The Unbelief Of The People
THE UNBELIEF OF THE PEOPLE
JOHN 12:37-43
Many people rejected Jesus’ claims because they wouldn’t believe in him.
We are now coming to the end of the “Book of Signs” and the evangelist gives us a brief summary of the lack of success of Jesus’ mission and the reasons for that. Signs were meant to be an aid to faith so that men should have life. That is why the evangelist himself took the trouble to write them down (20:31). But for the majority of the people the signs did not have this effect. All sorts of excuses were made at various stages of the Gospel why men should not believe in Jesus. It was possible to question the evidence in one way or another, or to form a priori theological opinions that Jesus could not be a man of God, or simply to crush the suggestion from a position of ecclesiastical privilege.
But it would be wrong to look for the whole cause merely at the human level. The trouble went deeper than that. For this was a fulfillment of prophecy. In Isaiah 53:1 the fact of unbelief had been stated, and when the suffering servant of the Lord came, that had to be fulfilled. In Isaiah 6:10 the prophet went further and attributed unbelief to the action of God who blinded them.
Despite all this, there was not a clear-cut rejection of Jesus’ claims. There were many secret believers who were anxious not to lose their position in Judaism, especially those of them who were among the authorities. They come under the devastating condemnation that they preferred to be praised by men than by God.
Notes This brief review of the ministry by the evangelist is similar to the writer’s assessment of the history of the northern kingdom of Israel in 2 Kings 17. 12:40: the apparent failure of the mission of Jesus was accounted for in the Synoptic Gospels also by the quotation from Isaiah 6:10 (cf. Mark 4:11f.; 8:17f.; also Acts 28:26f.). The sense of the fulfillment of the divine purpose is supposed to complement rather than override human moral responsibility (cf. Acts 2:23). 12:43: Nicodemus and Joseph became bolder later (19:38-42). Perhaps someone like Gamaliel was also a secret believer (Acts 5:34-39).