John 12:23-26

The hour is come that the Son of Man should be glorified.

The significance of this declaration in connection with the incident

Why should this be such an hour of trouble and glory? How should the appearance of a few strangers have led to a discussion respecting the falling of wheat into the ground, and its death--the saving of life and the losing it? You will remember that when our Lord spoke of those “other sheep” He connected the formation of the one flock with the death of the one shepherd. The assertion is in strict harmony with the prophecy of Caiaphas. If you turn from St. John to St. Paul you will find that the breaking down of the wall of partition between Jews and Gentiles is effected “in the body of Christ’s flesh through death.” If you reflect on these passages, that which we treat as though it were only an accident--the calling in of the Gentiles--the unfolding of a universal society, will be seen to be that wonderful event to which all God’s purposes, from the beginning of the world, had been tending--the unveiling of the deepest mystery of all, in the relations of God to man, in the Being of God Himself. Without sacrifice Jews and heathen had been taught there could be no unity among the members of a race. Sacrifice must bind them to God and to each other. Only he who can give up himself--so the heart of mankind testified--is a patriot; only he obeys the laws; only he can save his country when itis falling. There had been, then, a sure conviction that any larger union must involve a mightier sacrifice. As the conscience was awakened by God’s teaching more and more clearly to perceive that all resistance to God lies in the setting up of self, it began to be understood that the atonement of man with man must have its basis in an atonement of God with man, and that the same sacrifice was needed for both. One thing yet remained to be learned--the most wonderful lesson of all, and yet one of which God had been giving the elements, line upon line, from the beginning: Could sacrifice originate in God and be made, first, not to Him but by Him? All our Lord’s discourses concerning Himself and His Father--concerning His own acts as the fulfilment of the Father’s will--concerning the love which the Father had to Him because He laid down His life for the sheep--had been bringing these mysteries to light; had been preparing the meek to confess with wonder and contrition that in every selfish act they had been fighting against an unselfish God--that in every self-sacrificing act they had been merely yielding to Him. And so far as they had any glimpses of the accomplishment of God’s promises--that He would bring all into one--that the Gentiles should wait for His law--that He would be a Father of all the families of the earth--so far they had the vision of a transcendent and Divine sacrifice. (F. D. Maurice, M. A.)

The hour of redemption

It was given to St. John long after the other evangelists had described the Passion to add some details of the deepest interest. The Transfiguration and Gethsemane St. John omits, but here records the significance of both. The Lord passed through a season of profound agitation--the earnest of the Garden; but out of the darkness light unspeakable arose--the reflection of the Mount.

I. THE LORD ENTERS INTO THE DARKNESS OF HIS HOUR AND PROCLAIMS ITS GLORY.

1. “The hour” is the sacred term that marks the Passion as the consummation of the Redeemer’s work. He entered the world in the “fulness of time”; He wrought His preparatory work in the “days of the Son of Man”; and now, after ages of waiting had passed into days of fulfilment, the days are compressed into an “hour.” From this moment the shadow of the cross throws its sacred gloom upon every incident and word. The Passion has begun, and from that moment went on in its ever-deepening variety of grief, through the indignities of His enemies, the abandonment of His friends, the sense of the world’s guilt, to that infinite woe which took from man his curse. It was the first more direct onset since the temptation. It was the beginning of the awful strain on the resources of His lower nature under which He would fain cry “Save me,” but that He knows “for this purpose,” etc.; the same pressure which caused Him to ask that the cup might pass, a prayer the next moment recalled in the submission of perfect victory.

2. The darkness is not past, but the true light already shines. His first word on entering the dark valley is--“The hour … glorified.” His lowest humiliation was His highest dignity. The cross in which His servants gloried He here glories in. In it He beholds the glorification of the Father’s attributes (verse 28), an exhibition of the glory of Divine justice visiting upon sin its penalty, and the glory of the Divine mercy providing salvation for the sinner. To this the Redeemer’s final “Lo! I come,” there is a sublime response from heaven. For the third time the Father proclaims aloud the secret of His constant complacency in the sacrifice of His Son.

