Jesus's last appeal to the Jews (12:1-50)

This chapter marks the end of the section of John’s gospel written ‘that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God’; and a shift instead to focus on what it means to ‘have life in Him through believing’ (20:31).

The Jews’ decision to kill Jesus, is counterbalanced by three affirmations: Mary with her anointing oil (vs 1-8); the triumphal entry (vss 9-19); and the Greeks (vss 20-36). Jesus teaches about the purpose and significance of His imminent death, and how it is a role model for discipleship. John inserts an explanatory note about why the Jews ultimately rejected Jesus (‘His own received Him not’) before recording Jesus’s last appeal to them.

Mary anoints Jesus ready for burial

A banquet is held in Jesus’s honour, when he returns to Bethany shortly before Passover. (Other pilgrims have already arrived, because ritual cleaning for the ceremony took a full week (11:55,56): but Jesus had no need to be cleansed). The sisters are true to character, Martha waitressing while Mary worships: but there is no mention of grousing this time! Martha too is full of love for the Lord, deeply aware that Jesus is ‘the resurrection and the life’; but expresses her worship in service.

Everyone present must have known how incredibly dangerous it was for Jesus to return to Jerusalem area (11:16,57). Whether any of them realised that His death was only six days ahead, is debatable. Though Jesus had specifically told them that the Priesthood would arrest Him, and turn Him over to the Romans to be flogged and crucified (Mk 10:32-34; Matt 20:17-19; Lk 18:31-34), according to Luke they had no idea what He was talking about. It seems however that Mary had understood: for her actions were purposeful, according to Jesus. Perhaps she had understood His statement that ‘I am the resurrection and the life’ to mean that He himself would die and rise again?

John’s account matches Matthew & Mark - with the exception that they refer to His head, whereas John refers to His feet. Perhaps this is because the former were emphasising Jesus’s Kingship, whereas John wishes to emphasise the depth of worship due Him as the Son of God.

The amount was far more than would suffice for both head and feet; Mark & Matthew refer to it being poured on His body as well as His head, so it may have been like the anointing oil on Aaron, ‘flowing down from his head over his beard and right down his robes’ (Ps 133:1,2). The guests at the meal would have been reclining sideways on couches, so Jesus’s feet would have been easily accessible to Mary.

Breaking the neck of the alabaster jar (Mk 14:3) was irreversible commitment. It was how to get the oil all out quickly - similar to taking the cap off the ketchup! It also indicates it was full to the brim. It was worth more than a year’s average wages - wildly expensive in today’s terms, maybe a family heirloom?

Luke records a similar episode but in quite different circumstances: earlier in Jesus’s ministry, with a woman of ill repute, in a Pharisee’s house. Jesus uses it to point out that ‘he who is forgiven much, loves much’: the woman’s worship shows she knows how much she has been forgiven. Maybe Mary had heard of this previous episode and wished to echo the sentiment? The house was filled with the scent; and the aroma of gratitude for grace has spread wherever the gospel has been told, down through the centuries.

Mary’s humility, kneeling to wipe Jesus’ feet with her hair, contrasts with the disciples’ pride in not washing one another’s feet (13:1-5).

It was this action that triggered Judas to go to the High Priest and offer to betray Jesus (Mk 14:10). John tells us that Judas used to embezzle money from the team purse, normally used to buy provisions or to give to the poor (13:29). He had sold out to worship Mammon, long before this; and Mary’s willingness to count everything loss for Christ, must have deeply challenged him. But his response was not to learn from her example, but to take his habit of sinning to its natural conclusion, and sell Jesus for thirty pieces of silver.

Jesus enters Jerusalem as the humble King

The city would have been crowded with pilgrims: Josephus mentions 2,700,000 - not counting the defiled and the foreigners! Probably Bethany itself would be crowded with guests. Those who’d seen the banquet would have told their friends in Jerusalem, who then came out in hordes to see Jesus and Lazarus. He was living proof of resurrection, a doctrine so hated by the priesthood that they decided he too must be eliminated.

