Verses 20-36
V a
ANTITHESIS BETWEEN THE GENTILE GREEKS FROM ABROAD WHO DO HOMAGE TO CHRIST, AND THE MAJORITY OF THE JEWISH PEOPLE THAT FALL AWAY FROM CHRIST IN UNBELIEF AND OCCASION HIS RETURN INTO CONCEALMENT. SYMBOLISM OF THE JEWISH PASCHAL-FEAST, OF HELLENISM, OF THE GRAIN OF WHEAT. THE GLORIFICATION BY SUFFERING AND DEATH, OR THE SPIRITUAL SELF-SACRIFICE OF CHRIST IN THE TEMPLE
(John 12:24-26. Laurentius-Pericope; John 12:31-36. Elevation of the Cross.)
20And [But] there were certain Greeks [Ἕλληνες, Gentile Greeks, not Ἑλληνισταί, Greek Jews] among them that [those who] came up [made pilgrimage up to Jerusalem] to21worship at the feast. The same [These] came therefore to Philip, which [who] was of [from] Bethsaida of Galilee, and desired [asked] him, saying, Sir, we would see22[wish, or, desire to see] Jesus. Philip cometh and telleth Andrew: and again [omit23and again]23 Andrew [cometh] and Philip [, and they] tell Jesus. And [But] Jesus answered them, saying, The hour is [hath] come, that the Son of man should be glori-fied. 24Verily, verily, I say unto you, Except a corn [the grain] of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone [isolated, by itself alone]: but if it die, it bringethforth much fruit. 25He that loveth his life [his own soul, τὴν φυχὴν αὑτοῦ]24 shall lose it; and he that hateth his life [his own soul] in this world shall [will] keep it unto life26[ζωήν] eternal. If any man [any one would] serve me, let him follow me; and where I am, there shall [will] also my servant be: if [ἐάν without χαί]25 any man [any oneshall] serve me, him will my [the] Father honour. 27Now is my soul troubled; and what shall I say? Father, save me from this hour: [!]26 but [But] for this cause27 camel unto [I came to] this hour. 28Father, glorify thy name. [!] Then came there a voice from heaven, saying [omit saying], I have both glorified it, and will glorify it again.
29The people [multitude] therefore that stood by, and heard it, said that it thundered: others said, An angel spake [hath spoken, λελάληχεν] to him.
30Jesus answered and said, This voice came not because of me [for my sake, δἰν ἐμέ], but for your sakes [δἰ ὑμᾶς]. 31Now is the judgment of this world: now shall [will] the prince of this world be cast out. 32And I, if I [shall]28 be lifted up from the33earth, will [shall] draw all men unto me [myself, πρὸς ἐμαυτόν]. This he said, signifying what death he should die [by what manner of death he was about to die, 34or, what kind of death he was to die]. The people [multitude, therefore, οῦ̓ν] answered him, We have heard out of the law that [the] Christ abideth for ever: and how sayest thou [how then dost thou say], The Son of man must be lifted up? who35is this Son of man? Then Jesus [Jesus therefore] said unto them, Yet a little while is the light with you [within you].29 Walk while [as]30 ye have the light, lest darkness come upon you [that darkness may not overtake you, ἵνα μὴ σχοτία ὑμᾶς χαταλάβῃ]: for [and] he that walketh in [the] darkness knoweth not whither hegoeth. 36While ye have [the] light, believe in the light, that ye may be the children of light [become sons of light, ἵνα υἱοὶ φωτὸς γένησθε].
These things spake [spoke] Jesus, and departed, and did hide [and, having departed, he hid, or, withdrew] himself from them.
EXEGETICAL AND CRITICAL
John 12:20. Certain Greeks [Ἕλληνες].31—By these we are 1. not to understand (after Semler and Baumgarten-Crusius [Calvin, Ewald],) Jews who spoke Greek [Hellenists]; this view is contradicted by the name, comp. John 7:35, the whole scene and the deduction of Christ, John 12:23; John 12:32,—the reference to the universal extension of His ministry. 2. Not perfect or pure heathen (after Chrysostom, Euthymius, Schweizer), against which interpretation ἀναβαίνοντες32 militates,—but, as this very word proves, 3. proselytes of the gate [half Jews, or Judaizing pagans], like the treasurer, Acts 8:27. See Comm. on Acts [p. 155, Am. ed.]. “If they were from Galilee, which was partly inhabited by Gentiles, we might imagine them to have been previously acquainted with Philip; yet (Grecianized) Syrians inhabited the country from Lebanon to Lake Tiberias (Josephus, De bello Jud., III. 4, 5); Peræa had Greek cities (Joseph. Antiq., XVI. 11, 4), etc. Philip’s consultation with Andrew must be attributed to the unusualness of seeing the Master hold intercourse with Gentiles (Matthew 10:5)—for the uncircumcised proselytes of the gate were still so considered—(Acts 10:0).” Tholuck. On this we remark that it is not altogether probable that these Gentiles were from Galilee, or from any part of Canaan, because in that case they might easily have had an earlier opportunity of seeing Jesus. Furthermore, Jesus had already had dealings with the Gentile captain at Capernaum, and the Canaanitish woman; the disciples, however, might for reasons of policy, hesitate for a while before bringing the Lord, after He had just been proclaimed King of Israel, into contact with Gentiles, in the sight of all the Jews. For, doubtless, the scene occurred within the area of the temple, i.e., the porch. Perhaps Jesus was, by the mediation of His disciples, to be called back into the court of the Gentiles. This locality is supported by 1. the testimony of the Synoptists, that in the days subsequent to the Palm-entry Jesus abode continually in the temple; 2. the character of these Gentile visitors to the temple; 3. the concourse of people, John 12:29. (Contrary to all indications Michaelis and others have shifted the scene to Bethany; Baur places it “in the idea of the author!”) As to the day, the thirty-sixth verse seems to indicate that it was the last of the three days of Jesus’ stay in the temple, i.e., Tuesday (see Doctrinal and Ethical Notes, No. 1).
[These God-fearing Greeks, who (in their groping after “the unknown God,” embraced the monotheism and the Messianic hopes of the Jews, without being circumcised) belonged to the church invisible, to the children of God scattered among the heathen, John 10:16; John 11:52, and were the forerunners of the Gentile converts. Stier: “These men from the West at the end of the life of Jesus, set forth the same as the Magi from the East at its beginning; but they come to the cross of the King, as those to His cradle.” We find such chosen outsiders under the Old Testament, as Melchisedek, Jethro, Job, Ruth, king Hiram, the queen of Sheba, Naaman the Syrian. Augustine, exclusive as was his system, yet adduces the case of Job as an example of genuine piety outside of the visible theocracy, and infers from it that among other nations also there were persons “qui secundum Deum vixerunt eique placuerunt, per-tinentes ad spiritualem, Jerusalem” (De civit. Dei xviii. 47).—P. S.]
John 12:21. These therefore came to Philip.—Philip might be accidentally in the court of the Gentiles, and hence, as the first of the disciples who was forthcoming, be charged with the communication of their request to the Lord. It is still remarkable, however, that both Philip and Andrew had Greek names and, according to tradition, their labors were likewise in part among the Greeks.
Sir, we wish to see Jesus.—[Κύριε, not in the higher sense, yet with reverence]. The expression of their desire is threefold: 1. The solicitation; 2. the respectful manner of addressing even the disciple of the celebrated Master; 3. the strong and yet modest expression of the wish. To see can here mean nothing less than: to speak with. (Goldhorn: They wished to propose to Him that He should go to the Hellenists. A misapprehension of the proselytes and also of the situation. Brückner: They wished merely to see Him. Too literal). As proselytes of the gate they shared Israel’s hope and the enthusiastic feelings of the people.
John 12:22. Philip cometh and telleth Andrew.—Meyer: Philip was of a deliberate disposition.33 The other characteristics of Philip are in no wise indicative of a deliberate man. The case was of sufficient importance, as an official question, for two disciples, and Mark 3:18 we find these two in close contact; John 6:7-8, however, they even act in concert, as in this place, and in measure, likewise, in “foreign affairs.”—Andrew cometh and, etc.—Andrew seems to take the lead.
John 12:23. And Jesus answered them.—The following discourse is framed so decidedly for the Greeks that we cannot assume their request to have been denied by Jesus (Ewald [Hengstenberg, Godet]),—such a proceeding would, moreover, be unprecedented; neither can we hold that the admission of the Gentiles had been resolved upon, but that the voice from heaven changed the scene (Meyer). De Wette thought the answer unsuitable. Tholuck, in accordance with the usual conception, supposes the meeting between Jesus and the Greeks to have preceded this discourse; Luthardt: the disciples had given Jesus occasion to speak in presence of the Greeks. The scene certainly seems to have changed; either the Greeks must have immediately followed the two disciples to Jesus, or else Jesus directly accompanied the disciples to the Greeks. He seems to have intentionally avoided addressing Himself particularly to the Greeks, preferring to discourse in their presence to the circle of disciples, with special reference to them and their desire. For at this moment and in this place it was of the utmost importance that He should withhold from His enemies every pretext for reproach.
John 12:23. The hour is come.—From the visit of the Gentiles Jesus deduces the preparation of His mission for the Gentiles, i.e., His resurrection. From the nearness of the period when the bounds which have encompassed Him shall be removed, and His ministry be rendered a universal one, He infers His imminent, death. Universalness and resurrection are for Him reciprocal ideas; universalness and preceding death are for Him inseparably connected, John 10:15-16; John 17:0. And so this saying also again recalls the barrier which hinders Him from surrendering Himself to full communion with the Greeks. But the decisive hour which is to conduct Him across this barrier is at hand; it announces itself in this petition. The hour, however, is not His hour of death by itself, but that together with the hour of His departure out of this world. The two are comprehended in one, as in the idea of exaltation, John 12:32; John 12:34, and John 3:14. Thus Christ saw in the Samaritans (John 4:0) and in the Gentile centurion (Matthew 8:11) a distant indication of the future approach of the believing Gentiles; here the future of the believing Gentile world, the future of its access to Him, is before Him in its nearest representatives as an incipient present (comp. John 13:31).
