John 12

Chapter 12. Christ’s Discourses in John 10-12The next two discourses were delivered during the Feast of Dedication and the Feast of Passover. The Gate and the Shepherd (John 10) This discourse was delivered at Jerusalem during the Feast of Dedication. As we have already noticed, there is some uncertainty about the 22nd verse as to whether it looks backward or forward, to the discourse which precedes or that which follows; or does it include both? For our present purpose, however, as both sections of the discourse refer to the one theme, thus making it ethically but one address, we shall treat it as one discourse. There is an evident allusion implied in the figure to the conduct of the Jewish rulers and their blindness, selfishness, harshness and cruelty as false guardians of the flock of God which had been intrusted to their keeping—more especially to their harsh treatment of the blind man whom they had just expelled from the synagogue for being true to his conscience and the Savior. They had proved themselves to be false shepherds. In contrast with them the Lord now assumes the beautiful tide and character which the Old Testament types and prophecies had made so familiar in connection with the hope of the Messiah, and contrasts the Good Shepherd with the selfish hirelings and the thieves and robbers who had usurped the place of shepherds in the flock of God and who so shamefully abused their trust and imposed upon the helpless flock. There are three divisions in the discourse around which the various thoughts may be clustered:

1. The Gate (John 10:7).
2. The Shepherd (John 10:2).
3. The Sheep (John 10:14-15). Let us keep clearly before our minds the two distinct figures running through this discourse, and then all the symbolism will become plain. These are the sheepfold and the flock. With reference to the sheepfold, Christ is the gate; with reference to the flock, He is the Shepherd. There is a mistranslation in the 16th verse of our revised version which tends to confuse the figure and also to mislead in the deeper spiritual teaching. The true meaning is, “Other sheep I have which are not of this fold. Them also must I bring… and there shall be,” not one fold, but “one flock.” There may be many folds, that is, many branches of the visible Church among agencies for the nurture of Christians, but there is only one flock.
4. The Gate This figure had been used in the symbolism of the tabernacle to denote the curtains by which the priests had access to the Holy Place, which was a type of our fellowship with the Lord and our place of privilege and blessing. The simple and fundamental idea is that Christ is the only way of access, both into the Church and the kingdom. The Church is not the gate of Christ, but Christ is the gate of the Church, and also of salvation in its every stage, and its full and final consummation. He is the gate of pardon, of holiness, of access and communion with God, of prayer, of power, of service, and of heaven. He is an open gate for all who will enter in, and yet He is a closed gate, shutting His people in so that they shall never perish, nor shall any pluck them out of His hand. And He is a personal gate; not our states or acts, not any ceremony, form or external condition, but union with Himself admits us to all the privileges and immunities of the flock. The one condition of salvation is union with Jesus Christ. This is the simplicity and glory of Christianity. It has but one gate, and the test of all false teachers and false ways is simply this, that they climb up some other way. The touchstone of Christianity is the name of Jesus, and its glory His person and His cross.
5. The Shepherd This figure had been invested with peculiar beauty and sacredness in the Psalms of David and the prophetic visions of Ezekiel, and possessed a certain divine character which no mere human teacher would ever have dared to assume. Christ’s application to Himself of the figure is a virtual claim of divinity. Twice, already, among His parables had He used this beautiful symbol of His own seeking love. He now applies it, not so much to the seeking of the lost, as to the care and nurture of the flock. Five things are attributed to the Good Shepherd: a. He loves and suffers for His flock. The Good Shepherd gives His life for His flock. The hireling makes no sacrifice, but seeks only his own interest and safety. The Good Shepherd suffers, and even sacrifices His life for His own (John 10:11, John 10:15, John 10:17). The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep. The hired hand is not the shepherd who owns the sheep. So when he sees the wolf coming, he abandons the sheep and runs away. Then the wolf attacks the flock and scatters it. The man runs away because he is a hired hand and cares nothing for the sheep…. I lay down my life—only to take it up again. No one takes it from me, but I lay it down of my own accord. I have authority to lay it down and authority to take it up again. (John 10:11-13, John 10:17-18) Thus did He anticipate and prepare His disciples for His approaching death; and thus, voluntarily, did He look forward to it Himself, as a willing sacrifice of love. b. He knows His flock personally and calls them by name (John 10:2-14). “He calls his own sheep by name…. I am the good shepherd; I know my sheep and my sheep know me” (John 