The morning after the banquet, Jesus sets off to walk into Jerusalem: an hour’s walk at a usual pace, up from Bethany over the brow of the Mount of Olives, passing Bethphage en route. Then down through the huge graveyard, past the garden of Gethsemane, across the Kidron brook and up onto Mount Moriah, the Temple Mount. The Lord of life, the raiser of the dead who has said ‘the dead shall hear the voice of the Son of God, and those who hear shall live’, rides through Death’s territory victorious!

As He approaches from the east, Pontius Pilate is approaching from the west, on a warhorse with a large contingent of Roman soldiers. Passover is a volatile time in Jerusalem, when revolts and rebellions can break out; so a show of force by the occupiers is necessary to ‘keep the peace’.

Someone runs ahead of Jesus to bring the news of His approach, and pilgrims surge out of the city. Soon He is surrounded, His followers from Bethany behind and the Jerusalemites and pilgrims in front. They pull down palm branches - symbols of national identity - to create a ‘red carpet’ for Jesus, spreading their own cloaks over it as symbols of allegiance to His rule. And they shout the ‘Great Hallel’ from Psalm 118:25-28: “Save now, I pray, O LORD; O LORD, I pray, send now prosperity. Blessed is He who comes in the Name of the LORD. God is the LORD, and He has given us light; bind the sacrifice with cords to the horns of the altar. You are my God, and I will praise You. You are my God, I will exalt You.”

They are blessing the One who comes ‘in the Name of the LORD’ - that unspeakably holy Name, which they refer to as HaShem.The Pharisees thought the crowds’ worship was sacrilege, and tried to get Jesus to rebuke them - but He wouldn’t (Lk 19:39). If they’re silenced, He said, the very stones would cry out in worship of Him!

Nationalist fervour is rising, as it had done the previous Passover when Jesus fed the five thousand by Lake Galilee (6:14,15). Perhaps in order to damp it down, Jesus sends two disciples to commandeer a donkey and its colt (Mt 21:1-3, Mk 11:1-7). The colt had never been ridden before. Then He mounts it and continues His procession - but the contrast with Pilate’s warhorse could not have spoken more clearly. His Kingdom is ‘not of this world’; not to be achieved militarily or by force.

This is our God, the Servant King

He calls us now to follow Him

To bring our lives as a daily offering

Of worship to the Servant King

Nevertheless, even the disciples didn’t grasp the significance of Jesus’s mode of transport. John retrospectively brings out its meaning, by quoting the prophet Zechariah. As is often the case, the context of the quote conveys further meaning:

“Rejoice greatly, O daughter of Zion! Shout, O daughter of Jerusalem! Behold, your King is coming to you; He is just and having salvation, lowly and riding on a donkey, a colt, the foal of a donkey. I will cut off the chariot from Ephraim and the horse from Jerusalem; the battle bow shall be cut off. He shall speak peace to the nations; His dominion shall be ‘from sea to sea,

And from the River to the ends of the earth.’ As for you also, because of the blood of your covenant, I will set your prisoners free from the waterless pit.” (Zech 9:9-10)

The Pharisees recognise that it is ‘Game over!’ The whole city, even including some Greek proselytes (v20), has ‘gone after Him’.

The Greeks

The cleansing of the Temple recorded in the Synoptics, may have occurred at this point, though John doesn’t mention it. If so, the Court of the Gentiles had once again become ‘a house of prayer for all nations’. These Greeks may have been attracted by that - or perhaps were from the Decapolis and thus been aware of Jesus’s teachings for some time. Or they may have been Greek proselytes to Judaism. (Usually Greeks would have been very unwelcome to the Jews, who remembered how Antiochus, a Greek emperor, had tired to wipe out their national identity and defile their Temple). If they were from Decapolis, that might explain why they approach Philip - whose home town was Bethsaida, near to them. Both Philip and Andrew had Greek names.

Jesus’s first statement, ‘The hour has come that the Son of Man should be glorified’ (v23), would have been music to the crowd’s ears. They had prayed, ‘Save now, LORD’: surely Jesus was about to do so! But His following sentences painted a completely different picture.

This seems to be a divine timing marker for Jesus. The hour that was always ‘not yet come’, the hour of His glorification, has now arrived and is in immediate view (13:1,17:1). The glorification is not just His resurrection and ascension, but the cross itself. “My servant will be raised and lifted up and highly exalted” (Ps 52:13). “it is not just that the shame of the cross is inevitably, followed by the glory of the exaltation, but the glory is already fully displayed in the shame” (Carson).

