20 Now among those who went up to worship at the feast were some Greeks. 21 So these came to Philip, who was from Bethsaida in Galilee, and asked him, “Sir, we wish to see Jesus.” 22 Philip went and told Andrew; Andrew and Philip went and told Jesus. 23 And Jesus answered them, “The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified. 24 Truly, truly, I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit. 25 Whoever loves his life loses it, and whoever hates his life in this world will keep it for eternal life. 26 If anyone serves me, he must follow me; and where I am, there will my servant be also. If anyone serves me, the Father will honour him.”
“Sir, we wish to see Jesus.” These words were spoken by a group of unnamed Greeks in the days leading up to Jesus’ death and resurrection. John records this conversation with Philip as something which happened at a specific time and place in history, but what they said to Philip should reflect the desire of every Christian. “Sir, we wish to see Jesus.”
There were a large number of Greeks living in Palestine during the time of Jesus, many of whom were converts to Judaism who at the time were in Jerusalem for the annual Passover. We know that both Philip and Andrew grew up in Bethsaida in Galilee, which was close to a large Greek population, so it is possible that either Philip or Andrew had some understanding of the Greek language.
As we have seen so often, Jesus’ reply to Philip and Andrew was not what they might have expected to hear. “The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified.” (John 12:23) John doesn’t tell us whether Jesus actually met these men face to face, but with the cross now central in Jesus’ mind, the arrival of these Gentiles was no coincidence. This was a sign that the whole purpose of His mission on earth was about to be accomplished.
Jesus had often said that His hour had not yet come, the first occasion being in chapter 2 when His mother told Him that the hosts at the wedding in Cana had run out of wine. Later on in chapter 7 when His brothers urged Him to perform miracles as further proof of who He was, He replied, “My time has not yet come,” and in chapter 8 the authorities failed in their attempt to have Him arrested because as John wrote in verse 20, “His hour had not yet come.”
So what is the significance of Jesus’ reply to Philip and Andrew in verse 23, “The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified?” Part of the answer is found in the increasing tension between Jesus and the Jewish authorities which we have seen throughout John’s Gospel. Everything was leading to the sacrificial death of Jesus. This was, after all, His reason for coming into the world, and the significance of these Greek men, who represented the Gentile world, is important.
This teaches us that Jesus died not only for the Jewish nation, but for all who put their faith in Him. Later on in Acts 15 the Jewish leaders were upset with the apostles for preaching salvation through Christ to the Gentiles. They wanted these Gentiles to embrace many of the rituals of Judaism, insisting that they adopt all of the Jewish laws and customs, including circumcision before they could be saved.
Reading from verse 5, “Some believers who belonged to the party of the Pharisees rose up and said, ‘It is necessary to circumcise them and to order them to keep the law of Moses.’ The apostles and the elders were gathered together to consider this matter. And after there had been much debate, Peter stood up and said to them, ‘Brothers, you know that in the early days God made a choice among you, that by my mouth the Gentiles should hear the word of the Gospel and believe. And God, who knows the heart, bore witness to them, by giving them the Holy Spirit just as He did to us, and He made no distinction between us and them, having cleansed their hearts by faith. Now, therefore, why are you putting God to the test by placing a yoke on the neck of the disciples that neither our fathers nor we have been able to bear? But we believe that we will be saved through the grace of the Lord Jesus, just as they will.’” (Acts 15:5-11)
The unbearable yoke that Peter referred to in verse 10 was the burden of Jewish religious ritual.
James then says to the council in verses 13 and 14, “Brothers, listen to me. Simeon has related how God first visited the Gentiles, to take from them a people for His name.”
We ended last week with the complaint of the Pharisees in John 12:19. “You see that you are gaining nothing. Look, the world has gone after Him,” and John, very deliberately in the next verse announces the arrival of these Greek converts to show that this was exactly what Jesus intended - to bring salvation to both Jew and Gentile. The Jewish leaders had rejected Him, so now, as the Church came into being after the resurrection and ascension of Jesus, the Gentiles would hear the Gospel and many of them would believe and be saved.
The Greeks in John 12 wanted to see Jesus because they had heard about Him, probably about His miracles, and especially His raising of Lazarus from the dead, and in Jesus’ seemingly cryptic answer to them, He points them to the cross as He says, “The hour has come.” The hour for which He stepped out of eternity into our time and space, and for which He came into the world was now upon Him. Jesus will now go to the cross.
