the prophet (Zechariah 9:9).
John does not quote accurately because obviously he is quoting from
memory. Zechariah had said: "Rejoice greatly, O daughter of Zion; shout
aloud, O daughter of Jerusalem, Lo your king comes to you; triumphant
and victorious is he, humble and riding on an ass, on a colt the foal of
an ass." There is no doubt at all that Jesus' claim was a messianic
claim.
But, second, it was a claim to be a particular kind of Messiah.
We must not misunderstand this picture. With us the ass is lowly and
despised; but in the East it was a noble animal. Jair, the Judge, had
thirty sons who rode on asses' colts ( 10:4). Ahithopel rode upon an ass (2 Samuel 17:23). Mephibosheth, the royal prince, the son of Saul, came to David riding upon an ass (2 Samuel 19:26).
The point is that a king came riding upon a horse when he was bent on
war; he came riding upon an ass when he was coming in peace. This action
of Jesus is a sign that he was not the warrior figure men dreamed of,
but the Prince of Peace. No one saw it that way at that time, not even
the disciples, who should have known so much better. The minds of all
were filled with a kind of mob hysteria. Here was the one who was to
come. But they looked for the Messiah of their own dreams and their own
wishful thinking; they did not look for the Messiah whom God had sent.
Jesus drew a dramatic picture of what he claimed to be, but none
understood the claim.
(iv) In the background there were the Jewish authorities. They
felt frustrated and helpless; nothing they could do seemed able to stop
the attraction of this Jesus. "The whole world," they said, "is gone off
after him!" In this saying of the authorities there is a magnificent
example of that irony in which John is so skilled. No writer in the New
Testament can say so much with such amazing reticence. It was because
God so loved the world that Jesus came into the world; and here, all
unwittingly, his enemies are saying that the world has gone after him.
In the very next section John is going to tell of the coming of the
Greeks to Jesus. The first representatives of that wider world, the
first seekers from outside, are about to come. The Jewish authorities
were speaking truer than they knew.
We cannot leave this passage without noticing the simplest thing
of all. Seldom in the world's history has there been such a display of
magnificently deliberate courage as the Triumphal Entry. We must
remember that Jesus was an outlaw and that the authorities were
determined to kill him. All prudence would have warned him to turn back
and make for Galilee or the desert places. If he was to enter Jerusalem
at all, all caution would have demanded that he enter secretly and go
into hiding; but he came in such a way as to focus every eye upon
himself. It was an act of the most superlative courage, for it was the
defiance of all that man could do; and it was an act of the most
superlative love, for it was love's last appeal before the end.
12:20-22 There were
some Greeks among those whose practice it was to come up to the feast.
Now these came to Philip, who came from Bethsaida in Galilee, and made a
request to him. "Sir," they said, "we wish to see Jesus." Philip went
and told Andrew, and Andrew and Philip went and told Jesus.
None of the other gospels tells of this incident, but it is
very fitting to find it in the Fourth. The Fourth Gospel was the one
written to present the truth of Christianity in a way that the Greeks
could appreciate and understand; and it is natural that in it the first
Greeks to come to Jesus should find a place.
It need not seem strange to find Greeks in Jerusalem at the
Passover time. They need not even have been proselytes. The Greek was an
inveterate wanderer, driven by wanderlust and by the desire to find out
new things. "You Athenians," said one of the ancients, "will never rest
yourselves, nor will you ever let anyone else rest." "You Greeks," said
another, "are like children, always young in your souls." More than
five hundred years before this Herodotus had travelled the world, as he
said himself, to find things out. Far up the Nile to this day there
stands a great Egyptian statue on which a Greek tourist, even as modern
tourists do, had scratched his name. The Greek voyaged for trade and for
commerce of course; but he was the first man to wander for the sake of
wandering in the ancient world. There is no need to be surprised to find
a detachment of sightseeing Greeks even in Jerusalem.
But the Greek was more than that. He was characteristically a
seeker after truth. It was no unusual thing to find a Greek who had
passed through philosophy after philosophy, and religion after religion,
and gone from teacher to teacher in the search for truth. The Greek was
the man with the seeking mind.
How had these Greeks come to hear of Jesus and to be interested
in him? J. H. Bernard throws out a most interesting suggestion. It was
in the last week of his ministry that Jesus cleansed the Temple and
swept the money-changers and the sellers of doves from the Temple court.