It seems so ironic that just as the Jewish leaders are turning irrevocably against Jesus, the Gentiles are recognising Him! But Jesus is not seduced by the adulation of the multitude, or by the approach of the Greeks with its seductive message of world fame. He has already been offered, and turned down, the kingdoms of this world, if only He will worship Satan (Mt 4:8,9).

A seed carefully preserved in a packet remains a single seed. But if it falls into the ground and dies, it sprouts and grows, bringing forth ‘thirty-fold, sixty-fold and a hundred-fold’. He is about to give His life for the world, and His sowing Himself will bring life to millions. ‘He will see the (fruit of) the travail of His soul, and be satisfied’ (Isa 53:11).

But the seed analogy is not just about His impending death. It is also a powerful metaphor for the life of discipleship - John’s way of referring to ‘taking up one’s cross’, ‘crucifying the flesh’, ‘dying to self’, ‘walking by the Spirit and not according to the flesh’. True service is following Jesus, staying close to Him (v26) and leads to honour from the Father!

Letting our soul-life die, is necessary for eternal life

Once again our English translation suffers from only having one word for ‘life’. Jesus uses the two different Greek words psyche (for soul life) and zoe (for spiritual or eternal life) (v25). He reminds His disciples that zoe life involves laying down one’s soul-life. If we want to serve Him, we must follow Him to the Cross (v26). If we want to be with Him in resurrection life, we must be with Him in death to self. Loving our soul-life in this world, will mean losing it: whereas hating it will lead to keeping it into eternal life. What does this mean?

Each of us has three dimensions of life:

• bodily life (Greek = ‘bios’), through which we experience the world;

• soul life (Gk = ‘psyche’) , through which we experience human society; and

• spirit life (Gk = ‘zoe’), through which we can know and experience God.

Our soul and body together constitute what scripture calls our ‘flesh’ - fallen human nature. Our soul consists of our mind, will and emotions. When the Bible talks about ‘the lusts of the flesh’ it is talking about sinful thoughts, feelings and desires. Because Satan is the ‘prince of this world’, he has perverted the way we look at the world, and the way the world appears to us, so as to draw us away from God: just as he did with Eve. Things that God has forbidden, now seem attractive to us: ‘must-haves’. If we love the world and indulge our flesh nature, eventually we will face judgement and our soul will perish in the Lake of Fire. Loving the world is diametrically opposed to loving the Father (1Jn 2:15-17) and His Son. If we love God, we will find ourselves in a continual struggle to overcome our flesh and instead, walk by the Spirit. But the fruit, the outcome, will be resurrection of our body and soul into eternal life.

Jesus speaks repeatedly about this issue in the Synoptic gospels, under the metaphor of taking up our cross and following Him. In fact all the New Testament authors speak of this struggle, and give lots of explanation about how it applies in different aspects of our lives. For example, Paul says, "Walk by the Spirit, and do not fulfil the lusts of the flesh. For the flesh lusts against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh" (Gal 5:16,17). He goes on to list seventeen specific examples of 'the works of the flesh', contrasting them with 'the fruit of the Spirit'. James says, "Friendship with the world is enmity with God ... Or do you think the scripture says in vain, ''The Spirit who dwells in us yearns jealously?'" (Jas 4:4,5). Peter says, "Since Christ suffered for us in the flesh, arm yourselves with the same mind, for he who has suffered in the flesh has ceased from sin, that he should no longer live the rest of his time in the flesh for the lusts of men, but for the will of God" (1Pet 4:1,2). And John says, "Do not love the world or the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. For all that is in the world - the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life - is not of the Father but is of the world." (1Jn 2:15,16).

Identifying where our own soul-life is blocking the fruit of the Spirit, is particularly difficult once we have come to Christ and its grossest manifestations have already fallen away. Paul says that whilst the 'natural man' (non-believer) cannot receive the things of God at all, the 'spiritual man' can: but there is a third group who he calls 'carnal' - believers whose relationships within the church are characterised by envy, quarrels, and divisions. Such folk are like unweaned babies, not yet able to take solid spiritual food (1Cor 2:14-3:4). This is the flesh nature obstructing our spiritual growth.