Be it observed that, here it is the glorification of the Son of Man that is spoken of, not simply that of the Son of God, as John 11:4. The glorification of the Son of Man is the exaltation of Christ in His human nature above death (a transit from the first stage of human life to the second), above the limits of the servant to the boundless liberty of the lord; above a qualified working by individual words and signs to unqualified activity through the Spirit. It is a development of His inner wealth, according to John 12:24; a personal lifting up, according to John 12:32; a local, but at the same time a universal one, according to John 12:33. For the Greeks, whom we conceive to have been true Hellenes, a peculiar significance attached to the announcement that Christ as the Son of Man should be manifested in His glory. This glorification presupposes a suffering of death, in accordance with a law of nature (John 12:24) and in accordance with an ethical law obtaining in this world, John 12:25.
John 12:24. Except the grain of wheat fall into the ground and die, etc. [ἐὰν μὴ ὁ κόκκος τοῦ σίτου πεσὼν εὶς τὴν γὴν , αὐτὸς μόνος μένει].—First oxymoron. A fundamental truth is again announced with verily, verily. We assume the subsequent words to have been intended to correct the Greek view of the world, just as those contained in John 18:36 are applicable to the ideas entertained by the Romans. Human nature does not attain in this world a true and essentially beautiful appearance by the aid of poetry and art; but it arrives at the true and the beautiful by passing through death into a new life (see 1 John 3:2). The grain of wheat here symbolizes the new life which must proceed from death in order to appear in its richness, its fruit. Hence the thought is no mere elucidation of the preceding sentence. It advances from the idea of the personal glory of Christ in the new life (the glorification of His human nature) to the idea of His glorification in the universal Church. Thus even nature protests against the Hellenic fear of death, against the Hellenic isolation of the personality in the outward individuality. In the way of death, not only does the single grain of wheat develop into many, but these many, as fruit for nourishment and new seed, appear as an infinite power, a universal life. It is evident that this symbolism of the grain of wheat is indirectly illustrative of simple death in the physical nature itself. This death, however, is in particular a symbolism of the ethical, sacrificial death. [Alford: “The symbolism here lies at the root of that in John 6:0, where Christ is the Bread of life.”]
John 12:25. He that loveth his own life [Lange translates: Eigenleben; better: his own soul, ὁ φιλῶν τὴν ψυχὴν αὑτοῦ], etc.—Comp. Matthew 10:39; Matthew 16:25; Luke 9:24; Luke 17:33. This is the watch-word of Christ, and it should be that of His people also, Matthew 10:38, 1 John 2:6. The egoism that clings to the outward life of appearance, and lives for that, loses its true life which is conditional on surrender to God; the spirit of sacrifice which does not cleave to its life of self, nay, which hates it in its old form in this old world, i.e., joyfully sacrifices it, the sooner the better, and even hates it, if it be about to become a hindrance—regains it unto a higher, eternal life. That ψυχή must here mean soul in our conception of the word, does not result (as Meyer maintains) from the distinction made between ψυχή and ζωή (αἰώνιος); for the latter is expressive not simply of an endless duration of natural life, but of divine life. The declaration Matthew 16:25 [“for whosoever will save his life, τὴν ψυχὴν αὑτοῦ, shall lose it,” etc.] is undoubtedly intended as the rationale of the foregoing ἀπαρνησάσθω ἑαυτόν and hence it is proved that ψυχή means “self” as well as “life” (Tholuck).34 But the reason of this is that the false love of life is one with, and has its root in, false self-love. With the life of self the selfishness of the soul, the false self, must be sacrificed; thus with the life in God, in the true self, new life also is gained. But the point in question is the sacrifice of life, since the opposite is death. On the μισεῖν comp. Luke 14:26. Augustine; “Magna et mira sententia, quemadmodum sit hominis in animam suam amor ut pereat, odium ne pereat; si male amaveris, tunc odisti, si bene oderis, tunc amasti.”—Unto life eternal.—First promise.
John 12:26. Follow me.—Indicative of the way of suffering and death, so readily forgotten by the disciples, as they witness the fresh homage rendered him by the Greeks; a way which Hellenic worldly-mindedness in particular must henceforth tread.
And where I am, there, etc.—Not simply on the same road (Luthardt); that is expressed in the preceding sentence; nor only in the Parousia (Meyer), but first in the state of humiliation, of death, then in the state and land of δόξα, beyond death,—the idea of the raising of the servant being thus involved (see John 6:39; John 6:44; John 6:54; John 17:24; 2 Timothy 2:11-12). Second promise.
Him will the Father honour [τιμήσει].—Third promise. The Father Himself will esteem him as a personality connected with Himself and exalted above death.
John 12:27. Now is my soul troubled [Νῦν ἡ ψυχή μου τετάρακται].35—The agitation of soul experienced by Jesus has been already introduced by the whole train of thought from John 12:24. Primarily, indeed, Jesus fixed His eye upon the great goal of the death-road; now the road itself engages His attention. Another thing the Greeks must learn by His example, viz., neither to be fanatically enthusiastic about the conditions of death, nor to turn away their eyes from them in cowardly dread. He therefore gives free utterance to His emotion. This change of mood is, however, not unlooked for in the life of the Lord. In the perfect life of the spirit the most blissful moods pass, in the sublimest transition of feeling, into the saddest. Thus in the Palm-entry (Luke 19:41), thus here, thus after the high-priestly prayer, thus at the Supper, John 13:31. On the other hand, the saddest moods likewise pass into the most blissful. Thus at the departure from Galilee (Matthew 11:25), thus at the Supper (John 13:31), thus in Gethsemane (John 18:15 ff.), thus en the Cross (see Comm, on Matthew, John 11:25; comp. Luke 12:49-50). The difference between the ἡ ψυχή μου τετάρακται and the ἐτάραξεν ἐαυτόν, John 11:33, does not lie in the antithesis of πνεῦμα and ψυχή (as Olshausen affirms; since the latter passage does not treat of a ταράσσεσθαι τῷ πνεύματι), but in the fact that there the psychico-corporeal agitation is an effect of His indignation in spirit, an act of His spirit (Origen: τὸ πάθος ῆ̓ν ἐρχόμενον τῇ ἐπικρατείᾳ τοῦ πνεύματος), while here it is an affection of suffering inflicted upon Him by the objective situation. It is the horror of death which the contemplation of death brings upon the inward life of feeling. The soul may and must be thus troubled,—prepared, as it were, for its death; but not so the καρδία (John 14:1; John 14:27). So then, the subject under consideration is neither the trichotomy nor the dichotomy, body and soul (Tholuck), but the antithesis of passive and actual consciousness, or of the life of feeling and the will. The thought of death moves Him as the law of His death, as of the death of all His followers who must be baptized with His baptism into His death. And doubtless this, rightly understood, is a feeling of divine wrath, not as confronting Jesus within His conscience, but as perceived by Jesus in the law of death governing sinful humanity, to which law He has submitted Himself. A “momentary abhorrence of the pains of death, induced by human weakness” (Meyer), must be out of the question, inasmuch as abhorrence involves an active inclination of the will. We might with equal truth talk of an innocent abhorrence of suffering or the cross. (Beza, Calov, Calvin: Mortem, quam subibat, horroris plenam esse oportuit, quia satisfactione pro nobis perfungi non poterat, quin horribile dei judicium sensu suo apprehenderet.) Schleiermacher gives special prominence to the thought, that to Jesus the coming of the Hellenes was attended with the full presentiment of the fact that His people would reject Him, and that the salvation of the Gentiles was conditional upon the great judgment on the Jews. That was the great tragic grief of Paul also (Romans 9:0; comp. 2 Corinthians 12:7). We have seen how, also in Gethsemane, Christ’s sufferings were especially grievous to him as a being betrayed and delivered up (see Comm. on Matthew, John 20:17; Note 3).
And what shall I say? etc.—[On the punctuation compare the Textual Note.—P. S.]. It is difficult to suppose with Euthymius [ἀποροώμενος ] and others (Lücke, Meyer, etc., even Calvin [Alford]), that Jesus is uncertain what to pray for; that in this uncertainty He at first prays: Father, save me from this hour; but then, in the subsequent words, retracts “this momentary wish of a human abhorrence of death.” In opposition to this view: 1. the assumption of such an uncertainty on the part of Jesus is not justified by Romans 8:26; Romans 2:0. the presentation of such a retracted wish would be explained neither by the words, Hebrews 5:7, nor by the prayer in Gethsemane; 3. the idea of a self-correction is inappropriately applied to Jesus. We prefer, therefore, the interrogative explanation with most Greek exegetes and Erasmus (Lampe, Tholuck [Ewald, Godet], etc.), the interrogative interpretation of πάτερ, etc. After Jesus has revealed His quaking heart to His auditors He can also show them how He works off the affection, that they in like situations may behave similarly. They too should accord to grief its sacred right. We cannot discover that such a reflection is incongruous with this mood replete with emotion, as Meyer maintains. Comp. John 11:42. They may thus see that He stands at the junction of two ways. What shall I say? He asks them. Hence the subsequent words are part of the question. Would you advise Me to give utterance to My feeling in these words: Father, save Me? etc.
From this hour.—Meyer: “The hour of suffering is made present to His mind as if He had actually entered into it.” But He has indeed actually entered it, for here as little as in Gethsemane is He speaking of the hour of external death in itself alone (comp. Comm. on Matthew). It is the convulsion itself in its deathlike might. In Gethsemane, when He was similarly and yet more powerfully affected, He could conceal Himself in some measure from His most intimate friends; it humiliates Him to be obliged to stand here before representatives of the Gentile world who are to greet in Him the King of Glory, in this sad figure. [?] But He is directly able to reconcile Himself to this juncture, and with the question there begins already His elevation above the nameless grief which has come upon Him from the historical world.