Now these traders had their stance in the Court of the Gentiles, that
great court which was the first of the Temple courts and where Gentiles
were allowed to come but no further. If these Greeks were in Jerusalem
at all they would be certain to visit the Temple and to stand in the
Court of the Gentiles. Perhaps they had actually witnessed that
tremendous scene when Jesus had driven the traders from the Temple
court; and perhaps they wished to know more of a man who could do things
like that.
However that may be, this is one of the great moments of the
story, for here is the first faint hint of a gospel which is to go out
to all the world.
The Greeks came with their request to Philip. Why Philip? No one
can say for certain, but Philip is a Greek name and perhaps they
thought that a man with a Greek name would treat them sympathetically.
But Philip did not know what to do, and he went to Andrew. Andrew was in
no doubt and he led them to Jesus.
Andrew had discovered that no one could ever be a nuisance to
Jesus. He knew that Jesus would never turn any seeking soul away.
12:23-26 Jesus
answered them: "The hour has come that the Son of Man should be
glorified. This is the truth I tell you--unless a grain of wheat falls
into the ground and dies, it remains all by itself alone; but, if it
dies, it bears much fruit. He who loves his life is losing it; and he
who hates his life in this world will keep it to life eternal. If anyone
will serve me, let him follow me; and where I am, there will my
servants also be."
Hardly any passage in the New Testament would come with such a
shock to those who heard it for the first time as this. It begins with a
saying which everyone would expect; and it finishes with a series of
sayings which were the last things anyone would expect.
"The hour has come," began Jesus. "when the Son of Man should be
glorified." It was clear that things had been budding up to a crisis
and that crisis had now come. But Jesus' idea of what that crisis
involved was quite different from anyone else's. When he talked about
the Son of man, he did not mean what other people meant. To understand
the shocking nature of this short paragraph we must grasp something of
what the Jews understood by Son of Man. That term took its origin in Daniel 7:13.
In that passage the King James Version mistranslates. It has it that
one like unto the Son of Man came to the Ancient of Days, and received a
kingdom, a glory and a dominion that were to be universal and for ever.
The correct translation is not the Son of Man, but a son of man as the
Revised Standard Version has it.
The point of the passage is this. In Daniel 7:1-8
the writer has been describing the world powers which have held sway,
the Assyrians, the Babylonians, the Medes and the Persians. They were so
cruel, so savage, so sadistic that they could be described only under
the imagery of wild beasts--the lion with the eagle's wings, the bear
with the three ribs between its teeth, the leopard with the four wings
and the four heads, and the terrible beast with iron teeth and ten
horns. These were the symbols of the powers which had hitherto held
sway. But it was the dream of the seer that into the world there was
going to come a new power, and that power was to be gentle and humane
and gracious, so that it could be depicted under the symbol, not of a
savage beast, but of a man. This passage means that the day of savagery
would pass and the day of humanity was coming.
That was the dream of the Jews, the golden age, when life would
be sweet and they would be masters of the world. But how was that age to
come? It became clearer and clearer to them that their nation was so
small and their power so weak, that the golden age could never come by
human means and human power; it must come by the direct intervention of
God. He would send his champion to bring it in. So they thought back to
the picture in the book of Daniel, and what more natural than that they
should call the champion the Son of Man? The phrase which had once been
merely a symbol came to describe a person. Between the Old and the New
Testament there arose a whole series of books about the golden age and
how it was to come. Amidst their troubles and their sufferings, in their
subjections and their slaveries, the Jews never forgot and never gave
up their dream. One of these books was specially influential--the Book
of Enoch and it repeatedly speaks about that Son of Man. In Enoch the
Son of Man is a tremendous figure who, as it were, is being held in
leash by God. But the day will come when God will release him and he
will come with a divine power against which no man and no kingdom will
be able to stand, and smash the way to world empire for the Jews.
To the Jews the Son of Man stood for the undefeatable world
conqueror sent by God. So Jesus says: "The hour has come when the Son of
Man must be glorified." When he said that, the listeners would catch
their breath. They would believe that the trumpet call of eternity had
sounded, that the might of heaven was on the march, and that the
campaign of victory was on the move. But Jesus did not mean by glorified
what they understood. They meant that the subjected kingdoms of the
earth would grovel before the conqueror's feet; by glorified he meant
crucified. When the Son of Man was mentioned they thought of the
conquest of the armies of God; he meant the conquest of the Cross.