Some ways in which I observe my own flesh-nature in operation, include the following:-

• Indulging and excusing my own passions - greed, lust, anger etc

• Holding onto self-righteousness; defensiveness and reluctance to admit I was wrong, to God and to man

• Placing my own intellect in judgement over the word of God

• Seeking affirmation and honour from oterhs rather than from God

• Shying away from witnessing, for fear of ostracism

• Holding suffering against God (victim mentality), rather than embracing 'trials' as His way of strengthening me

What about you? How do you experience this struggle?

Jesus now allows us to glimpse His own inner struggle (v27,28). His human nature, ‘tempted in every respect like we are’, is horror-stricken at facing death on the Cross. “I have a baptism to be baptized with; and how am I straitened till it be accomplished!” (Lk 12:50). His humanity revolts at the thought of facing crucifixion, and would dearly love to pray to avoid it. But His spirit-man knows that the Cross is the ultimate purpose of His incarnation, and always has been since before the foundation of the world. His two natures wrestle together, until He overcomes and can pray triumphantly, "Father, glorify Your name!"

Death is the judgement off God upon our rebellion against Him. Death proclaims that there is nothing in our flesh nature which is fit to endure into eternity: death is ‘guilt made visible’. In death, God meets us as Judge.

Jesus must face the Father Himself, the One to whom He has been inseparably bound for all eternity, not in the warm embrace of His everlasting love, but in the terror of His holy and righteous wrath. He must in fact become the object of divine rejection; the bearer of the implacable antipathy to sin and evil, of the ever-living God.

He is strongly tempted to pray, “Father, save Me from this hour”: a foretaste of the struggle He later endures in Gethsemane. But to do so would negate the whole purpose of His incarnation, His coming into the world.

Rather, He reaffirms His original commitment to doing God’s will and seeking the Father’s glory, not His own. He chooses to let His flesh die. This is not suicide, because the Father has given Him authority to do so (10:18).

“Father, glorify Your Name!” Is exactly the same as He had earlier taught the disciples to pray: ‘Hallowed be Thy Name, Thy Kingdom come, Thy will be done’. These three petitions are in fact synonymous. This is what that prayer implies, the depth of devotion to the Father’s glory not our own, shown out in Jesus’ life. This is the Gethsemane prayer, “Yet not my will, but Thy will, be done O Lord.” How routinely we pray for our daily bread, forgiveness for our trespasses, protection from the Evil One: forgetting that all these should be secondary to a burning desire for His Kingdom, His power, His glory.

“I have glorified it, and will glorify it again”: The Father had already glorified His Name in sending His only-begotten Son to redeem us, and in His Son’s perfect obedience. Now He promises His Son that the sacrifice will not be in vain: while men may see the Cross as ultimate shame, it will in fact be the ultimate instrument of glorifying God’s Name.

The bystanders heard it as thunder, or else thought that an angel had spoken - though the use of ‘I’ implies that it is Jesus’s Father responding to Him. The voice is not for Jesus’s reassurance, but so that the hearers will realise that a turning point in redemption history has arrived.

The effects of Jesus’s imminent crucifixion

Vss 30-32 are Jesus’s exposition of three ways in which God’s Name will be glorified:-

1. Judgement of this world (v31): it’s sin will be exposed by their unbelief (16:9). In crucifying Jesus, the sinfulness of sin is fully exposed. But the cross also adjudges those who believe in Him as righteous: rather than exposing, it covers (makes atonement for) believers’ sin.

“He who believes in him, is not condemned; but he who does not believe, is condemned already, because he has not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God. And this is the condemnation, that the light has come into the world, and men loved darkness, rather than light, because their deeds were evil.” (3:18,19)

2. Expulsion of the ruler of this world (v31): The ruler of this world will be cast out (16:11). “He has taken (our sins) out of the way, having nailed (them) to the Cross. Having disarmed principalities and powers, he made a public spectacle of them, triumphing over them in it.” (Col 2:14b,15). Satan, the Prince of this world, its Supreme Ruler, will be expelled. The tense is future, whereas the judgement was present tense. He will be expelled, whilst Christ will draw all men to Himself. He will be evicted by the power of the Cross, whereas they will be attracted, drawn, by God’s love expressed in the Cross.