But for this cause I came into this hour.—[But: Christ controls and corrects the natural shrinking of His true humanity from the horrors of death by the consideration that He came to this world for the very purpose of enduring death for the redemption of the world. To do full justice to the deep commotion of our Lord on this occasion and in Gethsemane of which this was a foretaste, we must keep in view the vicarious nature of His passion by which He bore the sins of the whole world.—P. S.] For this cause [ διὰ τοῦτο], not that by My mortal sufferings Thy name may be glorified (Lücke, Meyer), but in order to be thus troubled, and in order to appear before you in this commotion. He knows: 1. that grief itself has its holy aim, and 2. that the humiliation in His grief, like every one of His humiliations (see the Baptism, the conflict in Gethsemane), is connected with a glorification, to the glorification of the Father. And because in His grief He has just sacrificed Himself to the Father, He can now pray as follows.36
John 12:28. Father, glorify Thy name [δόξασόν σου τὸ ὅνομα].—The σου emphatically comes first, yet not in antithesis to an “egotistical “reference of the preceding prayer [Meyer]. It expresses the idea: it is Thy cause and for Thine honor that there should be a compensation for this humiliation also. Whereby is the Father to glorify His name: 1. Greek exegetes [and Alford]: by His death (Comp. chap, John 21:18); 2. Bengel: quovis impendio mei; 3. Tholuck: by the bearing of fruit, John 12:34; John 15:8. The most obvious explanation is: by the issue of this mood itself. By this the name of the Father, i.e., the one God of revelation, must be glorified in presence of the Greeks in particular. And this purpose was served by the heavenly voice, in and for itself, irrespective of its purport; a form of revelation exactly suited to the exigencies of the Gentile disciples.
Then came there a voice from heaven.—The evangelist, in writing οῦ̓ν here, expresses the assurance of his faith. The answer to Christ’s prayer could not fail. We must first distinguish the voice itself from its purport, because the voice, in the abstract, was a glorification at once of the Father and the Son. interpretations of this wonder:
1. “Since Spencer many (Paulus, Kuinoel, Lücke, etc.) have apprehended this heavenly voice to be the Jewish Bath-Kol (בַּת קוֹל daughter of a voice), and this has been regarded as a voice issuing from a peal of thunder—according to modern rationalistic interpretation (as in his time Maimonides) the subjective interpretation of a peal of thunder on the part of Jesus and His disciples.” Tholuck. However “the Bath-Kol itself cannot be traced to a peal of thunder, and how much less the voice mentioned here, where the narrator expressly excluded the idea of thunder” (the same). Still it is remarkable that by the Bath-Kol a derivative voice is to be understood, one developed from another, the echo of a voice, a voice in the second power, i.e., the transformation of an apparently fortuitous sound into a spirit-voice by the interpretation of the Spirit conformably to the situation (comp. Tholuck on this passage; Lübkert Stud. u. Krit, 1835, III. Herzog’s Real-Encyklopædie: Bath-Kol).
2. A voice actually issuing from heaven, considered by John as an objective occurrence.
a. Acoustic. The voice sounds directly over Christ’s head; hence those who stand at some distance from Him perceive only a heavenly talking, those still further removed, but a sound as of thunder (ancient commentators). But in the case of purely objective sounds as loud as thunder, even those at a distance must have understood the words as well. Untenable, likewise, is the interpretation which affirms that the σαρκικοί soon forgot the more exact impression of what they had heard (Chrysostom).
b. Resembling thunder, so that the precise words sounding through these tones were unperceived by the insusceptible (Meyer). There is a lack of clearness in this reasoning in the case of a purely objective voice, for in such case perception would depend upon the acuteness of the hearing, not upon the degrees of spiritual susceptibility.
c. Of an angelic nature, mediated by angelic ministry (Hofmann). Apart from the arbitrary interpretation of an intensified doctrine of angels, this would afford not the slightest explanation of the voice.
d. A spirituo-corporeal [a spiritual and celestial, yet audible] voice, which was understood more or less according to the corresponding frame of mind (Tholuck; my Leben Jesu, II. p. 1207).37
Manifestly, the voice now heard by Jesus is entirely analogous to the voice at His baptism (see Comm, on Matthew, the baptism of Jesus, and at His transfiguration (see Comm. on Matthew, the Transfiguration). Its distinguishing point is the circumstance of its sounding here openly above the temple, in the hearing of all the people and of the Greek proselytes, and the trait of its striking even the insusceptible with the force of a sound like thunder, ringing upon the ears of the more susceptible with a beauty of tone which they can liken only to angelic voices, while Jesus, and with Him doubtless the most intimate of His disciples, perceive the perfectly distinct expression of the words which even contain an antithesis. Just this latter trait of a twofold gradation converts the event into a revelation concerning the nature of celestial voices. In the voice heard by Samuel, and not by Eli (see the note in Tholuck, p. 333), the subjective, ecstatic condition of the voice was clearly conspicuous, as in the case of the two angels seen by Mary Magdalene, and not by the disciples, this contrast became apparent in reference to miraculous visions. In the history of Paul there is a proportional, simple gradation between Paul himself, who sees the Christ within the shining light and hears the word of His voice, and the attendants who perceive only the brilliant light and the sound (see Apostol. Zeitalter, II. p. 115). But here a twofold gradation appears: the hearing of Christ and His intimate friends, the hearing of the people, the hearing of others. The ecstatic conditions of such a hearing are clearly manifest, Acts 9:7; comp. Acts 22:9. The condition upon which an apprehension of the voice by those not standing in the centre of revelation (as here Christ; Acts 9:0, Paul) depends, is spiritual connection, fellowship of feeling,—sympathy; this results especially from the rapport between Christ and the Baptist at the baptism in Jordan. But the objectivity of the voice which proceeds from the living God is proved by sensuous evidence which it creates and procures. Tholuck: “Voices from heaven, as in this place, are found also, Daniel 4:31; 1 Kings 19:11-12; Matthew 3:17; Matthew 17:5; Acts 9:7; Acts 10:13; Revelation 1:10; Revelation 4:5, where we read of φωναί together with βρονταί;—on this Züllich: articulate sounds contrasted with the inarticulate thunderings.”
Purport of the voice: I have glorified it, and will glorify it again [Καὶ ἐδόξασα καὶ πάλιν δοξάσω. Πάλιν is no mere repetition, but an intensification of the glorification]. Meyer makes the first sentence of the voice refer to the works of Jesus hitherto, the second to the impending glorification through death to δό ξα. Taking into consideration the antithesis, chap. 10, and the existing state of matters, we assume that the consummated glorification of the name of God refers to His revelation in Israel, closing of course in the labors of Christ, and the new glorification of His name to the impending revelation of God in the Gentile world, this of course being conditioned by the death and resurrection of Jesus.
John 12:29. The multitude therefore, etc. Perception of the voice. 1. The comprehension of it was probably not confined to Jesus, but was shared by His disciples, or by some chosen ones among them. 2. For the surrounding people the voice had a tone like thunder. Is this expressive simply of the third degree of susceptibility? Perchance it contains also an intimation of the judgment impending over the people of Israel. 3. To this hearing the hearing of others seems to form an antithesis. Those hear a voice of thunder; they, on the other hand, angelic speech. Is it not possible that by these others the Greek proselytes are meant? Such a thing is not positively expressed. Be it observed, however, that it is these very men whom Jesus seems to answer in the subsequent speech. At all events, their attitude towards the people is that of a more susceptible minority.
John 12:30. This voice came not [was not audibly uttered] for my sake, but for yours.—The disciples were really no longer in need of this attestation of Jesus. Neither was it needed by that portion of the people that believed on Him on account of the raising of Lazarus. From the words immediately following it seems to be spoken with special reference to the Greeks. Hence He continues:
John 12:31. Now is the judgment of this world, etc.—The Jewish world is assuredly included; the words, however, relate pre-eminently to the heathen world. Therefore Satan is spoken of as the prince of this world who is now being cast out. The words are explanatory of the heavenly voice: I will glorify it again. Judgment was also now proclaimed to the world. It proclaimed itself with His woful feeling of death; it was put in execution by His death, made manifest by His resurrection, published and appropriated to the world by His Holy Spirit (John 16:11). The judgment upon the world should, however, be the world’s salvation; a judgment in which it was judged but as an ungodly world, its prince (2 Corinthians 4:4; Ephesians 2:2; John 6:12) being cast out of it and Christ in his stead assuming the sovereignty over it. In the rabbins, Satan, as regent of the heathen world, bears the name; Prince of the world38 (according to Lightfoot, Schöttgen and Eisenmenger. Delitzsch, Bibl. Psychologie, p. 44). The expulsion from heaven (Luke 10:18) is not again meant here. Satan had penetrated into the Paradise of the first man when he tempted the first of the human race; when he tempted Christ in the wilderness he had ventured into heaven itself (the heaven of spiritual life) as a tempter. With the victory of Christ over Satan in the wilderness, the latter fell from heaven like lightning; and upon this transaction rested the victories of Jesus’ disciples over demons in Israel (see Leben Jesu, II. 3, p. 1070; III. p. 428). Now Satan is likewise cast out of the world, the κόσμος οῦ̓τος i.e., the old pre-Messianic and non-Messianic world—with special reference to the Gentile world whose highest cosmical formation is the very Hellenism that is confronting Him. Satan’s empire over the world is shattered with the death and resurrection of Jesus. He is indeed still tarrying and working over the earth (Ephesians 2:2); here he retains his “Εξω, the air and wind regions of the human world as far as it is not yet spiritual, whence he reacts upon the church of Christ. Subsequently he is cast upon the earth (Revelation 12:9), i.e., he possesses himself of traditional, ancient ordinances, now deadened—lifeless. But in time to come he is also cast out of the earth into the bottomless pit, Revelation 20:0. Thus this saying opens up a perspective of the final judgment, whilst Hilgenfeld has pretended to discover in it a negation of the last judgment (together with other favorite gnostic ideas).
