John 12

37. But though he had done so many miracles before them, yet they believed not on him: 38 that the saying of Esaias the prophet might be fulfilled, which he spake, Lord, who hath 39 believed our report? and to whom hath the arm of the Lord been revealed? Therefore 40 they could not believe, because that Esaias said again, He hath blinded their eyes, and 41 hardened their heart; that they should not see with their eyes, nor understand with 42 their heart, and be converted, and I should heal them. These things said Esaias, when 43 he saw his glory, and spake of him. Nevertheless among the chief rulers also many believed on him; but because of the Pharisees they did not confess him, lest they should 44 be put out of the synagogue: for they loved the praise of men more than the praise of God. 45 Jesus cried, and said, He that believeth on me, believeth not on me, but on him that 46 sent me: and he that seeth me seeth him that sent me. I am come a light into the 47 world, that whosoever believeth in me should not abide in darkness. And if any man hear my words, and believe not, I judge him not: for I came not to judge the world, 48 but to save the world. He that rejecteth me, and receiveth not my words, hath one that judgeth him: the word that I have spoken, the same shall judge him in the last 49 day. For I have not spoken of myself; but the Father which sent me, he gave me a 50 commandment, what I should say, and what I should speak. And I know that his commandment is life everlasting: whatsoever I speak therefore, even as the Father said unto me, so I speak.

THE moment Christ appeared, he became a judgment, or a judge. There was no visible bench, no formal sentence. He was even anxious to remove the impression that condemnation was his earthly errand. He said, “I came not to judge the world, but to save the world.” Nevertheless the judgment comes, and by a law inwrought into all our souls. No one of us can ever be as if Christ had not appeared on the earth. To hear the name of Christ alters the relations of every human being to the highest facts, to God, to eternity. It was not so much any special saying; it was his character, his very nature, that was judicial. As soon as he was manifest, the whole world of men about him fell apart, and souls took their places on the right hand and the left. It was as if that divine presence located instantly every human life on earth. And so he added: “Though I came not into the world to judge it, though that is not my special mission here in the body, but to manifest God to you, yet afterward, in the world to come, and in consequence of that manifestation, judgment will come, solemn, awful, inevitable, sudden as a thief in the night. The word that I speak unto you, that shall judge you.”

The question, then, for the individual is this: Do we see Christ? Do we recognize and own our Lord? Whether he has come, where he is, whether he can be found, is not the matter we have to consider; nor whether we belong to him. He has come: he lives: he is visible to the eyes of faith: his life goes forth into the race forever, flowing into all hearts that will open to receive it, making them sons and kings and priests unto God. F. D. H.

37-41. It is the manner of this evangelist alone to record his own reflections on the scenes he describes: but here, having arrived at what was virtually the close of our Lord’s public ministry, he casts an affecting glance over the fruitlessness of his whole ministry on the bulk of the now doomed people. B.

38. The first passage which John quotes from

Isaiah is taken from chap. 53:1. No other passage could he have chosen which strikes so straight at the very heart of the people which rejected their King. It is the well-known chapter of the cross. The prophet foresees and mourns over the unbelief of his people, who knew not the Lamb of God, neither at the place of slaughter, where he suffers, nor on the throne, where he reigns. The arm of the Lord, the glorious power of God, which is revealed in the incarnate Word, is hidden from this blind people, that they believe not. The Acts of the Apostles, which sets forth Israel’s self-hardening against the apostolic preaching of the crucified and risen Christ, closes with these same prophetic words. Such is the awful course of the righteous judgment of hardening, from Esau and Pharaoh down to the last vessel of the wrath which is fitted to destruction. Man himself hardens his heart against the gracious voice of God which he hears—this is his sin; afterward he becomes hardened, so that he is no longer able to understand with his heart and to be converted—this is his punishment. R. B.—It was not because Isaiah spake that they believed not, but because they were not about to believe, that he spake. Chrys.—The Lord, by the prophet, did predict, not cause, the unbelief of the Jews. Aug.

39. By the great body of the Jews, both rulers and people, his doctrine had been rejected, his authority denied, his Messiahship despised. This result of his mission had been predicted by Isaiah, who, in the strong metaphor of the Hebrew prophets, ascribed to the Lord this hardening, which came of the fact that he brought into the world a stronger, clearer light of conviction, against which men closed their eyes. J. P. T.—They could not. Literally, “they were not able.” They had no will to believe, and so they had no power. They could have believed, if they would, but they would not, and so they could not. 40. He hath blinded. Those whom God is said to “harden and blind” will always be found to be persons whom he had previously warned, exhorted, and constantly summoned to repent. And never is he said to give men up to judicial hardness and blindness till after a long course of warnings. One thing must never be forgotten: God “willeth not the death of any sinner.” He is willing to soften the hardest heart, to open the blind eyes of the greatest sinner. J. C. R.—We have this text, than which there is none more terrible, no less than six times quoted in the New Testament. In all places it is given as a reason for the Jews’ unbelief in Christ. The Jews first shut their own eyes, and hardened their own hearts. Thus behaving themselves, God judicially gave them up to their own lusts. He did not infuse any malice into their hearts, but withdrew his grace from them. Poole.