He is ruler of this world in two senses:

- Firstly in that the kingdoms of this world are under his control (Matt 4:8-10) through a hierarchical system of authorities (Eph 6:11-13) involving earthly principalities, authorities, world rulers of the darkness of this age, and spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly realms. These kingdoms will become the kingdoms of our God and of His Christ, when Jesus returns for His millennial reign. (Rev 11:15)

- Secondly, at a personal level, the ruler of this world is the same one who is the Jews’ father as well as the Gentiles’; who has blinded their minds so they cannot see the light of the gospel of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ (2Cor 4:4). All of us walked by the values of this world, set by the Prince of the power of the air - the spirit now at work in the sons of disobedience (Eph 2:1-3). We were by nature children of wrath, fulfilling the desires of the flesh and of the mind. We are now fighting daily battles, practicing using the full armour of Christ so that when the battle reaches its height, we will be able to stand. Each victory we win, helps prepare us for the next battle.

We overcome him by refuting His accusations continuously, asserting the power of the blood of Jesus and witnessing to His saving redemption (Rev 12:10,11).

3. Drawing of multitudes into the Kingdom of God (v32): the fact that Jesus has gone to the Father and is no longer visible (16:10), will draw all unto Him. For example, think of the Roman soldier’s comment at the Cross, “Truly, this was the Son of God”. But a multitude of onlookers also repented at His death (Lk 23:47,48). He will draw all men unto Himself, not to the cross or the resurrection per se, but to Himself, His Person.

“The cross is a throne; His crucifixion is His coronation; He reigns from the tree. His being glorified is not a reward or recompense for His crucifixion: it is inherent in the crucifixion” (Boice).

In these three effects of the Cross, we see the three main understandings of the meaning of the cross in the worldwide church nowadays. Evangelicals focus on the cross’s effect in bringing substitutionary atonement. Orthodox churches focus on Jesus's victory over the powers of darkness. And liberal Christians focus on the drawing power of the cross, as an example of God’s love. All three are true simultaneously!

John’s closing commentary on why the Jews didn’t believe. (12:34-43)

The hearers rightly connected Jesus’s earlier self-reference to the Son of Man as being Messianic, and His use of ‘lifted up’ as referring to a departure or death. But the Judaism of that time expected Messiah to be victorious and to reign eternally (Isa 9:7, Ezek 37:25, Ps 89:35-37): they don’t seem to have registered about Messiah being cut off (Dan 9:26).`

They were asking about what kind of ‘Son of Man’ He was saying that He was. They still could not grasp how they could marry up what He was saying, with the partial insights into Messiah that they had gleaned from the Jewish scriptures.

That question would of course be very relevant to any Jews considering Christ’s claims at the time John wrote this, in AD95 or thereabouts. ‘The Way’, as the early Christians were known, had grown far beyond being a sect within Judaism and was now international. Roman hostility to Judaism had grown as an independence movement within Israel had gained ground, leading to tensions between Jewish and Gentile believers, the latter keen to disassociate themselves from their Jewish brethren in order to avoid persecution. Paul had taught the churches in Ephesus that God’s purpose was for Jew and Gentile to become one new Man in Christ, and that God's faithfulness to Israel was temporarily in abeyance ‘until the fullness of the Gentiles had come in’ to the Kingdom. Then he and Peter had both been martyred in Rome, in waves of persecution which prefaced the terrible Roman subjugation of Israel and destruction of the Temple in AD70. Somehow John had survived, and now he was reflecting on how it could be that the Jews had rejected their own Messiah. How could it be that ‘He came unto His own, and His own received Him not’?

There is a terrible tragedy in that verse, but also a majestic mystery of grace for Jews as well as the Gentiles.