John 12:32. And I, if I shall be lifted up [κἀγὼ ἐὰν ὑψωθῶ ἐκ τῆς γῆς]. See chap John 3:14; John 8:28. As in those passages both events are understood by the lifting up; the lifting up upon the cross and the lifting up upon the heavenly throne; in this place, pre-eminently the latter.39 This double meaning of the word (Erasmus, Tholuck, etc.), is disallowed here by Meyer; he particularly denies that there is any reference to the crucifixion (the Fathers, most of the ancients, Kling, Frommann), maintaining that the ἐκ τῆς γῆς conflicts with such an interpretation, though indeed it is that of John himself. However, the crucifixion itself in its inward essence was an exaltation of Christ above the earth. With the dethroning of Satan, the dark usurper in the world, the enthroning of Jesus corresponds; hence: “And I.” With the breaking of the Satanic principle and the power of the spirits of darkness by the expiatory and redemptive death of Christ, the full power of the Christian spirit releases itself; then comes the Holy Ghost, John 7:39; John 14:26 ff.
Will draw all men unto Myself [πάντας ἑλκύσω πρὸς ἐμαυτόν].—All is referred: 1. by Chrysostom, Cyril, Calvin, Lampe, to the antithesis of Jews and Gentiles, after John 10:16; John 2:0. by Lutheran theologians to all who hear the preaching of the Gospel and do not resist the drawing of Christ; 3. by individual Reformed theologians to the elect; 4. Meyer: without restriction.40 We suppose it to be indicative of the totality of the nations in antithesis to the firstlings of the Greeks who have here inquired after Him; similarly: I will draw them forms a contrast to the announcement sent by these individuals. It is the attraction of the cross,—its medium the preaching of the crucified One,—made effectual by His Spirit, which draws the nations to baptism and death with Him, and to new life. But the ἑλκύειν of the Son does not here assume the place of the ἐλκύειν on the part of the Father, John 6:44 (Tholuck); for the drawing of the Son is the gratia convertens in vocation which joins the drawing of the Father in the gratia præveniens or fore-ordination. All must experience the powerful drawing of calling grace; yet it is a drawing without moral compulsion because it is a drawing of free love calling unto freedom. The emphasis contained in πρὸς ἐμαυτόν (comp. John 14:3) signifies of course: to Myself. They will not stay with Philip or Andrew, or require the mediation of a Jewish or priestly church.41
John 12:33. Signifying what kind of death he was to die [ποίῳ θάνατῳ ἤμελλεν ].—Not simply a Johannean interpretation (Meyer) or a mere hint perchance (Tholuck). For the death of the cross was not only objectively the condition of the lifting up of Christ; it is also subjectively the strongest and the single decisive attraction to the exalted Christ (ποῖος θάνατοσς !).
John 12:34. That the Christ abideth forever [ὁ Xριστὸς μένει εἰς αἰῶνα].—A people is spoken of that recognizes the Christ in Jesus. They have heard out of the law [ἐκ τοῦ νόμου], i.e., by the reading, as well as by the explanation of the Holy Scriptures generally, that the Messiah should abide forever. This conception was occasioned in them by passages such as Psalms 110:4; Isaiah 9:7, and the like. According to Meyer also Daniel 7:13. But with this last passage in their minds, Christ’s being lifted up from the earth could not have appeared strange to them, for there the Son of Man is brought to the Ancient of Days before whom His kingdom is given to Him. Neither was that passage popularly supposed to refer to the Messiah. According to Meyer it was likewise from the Danielic passage that they took the expression: the Son of Man, and put it into His mouth; such an explanation of their use of the term is entirely unnecessary since Jesus has just entitled Himself the Son of Man (see John 12:23)—(although even Tholuck can remark, in opposition to Luthardt, that this reference to Christ’s words is too remote).42 Neither is it alone the distinction of the earthly and the spiritual Messianic hope which here comes under consideration, even though an elucidation is found in the fact that Jonathan translates the אֲבִי־עֵד, Isaiah 9:6, precisely as the people express themselves: “He that abideth forever, the Messiah;” the Septuagint, however, has it: πατὴρ τοῦ μέλλοντος αἰῶνος.” Tholuck. But the people, as also the disciples, lack as yet all discrimination between the first and the second coming of Christ. They imagine that if the Messiah had but come (with the breaking forth of the “Messianic travail-pangs,” perchance) the Kingdom of Glory would at once be ushered in with His residence at Jerusalem. At this they first stumbled,—that their Christ should be removed again from the earth, like Enoch and Elijah. But manifestly at this also, that He has again exchanged the name of Messiah for the designation of the Son of Man. And hence they ask: who is this Son of Man? Meyer considers their meaning to be: Who is this anti-Scriptural Son of Man who is not to abide in accordance with Daniel, but is to be lifted up from the earth? Thus too Tholuck. But in that case they would not ask: who is this Son of Man? but, how does that agree with the Son of Man? The first offence, namely at His being lifted up, concerns the spiritual and heavenly side of the Messianic picture set up by Christ; the second concerns that universality in the idea of the Son of Man, which they doubtless feel. The Greeks, evidently, have again excited their Jewish jealousy, manifested on a former occasion, John 7:35. Especially prominent in the response of the people is this practical trait; their carnal Messianic hope prevents them from having the slightest suspicion of what is impending over the Messiah, and hence also over them in their relation to Him during the next days. To this the answer of Christ has reference.
John 12:35. Yet a little while is the light among you.—[τὸ φῶς refers to Christ Himself; see John 1:4-5; John 1:7-8; John 7:33; John 8:12; John 9:4-5.—P. S.] Jesus does not enter upon a theological disquisition with the view of convincing them of their error in stumbling at His sayings, because the reason of their stumbling lies in their want of obedience to His word, in their lack of true surrender to the light. In the path of this surrender they should be freed from stumbling. Thus He practically lays hold of them in the centre, the conscience. They have not the slightest suspicion or presentiment of what awaits Him and them. Therefore: Walk as ye have the light (ὡς stronger than ε͂ως),43 in accordance with the fact that the light is about being taken from you, unless, by submissive faith, ye appropriate it permanently to yourselves as inward light.
That darkness may not overtake you, [ἴνα μὴ σκοτία ὑμᾶς καταλάβῃ].—Namely unprepared, and so to your destruction. The great night of temptation came upon them on the day of crucifixion, and to those who confronted it unsuspiciously, with their outward Messianic hope, it likewise became an inward night of apostasy and ruin.
He that walketh in the darkness.—He that acts then, walks then (comp. John 11:10). This περιπατεῖν is expressive of the fault by which outward darkness is converted into inward obscurity.—Knoweth not whither he goeth.—The figure drawn from outside life is strikingly demonstrative of the fate of the Jews. They knew not whither they went—into perdition, into dispersion to the ends of the world, into the curse of judgment until the end of time. Antithesis to Christ’s going to the sure goal of glory.
John 12:36. Believe in the light that, etc.—Faith here especially conditional upon obedience. The stumbling of these believers on the Messiah proved that they had not yet true faith in the sense of submissive obedience. The walk should be in conformance to the light, i.e., with trust in the light.—That ye may become [not be] sons of light [ἵνα υἱοὶ φωτὸς γένησθε. It is by believing in the light that men become sons of light]. Then should the inward light of illumination conduct them safely through the outer darkness, Luke 16:8. It is most fitting that these should be the last words of Christ to the believing portion of the people. Nothing but trust in that light which had risen upon them in Him, could lead them safely through the fearful night of trial.
And He departed and hid Himself from them [καὶ ʼ αὐτῶν].—This moment coincides, as regards the main point, with the departure from the temple described by the Synoptists (see Comm. on Matthew, p. 415, Am. Ed.) Meyer [and Alford]: “Probably to Bethany [Luke 21:37], in order to spend the last days of His life, before the coming of His hour, in the circle of the disciples.” These last days of His life amounted at the utmost to two. On Tuesday evening Christ left the temple; on Thursday, towards evening, He returned to Jerusalem to celebrate the Passover.
DOCTRINAL AND ETHICAL
1. John’s description of the close of the public ministry of Christ forms a most important supplement to the description of the same given by the Synoptists, Matthew 23:39; Mark 13:1; Luke 21:38. They depict pre-eminently the departure of Jesus from the hostile portion of the people (with the exception of Luke, whose account in this respect is less definite), while John delineates His departure from the more friendly portion. But if we regard the Palm-entry as the introduction to this history, then John has supplemented an account not only of the immediate occasion of the Palm-procession, but also of the grand acme of it,—the coming of the Greeks and the glorification of Jesus by the voice from heaven within the precincts of the temple itself. In accordance with this presentation of the subject, we should conjecture that the introduction of the Greeks took place on the great, festive Monday when Christ displayed His glory in the temple undisturbed (see Leben Jesu, III. 1, p. 1200). It were possible so to incorporate these words (descriptive of His stay in the temple) with the Johannean account, that we should find in the ἀπελθών John 12:36 an intimation of the farewell discourse of Jesus, Matthew 23:0 together with the preceding great contests on the Tuesday. But since the denunciatory discourse, at all events, which Matthew records as pronounced against the Pharisees by Jesus, was followed by His still longer stay in the temple over against the treasury, according to Mark and Luke,—since Matthew is induced by the order of affairs to alter the historical sequence, not so, however, John,—since, furthermore, the definite announcement, in the temple, of His speedy death, nay, the very presentiment of death which has already entered His soul, seem to presuppose His final, open rupture with the Hierarchs on the great day of contest, Tuesday,—we now assume this conference of Jesus with the Hellenes, the glorification consequent upon it, and His charge to the people, to be significant of the last grand sunbeam which His presence shed on Mount Zion; the very reference to the remnant of day-light still illumining the nation is apparently indicative of the decline of this, the last day of His public ministry. These proselytes of the gate remind one involuntarily of the tradition (protested against indeed) that Luke was one of the seventy disciples. Comp. Luke 24:13 ff.