10:3, John 10:14). The Oriental shepherd is personally acquainted with each member of his flock. How beautifully Nathan describes this intimacy in 2 Samuel 12:3. “The poor man had nothing except one little ewe lamb he had bought. He raised it, and it grew up with him and his children. It shared his food and drank from his cup, and even slept in his arms. It was like a daughter to him.” Thus Jesus owns His sheep; for each of us He has a personal love and a personal voice, and, as the mother gives her whole heart to each of her children, although she may have many, so He loves us individually and perfectly. Thus, to His weeping disciple in the garden did He come on the resurrection morning, calling her by her own name. Thus did He adapt himself to the different temperaments of Martha and Mary, and thus each of us has learned to know Him. The voice is different from the written word; He speaks to us all in the latter, but to each of us He has besides a living voice which we may know and follow. It is the revealing of His person and love to the heart. c. He leads His flock. He calls his own sheep by name and leads them out. When he has brought out all his own, he goes on ahead of them, and his sheep follow him because they know his voice. But they will never follow a stranger; in fact, they will run away from him because they do not recognize a stranger’s voice. (John 10:3-5) He does not merely lead them by His command, but He precedes them in person. There is not a step of the difficult pathway which they must go but He has already gone before them all the way. There is not a hard place still where He pushes them out in advance, but they may always hear His voice in front saying, “Arise, let us go hence.” The personal companionship of Christ, and His direct and conscious guidance in every step of our pathway, is the most certain and delightful fact of Christian experience. d. He feeds them, supplying all their needs and leading them into the fullness of His grace. “Whoever enters through me will be saved. He will come in and go out, and find pasture” (John 10:9). “I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full” (John 10:10). “He makes me lie down in green pastures, he leads me beside quiet waters” (Psalms 23:2). His word and its precious promises, His Holy Spirit, His tender consolation, His public ordinances, and all their blessed fellowship, instruction and inspiration, these are the pastures of His love and bounty, in which we find not only life, but the life more abundantly. e. He keeps them, guards them, defends them, and will never let them fall from His hands or be lost from His flock: 1 give them eternal life, and they shall never perish; no one can snatch them out of my hand. My Father, who has given them to me, is greater than all; no one can snatch them out of my Father’s hand. (John 10:28-29) Locked in the double clasp of the Father and of the Son, the trusting soul is safe forever if it only heeds this simple condition, “My sheep listen to my voice; I know them, and they follow me” (John 10:27). There is a cast-iron way of stating the doctrine of the saint’s security which would seem to sanction rash and unholy confidence. God’s Word is never spoken in a one-sided manner, so as to encourage confidence in any course of disobedience and sin; but for those who have fled for refuge to the hope set before us and are humbly abiding in Him, there is indeed strong consolation and a hope which is an anchor of the soul, both sure and steadfast, and which enters into that within the veil.
6. The Sheep a. The sheep hear His voice (John 10:3-27). “My sheep listen to my voice” (John 10:27). “You do not believe because you are not my sheep” (John 10:26). This is the mark of true sheep, they listen to the shepherd’s voice and are willing to be led and taught. This listening spirit, both through the Old Testament and the New, is the very secret of the Lord and the mark of His spiritual followers. b. They follow the Shepherd (John 10:4-27). The sheep follow Him for they know His voice. “My sheep listen to my voice… and they follow me” (John 10:27). This expression includes the whole life of humble and holy obedience to the commandments and leadings of the Lord. It implies His personal presence and leadership. We do not have to walk alone, but He goes before. It makes the way easy to have only to follow. This was the first word to the disciples in the first chapter of John, and this was the last word to Peter in the 21st: “Follow me.” c. They know Him (John 10:4, John 10:14-15). The sheep follow Him for they know His voice, and a stranger will they not follow, for they know not the voice of strangers. “I know my sheep and my sheep know me—just as the Father knows me and I know the Father” (John 10:14-15); that is, we know the Shepherd as He knows the Father. Our personal intimacy with jesus is the same as His with His Father in heaven. The translation of the 15th verse obscures this thought a little, and it ought to read, “I am known of mine as the Father knows Me and as I know the Father.” These thoughts lead us into depths and heights which, as yet, His disciples could not understand. We do not wonder therefore to read in the sixth verse, “Jesus used this figure of speech, but they did not understand what he was telling them.” But the time came when the same Apostle