3. The record teaches us two errors we must avoid.

(1) We must not by our feeble theories mitigate the sorrow that wrought out our redemption and exchange it into a mere demonstration of such charity and self-sacrifice as man might rival and which could never redeem man’s soul.

(2) It tells us, too, that the Redeemer was filled with a sense of His own glory and His Father’s complacency even while He suffered for our sins. He presented Himself as an oblation for man’s sin to manifest the love that provided the propitiation, and to declare the glory of the Divine name in the harmony of its perfections.

II. FROM THE HOUR OF THE PASSION TO THE LIFTING UP ON THE CROSS THE TRANSITION IS OBVIOUS. Here also we perceive the blending, of opposite emotions.

1. St. John has already made us familiar with this expression, which serves the double purpose of signifying the crucifixion and the exaltation. But in the gospels it is used to express the act of man that lifted Jesus to His cross. In the beginning of His ministry, our Lord spoke to Nicodemus of this lifting up; in the middle He told the Jews that they would do it; and now He refers to it at the close. But the cross is the symbol here of His own reproach, “Cursed is everyone that hangeth on a tree.”

2. But while His soul is troubled--and only in His deepest anguish does He mention His soul--Jesus still rejoiced in spirit. On either side is a word of triumph.

(1) “The prince of this world is cast out.” He had at an earlier time, and in a higher sphere, “beheld Satan as lightning,” etc. Now He beholds, as the result of His redeeming death, Satan fall from his power on earth--not, indeed, with the swiftness of lightning, but absolutely and surely.

(2) “I will draw all men unto Me” expresses the tranquil assurance that the virtue of His death would draw in due time--when preached in His word and testified by His spirit--all the children of men to Himself.

3. Here also are two lessons that guard our thoughts.

(1) The reality of Satan’s relation to our sin and the world’s redemption. A doctrine of atonement finds acceptance, which rejects the personality of the being to whom our Lord alludes. But in so doing they must reconstruct the entire doctrine of the New Testament, wrest the Saviour’s words to their own peril, and undermine the whole economy of redemption, which assumes that Satan is the representative and ruler of the world’s wickedness, whose power and law is broken.

(2) That through our redemption we are delivered from the reign of sin; that the drawing of Christ is as universal in its influence as the virtue of His atonement; that we may enter into our Master’s joy and exult over a vanquished enemy.

III. WE PASS FROM THE HOUR, THROUGH THE LIFTING UP, TO THE SELFSACRIFICING DEATH WHICH GIVES LIFE TO MULTITUDES. Here again we have two contending emotions.

1. All His allusions to the coming end connect His own loss with our gain, His death with our life. So it is here, only the emblem is the most affecting He ever employed, expressive of the entireness of His surrender, and the absolute connection between His death and the abundant life of His people. What in the similitude of the corn of wheat expresses the deep anguish of this prelude to Gethsemane the Lord does not say. There was a mystery in the anguish of His soul that nothing in the secret of human dying will account for.

2. But the rejoicing of His spirit keeps not silence. He passes immediately to the much fruit that would grow from His death, the example He would set to His saints, and the supreme honour which He and His imitators in the self-renouncing charity of holiness would partake together throughout eternity. Nor is His rejoicing marred by the prospect that His death will not give life to all mankind. And should we be discontented when our Master sees of the travail of His soul and is satisfied?

Conclusion:

1. The only word of exhortation that we hear in this solemn hour is, “If any man serve Me, let him follow Me.” This is the voice of Him who passes through the garden to the cross. There is no loyalty to the Redeemer which does not share His passion. For Him we must sacrifice our sins, and, in imitation of His last example, must live, and, if need be, die for others.

2. “Where I am,” etc.; for a short season in the gloom of sorrow and conflict, but forever in His glory.