2. The last facts recorded by John do not present the motive for Christ’s departure from the people and the temple as distinctly as do those related by the Synoptists; nevertheless, the cause is intimated by the final question of the people that recognize Him as the Messiah. They have not the faintest foreboding of the state of matters, and even their lofty enthusiasm of the day of Palms begins to be obscured again by Judaistic expectations. This exhibition of the mind of the multitude seems to the evangelist sufficiently expressive; but he too subjoins his explanation in his epilogue on the public ministry of Jesus and the motive for His retirement.3. Remarkable is the glorious, threefold climax with which, according to John, the public ministry of Jesus closes: 1. The anointing of Jesus in Bethany before His official Messianic entry into Jerusalem; 2. the Palm-entry itself, originating particularly with festal pilgrims going forth to Bethany out of Jerusalem; contrasted with this, the despair of the Supreme Council; 3. the announcement of the Greeks, and the glorification of Jesus through the voice from heaven, upon Mount Zion itself, in the hearing of the whole nation,—together with the proclamation from His own mouth of His redemptive death, His glorification for all nations, and the universal Gospel.4. Christ’s last words of farewell to the people on the temple-mount a gentle warning, according to John, and yet also an earnest explanation of Jewish stumblings. Therefore did Jesus return no answer to these stumblings themselves. Obedience from the heart unto truth alone can free from the prejudices of tradition.5. At the moment of the consummated apostasy of the sacerdotal party from the Christ on Zion, the first Gentiles most significantly made their public appearance as His disciples. The hypothesis of Sepp assuming them to have been a deputation sent to Jesus by king Abgarus of Edessa, after the well-known account of apocryphal sound in Eusebius, cannot avail to enrich this event.6. The Hellenes. A literal fulfilment of the predictions of the prophets, especially of Isaiah 2:0; also a fulfilment of the type contained in the history of the wise men from the East. A foretoken of the ensuing conversion of the proselytes of the gate, then of the Gentile world itself.
7. The pure historical truth, the clear picture of the situation in the intercession of the disciples Philip and Andrew.8. The Hour. To the Lord the presentiment of His death is connected with the presentiment of His glorification. Be it observed that John regards even the humiliation of Jesus unto death as a particular form of Christ’s exaltation, and that not simply in the ironical sense of the being lifted up upon the cross. It is the perfect exaltation of Jesus in His love, to the perfect glorification of the grace of God.
9. Stier very ingeniously remarks: “For this He now appeals—not to the testimony of the prophets, but to a secretly prophetic mystery of nature (as a proof also that His discourse is aimed at the Greeks as well as the Jews) which yet on the instant shines transfigured in His mouth.” Symbolism of the grain of wheat. See Note on John 12:24. The word concerning the grain of wheat has a threefold reference: (1) It declares a universal law of life: a death-like metamorphosis, as a condition whereon depends the renewal of life, is a type of the fundamental law in the kingdom of God, which law provides that we by a priestly surrender of our own wills to the will of God do obtain new kingly life in God. (2) The law of life of sinful humanity; in God’s kingdom of this earth real death is a condition of the transition from the old life to the new; a symbol of the propitiatory sacrificial death of Christ for the reconciliation and glorification of the world; likewise of the death of thank-offering in which believers die with Christ in order to walk with Him in new life. (3) In the most special sense, the law of life of the regeneration of Hellenism, whose peculiar essence consists in a fleeing from death and the cross in the embellishment of the present life (Leben Jesu, II. p. 1203; III. p. 665).44 The Greek’s aim is levelled at beauty of appearance. Even these Greeks, religious though they be, betray themselves with the expression: “We wish to see Jesus.” Essentially eternal youth, beauty and glory in the new world are attained by the Christian only through death.
Hence the butterfly alone does not suffice for a symbol of immortality; the symbol of the grain of wheat must be added to it. The butterfly symbolizes the capacity of man for a paradisaical, death-like metamorphosis which yet is not dead and is merely a symbol of an individual renewal; the grain of wheat symbolizes the renewal of life through death,—and that a renewal which is at once its infinite enrichment and extension, and its glorification in spirit. Jesus did not indeed see corruption, but He drew very near to it; and thus it is, at bottom, with the grain of wheat; it passes through the semblance of corruption, but, in respect of its innermost kernel, its life leaps out from corruption into the metamorphosis of the butterfly, just, as on the other hand, the butterfly must strip itself of a corruptible something—the dead pupa. Christ has glorified both forms of transit from the old to the new life. Moreover all the chief moments in the life of Christ are prefigured in the history of the grain of wheat: Christmas, Good Friday, Easter, Ascension, Whitsuntide.
10. The two oxymora, John 12:24-25; the three promises, John 12:24-26. See the Exegetical and Critical Notes.
11. Joh 12:27. The first presentiment of the death of Jesus in the temple a fulfilment of the foretoken of His baptism, the announcement of His baptism of suffering (Luke 12:50); again, a foretoken of the mortal conflict of His soul in Gethsemane, the sure prophecy of His death; crowned, therefore, as a great moment in the pathway of His humiliations, with a glorification,—like the baptism, like the announcement of His sufferings (Matthew 16:21 by the transfiguration John 17:1), like His conflict in Gethsemane, like His death. We have too mean an idea of the emotional life of Jesus if we refer these moods to a fear of death. See Exegetical and Critical Notes on John 12:23 and the conclusion of that on the first clause of John 12:27. The present moment denotes nothing less than the mental self-sacrifice of Jesus in the temple.
12. The voice within the precincts of the temple. See Exegetical and Critical Notes.
13 John 1:12:31. The different stages in the subjection of Satan, the prince of this world. See exegetical and critical notes. The death of Jesus a judgment, glorified by the Spirit. See John 16:1. The foundation and beginning of the separation between Satan and the world; 2. the foundation and beginning of the separation between believers and unbelievers; 3. the foundation and beginning of the union of all the godly. “The anabaptists cited this verse (31) among others as a proof that the powers that be are not of divine ordinance. See the refutation in Gerhard, Loci theol. 13, p. 260.” Heubner.
14.John 12:35. Who is this Son of Man? It was as little their desire to find the doctrine of the Son of Man in their Christology, as to discover in it the doctrine of the Son of God. They would have no true Son of Man, no Redeemer revealing divinity in the perfection of manhood and humanity, no suffering Messiah; they wanted an orientally superhuman and godlike Son of David, displaying the perfect and exact medium of a divinity broken through humanity, of a humanity broken through divinity;—the ideal of all benumbed orthodoxistic systems, a rigid, everlasting -symbol of the God-Man, which should be the central point of the rigid symbolism of the kingdom of God, beyond which symbolism they desired never to pass. (See Leben Jesu, III. p. 608.)
15.John 12:35-36. The gentle and impressive farewell words of Jesus to the believing portion of the people in the evening of His public ministry. But once more should He re-appear as a prisoner among the people; like a setting sun, to shed upon them for the last time the radiance of His life. (Ibid. p. 668.)
HOMILETICAL AND PRACTICAL
See the Doctrinal Notes.—The Greek proselytes, or Judaism a leading of the Gentiles to Christianity: 1. In the historical sense; 2. in the spiritual sense.—The advance of the Gentiles at the recession of the Jews in the history of the kingdom of God: 1. Historical; 2. typical.—The last discourse of Jesus in the temple for the benefit of the Greeks, compared with the last discourse of Jesus in the temple for the benefit of the Jews (according to Matthew).—The two signs in the meeting of Jesus with the Greeks within the temple limits: 1. The sign seen by Jesus in the appearance of the Greeks: a sign of decision, a sign of death, a sign of life. And that in accordance with the Old Testament and the law of the spirit. 2. The sign given by the Father to the people about Jesus.—How the Lord was troubled also by grief at the impending rejection of His nation when He saw the coming of the Gentiles (see the conclusion of the note on the first clause of John 12:27).—The humiliation and glorification of Jesus in the temple an image—a reflection—of His whole life (especially of the baptism, the transfiguration, His soul-passion in Gethsemane, His death).—The great change in the great emotional life of the Lord: 1. How often it appears (see note on first clause of John 12:27); 2. what it denotes: the strength, extent, earnestness, buoyancy and holiness of His spirit.—Even the humiliation of Christ already an exaltation of Him, or the beginning of the full revelation of the glory of His inner life: 1. In His obedience; 2. in His confidence; 3. in His love.—Made specially prominent by John as a precursory exaltation.—The anticipatory solemnization of the Christian sacrificial feast upon the eve of the Jewish one.—Christ and the Greeks (Christianity and Hellenism): 1. The application of the Greeks: a. Courteous form (through Philip and Andrew); b. purport: we would see Jesus. 2. The word concerning the grain of wheat. Concerning the life of this world; concerning the following of Christ.—Messianic traits in our history: 1. The teaching Christ (John 12:24-26); 2. the high-priestly Christ (John 12:27-28, first half); 3. the royal Christ (John 12:28-32); 4. the wholly undivided Christ (John 12:33-36).—The saying concerning the grain of wheat and the succeeding sayings: 1. A sermon on salvation, as a word concerning Christ; 2. a sermon on repentance, as a word for us; 8. a sermon of consolation, as a word concerning suffering and dying Christians.—The Christian life in three decisive traits: 1. In the three truths concerning the grain of wheat, life, service; 2. in the three demands of Christ; 3. in the three promises.—The soul-passion of Jesus in the temple a foretoken of His soul-passion in Gethsemane.—The self-sacrifice of Christ in the temple: 1. Its occasion: the announcement of the Gentiles; 2. its form: assumption of the feeling of death; by anticipation, therefore, of death itself; 3. its result: the voice, the future of Christ.—The three voices from heaven in attestation of the Lord: 1. By Jordan; 2. on the Mount of Transfiguration; 3. in the temple.—The prospect of death and of glory as one undivided prospect with Jesus. The import of this to the Christian.—The two stumbling-blocks to the believing Jews in the word and life of the Lord: 1. His removal to heaven unto divine glory; 2. His humanity and devotion to mankind.—The farewell words of Jesus to the better portion of the Jews like the solemn, tender, parting gleam of the sinking sun.
