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Exegetical and Hermeneutical Commentary of John 12:27

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Now is my soul troubled; and what shall I say? Father, save me from this hour: but for this cause came I unto this hour.

27. This is a verse of well-known difficulty, and the meaning cannot be determined with certainty, several meanings being admissible. The doubtful points are (1) the position of the interrogation, whether it should come after ‘I say’ or ‘from this hour;’ (2) the meaning of ‘for this cause.’

Now is my soul troubled ] The word rendered ‘soul’ is the same as that rendered ‘life’ in ‘loveth his life’ and ‘hateth his life.’ To bring out this and the sequence of thought, ‘life’ would perhaps be better here. ‘He that would serve Me must follow Me and be ready to hate his life; for My life has long since been tossed and torn with emotion and sorrow.’ ‘Is troubled’ = has been and still is troubled; a frequent meaning of the Greek perfect.

what shall I say? ] Or, what must I say? This appears to be the best punctuation; and the question expresses the difficulty of framing a prayer under the conflicting influences of fear of death and willingness to glorify His Father by dying. The result is first a prayer under the influence of fear ‘save Me from this hour’ (comp. ‘Let this cup pass from Me,’ Mat 26:39), and then a prayer under the influence of ready obedience ‘Glorify Thy Name’ through My sufferings. But the Greek means ‘save me out of ’ ( sson ek), i.e. ‘bring Me safe out of;’ rather than ‘save Me from ’ ( sson apo), i.e. ‘keep Me altogether away from,’ as in ‘deliver us from the evil’ (Mat 6:13). S. John omits the Agony in the garden, which was in the Synoptists and was well known to every Christian; but he gives us here an insight into a less known truth, which is still often forgotten, that the agony was not confined to Gethsemane, but was part of Christ’s whole life. Others place the question at ‘from this hour,’ and the drift of the whole will then be, ‘How can I say, Father save Me from this hour? Nay, I came to suffer; therefore My prayer shall be, Father, glorify Thy Name.’

for this cause ] These words are taken in two opposite senses; (1) that I might be saved out of this hour; (2) that Thy Name might be glorified by My obedience. Both make good sense. If the latter be adopted it would be better to transpose the stops, placing a full stop after ‘from this hour’ and a colon after ‘unto this hour.’

Fuente: The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges

Now is my soul troubled – The mention of his death brought before him its approaching horrors, its pains, its darkness, its unparalleled woes. Jesus was full of acute sensibility, and his human nature shrunk from the scenes through which he was to pass. See Luk 23:41-44.

What shall I say? – This is an expression denoting intense anxiety and perplexity. As if it were a subject of debate whether he could bear those sufferings; or whether the work of mans redemption should be abandoned, and he should call upon God to save him. Blessed be his name that he was willing to endure these sorrows, and did not forsake man when he was so near being redeemed! On the decision of that moment – the fixed and unwavering purpose of the Son of God depended mans salvation. If Jesus had forsaken his purpose then, all would have been lost.

Father, save me – This ought undoubtedly to have been read as a question – Shall I say, Father, save me? Shall I apply to God to rescue me? or shall I go forward to bear these trials? As it is in our translation, it represents him as actually offering the prayer, and then checking himself. The Greek will bear either interpretation. The whole verse is full of deep feeling and anxiety. Compare Mat 26:38; Luk 12:50.

This hour – These calamities. The word hour, here, doubtless has reference to his approaching sufferings the appointed hour for him to suffer. Shall I ask my Father to save me from this hour – that is, from these approaching sufferings? That it might have been done, see Mat 26:53.

But for this cause – That is, to suffer and die. As this was the design of his coming as he did it deliberately – -as the salvation of the world depended on it, he felt that it would not be proper to pray to be delivered from it. He came to suffer, and he submitted to it. See Luk 23:42.

Fuente: Albert Barnes’ Notes on the Bible

Joh 12:27-29

Now is My soul troubled.