The Roman cross of crucifixion was the ultimate sign of disgrace and shame. It was reserved for the worst of criminals, but it was on the cross where the glory of God is revealed, because it is through that same instrument of shame that Jesus saves His own. Hebrews 12:2 says, “Looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that was set before Him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God.”
Why is the symbol of the Christian faith an instrument of torture and execution? Because the glory of God is seen in the Cross of Calvary. This is why He could say in verse 23, “The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified.” He was glorified when He died for you and me, and He was glorified when He rose from the dead.
The Canadian theologian D. A. Carson wrote, “Jesus’ death was itself the supreme manifestation of Jesus’ glory.”
In verse 23 Jesus referred to Himself as the Son of Man, something He often did. This points back to a prophecy in Daniel 7. “I saw in the night visions, and behold, with the clouds of heaven there came One like a Son of Man, and He came to the Ancient of Days and was presented before Him. And to Him was given dominion and glory and a kingdom, that all peoples, nations, and languages should serve Him; His dominion is an everlasting dominion, which shall not pass away, and His kingdom one that shall not be destroyed.” (Daniel 7:13-14)
It’s what is often called the paradox of the cross. Daniel’s prophecy and every other Old Testament prophecy which speaks of the glory of God is best understood in the light of the cross, because it was here where God is most glorified. The entire Old Testament was explained and fulfilled when Jesus went to the cross. What the world sees as the greatest humiliation, was in fact Jesus’ highest glory. On the night He was arrested Jesus said, “Now is the Son of Man glorified, and God is glorified in Him.” (John 13:31)
This is why it is the cross which is the clear dividing line between Christians and non-believers. Paul wrote in 1 Corinthians 1:23-24, “We preach Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and folly to Gentiles, but to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God.”
Jesus continued His teaching on His death being a glorious thing by using an example from nature. “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit.” (John 12:24)
Just as a seed needs to be buried in the ground and decay in order for a new plant to be given life, Jesus is glorified and bears His fruit through His suffering and death. In order for a seed to produce fruit, it needs to die first. This is a principle we know very well, but what did Jesus mean by using this analogy from agriculture?
It’s really quite simple. Remember, He was replying to the request the Greeks made in verse 21: “Sir, we wish to see Jesus.” Some people think they’ve seen Jesus because they have read the Gospels and they have studied His life. But all they have seen is a historical account of a man who lived some 2000 years ago.
If you really want to see Jesus, you have to see and comprehend His death and His resurrection. It’s the cross that makes all the difference. He died a redemptive death. He gave His life in death in order to give us life. Like the Greeks that day, you might also be saying, “Sir, we wish to see Jesus,” but you will never see the real Jesus until you see Him as the Saviour who died for you on the cross.
Most other religions acknowledge Jesus of Nazareth as a real historical figure. Some even regard Him as a prophet, but they stop short of calling Him the Son of God, and they deny that His death has any redemptive power. They have not seen Jesus.
This is what Jesus was really saying to those who wanted to see Him in John 12. There is far more than just seeing Him physically, or for today to regard Him as an historical figure who did some really amazing things and who taught with such wisdom. We need to see Him as the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world through His death on the cross.
It was only by dying that Jesus could become our Saviour. Unless He bore the condemnation for our sins on the cross, there would be no Christianity and there would be no Church. Without the cross there is no hope of salvation, and as Jesus said in John 8:24, “I told you that you would die in your sins, for unless you believe that I am He you will die in your sins.”
The Bible makes it very clear that our salvation is possible only by what Jesus did on our behalf on the cross. It is His atoning death which satisfies the wrath of God at our sin, and nothing else. Our greatest problem is God’s righteous condemnation of our sin.
The issue is not how we can find God, but how the God we find can accept guilty sinners like us, and it is for this reason that Jesus is glorified as our Saviour when we confess our great need. You cannot have a cross-less Christianity. To deny the necessity of the cross is to deny Christ. Refuse to confess your sin and your need for Jesus’ atoning blood, and you have refused the only way of salvation that He offers to you.
It is only by sending His Son to die on our behalf that God saves us. The grain of wheat Jesus refers to in John 12:24 is Himself. What He is saying is that unless He died there would be no fruit, and the fruit He is talking about is the harvest of redeemed sinners like us. Trying to be a kind person and treating others the way you would like to be treated will not save you. It is only the crucified Christ dying in the place of sinners who saves. The example of Christ does not save. At no point does the Bible teach that if we follow the example of Jesus and try to live as He lived we will find happiness in this life and salvation in the world to come. That is not the Gospel message.