Starke: It was not without the special providence of God that so great a multitude of strangers from the Gentiles were at Jerusalem in those days;—to the end, namely, that in this way the truth of the revealed glory of Christ might, through approved witnesses, not from the Jews alone, but also from the Gentiles, be published and corroborated throughout the world.—Lampe: This desire (of the Greeks) typified the fulfilment of the prophecies in which it was predicted that the nations should cleave unto Him (Christ), Genesis 49:10; Haggai 2:7-8.—O shame, that heathen who have not God’s word, outstrip Christians in inquiring after Christ, though these latter call themselves after His name!—(Philip and Andrew.) Preachers must agree in this, the leading of souls to Christ.
John 12:24. Zeisius: Christ’s death is the world’s life.—Hedinger: He who would live in Christ must first die unto flesh and sin.
John 12:25. Ibid.: Much lost to gain a thousand-fold more.—Zeisius: How many servants Christ hath and yet so few true and constant followers!
John 12:27. Soul, if thou be not cheerful and joyous, but, on the contrary, sad and dejected, look upon thy Saviour,—He in His infirmities was as thou art; courage! as He conquered, thou too shalt conquer in Him.—Ibid.: No better remedy for all suffering, nay, for death itself, than fervent prayer after the example of Christ.—Osiander: Even the cross and tribulation add fresh glory to the name of God; therefore we also should take such upon us with thorough willingness.
John 12:29. Lampe: O how diverse are the hearers of the Gospel!
John 12:30. (The voice of God.) Canstein: We must take for granted that we too are concerned in everything that it says.
John 12:32. Cramer: Christ is the true magnet that draweth us after itself.
John 12:35. Hedinger: To-day, to-day is certain,—to-morrow is uncertain.—Zeisius: The greater the light was, the thicker the darkness of wrath fallen upon the despisers of grace.—Am I too a child of light?—Gerlach: Jesus warns His disciples likewise not to surrender themselves now to earthly hopes of a carnal glory; He indeed is going to His glorification, but the way lies through death and resurrection.—The goal of suffering and death,—that of Christ and hence His people’s also,—is glorification.—My soul is troubled. To the end that He may the more decisively counteract the carnal hopes of His disciples, He openly announces the state of His feelings.—The voice. As, at the conclusion of the Old Covenant, Moses spake and God answered him aloud (Exodus 19:19), so the New Covenant is here solemnly concluded before all the people, the Son offering Himself to the Father and the Father accepting His sacrifice.—The prince of this world. It stands to reason that this is no denial of the devil’s power to tempt the people of Christ after His exaltation; as little do the words of Jesus: “It is finished,” declare that there are no more battles to be fought by Christ and His Church. But the power of the prince of this world has now become impotency in respect to the faithful; individual Christians, as well as the Church of the Lord as a body, are now in faith on Christ sure of their ultimate victory.—He had striven to subdue the carnal transport of joy by the mention of His mortal sufferings (John 12:24), and seeks with equal earnestness to show that His death itself, His deepest humiliation, would constitute the strongest centre of attraction for the hearts of men. Hence in this instance the double meaning attaching to the term “lifted up” is expressive of the following facts: His deepest humiliation should be His very exaltation,—the most horrid shame His highest honor; and so afterwards in the incidents attendant upon His death everything significantly came to pass after this fashion (purple, crown, John 19:2; kingly title, John 19:19-22), which very circumstances are mentioned by John with peculiar emphasis.—Lisco: Fruits of the death of Jesus.—The true and only way to serve Christ is to follow Him.—To the impenitent the Gospel is thunder; to him who thirsts for salvation it is an angel; to him on whom salvation has been bestowed, it is Jesus Himself and His heavenly Father.—By means of the Redeemer’s passion and death, judgment is passed upon the world.
Braune: This scene constitutes most truly the close of Christ’s public ministry. Gentiles approach Jesus, divining that they behold in Him the Light of the Gentiles, whilst His nation rejects Him; here a divine voice attests Him in Jerusalem at the close of His ministry, as by Jordan at its beginning; and before the conflict, He is stirred with a sense of victory.—He speaks here, as at the commencement of the high-priestly prayer, John 17:1.—It abideth alone. It doth not increase; no slender verdant stalk, no rich car is given it, wherewith to rejoice in the brightness of the sun, and to make glad the eyes of the world.—Seed-time and harvest, suffering and glory are mated for Himself and His people.—The glimpse of the rich harvest ensuing from the seed of His death, draws His soul into that conflict, whose first traces are perceptible in His lamentation, Luke 12:50, and whose culmination is reached in Gethsemane. The Baptist cried. “Behold the Lamb of God!” This title was given to Christ, not simply under the cross, but from the beginning; and thus, side by side with the assurance of victory, the anguish of conflict threaded His life. Divine life did not stifle or abolish human feeling; and this must needs struggle against the sufferings which were pressing upon Him,—against death. (? But doubtless the struggle consisted 1. in His working off His emotion, and in His submission, 2. in His resurrection.) Jesus was the original man, not an unnatural man; not dis-humanized, but the ideal of pure human nature. His grief was the misery of all who despised Him, etc.—Follow Him. He requires the act of obedience.—Father, glorify, etc. That was a sublime moment on earth, in perfect unison with that heaven, whence a voice resounded.—Are there not, then, organs of perception for the higher regimen of the world? Ephesians 5:8.——Gossner: Thus He gives death an entirely different form. It is, namely, nothing but a passage; the goal is glorification.—And where i am. Where Christ stayeth, there do we stay also.—Thus it is betwixt the Saviour and the soul. He comes to us with truth, and we go to meet Him with our faith.
John 12:37. Gone is gone. One trembles when one sees His blind people upon the very verge of losing the light for over because it loves darkness so much.
Heubner, John 12:23 : Everywhere the future opens wider to the God-fearing man than to the common eye.—The hour. Jesus calls the whole period of His final suffering an hour; it was the great hour for the world, when, by His passion and death, the liberty and life of mankind wore obtained; He suffered the natal pangs of the whole world in order that He might bring a new world into being.—The missionary discourse of James is glorious: The attractive power of the cross of Christ, Nuremberg, 1820.—Josephus can not depict in colors dark enough the confusion, the anarchy, into which everything lapsed in the Jewish nation. This was the consequence of the rejection of Jesus.—Any enlightenment that fails to load to a new and holy life is no true enlightenment.
Schleiermacher: On the grain of wheat, reference to John 16:7; John 16:14; John 13:34.—We know that it is only His redeeming and sanctifying love, diffusing itself amongst us and taking root within ourselves, from which depends the fruit that He shall bear.—We should know and love no other honor than that which comes to us from God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, and of us.—It is still true that we can enter into the kingdom of God only through tribulation.—His soul could not but be troubled by the reflection that the very greatest and most glorious event, the salvation of the human race, should not be brought about without the deepest ruin (of the Jewish nation, in particular),—that heavenly light should force a way for itself only by a hard conflict with the darkness. It is the same sorrow that filled Him when He gazed upon Jerusalem and said: “Jerusalem, Jerusalem,” etc.; the same sorrow that He would fain have communicated to others when He said: “Daughters of Jerusalem, weep not,” etc, And this sorrow—that the word of life could not come unto the Gentiles except after the Jews had rejected Himself, the Prince of life—was natural to His soul at the moment when Greeks desired to see Him.—We too should keep fast hold of the maxim, that for this cause we are come into every hour, namely, that the alone-wise counsel of God may be executed in us and through us, that all things may be fulfilled whereby the glorification of Him whom God has sent for our salvation may be accomplished.—“Glorify Thy name.” In this every wish of ours should centre. To us also the name of the Most High should be glorified in His ways.—In our speculations let us ever hold fast that which is far greater than speculation,—namely, that we walk in the light and believe on the light.
Besser: The glorification of the Son of Man comprehends three things: 1. the perfection of His obedience in the sacrifice of His love; 2. exaltation to the glory proper to Him; 3. the exhibition of His name as that of the Saviour of mankind, the gathering of a holy church, the outpouring of the Holy Spirit.——Bengel: “A son of thunder (Mark 3:17) is well able to hear voices of thunder (Revelation 4:5; Revelation 10:3). The saying of the Lord: ‘now is judgment passed upon the world,’ was deeply graven on his soul.”—Richier: The mission to the Gentiles is a glorification of Christ.—The Father does but see how one is affected towards His Son whom He would have us resemble.—First one walks by the light, then one believes in it, and thus one becomes a child of light.
[Craven: From Augustine: John 12:20-21. Lo! the Jews (some of them) wish to kill Him, the Gentiles to see Him.—Behold them of the circumcision (some of them, John 12:13), and them of the uncircumcision, once so wide apart, coming together in one faith of Christ.
John 12:23. Christ took occasion from this request of some Gentiles to see Him, to announce the approaching fulness of the Gentiles.
John 12:24. That grain of wheat was He; to be mortified in the unbelief of the Jews, to be multiplied in the faith of the Gentiles (and in the subsequent faith of the Jews also. E. R. C.)
John 12:26. They serve Christ, who seek not their own things but the things of Christ, i.e., who follow Him—love Him for His own sake and think it a rich reward to be with Him.
John 12:27. Now is my soul troubled:Thou of Thy love wast of Thine own will troubled to console those who are troubled through the infirmity of nature, that the members of Thy body perish not in despair.
John 12:31. There is a judgment, not of condemnation, but of selection, which is the one here meant—the selection of His own redeemed.—Now shall the Prince of this world be cast out: The devil never ceases to tempt believers; but it is one thing to reign within, another to lay siege from without.
John 12:32-35. The Jews understood that our Lord spoke of His own death; it was not wisdom imparted, but conscience disturbed, which disclosed the meaning of His words.
John 12:36. When He hid Himself, He consulted our weakness—He did not derogate from His own power.——From Chrysostom: John 12:26. Where I am, there shall also my servant be; death shall be followed by resurrection.—What greater honor can an adopted son receive than to be where the Only Son is?
John 12:27-33. As He draws near to the cross His human nature appears—Christ had a body free from sin, but not from natural infirmities.
John 12:22. The Father draws (John 6:44) by the Son Who draws.—I will draw, He says, as if men were in the grasp of some tyrant from whom they could not extricate themselves.——From Bede: John 12:24. He Himself, of the seed of the Patriarchs, was sown in the field of this world, that by dying, He might rise again with increase; He died alone, He rose again with many.——From Theophylact: John 12:25. It were harsh to say that a man should hate his soul, so He adds, in this world, i.e., for a particular time, not forever.
