Jesus Speaks About His Death
JESUS SPEAKS ABOUT HIS DEATH
JOHN 12:27-36
Even Jesus’ disciples found it hard to take in his death.
As Jesus enters into the supreme crisis, not only in his own ministry but in the history of the world, he cries out to his Father for strength and guidance. However tempting it might be to try to avoid the horrors that lay ahead of him, he will not do it. He knows it is his hour at last. He knows that the purpose of it all is to glorify his Father’s name. It is for that that he asks, and a heavenly voice assures him that his prayer has been and will be answered. As usual the bystanders misunderstand. They no more grasp the meaning of the heavenly voice than they have done the meaning of the words of Jesus.
If this had seemed a strange time to be speaking of glory, it is an equally unusual one to refer to judgment when it is not judgment of Jesus but judgment of the world and the devil which is meant. But paradox cannot be avoided and it is his exaltation in death that will be the means of life for all.
Still people do not understand. Still they do not know who this mysterious Son of Man is. So Jesus can only give them an urgent exhortation concerning the need to act while the light is there with them in his person. Faith in him will change their whole being. And with that final challenge he goes, hidden from them until he appears as a prisoner about to be put to death.
Notes 12:27: John does not describe the agony in the Garden of Gethsemane. This passage shows that he is aware of the real moral struggle which Jesus had to undergo as he faced death for the sins of the world. 12:28: the nature of the heavenly voice is not clear. The crowd heard the sound without distinguishing the words (cf. Acts 9:7; 22:9). 12:31: for the cross as a victory over the devil, cf. Colossians 2:15. 12:32: the idea of being “lifted up” was important because of its double meaning (cf. 8:28; Genesis 40:20) and also because it specified death by crucifixion rather than by stoning or in any other way. 12:34: the passages in the Law referred to possibly include Psalm 89:4,29,36; Isaiah 9:7; Ezekiel 37:25.