The first sentence which Jesus spoke would excite the hearts of
those who heard it; then began a succession of sayings which must have
left them staggered and bewildered by their sheer incredibility, for
they spoke. not in terms of conquest, but in terms of sacrifice and
death. We will never understand Jesus nor the attitude of the Jews to
him, until we understand how he turned their ideas upside down,
replacing a dream of conquest with a vision of a Cross. No wonder they
did not understand him; the tragedy is that they refused to try.
What was this amazing paradox which Jesus was teaching? He was saying
three things, which are all variations of one central truth and all at
the heart of the Christian faith and life.
(i) He was saying that only by death comes life. The grain of
wheat was ineffective and unfruitful so long as it was preserved, as it
were, in safety and security. It was when it was thrown into the cold
ground, and buried there as if in a tomb, that it bore fruit. It was by
the death of the martyrs that the Church grew. In the famous phrase:
"The blood of the martyrs was the seed of the Church."
It is always because men have been prepared to die that the
great things have lived. But it becomes more personal than that. It is
sometimes only when a man buries his personal aims and ambitions that he
begins to be of real use to God. Cosmo Lang became Archbishop of
Canterbury. At one time he had had great worldly ambitions. A godly
friend's influence led him to abandon these and enter the Church of
England. When he was studying for the ministry at Cuddesdon, one day as
he was praying in the chapel he heard unmistakably a voice saying to
him: "You are wanted!" It was when he had buried his personal ambitions
that he became useful to God.
By death comes life. By the loyalty which was true to death
there have been preserved and born the most precious things which
humanity possesses. By the death of personal desire and personal
ambition a man becomes a servant of God.
(i) He was saying that only by spending life do we retain it.
The man who loves his life is moved by two aims, by selfishness and by
the desire for security. Not once or twice but many times Jesus insisted
that the man who hoarded his life must in the end lose it, and the man
who spent his life must in the end gain it. There was a famous
evangelist called Christmas Evans who was always on the move preaching
for Christ. His friends besought him to take things easier but his
answer always was: "It is better to burn out than to rust out." When
Joan of Arc knew that her enemies were strong and her time was short,
she prayed to God: "I shall only last a year, use me as you can." Again
and again Jesus laid down this law (Mark 8:35; Matthew 16:25; Luke 9:24; Matthew 10:39; Luke 17:33).
We have only to think of what this world would have lost if
there had not been men prepared to forget their personal safety,
security, selfish gain and selfish advancement. The world owes
everything to people who recklessly spent their strength and gave
themselves to God and to others. No doubt we will exist longer if we
take things easily, if we avoid all strain, if we sit at the fire and
husband life, if we look after ourselves as a hypochondriac looks after
his health. No doubt we will exist longer--but we will never live.
(iii) He was saying that only by service comes greatness. The
people whom the world remembers with love are the people who serve
others. A certain Mrs. Berwick had been very active in Salvation Army
work in Liverpool. She retired to London. There came the war and the air
raids. People get queer ideas and the idea got about that somehow Mrs.
Berwick's poor house and her shelter were specially safe. She was old
now; her Liverpool days of social service were long behind her; but she
felt she must do something about it. So she got together a simple
first-aid box and she put a notice on her window: "If you need help,
knock here." That is the Christian attitude to our fellow men.
Once a schoolboy was asked what parts of speech my and mine are.
He answered--more truly than he knew--that they were aggressive
pronouns. It is all too true that in the modern world the idea of
service is in danger of getting lost. So many people are in business
only for what they can get out of it. They may well become rich, but one
thing is certain--they will never be loved, and love is the true wealth
of life.
Jesus came to the Jews with a new view of life. They looked on
glory as conquest, the acquisition of power, the right to rule. He
looked on it as a cross. He taught men that only by death comes life;
that only by spending life do we retain it; that only by service comes
greatness. And the extraordinary thing is that when we come to think of
it, Christ's paradox is nothing other than the truth of common sense.
12:27-34 "Now, my soul
is troubled. And what shall I say? 'Father, rescue me from this hour.'