[From Burkitt: John 12:33-34. Jesus arms His disciples against the scandal of the cross, by showing the great benefit that would result from His death—1. (to Himself—He was to be glorified, E. R. C.) 2. to all mankind.—As corn unsown never increases, but if sown brings forth a crop; so if Christ had not died He would have had no Church, whereas His death made Him fructify.—Observe how plainly our Lord dealt with His followers.
John 12:25. The surest way to attain eternal life is to lay down our temporal life when the glory of Christ requires it.
John 12:26. If any man profess himself to be My servant, let his conversation correspond with his profession.—All that will be Christ’s servants must be His followers, i.e., they must—1. obey His doctrine; 2. imitate His example.—Christ’s servants must not expect better usage than their Master received.—God will crown the fidelity of Christ’s servants with the highest honor.
John 12:27-28. Their trouble is no sin; Christianity does not make men senseless.—The fear of death, especially when accompanied with apprehension of the wrath of God, is most perplexing and soul-amazing.
John 12:31-32. The double effects of Christ’s death—1. the judgment of this world; 2. the drawing all men unto Him.—Learn that—1. Satan is the Prince of this world, not by right but by usurpation; 2. this usurper will not quit his possession unless he be cast out; 3. Christ by His death has cast him out.—There is a twofold lifting up of Christ—1. ignominious, when He was hung upon the cross; 2. glorious, in the preaching of the gospel: meritoriously by His death, instrumentally by the preaching of His gospel, He draws all men unto Himself.—All persons are naturally unwilling to come to Christ, they must be drawn.—All men are not effectually drawn to Christ, but by the preaching of the gospel they are called (so drawn) as to render those who do not come inexcusable.
John 12:35. Note—1. A privilege enjoyed, the light is with you, (1) a personal light, Christ, (2) a doctrinal light, the gospel; these brought with them the light (a) of knowledge answering our darkness of ignorance, (b) of holiness answering our darkness of sin, (c) of joy answering our darkness of misery; 2. The time of enjoying this privilege limited, yet a little while is the light with you; 3. A duty enjoined, walk whilst ye have the light, i.e., walk according to—(1) the precepts of the gospel, (2) its privileges, (3) its supplies of grace, (4) its hopes: 4. A danger threatened to neglecters, lest darkness come upon you, a darkness of (1) judicial blindness, (2) error, (3) horror and despair, (4) the blackness of darkness forever.——From M. Henry: John 12:20-22. The Greeks having a desire to see Christ were industrious to use the proper means; they that would have the knowledge of Christ must seek it.—They made their application to one of the disciples; they that would see Christ by faith must (should) apply themselves to His ministers.—It is good to know those who know the Lord.
John 12:25. Behold—1. the fatal consequence of an inordinate love of life; 2. the blessed recompense of a holy contempt of life.—Our life in this world includes all the enjoyments of our present state; these we must hate, i.e.—1. despise them as vain, 2. dread the temptations that are in them, 3. cheerfully part with them when they come in competition with the service of Christ.
John 12:26. The Greeks desired to see Jesus; He lets them know that it was not enough to see Him, they must serve Him.—Christ fixes for His servants both their work and their wages: 1. their work, to attend—(1) His motions—let him follow Me, (2) His repose—where I am, let my servant be, (a) in the assemblies of the saints, (b) in heaven in thought and affection: 2. their wages, they shall be—(1) happy with Him; (2) honored by His Father.
John 12:27. Trouble of soul sometimes (often) follows great enlargement of spirit.—Note—1. The sin of our souls was the trouble of His soul; 2. The trouble of His soul was designed to ease the trouble of our souls.—Holy mourning is—1. consistent with spiritual joy: 2. the way to eternal joy.—What shall I say: He speaks like one at a loss; He was in all points tempted like as we are.—When our souls are troubled we must take heed of speaking unadvisedly, and debate with ourselves what we shall say.—It is the duty and interest of troubled souls to pray to God, and in prayer to eye Him as a Father.—Prayer against trouble may consist with patience and submission.—He calls His suffering this hour, intimating that the time of suffering was—1. a set time, 2. a short time.—For this cause came I unto this hour; it should reconcile us to our darkest hours that we were all along designed for them.
John 12:28. Father, glorify Thy name; here is—1. More than bare submission, a consecration of His sufferings to the glory of God; 2. A mediatorial word—a tender of His sufferings as satisfaction for the wrong done the Father’s glory by our sin.—What God has done for His own glory, is an encouragement to us to expect what He will yet farther do.
John 12:29. God speaketh once, yea twice, yet man perceiveth it not, Job 33:14.
John 12:30. The supports granted to our Lord in His sufferings were for our sakes.
John 12:31-32. Two things designed by the death of Christ—1. that Satan should be conquered; 2. that souls should be converted.—Christ’s death the judgment of this world, a judgment—1. of discovery and distinction; 2. of absolution to the chosen ones; 3. of condemnation against the powers of darkness.—Satan is here styled the Prince of this world, because he rules over the men of the world by the things of the world.—Christ reconciling the world to God by the merit of His death, broke the power of death and cast out Satan as a destroyer; Christ, reducing the world to God by the doctrine of His cross, broke the power of sin, and east out Satan as a deceiver.—The bruising of Christ’s heel was the breaking of the serpent’s head, Genesis 3:15.
John 12:32. Christ all in all in the conversion of a soul—1. it is Christ who draws; 2. it is to Christ we are drawn.—He does not drive, but draws.
John 12:34. Great knowledge in the letter of the Scripture may be abused to serve the cause of infidelity.—In the doctrine of Christ there are paradoxes which to men of corrupt minds are stones of stumbling.—Christ’s dying, was as consistent with His abiding forever, as the setting (eclipse) of the sun is with its perpetuity.
John 12:35. The Jews had the light; they had—1. Christ’s bodily presence; 2. His preaching; 3. His miracles.—It is good for us to consider what a little while we have the light.—Walk while ye have the light; as travellers who make the best of their way forward.—Our life is but a day and we have a day’s journey to go.—The best time of walking is while we have the light.—Lest darkness come; lost you lose your opportunities.—The sad condition of those who have sinned away their day of grace—they know not where they go nor whither they go.
John 12:36. They that believe in the light shall be children of light—1. sons of God, Who is light; 2. heirs of Heaven, which is light.—Jesus departed and hid Himself: He justly removes the means of grace from those that quarrel with them.——From Scott: John 12:20-21. They who are nearest the means of grace often ripen fastest for vengeance, whilst sinners come from afar to inquire after Christ.
John 12:31. In the death of Christ faith beholds the world judged, Satan vanquished, his slaves liberated, and his work destroyed.
John 12:34-36. An obedient faith is better suited to our condition than disputatious speculations.
[From Stier: John 12:23-36. The Lord’s last public declaration concerning His death.
John 12:20-21. We would see Jesus, a great missionary text; the Greeks (Ἕλληνες) were heathens (?)—unconsciously they speak in the name of the world of heathenism, the highest desire of which in all times has this for its goal—to find and know a Jesus.
John 12:24. The Greeks were to behold the Cross succeeding the triumphant entry—He presents beforehand the solution of the mystery, He explains in brief His (philosophic) system.—Not only prophecy in Israel, and the presentiments of the heathen world, but Nature also speaks of the mystery of a redeeming death.—The inmost kernel of the seed and harvest parables.—Wheat is specified, partly because it is the most precious grain, partly because it more effectually than any other perishes in pushing forward the almost invisible germ, (partly because the most productive).—The germ of St. Paul’s resurrection doctrine in 1 Corinthians 15:0
John 12:25. That which holds good of Christ in its peculiar sense, is a type for us and is fulfilled in us to a similar victory and blessedness.
John 12:26. Where I am, there shall or should also My servant be: Both an added condition and a promise.—What shall be done to the man whom the Blessed and Only Potentate, the King of all kings, the Creator of the universe, the Father of Jesus Christ, delighteth to honor!
John 12:27-28. A prelude to Gethsemane—the lamentation, the petition, the resignation.—All the typical appeals and supplications of the Psalms reach in the lips of our Lord their Messianic meaning.—The two opposites pressed hard upon Him, perfectly combined but separated in utterance—the cry (desire) for help and (spirit of) submission.—The entering into this hour is the being brought out of it, the suffering is the deliverance (?).
John 12:28. The glorification is not of the Father Himself but of His Name—of the revelation of Himself in the Son of Man (see John 12:23).
John 12:28. The three accrediting voices from heaven—at the beginning, the middle, the end of the Messiah’s course—all in relation to the assumption on His part of His destiny of death.
John 12:29. “Before men will see (hear) and believe in God they will resort to all kinds of imaginations of thunder and angels.” Hamann.
John 12:31. Our dogmatic theology has much to do before full justice will be done to all the relations of the mystery of the Cross—the revelation of love, the vindication of right, the reconciliation between the world and God, the mortification of sin in the flesh, the abolition of death, the breaking down of Satan’s power.—The ungodly world is in a certain sense judged in its prince, even while it is saved.—The casting out of Satan goes on from age to age down to the final victory.
John 12:33. What death (ποίῳ θανάτῳ) comprehensively expresses all that our Lord had said concerning the significance, the power, and the fruit of His death.
John 12:32-33. “The attraction of the Cross.” (James, of Birmingham).—I will draw them unto Me, through the Cross—first, to Me on the Cross; ultimately, away from earth into heavenly places.—Before the glorification of Christ, the Father draws to the Son; afterwards the Son Himself draws immediately.—Does not the Lord actually draw all men?—drawing is no enforcement.—Children of light is not a mere Hebraism—a new race (γενεά) was to be born of the light.
[From A Plain Commentary (Oxford): John 12:24. The whole World is but one mighty Parable to which the Gospel supplies the clue.
John 12:27. The Humanity of our Lord—Soul as well as Body—becomes more and more apparent as His Cross draws nearer in sight.