3. “If any man serve Me,” etc.; heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ. (W. B. Pope, D. D.)

The hour of Christ’s suffering and triumph

(text and John 12:27)

I. THE HOUR. It stands out from all other hours amid the reminiscences of the past and anticipation of ages to come. Time’s stream set in to bear upon it. All prophecy met here. One dispensation after another was introduced and completed in relation to it, and derived all their importance from that relation. It was an hour

1. Of intense suffering. Who can tell the physical agony? His soul was troubled within a body of sensibility as keen as ours; and what anguish racked His spirit when He was executed as a malefactor and forsaken of His Father!

2. Of triumph. An hour in which He glorified God and God Him; in which all the Divine attributes harmonized as they never had before, and never could again. They received glory which covered all obscurations that had appeared, and which can never be tarnished to eternity.

II. THE SEEMING RELUCTANCE OF CHRIST TO MEET THIS HOUR (John 12:27). His spirit is perplexed, for He was as truly man as God. But wherefore these cries and tears? Because of

1. The death of ignominy which He, innocence itself, was about to die.

2. The unbelief and ingratitude of the Jews. “He came to His own,” etc.

3. The desertion of His disciples, the denial of Peter, the betrayal of Judas.

4. The buffetings of Satan during “the hour and power of darkness.”

5. The hiding of the Father’s face (Zechariah 13:7; Matthew 27:45). Well might His soul be troubled and say, Father, save Me from this hour--if there is any other way of saving sinners. But God spared not His own Son, and the Son acquiesced.

III. THE GROUNDS ON WHICH HE OVERCAME HIS APPARENT RELUCTANCE. They respect

1. Himself. He knew that on this hour depended all that He came to do, and this consideration dispelled the cloud human nature raised. He had done too much to allow of His retracting. Why the Babe of Bethlehem if He refused to be the Man of Sorrows? He came to finish the work God gave Him to do.

2. His people. If I would save others I dare not save Myself. If they are to have life I must endure death.

3. His Father. To glorify Him was the design of His coming into the world. “Lo! I come,” etc.

IV. BY WHAT MEANS GOD WAS GLORIFIED IN THE WORK OF CHRIST.

1. In the fulfilment of Messianic prophecy. God had in all the introductory announcements of the Redeemer for four thousand years, connected His glory with the completion of redemption by Christ’s death as a sacrifice for Hebrews 1:1; Luke 2:7).

2. The incarnation. “We beheld His glory,” etc.

3. The discourses, miracles, and character of Christ.

4. His death, resurrection, and ascension.

5. The spread of the gospel.

6. The resurrection and judgment. (T. Raffles, LL. D.)

The glorification of the Son of Man

1. Christ here displays His broad humanity. Not “Son of David.” The Jewish side of His mission is no longer prominent. As “the Son of Man” Jesus is near akin to every man that lives.

2. He speaks of His glory as approaching suggested by the sight of these first fruits among the Gentiles. Christ is glorified in the souls He saves, as a physician wins honour by those he heals.

3. The same visitors led the Saviour to use the metaphor of the buried corn. Wheat was mixed up with Greek mysteries. Christ was undergoing the process which would burst the Jewish husk in which His human life had been enveloped. Aforetime He said He was not sent save to the lost sheep of the house of Israel. Note

I. PROFOUND DOCTRINAL TEACHING conveyed in several paradoxes.

1. Glorious as He was, He was yet to be glorified.

(1) Jesus was always glorious--as one with God, in the perfection of His moral character, in His great love, in His complete consecration, and also in the wonders of His birth, baptism, and transfiguration.

(2) But something was to be added to His honour--death, resurrection, ascension, etc.

2. His glory was to come to Him through shame. It is His highest reputation to be of no reputation. His crown derives new lustre from His cross. If we merge the crucified Saviour in the coming King we rob our Lord of His highest honour.