Way back six hundred years before Christ, God had told Isaiah that his prophetic ministry would have the effect of blinding Israel’s eyes, blocking their hearing and hardening their hearts (Jn 12:40; Isa 6:10). Like John at the Transfiguration, Isaiah had seen ‘the light of the gospel of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ’ (v41; 2Cor 4:4). Despite all the wonderful revelations of Messiah in his prophecies, especially the ‘Songs of the Suffering Servant’ and Messiah’s manifesto (Isa 61:1-4), the Jews would not believe and would be unable to recognise ‘the arm of the Lord’ - His intervention in history, when Jesus was born.

Paul says of the Jews,

‘I do not desire, brethren, that you should be ignorant of this mystery, lest you should be wise in your own opinion, that blindness in part has happened to Israel until the fullness of the Gentiles has come in. And so all Israel will be saved, as it is written: “The Deliverer will come out of Zion, and He will turn away ungodliness from Jacob; for this is My covenant with them, when I take away their sins.”

Concerning the gospel they are enemies for your sake, but concerning the election they are beloved for the sake of the fathers. For the gifts and the calling of God are irrevocable. For as you were once disobedient to God, yet have now obtained mercy through their disobedience, even so these also have now been disobedient, that through the mercy shown you they also may obtain mercy. For God has committed them all to disobedience, that He might have mercy on all.

Oh, the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are His judgments and His ways past finding out! “For who has known the mind of the Lord? Or who has become His counselor? Or who has first given to Him and it shall be repaid to him? For of Him and through Him and to Him are all things, to whom be glory forever. Amen’. (Rom 11:25-33)

Though the Jewish leaders were deeply culpable for rejecting Christ despite the many Messianic miracles He’d done, and for fabricating charges which led to His crucifixion, it is also true that God’s sovereignty was at work, preparing the way for the gospel to come to the Gentiles, but eventually to be brought back to the Jews so that one day He ‘will pour on the house of David and on the inhabitants of Jerusalem the Spirit of grace and supplication; then they will look on Me whom they pierced. Yes, they will mourn for Him as one mourns for his only son, and grieve for Him as one grieves for a firstborn. .… In that day a fountain shall be opened for the house of David and for the inhabitants of Jerusalem, for sin and for uncleanness’.

At the personal level, however, salvation is available now to any Jew who turns to Christ. ‘To those who did receive Him, He gave the power to become children of God (1:12). ‘Moses, put a veil over his face so that the children of Israel could not look steadily at the end of what was passing away. But their minds were blinded. For until this day the same veil remains unlifted in the reading of the Old Testament, because the veil is taken away in Christ. But even to this day, when Moses is read, a veil lies on their heart. Nevertheless when one turns to the Lord, the veil is taken away’ (2Cor 3:13-16)

Apart from misunderstanding Moses and the scriptures, refuting the evidence of miracles, ignoring John the Baptist, self-righteousness (the Pharisees), self-interest (the Sadducees), and the overarching eternal purposes of God, there was one last reason that many Jews, even though they were convinced by Jesus’s teaching, did not publicly acknowledge Him. That was the fear of being ostracised by the Pharisees, and put out of the synagogue (vs 42,43). Social standing was ultimately more important to them than God’s approval.

Jesus’s last appeal to the Jews, to believe in Him. (Vss 35-36,44-50)

We know that Jesus was deeply grieved at the fate that was to befall Jerusalem and the Jews, because of their rejection of Him. He wept as He made His triumphal entry. Even as He was led out to be crucified, He told those weeping for Him, to weep instead for the city (Lk 23:27-31). There is a strong sense of urgency as He warns the Jews that time has almost run out (v35). His life, which was the light of men, was about to be snuffed out. Believing in the light, even if only for the few hours remaining, offered them the possibility of becoming ‘sons of light’: starting to reflect His character.

Exposing ourselves to the light of Christ’s life, brings the fruit of goodness, righteousness and truth. It means separating ourselves from participation in the works of darkness, perhaps even exposing and challenging sin: and making the most of the time allotted to us (Eph 5:8-16). It also means being continually ready for Christ’s return (1 Thess 5:5). There is an urgency intros last appeal, that we need to take note of.

From this point on, John’s account of Jesus’s public ministry is finished. He turns instead to Jesus’s role teaching His disciples about life in the Spirit (chaps13-16) interceding for them and us (ch 18), and offering Himself as the Lamb of God, crucified and raised again for the sins of the world (chaps 19-21).