John 12:35. Men walk in darkness because the god of this world hath blinded their minds, 2 Corinthians 4:4; the light is around them, the darkness is to them and within them.——From Barnes: John 12:20. Let him follow Me, i.e., 1. imitate Me; 2. do what I do; 3. bear what I bear; 4. love what I love.——from Ryle: John 12:24. The death of Christ the life of the world.—Death is the way to spiritual life and glory.—“By abiding alone Christ meant that if He did not die, He would be alone in Heaven with the Father and the elect Angels, but without any of the sons of men.” (Gill.)
John 12:25. The object of Jesus in thus speaking—1. to prevent His disciples from looking for good things in this world; 2. to teach them that like Him they must sacrifice much in the hope of glory in the world to come.
John 12:26. However little we know of the life to come we do know that we shall be with Christ.—Honor from men, Christians may not have; honor from the Father shall make amends for all.—The clearest (and most blessed) conception we can form of Heaven is being with Christ and receiving honor from God.—Never did Jesus keep back the Cross, or bribe men to follow Him by promising temporal comfort or happiness.
John 12:27. The possibility of much inward conflict without sin.—The weight of the world’s imputed sin laid on our Lord’s soul.—“By Thine unknown sufferings, good Lord, deliver us.” (Litany of the Greek Church).—“What shall I says? is the language of highest perplexity and anxiety; the Lord found deliverance in prayer.” Rollock).
John 12:28. Glorify Thy Name—the highest, greatest thing we can ask God to do.
John 12:31. Satan is a vanquished enemy.
John 12:32. “The passion of Christ began to draw souls at once, as in the case of the penitent thief and the centurion.” (Euthymius).
John 12:34. A half knowledge of Scripture will account for a large portion of mistakes in religion.
John 12:35-36. The duty of using present opportunities.—From Owen: John 12:25. The import of the mask of discipleship well understood by the early Christians when a profession of Christ was attended with fearful persecution.—Self-sacrifice and a readiness to sacrifice all things for Christ now demanded.
John 12:26. A beautiful correspondence between the words follow me and the promise of attainment to the presence of our Lord in His glorified state.
John 12:32. All of every nation—both Jew and Gentile.—Unto Me—to the state of dominion and glory to which He was raised—From Whedon: John 12:31. The Cross is the test and discriminator of the responsible character and final destiny of the race—the Cross becomes a throne of judgment.)
Footnotes:
John 12:22; John 12:22.—Instead of καὶ πάλιν etc. [text, rec], Lachmann and Tischendorf read ἔρχεται Ἀνδρέας καί Φίλιππος, καὶ λέγουσιν in accordance with Cod. Sin., A. B. L., etc.
John 12:25; John 12:25.—[ψυχή soul (distinct from πνεῦμα spirit) should be distinguished here from ζωή life, and be translated as in ver 27 Lange renders: sein Eigenleben, his self-life. See the Exeg. Notes.—P. S.]
John 12:26; John 12:26. [The text. rec. with A. Y. A., etc., inserts καί before the second ἐάν in א. B. D. L. X. Lat. Syr., etc., καί is omitted, which agrees with the E. V. In Luther’s Vers, the καί is translated, but Lange omits it.—P. S.]
John 12:27; John 12:27. [Lange (with Chrysostom, Grotius, Lampe, Thol., Ewald, Godet) takes the words πάτερ, σῶσόν με ἐκ τῆς ὥρας ταύτης interrogatively, as if we had here a reflective monologue, instead of an address to the Father. In this case a colon must be put after say, and an interrogation mark after hour. So also Lachmann in his Greek Testament. But I take the words (with the E. V., Meyer, Alford, etc.,) as a veritable prayer which corresponds to the prayer in Gethsemane. Matthew 26:39, and the Messianic prayers in the Psalms: “My soul is troubled, Lord, help me” (Psalms 6:3-4; Psalms 25:17; Psalms 40:12-13; Psalms 69:1).—P. S.]
John 12:27; John 12:27.—[Lange inserts after this cause the gloss: in order to be troubled. But the meaning of διὰ τοῦτο is disputed. See Exeg. And Crit.—P. S ]
John 12:32; John 12:32.—[The rendering of ἐάν by when (ὅταν) instead of if, is inaccurate. It does not necessarily imply doubt. Herrmann (Vig. p. 832) explains the phrase ἐὰν τοῦτο γένηται thus: Sumo hoc fieri, et potest omnino ficri, sed utrum vero futurum sit necne experientia, cognoscam. I cannot quite agree with the note of Alford: “The Lord Jesus, though knowing all this, yet in the weakness of His humanity, puts Himself into this seeming doubt, ‘if it is so to be;’ comp. Matthew 26:42” I would say rather that the stress is laid on ἑλκύσω as a certain fact, and ἐὰν ὑψωθῶ expresses, in a conditional form, the necessary antecedent condition. Just so ἐάν is used in John 14:3; ἐὰν πορευθῶ καὶ ἑτοιμάσω τόπον ὑμῖν, πάλιν ἔρχομαι, κ. τ. λ—P. S.]
John 12:35; John 12:35.—Instead of μεθ’ ὑμῶν (with you, text. rec. with A., Chrys., Cyr.,] should be read ἐν ὑμῖν within you, in accordance with א. B. D. K. I., etc.—P. S.]
[30]Ver 35.—The reading ὡς instead of ἕως [text, rec] has the overwhelming authority of A. B. D. L., etc., in its favor, Lachmann, Teschendorf [Alford]. So likewise, John 12:30. The close of John 12:36 also recommends ὡς rather than ἕως since Jesus departs with this very word.
[31][Bengel: Præludium regni Dei a judæis ad gentes trasituri.]
[32][The present indicates habitual pilgrimage to Jerusalem. P. S.]
[33][So also Bengel: cum sodali, audet, when associated with a companion, Philip makes bold and does it.—P. S.]
[34][Alford: “The word soul (or, life) is not realty in a double sense: as the wheat-corn retains its identity, though it (lie, so the soul: so that the two senses are in their depth but one. Notice that the soul involves the life in both cases, and must not be taken in the present acceptation of that term.”] P. S.]
[35][Bengel: concurrebat horror mortis et ardor obedientiæ.]
[36][This interpretation of διὰ τοῦτο (to endure this suffering) is also defended by Grotius, De Wette, Luthardt, Ebrard, Godet, Hengstenberg, Wordsworth. Olshausen supplies: that the world may be saved, which is not sustained by the connection, but results necessarily from the atoning death of Christ. Alford, with Lampe and Stier, supplies: ἱ ν α σ ω θ ῶ ἐκ τῆς ὥρας τούτης, I came to this hour for the very purpose that I might be delivered from it, or that, by going into and exhausting this hour, I might pass to My glorification. But this interpretation is not very clear, and would in consistency require the interrogative punctuation of the preceding clause, which Alford opposes.—P. S.]
[37][So also the ancients, and, among modern commentators, Olshausen, Kling, Stier, Meyer, Luthardt, Godet, Alford. Lange mentions only incidentally (sub. 1) the rationalistic interpretation of actual thunder and no more (Paulus, Kuinöl,. Amnion, etc.). Hengstenberg (II., p. 320 ff.), otherwise so uncompromisingly anti-rationalistic, likewise assumes natural thunder which was identical with “the voice from heaven,” and through which God spoke to Christ. But then it could not have been mistaken by some for the voice of an angel. It was clearly a supernatural phenomenon, a spiritual manifestation from the spiritual world, clothed in a symbolic form, an articulate sound from heaven, miraculously uttered, heard by all, but variously interpreted according to the degree of spiritual susceptibility.—P. S.]
[38][שַׂר הָעוֹלָם. Paul calls Satan ὁ θεὸς τοῦ κόσμου τούτου 2 Corinthians 4:4, ὁ , Ephesians 2:2.—P. S.]
[39][The deepest humiliation of Christ is at the same time His highest exaltation; His crown of thorns is His crown of glory. The double meaning of ὑψωθῆναι is in keeping with John, comp. John 2:19; John 3:3; John 4:10; John 11:51. Alford: The Saviour crucified, is in fact the Saviour glorified; so that the exalting to God’s right hand is set forth by that uplifting on the cross.—P. S.]
[40][Some infer from πάντας the apocatastasis or final restoration of all men. But in all such passages all must be explained in accordance with other passages where faith is expressly laid down as the indispensable condition of salvation. Chrysostom finds in ἑλκύω an intimation of deliverance from the chains of Satan. It rather implies the strong and irresistible power of Christ’s love. This attraction of the cross is one of the richest themes for effective evangelical sermons. See the Homiletical Department.—P. S.]
[41][I add the note of Alford on ἑλκύω: “by the diffusion of the Spirit in the church: manifested in the preaching of the Word mediately, and the pleading of the Spirit immediately. Before the glorification of Christ, the Father drew men to the Son (John 6:44), but now the Son Himself to Himself. Then it was, ‘no man can come except the Father draw him;’ now the Son draws all. And, to Himself, as thus uplifted, thus exalted;—the great object of faith; see John 11:52.”—P. S.]
[42][Alford refers to the still remoter passage in the discourse with Nicodemus, John 3:14, and “perhaps in the other parts of Christ’s teaching which have not been recorded,” The reference to John 12:23 ἵνα δοξασθῇ ὁ υἱὸς τοῦ , is sufficient.—P. S.]
[43][Alford: ὡς, as, not exactly “while” (E. V.): walk, according to your present state of privilege in possessing light: which indeed can only be done while it is with you.—P. S.]
[44] [Comp. the beautiful verses of Nic. Lenau (from Savonarola’s Christmas sermon):
“Die Künste der Hellenen kannten
Nicht den Erlöser und sein Licht.
D ‘rum scherzten sie so gern und nanntenDes Schmerzes tiefsten Abgrund nicht.
Dass sie am Schmerz, den sie zu tröstenNicht wusste, mild vorüberführt,
Erkenn’ ich als der Zauber grössten,
Womit uns die Antike rührt.”—P. S.]
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