But it was for this reason that I came to this hour. Father, glorify
your name." A voice came from heaven: "I have both glorified it and I
will glorify it again." So the crowd who were standing by, and who heard
it, said that there had been thunder. Others said: "An angel spoke to
him." Jesus answered: "It was not for my sake that this voice came, but
for yours. Now is the judgment of this world. Now will the ruler of this
world be cast out. And I, if I be lifted up from the earth, will draw
all men to myself." He said this in indication of what death he was
going to die by. The crowd answered him: "We have heard from the law
that God's Anointed One remains for ever. And do you say: 'The Son of
Man must be lifted up'? Who is this Son of Man?"
In this passage John shows us both Jesus' tension and his triumph, and shows us what turned the tension into the triumph.
(i) John does not tell us of the agony in Gethsemane. It is here
that he shows us Jesus fighting his battle with his human longing to
avoid the Cross. No one wishes to die at thirty-three; and no one wishes
to die upon a cross. There would have been no virtue in Jesus'
obedience to God, if it had come easily and without cost. Real courage
does not mean not being afraid. It means to be terribly afraid, and yet
to do the thing that ought to be done. That was the courage of Jesus. As
Bengel put it: "Here there met the horror of death and the ardour of
obedience." God's will meant the Cross and Jesus had to nerve himself to
accept it.
(ii) But the end of the story is not tension; it is triumph and
certainty. Jesus was certain that if he went on, something would happen
which would break the power of evil once and for all. if he was obedient
to the Cross, he was sure that a death-blow would be struck to the
ruler of this world, Satan. It was to be one last struggle which would
break for ever the power of evil. Further, he was certain that if he
went to the Cross, the sight of his upraised and crucified figure would
in the end draw all men to him. Jesus, too, wanted conquest; he, too,
wanted to subdue men; but he knew that the only way to conquer and to
subdue the hearts of men for ever was to show himself to them on the
Cross. He began with the tension; he ended with the triumph.
(iii) What came between the tension and the triumph and changed
the one into the other? It was the voice of God. Behind this coming of
the voice of God lies something great and deep.
There was a time when the Jews really and fully believed that
God spoke direct to men. It was directly that God spoke to the child
Samuel (1 Samuel 3:1-14). It was directly that God spoke to Elijah, when he had fled from the avenging Jezebel (1 Kings 19:1-18). It was directly that Eliphaz the Temanite had claimed to hear the voice of God (Job 4:16).
But by the time of Jesus they had ceased to believe that God spoke
directly. The great days were past; God was far too far away now; the
voice that had spoken to the prophets was silent. Nowadays they believed
in what they called the Bath (Hebrew #1323) Qol (Hebrew #6963), a Hebrew phrase which means "the daughter voice" or "the daughter of a voice." When the Bath (Hebrew #1323) Qol (Hebrew #6963)
spoke it quoted Scripture most often. It was not really the direct
voice of God; it was what we might call the echo of his voice, a
distant, faint whisper instead of a direct, vital communication.
But it was not the echo of his voice that Jesus heard; it was
the very voice of God Himself. Here is a great truth. With Jesus there
comes to men not some distant whisper of the voice of God, not some
faint echo from the heavenly places, but the unmistakable accents of
God's direct voice.
It is to be noted that the voice of God came to Jesus at an the
great moments of his life. It came at his baptism when he first set out
upon the work God had given him to do (Mark 1:11). It came on the Mount of Transfiguration when he finally decided to take the way which led to Jerusalem and the Cross (Mark 9:7). And now it came to him when his human flesh and blood had to be strengthened by divine aid for the ordeal of the Cross.
What God did for Jesus, he does for every man. When he sends us
out upon a road, he does not send us without directions and without
guidance. When he gives us a task, he does not leave us to do it in the
lonely weakness of our own strength. God is not silent, and ever and
again, when the strain of life is too much for us, and the effort of his
way is beyond our human resources, if we listen we will hear him speak,
and we will go on with his strength surging through our frame. Our
trouble is not that God does not speak, but that we do not listen.