This struggle is like one of those fissures in its crust which enables science to fathom the bowels of the earth. It lets us read the very inmost depths of our Lords being. And what do we discover? Just the reverse of that impassive Jesus attributed by criticism to St. John. (F. Godet, D. D.)

Lent, a preparation for Good Friday: or the valley of the shadow of death

It has been well said that all Lent should be regarded as a preparationfor Good Friday and its observance. Just as when we visit some deep and gloomy gorge amongst the mountains, long before we reach the spot where the cliffs rise highest and the daylight is farthest off, the hills begin to encircle us, the bright sunshine is lost and the black shadows of the stern and solemn precipices encompass our path! Thus, for a considerable time before His crucifixion, our Lord by His prophetic foresight entered into the valley of the shadow of death. And we, in sympathy, should follow His footsteps. When the great prehistoric temple of Stonehenge was perfect, a number of huge stone gateways gave access to the central altar, around which they were ranged. So our Blessed Lord may be pictured as approaching the great Sacrifice on the Altar of the Cross by passing through diverse portals. We may look on Him in different aspects of the preparation for the first Good Friday.

I. For instance, we see Him passing through the archway of PAINFUL ANTICIPATION. He knew what awaited Him–He told His disciples–the Son of Man was about to be betrayed–given into the hands of strangers–scourged, mocked, spitefully entreated–insulted–crucified! All, like a harrowing picture, was clear before His eyes, every detail stood out distinctly, and each day the crisis of His obedience drew closer. For though He was a Son, yet learned He obedience by those things which He suffered (Heb 5:8). A middle-aged man said that the most agonizing day he ever spent was the one day before an operation was performed on him; he did not know whether it would be very painful or not, and he was afraid to ask, and every time his thoughts wandered to pleasant matters they came back with a start to the grim recollection that every moment brought nearer and nearer the horrible instant that he could not escape!

II. Again, we may regard our Lord pressing on to the Cross through the portal of a brave and RESOLUTE DETERMINATION. He set His face to go up to Jerusalem. When His disciples objected, Master, the Jews of late sought to stone Thee, and goest Thou thither again? the warning cannot stay His footsteps. When the power of darkness is at hand, He says, with a noble resignation, The cup that My Father giveth Me to drink, shall I not drink it?

III. Another aspect in which we may observe our Saviour is, that He was called on to take His pathway under the gloomy arch of MORTIFICATION AND FAILURE. The disciples who walked by His side He knew were about to forsake Him. Peter, their chief spokesman, was going to deny Him, and Judas to betray Him, and the multitude were soon to exchange their welcome of Hosannah into grim yells of Crucify Him! But none of these things daunted the resolution of our Lord. In one golden sentence He summed up His task. (J. W. Hardman, LL. D.)

The Saviours prayer

I. THE EXPERIENCE OUT OF WHICH IT AROSE. Troubled means tortured, racked, torn, as it were, with intense and various emotions.

1. This trouble arose out of the foresight of the Cross. Between Him and His glory lay Calvary. But the anguish was not on account of the physical torture or personal ignominy He would endure, although extreme; He had tasted the bitterness of sin in the intensity and perfection of His redeeming sympathy, and to pass under the shadow of its retribution.

2. This trouble superinduced a great conflict in His mind, What shall I say? Father, etc. Some regard this as a petition; others with more propriety an interrogation implying a natural shrinking which it would have been more human not to feel. Gladly would He have said it but for the stability of His redeeming purpose. Purpose and feeling thus came into distressing collision.

3. The conflict, however, was but momentary. It gave place at once to a calm and heroic resignation.

II. THE PURPORT OF THE PRAYER. Father, glorify Thy name. How concise, yet comprehensive: expressive of

1. Resignation. Do what Thou wilt so long as Thou be glorified.

2. Fortitude. The task before Me is a heavy one, but for Thy sake, I will go forward to it.

3. Benevolence. Self is lost sight of, and the Fathers purpose and the redounding glory is all in all.

4. Faith. What Thou hast promised Thou wilt perform.

III. THE ANSWER.

1. How it was given. By a voice from heaven, mistaken as thunder, as the voice of an angel, but truly interpreted by Christ.