John could use that word know with even a deeper fullness than this chapter anywhere expresses, and say of the flock: You have known him who is from the beginning…. But you have an anointing from the Holy One, and all of you know the truth…. We know that we belong to the truth, and how we set our hearts at rest in his presence…. We know that he lives in us: We know it by the Spirit he gave us…. And so we know and rely on the love God has for us…. We know that we have passed from death to life…. We know that we have what we asked of him…. We know that we are children of God, and that the whole world is under the control of the evil one. We know also that the Son of God has come and has given us understanding, so that we may know him who is true. And we are in him who is true—even in his Son Jesus Christ. He is the true God and eternal life. (1 John 2:13, 1 John 2:20; 1 John 3:19, 1 John 3:24; 1 John 4:16; 1 John 3:14; 1 John 5:15,1 John 5:19-20) This discourse has reference not only to the individual believer, but also to the entire flock, and contains a beautiful reference to the time when its scattered fragments shall be all united, Jew and Gentile, out of every nation and class and age of time, “and there shall be one flock and one shepherd” (John 10:16), “For the Lamb at the center of the throne will be their shepherd; he will lead them to springs of living water. And God will wipe away every tear from their eyes” (Revelation 7:17). This beautiful discourse, instead of touching the hearts of His enemies, only stung them to fiercer exasperations, and was followed by a malignant attack upon Him and an attempt to stone Him in the temple, from which He escaped through the same supernatural power by which He had already evaded their fury more than once, and departed from Jerusalem to Perea for the last stage of His Jewish ministry. The Glory of the Cross (John 12:20-36) The occasion of this discourse was the arrival of certain Greeks who had come to attend the feast of the Passover, to ask for an introduction to Jesus through Philip. They may have had some slight acquaintance with him, or he may have had, perhaps, some Gentile blood in him. Philip consults with Andrew, and then together they go to the Master and tell Him of the request. It seems to make a profound impression upon His heart, and doubtless He sees in it the type and beginning of the conversion of the Gentiles through the gospel, which the Christian age is soon to usher in. The innumerable multitudes who are to follow in their train passed before Him in vision. Perhaps the prospect of these ransomed millions, saved through His suffering and death, lifts His spirit into exulting joy, even under the immediate shadow of the cross itself, and He exclaims, “The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified” (John 12:23). He then proceeds, in profound and beautiful language, to unfold the great principle of death and resurrection, of which His life was to be the greatest expression. First, He traces it even in the laws of nature, and then applies it both to His disciples and to Himself.
7. The Kernel of Wheat The principle of death and resurrection in the natural world: “Unless a kernel of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains only a single seed. But if it dies, it produces many seeds” (John 12:24). This is the law of natural life. We see it in the decay of winter and revival of spring; we see it in the chrysalis and in the butterfly; we see it in the bulb of autumn and the lily of spring; we see it in the buried seed and the harvest resurrection. Life, evermore, is fed by death, And joy, by agony, And that a rose may breathe its breath Something must die.
8. Death and ResurrectionHe makes the application of this principle to all discipleship. “The man who loves his life will lose it, while the man who hates his life in this world will keep it for eternal life” (John 12:25). Every follower of the Master must be willing to rise to life and kingliness by way of the cross, by the death of self and the portals of suffering. The word “life” here is expressed by two Greek terms having quite a different sense. The first means our lower life; the second, our higher and divine life. He that loves the former shall lose the latter, but he that yields it for the higher shall gain the life eternal. The first might be translated “soul”; it is the Greek psyche. He that loveth his own soul shall lose it, he that hateth it shall keep it unto life eternal. Not only must Christian life be animated by the spirit of self-sacrifice, but it must really begin in the renunciation and death of self in its very germ, in the surrender of our natural self to Jesus, and the reception of the new resurrection life in fellowship with Him; of which we can say, “I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me” (Galatians 2:20). Not only must it have its source in this great principle, but it must, all the way, enter into fellowship with Christ’s sufferings. “Whoever serves me must follow me; and where I am, my servant also will be” (John 12:26). But the cross is not forever; there is a glorious and everlasting reversion. “My Father will honor the one who serves me” (John 12:26); if we die, we shall also live with Him; and the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory which shall be revealed in us.