Following Him in obedience and faith and being kind and treating others as we’d like to be treated are the fruits or the evidence of our salvation, but they are not the means of our salvation.
We are saved through faith in what Jesus has done on the cross, and nothing else. Once we are saved we follow Him and His teaching, but we are not saved by His teaching. Jesus didn’t say that He would point the way to God and that if we follow that way, we would find Him. That’s what all the leaders of man-made religions do, but Jesus never said, “I will show you the way.” He said, “I am the way.”
This is what Jesus wanted the Greeks we meet in John 12 and us to know. We are right to wish to see Jesus, but we must be absolutely clear in our minds that eternal life comes only through His sacrificial death on our behalf. Just like the grain of wheat dies and is buried, Jesus bears the fruit of His kingdom through the cross.
Donald Barnhouse, a Presbyterian preacher from the first half of the 20th century wrote, “Because of His death, multitudes of every tongue and nation would come forth to eternal life in Him, as fruit. How true this has been as we survey the pages of Church history. Wherever the message of Christ’s atoning death has gone, it has borne fruit in abundance. This is the very heart of the Christian Gospel.”
Jesus continues with a teaching in verses 25 and 26 which has caused much confusion down the years. “Whoever loves his life loses it, and whoever hates his life in this world will keep it for eternal life. If anyone serves me, he must follow me; and where I am, there will my servant be also. If anyone serves me, the Father will honour him.”
He said something similar in Matthew 16:24-25. “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.”
If what is true for Jesus is true of those who follow Him, bearing in mind that He has done all we need in order to be saved, how are we to understand this idea of losing, even hating our lives in order to rightly follow Him?
Firstly, He is not saying that we should hate life itself, nor that we should not love the good things that God has placed in this world or blessed us with. Jesus’ meaning becomes clearer when we look at the original Greek text. In our English translations He uses the word life 3 times in verse 25. “Whoever loves his life loses it, and whoever hates his life in this world will keep it for eternal life.”
In the first two instances the Greek word is psuche, from which we get the English word psychology, so what Jesus means here is that as Christians we are to reject worldly thinking. But at the end of the verse, we should look at the word which precedes the word life. Jesus is talking about eternal life, so it’s easy to see that He intended to draw a distinction between our earthly, temporary lives and the eternal life He brings us. The Greek word He uses at the end of verse 25 is zoe. This is very different to the human understanding of life, as Jesus is speaking here about the eternal life we now have because of Him.
You sometimes hear of Christians described as being so heavenly-minded that they’re of no earthly use. This is intended as a criticism, but if anyone ever says that about you, take it as a compliment, because this is precisely how we should be living, as Paul wrote in Ephesians 4:17-24. “Now this I say and testify in the Lord, that you must no longer walk as the Gentiles do, in the futility of their minds. They are darkened in their understanding, alienated from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them, due to their hardness of heart. They have become callous and have given themselves up to sensuality, greedy to practice every kind of impurity. But that is not the way you learned Christ! - assuming that you have heard about Him and were taught in Him, as the truth is in Jesus, to put off your old self, which belongs to your former manner of life and is corrupt through deceitful desires, and to be renewed in the spirit of your minds, and to put on the new self, created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness.”
We are called to turn from our former, worldly, “me first” lives to Godly lives which honour Christ, rather than ourselves. When Jesus says we are to hate our lives, He does not mean we should have contempt for ourselves. We are created in the image of God, and are of value to Him, proven so graphically on the cross. Jesus is using hyperbole here. It’s a figure of speech in which He means we are now to build our priorities on the truth that we have been adopted as God’s own children. Because of the cross, everything has changed, and that reality should be obvious in our daily lives.
We’re familiar with the term “dying to self,” but what does it really mean, and how do we do it? We die to our own will as we surrender our lives to Jesus. We all have our ideas and dreams in life. Some of them are very bad ideas, while others are good, but when we seek to please God first and foremost, our priorities and our desires become less important. When we learn to see our lives through the lens of Scripture and measure the material things in life Biblically, we will find it easier to live for Him rather than ourselves.