Jesus claimed that, when he was lifted up, he would draw all
men to him. Some take this to refer to the Ascension and think it means
that when Jesus was exalted in his risen power, he would draw all men
to him. But that is far from the truth. Jesus was referring to his
Cross--and the people knew it. And once again--inevitably--they were
moved to incredulous astonishment. How could anyone possibly connect the
Son of Man and a cross? Was not the Son of Man the invincible leader at
the head of the irresistible armies of heaven? Was not his kingdom to
last for ever? "His dominion is an everlasting dominion, which shall not
pass away, and his kingdom one that shall not be destroyed" (Daniel 7:14). Was it not said of the prince of the golden age: "David my servant shall be their prince for ever"? (Ezekiel 37:25). Had Isaiah not said of the ruler of the new world: "Of the increase of his government and of peace there shall be no end"? (Isaiah 9:7).
Did the Psalmists not sing of this endless kingdom? "I will establish
your descendants for ever, and build your thrones for all generations" (Psalms 89:4).
The Jews connected the Son of Man with an everlasting kingdom, and here
was he, who claimed to be the Son of Man, talking about being lifted up
upon a cross. Who was this Son of Man, whose kingdom was to end before
it had begun?
The lesson of history is that Jesus was right. It was
on the magnet of the Cross that he pinned his hopes; and he was right
because love will live long after might is dead.
As Kipling had it:
Far-called our navies melt away;
On dune and headland sinks the fire;
Lo, all our pomp of yesterday
Is one with Nineveh and Tyre!
Nineveh and Tyre are only names now, but Christ lives on.
One of the great sonnets of the English language is Ozymandias by Shelley:
I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said: "Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them, on the sand
Half sunk, a shatter'd visage lies, whose frown
And wrinkled lip and sneer of cold command
Tell that sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamp'd on these lifeless things,
The hand that mock'd them and the heart that fed:
And on the pedestal these words appear:
'My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!'
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare,
The lone and level sands stretch far away."
Ozymandias was king of kings, yet all that he has left
is a shattered statue in the desert, and a name that a chance sonnet
keeps alive.
H. E. Fosdick quotes a poem in one of his books:
"I saw the conquerors riding by
With cruel lips and faces wan:
Musing on kingdoms sacked and burned
There rode the Mongol Genghis Khan;
And Alexander, like a god,
Who sought to weld the world in one:
And Caesar with his laurel wreath;
And like a thing from Hell the Hun;
And, leading like a star, the van,
Heedless of upstretched arm and groan,
Inscrutable Napoleon went,
Dreaming of Empire, and alone....
Then all they perished from the earth,
As fleeting shadows from a glass,
And, conquering down the centuries,
Came Christ the swordless on an ass."
The empires founded on force have vanished, leaving only a
memory which with the years becomes ever fainter. But the empire of
Christ, founded upon a Cross, each year extends its sway.
In Shaw's play, when Joan of Arc knows that she has been
betrayed to the stake by the leaders of her own people, she turns to
them and says: "I will go out now to the common people, and let the love
in their eyes comfort me for the hate in yours. You will all be glad to
see me burnt; but if I go through the fire I shall go through it to
their hearts for ever and ever." That is a parable of what happened to
Jesus. His death upon the Cross made him go through men's hearts for
ever and for ever. The conquering Messiah of the Jews is a figure about
whom scholars write their books; but the Prince of Love on the Cross is a
king who has his throne for ever in the hearts of men. The only secure
foundation for a kingdom is sacrificial love.
12:35-36 Jesus said to
them: "For a little while yet the light is among you. Walk while you
have the light that the darkness may not overtake you. He who walks in
the darkness does not know where he is going. While you have the light,
believe in the light, that you may become the sons of the light."
There is in this passage the implicit promise and the implicit
threat which are never very far from the heart of the Christian faith.
(i) There is the promise of light. The man who walks with Jesus
is delivered from the shadows. There are certain shadows which cast
their shade sooner or later on every light. There is the shadow of fear.
Sometimes we are afraid to look forward. Sometimes, especially when we
see what they can do to others, we are afraid of the chances and the
changes of life. There are the shadows of doubts and uncertainties.
Sometimes the way ahead is far from being clear and we feel like people
groping among the shadows with nothing firm to cling to. There are the
shadows of sorrow. Sooner or later the sun sets at midday and the lights
go out. But the man who walks with Jesus is delivered from fear; he is
liberated from doubt; he has a joy that no man takes from him.