9. Christ’s Cross He makes the application of this principle to Himself. He, too, must bear the cross in all its terrible reality; and for a moment, as the realization of it touches His sensitive spirit, He shrinks from the awful vision and cries, “Now my heart is troubled, and what shall I say? ‘Father, save me from this hour’?” (John 12:27). It was the instinctive recoil of His humanity from the cup of trembling; it was the foretaste of Gethsemane, as that was the foretaste of Calvary. But it was only a moment’s recoil, nor was it really accepted by His consecrated will; instantly He answers His own cry, “No, it was for this very reason I came to this hour. Father, glorify your name!” (John 12:27-28). And His holy will is still immaculately held on the altar of sacrifice in a very real sense. It is with Him in the hour of sacrifice and death. There are moments when we live over in the soul all the history of coming hours of anguish, and this was such a moment. But immediately the shadow is illumined by the glory beyond. a. First, we have the Father’s witness to His sacrifice by an audible voice from heaven in response to His prayer, proclaiming, “I have glorified it, and will glorify it again” (John 12:28). This is the highest glory of the cross, that it honors the Father and glorifies His name. It is the sublimest exhibition of His justice, holiness, wisdom and love, and the one offering which satisfies His heart with the perfect obedience of His beloved Son and the all-sufficient ransom for a lost and guilty world. In these Greeks He saw the prototypes of the world’s coming myriads, as they have been coming, and shall still come to Him for salvation; until, at length, an innumerable company that no man can number, out of all nations, and kindreds, and people, and tongues, shall gather around the throne, and before the Lamb, clothed with white robes, and palms in their hands, shouting, “Salvation belongs to our God, who sits on the throne, and to the Lamb” (Revelation 7:10). b. The cross is also the judgment of this world. “Now,” He cries, “is the time for judgment on this world” (John 12:31); not only was it the hour when the world was revealed in the deepest and darkest element of its wickedness and hatred toward God, but it was literally the hour when, in the person of the Substitute, the judgment of heaven was really passed upon sinful men. And for all who accept the atonement of Jesus the day of judgment is really passed, so far as their former sins are concerned, and the Lord Jesus Himself declares, “Whoever hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life and will not be condemned; he has crossed over from death to life” (John 5:24). c. It is also the way of assured victory over Satan. This is another of the glories of the cross, that through death it has destroyed him that had the power of death, that is the devil. The very act by which he sought to destroy the Redeemer and the hopes of men has ruined the foundations of his kingdom and sealed his everlasting fate. Never did Satan do a rasher deed than when he incited Judas and Pilate to crucify the Son of God. By His death Jesus has spoiled principalities and powers and made a show of them openly, triumphing over them in His cross. The strong figure of the apostle implies that Satan has been hung up as a scarecrow on the cross of Calvary, with his head pierced with the nails of crucifixion. We all may know henceforth that he is a slain and conquered foe.
10. The Crowning Glory The crowning glory of the cross is its attractive power to draw all men unto Jesus for salvation. This was the meaning of His joyful cry, “But I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all men to myself (John 12:32). The lifting up referred, primarily, to His crucifixion, but also might include His resurrection and His exhibition in the preaching of the gospel, for it is only as we lift up a crucified and risen Savior that we shall ever be honored to draw men unto Him. Soon after this beautiful discourse Jesus withdrew Himself from the people, hiding Himself, as it is expressed, from them, and adding the solemnly tender warning, You are going to have the light just a little while longer. Walk while you have the light, before darkness overtakes you. The man who walks in the dark does not know where he is going. Put your trust in the light while you have it, so that you may become sons of light. (John 12:35-36) And to those who believed on Him in secret and were afraid to confess because of others, He gave this parting admonition, When a man believes in me, he does not believe in me only, but in the one who sent me…. There is a judge for the one who rejects me and does not accept my words; that very word which I spoke will condemn him at the last day. For I did not speak of my own accord, but the Father who sent me commanded me what to say and how to say it. I know that his command leads to eternal life. So whatever I say is just what the Father has told me to say. (John 12:44,John 12:48-50) This solemn thought was enough to lift them above all the thoughts and fears of men. They were dealing with the Son of God, with the Word of God, with the issues of judgment. They were receiving not only the wisdom of a man and the kind and Christian words of a divine messenger, but the commandment of the Father, and a decisive message on the acceptance of which their eternal destiny should be settled before the throne. The offer of salvation comes to us not merely as a well-meaning opportunity, but as an authoritative command. God commands us to receive life everlasting. The law of faith is the test now of judgment and destiny. And in the day of His coming there shall be two classes, described in the earlier verses of this gospel by the solemn words, “Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe stands condemned already because he has not believed in the name of God’s one and only Son” (John 3:18).