41. To see the full force of this verse we should read the sixth chapter of Isaiah in its entirety. We should see there a magnificent description of the Lord’s glory, before which the seraphim veiled their faces. J. C. R.—It was Christ’s glory that Isaiah saw, when he saw in the temple the LORD seated on a throne, high and lifted up, surrounded by adoring seraphim; it was Christ of whom he spake when he said: “Mine eye hath seen the King, the LORD of hosts.” That which it was granted to the Prophet to behold in anticipation, it was vouchsafed to the Evangelist, who here speaks of Christ, to behold in actual reality, full of grace and truth; and accordingly he declares his own experience, as indeed the experience of all God’s New Testament children, when he says, “We saw his glory.” R. B.

44-50. This seems to be a supplementary record of some weighty proclamations, for which there had been found no natural place before, and introduced here as a sort of summary and winding up of his whole testimony. B.—He was come as a light into the world, and the words which he spake should judge those who rejected him; for those words—every brief answer, every long discourse—were from the Father; sunbeams from the Father of lights; life-giving rays from the life eternal. F.—These words are full of allusions to former discourses; indeed, they are a holy summary of those discourses, designed both for the joy of the disciples who abode in his words, and also to guard them against conceiving offence. R. B.

44-46. If to believe in Christ is to believe in the Father, and to see Christ is to see the Father, then Jesus Christ is equal with the Father—very and eternal God. The object of our Lord in these verses was partly to proclaim once more the unity of himself and the Father, and partly to encourage all believers in himself. J. C. R.—As if he had said: Be comforted! Let not your heart be troubled, because ye see me despised above all other men! What I have said is true: every one which seeth the Son and believeth on him, hath everlasting life. For whoever in faith beholds me that man beholds the glory of God.

47,48. “Wherefore I take you to record this day, that I am free from the blood of all men.” This is the meaning of his words. Since all had heard his words, all might have believed on him. Now the disobedient and unbelieving it is not I who judge, Christ says. Not in me, but in them lies the cause of this judgment. Not to condemn and judge did the Son of God come into the world, but to redeem and save; but he who rejects the Redeemer when he sees him, and receives not his words which he hears, sees and hears himself his judgment, because he discerns not the word of the Lord. R. B.—Truth never dies; it lives in itself, it lives in the memory, it lives in the conscience. And the day will come when the truth, no longer hidden by prejudice, nor baffled by passion, shall put forth its judicial, condemning power against the soul that has rejected it. And so the gospel of the Son of God shall be enthroned above the law of Sinai, to judge and condemn the world because of unbelief. J. P. T.—The word of life, when rejected, irresistibly thrusts itself upon the unbeliever as a word of judgment unto death. How fearful an expression that is!—he hath one that judgeth him. The word—the clear sum of all God’s words that he has ever heard—he can never entirely obliterate from his conscience; it clings to his feet wherever he goes, it lies down with him in his bed, it accompanies him to his worldly business and his worldly pleasures, and everywhere it whispers in his ear, “Miserable thou art still!” It whispers now; but at the last day this judging word will sound upon him with the voice of thunder from the lips of that Son of man whose redeeming love he has thrust from him; with unspeakable anguish will he recognize it as the same word to which, in the day of grace, he refused to hearken unto his salvation. R. B.

In the very presence of imminent death, there was the same tranquillity and repose as on the free hills of Galilee, or in the safe retreat of Cesarea Philippi: the same stupendous claims as head of the new kingdom of God, and king over the souls of men, for time and eternity. Within a few hours of crucifixion, and conscious of the fact; in the intervals of mortal contest with the whole forces of the past and present, the wandering Galilean Teacher, meek and lowly in spirit, full of divine pity, alone and poor, the very embodiment of weakness as regarded all visible help, still bore himself with a serene dignity more than human. In the name of God he transfers the spiritual glory of Israel to his own followers; throws down the barriers of caste and nationality; extends the new dominion of which he is head to all races, and through all ages; predicts the divine wrath on his enemies in this world, as the enemies of God, and announces the decision of the final judgment as turning on the attitude of men toward himself and his message. The grandeur of soul which could so utterly ignore the outward and apparent, and realize the essential and eternal; the conscious majesty in the midst of humiliation and danger; the absolute trust that the everlasting future was all his own, could spring in such a heart only because it felt that it was not alone, but that a greater than man was ever with him. Only when we realize him as enjoying unclouded and absolute communion with eternal truth and love—man, but also the incarnate divine—can we hope to solve the mystery. G.

Section 130.—Destruction of Jerusalem foretold.

Mount of Olives.