(ii) There is the implicit threat. The decision to trust life
and all things to Jesus, the decision to take him as Master and Guide
and Saviour, must be made in time. In life all things must be done in
time, or they will not be done at all. There is work which we can do
only when we have the physical strength to do it. There is study which
can be carried out only when our minds are keen enough and our memories
retentive enough to cope with it. There are things which have to be said
and done or the time for saying and doing them is gone for ever. It is
so with Jesus. At the actual moment Jesus said this, he was appealing to
the Jews to believe in him before the Cross came and he was taken from
them. But this is an eternal truth. It is a statistical fact that there
is a steep rise in the number of conversions up to the age of seventeen
and an equally steep fall afterwards. The more a man lets himself become
fixed in his ways the harder it is to jerk himself out of them. In
Christ the supreme blessedness is offered to men; in one sense it is
never too late to grasp it; but nonetheless it remains true that it must
be grasped in time.
12:37-41 When Jesus
had said these things, he went away and hid himself from them. Although
he had done such great signs in their presence they did not believe in
him. It happened thus that the word which Isaiah the prophet spoke
should be fulfilled: "Lord, who has believed what he heard from us? And
to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed?" It was for this reason
that they could not believe, because Isaiah said again: "He has blinded
their eyes, he has hardened their heart, so that they may not see with
their eyes and understand with their heart. and turn, and I will heal
them." Isaiah said these things because he saw his glory and spoke about
him.
This is a passage which is bound to trouble many minds. John quotes two passages from Isaiah. The first is from Isaiah 53:1-2.
In it the prophet asks if there is anyone who has believed what he has
been saying, and if there is anyone who recognizes the power of God when
it is revealed to him. But it is the second passage which troubles the
mind. The original is in Isaiah 6:9-10.
It runs: "And God said, Go and tell this people, Hear ye indeed, but
understand not; and see ye indeed, but perceive not. Make the heart of
this people fat, and make their ears heavy, and shut their eyes; lest
they see with their eyes, and hear with their ears, and understand with
their heart, and turn, and be healed." That is a passage which runs all
through the New Testament. It is quoted or echoed in Matthew 13:14-15; Mark 4:12; Luke 8:10; Romans 11:8; 2 Corinthians 3:14; Acts 28:27.
The terrible and the troubling thing is that it seems to say that man's
unbelief is due to God's action; that God has ordained that certain
people must not and will not believe. Now in whatever way we explain
this passage, we cannot believe that the God whom Jesus told us about
would make it impossible for his children to believe.
There are two things to be said.
(i) We must try to think ourselves back into Isaiah's heart and
mind. He had proclaimed the word of God and put everything he had into
his message. And men had refused to listen. In the end he was forced to
say: "For all the good I have done I might as well never have spoken.
Instead of making men better my message seems to have made them worse.
They might as well never have heard it, for they are simply confirmed in
their lethargy and their disobedience and their unbelief. You would
think that God had meant them not to believe." Isaiah's words spring
from a broken heart. They are the words of a man bewildered by the fact
that his message seemed to make men worse instead of better. To read
them with cold literalness is completely to misunderstand.
(ii) But there is something else. It was a basic belief of the
Jews that God is behind everything. They believed that nothing could
happen outside the purpose of God. If that is so they were bound to
believe that when men would not accept God's message their unbelief was
still within God's purpose. To put that into modern terms and into our
way of thought--we would not say that unbelief is God's purpose, but we
would say that God in his controlling wisdom and power can use even
men's unbelief for his purposes. That is how Paul saw it. He saw God
using the unbelief of the Jews for the conversion of the Gentiles.
We must understand this passage to mean, not that God
predestined certain people to unbelief, but that even man's unbelief can
be used to further God's eternal purposes. These Jews did not believe
in Jesus; that was not God's fault but theirs; but even that has somehow
its place in God's scheme. "Ill that he blesses is our good." God is so
great that there is nothing in this world, not even sin, which is
outside his power.
12:42-43 Nevertheless
many of the rulers believed in him, but they did not publicly confess
their faith for they did not wish to be excommunicated; for they loved
the glory of men rather than the glory of God.
Jesus did not speak entirely to deaf ears; there were those
even of the Jewish authorities, who in their heart of hearts believed.