3. He must be alone, or abide alone. Unless He had trodden the winepress alone, and had cried, “My God! My God!” etc., He could not have saved us. If He had not died He would, as man, have been alone forever: not without the Father, the Spirit, and the angels; but there had not been another man to keep Him company. Our Lord cannot bear to be alone. Without His people He would have been a shepherd without His sheep, a husband without His spouse. His delights were with the sons of men. In order that He might draw all men unto Him, He was lifted up upon the cross alone.

4. He must die to give life, not teach, etc. If the ethical part of Christianity is the most important, why did Jesus die? But since He did fall into the ground and die, we may expect much as the result of it. The travail of the Son of God shall not bring forth a scanty good.

II. PRACTICAL INSTRUCTION. What is true of Christ is in a measure true of Christians.

1. We must die if we would live.

2. We must surrender everything to keep it. We can never have spiritual life except by giving everything up to God.

3. We must lose self in order to find self. The man who lives for himself does not live--he loses the essence and crown of existence: but if you live for others and God, you will find the life of life. “Seek ye first,” etc.

4. If you wish to be the means of life to others, you must, in your measure, die yourself. The self-sacrificing life and death of saints has always been the life and increase of the Church. (C. H. Spurgeon.)

Christ’s cross, Christ’s glory

As regards

I. THE GREAT ENEMY. In the wilderness Christ did not achieve a complete victory. The devil departed from Him for a season only, and was actually and finally vanquished on the cross. He who hoped to crush Adam was himself crushed in Christ. Satan had brought ruin and misery into a happy world. Christ brought out the world into happiness tenfold as bright and holy as that which Satan ruined.

II. MAN. On the cross was transacted the central event of man’s world. All before had reference to this; all after flow from it. The whole system of types found its end on the cross; the whole state of acceptance in which believers stand before God, the whole dispensation of the Spirit, had its origin here. Wherever there breathes a man, there the cross has a deep and never-failing interest. Here also was the triumph of human nature. You hear of the power and dignity of human nature, its wonderful capacities for knowledge, its high endowments for enterprise; but in none of these did it reach its noblest height, nor bear its fairest fruit. Not in Athens or Rome, in poesy or art, has man been most glorified; but on the cross of Jesus. There manhood bore its fruit of love untouched by a blight, and was honoured with the union of the Godhead, stooping to share its sentence of death and to bring it to glory.

III. HIMSELF (Romans 14:9). Christ was born that He might be a King; and here we have His Lordship established and His kingdom inaugurated. Remember what He said to the dying thief. The cross is Christ’s throne; His atonement His basis of empire (Revelation 5:6); from it proceeds the work of the Spirit, whose office it is to glorify Christ.

IV. THE FATHER. By the counsel of the Father’s will was the plan of redemption directed, and His perfections find their highest example on the cross.

1. Love. “Herein is love,” etc.

2. Truth. “For this end He came into the world, to bear witness unto the truth”; and He bore it here.

3. Righteousness. “He made Him to be sin for us,” etc. (Dean Alford.)

The work and glory of the Saviour

In eternity there are no hours; yet there have been two hours in time which are drawn out over the length of eternal ages. One, pregnant of evil, when Eve plucked the forbidden fruit.
When time shall be no more that unhappy hour will live in the memory and be felt in the misery of the lost. The other hour, pregnant with greatest good, was when the Son of Man said, “It is finished,” and the head He bowed in death was crowned with its brightest glory.

I. THE VISIBLE GLORY OF THE CROSS. There never was a death like this.

1. Rays of Godhead streamed through the darkest stages of Christ’s humiliation. Angels attended His humble birth, and a new star rested above the stable. His hands were rough with labour, but at their touch eyes received their sight. His voice cried in infancy and death, but it quelled the storm and burst the fetters of the tomb. His eye was quenched in darkness, but it had read man’s heart and penetrated futurity. He wore no costly robes, but the hem of His garment cured inveterate disease. He trod on no luxurious carpets, but His step was on the sea. His simple drink was water, but water changed into wine at His bidding. No sumptuous banquets entertained His guests, but the few fishes and barley loaves in His hands satisfied multitudes.