This doesn’t necessarily mean we will lose everything, but we all know that there are some things in our lives which we consider to be far more important than we know they really are.
Probably the most important thing we should do as Christians is die to sin. Romans 6:11-13 says, “Consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus. Let not sin therefore reign in your mortal body, to make you obey its passions. Do not present your members to sin as instruments for unrighteousness, but present yourselves to God as those who have been brought from death to life, and your members to God as instruments for righteousness.”
You don’t need me to remind you that each day we are engaged in the ongoing battle with temptation and sin. The way to overcome and to die to sin is by starving sin and by presenting our lives to God. Of course, this is a lot easier said than done.
The Bible teacher Joel Nederhood hit the nail firmly on the head when he wrote, “We are deeply in love with the world. We play the game of life according to the rules the world lays down. Sometimes we drink of the trough with which it satisfies its ordinary swine. We relish certain things that heaven despises.”
The answer? Embrace the Word of God. Paul writes in 2 Timothy 3:14-15, “As for you, continue in what you have learned and have firmly believed, knowing from whom you learned it and how from childhood you have been acquainted with the sacred writings, which are able to make you wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus.”
Again, we don’t know if the Greeks who approached Philip in John 12 actually met Jesus. They would probably have been more than a little puzzled at His reply, but if you read it carefully, it is full of Godly wisdom as He speaks about the cross and the glory He received through His sacrifice. The hour of His glory was at hand as the cross loomed large.
As Christians, the hour is now for the Son of Man to be glorified in our lives, which is what Jesus taught in verse 26. “If anyone serves me, he must follow me; and where I am, there will my servant be also. If anyone serves me, the Father will honour him.”
J. C. Ryle wrote, “As the soldier follows his general, as the servant follows his master, as the scholar follows his teacher, as the sheep follows its shepherd, just so ought the professing Christian to follow Christ. Faith and obedience are the leading marks of real followers, and will always be seen in true believing Christians.”
As we learn to die to our own desires and wants, we are able to follow Jesus by obeying His Word and pursuing holy lives which bring Him honour rather than ourselves. Don’t forget that this is not something we do by sheer willpower. God has given us His Holy Spirit, and it is He who empowers us to live these radically transformed lives.
Also, when Jesus said, “Where I am, there will my servant be also,” this is not so much a command, but a promise. One of our greatest rewards for living Godly lives is to know we have Jesus’ encouragement, approval and power as our constant companions. He is always with us by His Spirit, even during the many times we stray, because He is our Good Shepherd who laid down His life for His sheep.
And finally for this week, Jesus says, “If anyone serves me, the Father will honour him.” We become so caught up in ourselves and our earthly pursuits and pleasures, but God calls us to a much higher standard. All through the Bible we see the words, “Be holy, for I am holy.” We are called to a life of holiness.
We’re content with the praise of men, but we were created and redeemed for glory. James Montgomery Boice wrote, “Jesus tells us that God will honour those who follow Him in this life. In this life His way often involves suffering. Sometimes it involves death for His sake. It always involves self-denial. But, says Christ, the suffering will be followed by honour and the self-denial by praise.” God promises to honour those who are faithful to God. Why would we want to exchange that honour for the empty applause of the world?
The Greeks said, “Sir, we wish to see Jesus.” Do you wish to see Jesus? If so, you need to come to His cross, confessing your sin before God and embracing Jesus’ atoning death as the only way of salvation. If you do not come to His cross, you will never meet the real Jesus, because to deny the cross you will be denying the only Saviour and you will die in your sins.
His glory is His cross, and it is through the cross alone that you will find grace, peace, forgiveness and eternal life.
Homegroup Study Notes
Read John 12:20-26
Depending on which version of the Bible you use, the request made by the Greeks in verse 21 is, “Sir, we wish to see Jesus,” or “Sir, we would like to see Jesus.”
How should this desire be reflected in the heart of every Christian, and why do you think it is important for us to “see” Him on a daily basis?
As we have seen many times before, Jesus does not give them a direct answer.
What does He mean by the hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified?
What is the significance of His analogy of the seed in verse 24?
Read verse 25 and Matthew 16:24-25.
How are these verses often misunderstood, and what does Jesus really mean?
In verse 26 He is referring to a life of holiness and obedience to His Word. Why is this important, and how do we do it?
We will only really see Jesus when we understand how He is glorified through His death.
What does this mean, and how do many people not properly see the “real” Jesus?