But they were afraid to confess their faith, because they did not wish
to run the risk of being excommunicated from the synagogue. These people
were seeking to carry out the impossible; they were trying to be secret
disciples. Secret discipleship is a contradiction in terms for, "either
the secrecy kills the discipleship, or the discipleship kills the
secrecy."
They feared that by becoming confessed followers of Jesus they
would lose so much. It is strange how often men have got their values
mixed up. Again and again they have failed to support some great cause
because it interfered with some lesser interest. When Joan of Arc
realized that she stood forsaken and alone, she said: "Yes: I am alone
on earth: I have always been alone. My father told my brothers to drown
me if I would not stay to mind his sheep while France was bleeding to
death; France might perish if only our lambs were safe." That French
farmer preferred the safety of his sheep to the safety of his country.
These Jewish rulers were a little like that. They knew that Jesus was
right; they knew that their fellow-rulers were out to destroy him and
all that he was seeking to do for God; but they were not prepared to
take the risk of openly declaring for him. It would have meant an end of
their place, their profit, and their prestige. They would have been
ostracized from society and banished from orthodox religion. It was too
high a price to pay. So they lived a lie because they were not big
enough to stand up for the truth.
In one vivid phrase John diagnoses their position. They
preferred to stand well with men rather than with God. No doubt they
thought themselves wise and prudent; but their wisdom did not extend to
remembering that while the opinion of men might matter for the few years
in which they lived upon this earth, the judgment of God mattered for
all eternity. It is true wisdom and prudence to prefer the good opinion
of God to the good opinion of men; it is always better to be right for
eternity than to be right for time.
12:44-50 Jesus cried
and said: "He who believes in me does not believe in me, but in him who
sent me. And he who looks upon me, looks upon him who sent me. It was as
light that I came into the world, that every one who believes in me
should not remain in darkness. And, if anyone hears my words and does
not keep them, it is not I who judge him. I did not come to judge the
world but to save the world. He who completely disregards me as of no
account, and who does not receive my words, has one who judges him. The
word which I spoke, that will judge him on the last day. That is so
because it was not out of my own self that I spoke. But the Father who
sent me, it was he who gave me the commandment which laid down what I
should speak and what I should say. And I know that his commandment is
eternal life. The things that I speak, I speak as the Father spoke to
me."
These, according to John, are Jesus' last words of public
teaching. Hereafter he will teach his disciples and hereafter he will
stand before Pilate, but these are the last words he will address to
people at large.
Jesus makes the claim which is the basis of his whole life, that
in him men are confronted with God. To listen to him is to listen to
God; to see him is to see God. In him God meets man, and man meets God.
That confrontation has two results and both have in them the core of
judgment.
(i) Once again Jesus returns to a thought that is never far away
in the Fourth Gospel. He did not come into the world to condemn; be
came to save. It was not the wrath of God which sent Jesus to men; it
was his love. Yet the coming of Jesus inevitably involves judgment. Why
should that be? Because by his attitude to Jesus a man shows what he is
and therefore judges himself. If he finds in Jesus an infinite magnetism
and attraction, even if he never succeeds in making his life what he
knows he ought to make it, he has felt the tug of God upon his heart;
and therefore he is safe. If on the other hand he sees in Jesus nothing
lovely and his heart remains completely untouched in his presence, it
means that he is impervious to God; and he has therefore judged himself.
Always in the Fourth Gospel there is this essential paradox; Jesus came
in love, yet his coming is a judgment. As we have said before, we can
in perfect, unmixed love offer a person some great experience, and find
that he sees nothing in it; the experience offered in love has become a
judgment. Jesus is God's touchstone. By a man's attitude to him he
himself stands revealed.
(ii) Jesus said that at the last day the words which these
people had heard would be their judges. That is one of the great truths
of life. A man cannot be blamed for not knowing. But if he knows the
right and does the wrong his condemnation is all the more serious.
Therefore every wise thing that we have heard, and every opportunity we
have had to know the truth, will in the end be a witness against us.
An old eighteenth century divine wrote a kind of catechism of
the Christian faith for ordinary people. At the end there was a question
which asked what would happen to a person if he disregarded the
Christian message. The answer was that condemnation would follow, "and
so much the more because thou hast read this book."
All that we have known and did not do will be a witness against us at the last.
-Barclay's Daily Study Bible (NT)