2. But this glory was still more apparent in His dying hours. Men had left undone nothing to heap shame upon Him. To pour contempt on His kingly claims they crowned Him with thorns; in mockery of His omniscience they asked Him to tell who struck Him; in ridicule of His omnipotence they challenged Him to leave the cross. Yet even ix this dark hour He was glorified. “If these should hold their peace the stones would cry out,” was now verified. Men were silent, dumb nature spoke. The rocks, whose bosoms, less hard than man’s, were rent, cried out on earth; the sun, veiling his face from a scene on which man looked without emotion, cried out in heaven; the dead, disturbed in their graves by so great a crime, cried out from their open tombs; and’ the temple’s veil added its solemn testimony to theirs.

II. THE MORAL GLORY OF THE CROSS.

1. Christ’s death afforded the fullest display of His love. Not that it had not been displayed before. It was when Moses smote the rock that its hidden treasures were unsealed. It was when the alabaster box was broken that its value became known. It is when the clusters of the grape are crushed that they yield the wine. And so Christ’s gracious attributes were not fully disclosed till His dying hour. But for that it had never been known how He loved. He had been despised and rejected of men, but He died to prove His willingness and power to save the chief of sinners.

2. By His death He conquered hell, death, and the grave. (T. Guthrie, D. D.)

The law of self-sacrifice exemplified in the death of Christ

We shrink too much from investigating the mental struggles of Jesus as though it were a profanation. But in this we commit two errors.

1. We lose sight of Christ’s proper humanity, of the fact that He had a mind governed like our own, a heart and sympathies which throbbed as ours.

2. A false conception of true reverence. It is reverential to be cautious of approaching too closely an earthly sovereign, because near approach would only produce familiarity, and make us feel that he too is but a frail and sinful man. But the Majesty of Jesus requires no such precautions, because the nearer we get to Him the more we realize His Divine Majesty. Note

I. THE LAW OF THE ATONEMENT.

1. The gloriousness of suffering. There are two ways of looking at every act--at the appearance, and at the reality. Hence what seems mean is often inwardly glorious, and vice versa. Thus there is nothing in the outward circumstances of a soldier’s death to distinguish them from an ignoble brawl; but over the soldier’s death is shed the glory of that cause for which his life was offered. So in external circumstances Christ’s death was mean, but in inward principles it was glorified by God. We say that a throne is glorious and a coronet noble; but nothing can ennoble cowardice or selfishness. We say that a dungeon, scaffold, and the lower arts of life are base; but Christ’s death has sanctified the cross, and His life shed a glory over carpentry.

2. The death of one for the life of many. This is the great law upon which God has constructed the universe. If there is to be a crop, there must first be the destruction of the seed. The lives of vegetables and animals are given for us. So the doctrine of the atonement is no strange, arbitrary principle. The Father who made the law by which the flesh of living things sustains the life of others is the same Being who made and obeyed the law by which the flesh of Christ is to the world “meat indeed.”

3. Self-devotion (John 12:25). The previous parallel fails in one thing. We do not thank the grain of wheat for dying, because its death is involuntary; and therefore to constitute a true sacrifice a living will is needed. Christ’s sacrifice was a voluntary act, else it had been no sacrifice at all.

II. THE MENTAL STRUGGLE BY WHICH THAT LAW WAS EMBRACED AS THE LAW OF THE REDEEMER’S LIFE. It is one thing to understand a law and another to obey it. To admire that which is right is one thing, but to do what is right is another. The Divine life of Christ subordinated innocent human ideas to itself by degrees. Here He was literally distracted between the natural craving for life and the higher desire to embrace the will of God. But the victory was won by prayer, that communion of the mind with God through which our will becomes at last merged into His. And so there was one perfect will, the will of the Father being that of the Son. “Father, glorify Thy name.” (F. W. Robertson, M. A.)