2. What it was. A declaration

(1) That it had been already fulfilled–in the whole of Christs life. How this assurance would animate Christ, and endear to Him afresh the Fathers will.

(2) That the end for which Jesus prayed would be still further attained. Conclusion: Learn to cherish at all times a true and steady regard for the glory of God. (B. Wilkinson.)

A foretaste of Gethsemane

I see in the whole event here described a short summary of what took place afterwards more fully at Gethsemane. There is a remarkable parallelism at every step. Does our Lord say here

1. My soul is troubled? Just so He said in Gethsemane: My soul is exceeding sorrowful, even unto death (Mat 26:38)

2. Father, save Me from this hour? Just so He says in Gethsemane: O My Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from Me (Mat 26:39).

3. Does our Lord say here, For this cause came I unto this hour? Just so He says in Gethsemane: If this cup may not pass away from Me except I drink it, Thy will be done.

4. Does our Lord say, finally, Father, glorify Thy name? Just so our Lord says, lastly, The cup which My Father hast given Me, shall I not drink it (chap. 18:11). The brief prayer which our Lord here offers, we should remember, is the highest, greatest thing that we can ask God to do. The utmost reach of the renewed will of a believer, is to be able to say always, Father glorify Thy name in Me. Do with Me what Thou wilt, only glorify Thy name. The glory of God after all is the end for which all things were created. Pauls joyful hope, he told the Philippians, when a prisoner at Rome, was that in all things, by life or by death, Christ might be magnified in his body (Php 1:20). (Bp. Ryle.)

Gethsemane in prospect

This world is a world of grief. The infant begins its career with a cry of distress premonitory of all it must suffer from the cradle to the grave. Some suffer more than others–martyrs, e.g. Heb 11:36-38). But one stands out preeminent for suffering (Isa 53:1-12; Psa 69:1-2; Psa 69:20). It was in the foresight of His amazing sufferings that Christ felt this perturbation of spirit, which arose out of

I. AN OVERWHELMING SENSE OF RESPONSIBILITY UNDER THE TRUST HE HAD ASSUMED. Those most worthy of responsibility feel its pressure most. Some rush into office without sensibility or conscience, prepared to take all responsibility merely to pervert it to private ends. But men who deserve the trusts of life shrink even from their honours–e.g., the conscientious physician, advocate, judge, parent. What was Christs trust? It was

1. To represent the sinner (Gal 5:4-5; 2Co 5:21).

2. To represent God. His holiness, justice, truth, in all the bitter experiences of His Spirit, and that not in His omnipotent Divine, but in His frail human nature.

II. THE VIEW OF DEATH AS THE PENALTY OF THE LAW. The dread of death is natural because it formed no part of our original constitution. Whatever belongs to our nature God makes pleasant–e.g., sleep and food. But death is horrible because it has supervened on our constitution Rom 5:12). But Christ had to die under the Fathers judicial displeasure as the substitute for sinners whom the law condemns. He was made sin for us who know no sin, which sinlessness added to the agony. Who that is in any degree sanctified can help but feel the pain of the sins with which He is brought in contact? How then must it have been with the Perfect Man who bore all sin, and all sorrows that are born of sin, even to the privation of the Divine presence.

III. THE ANTICIPATION OF CONFLICT WITH THE POWERS OF DARKNESS. It was an old quarrel begun when Satan lifted the standard of rebellion in heaven, continued when Adam fell, and after. We know something of the terribleness of striving with the devil, and as we advance in the Divine life it becomes more terrible. What then must it have been for the spotless Jesus to feel the full brunt of all the forces that hell could muster. Conclusion:

1. All these sufferings are the evidences of Christs love to us.

2. They show us the awful demerit of sin. (B. M. Palmer, D. D.)

The internal sufferings of Christ

It became Christ to suffer Heb 2:10). His sufferings were many varied and severe, and His external sufferings, though of no common kind, were the least part of them, as may be judged by the fact that they never extorted a complaint, whereas His inward anguish wrung from Him strong crying and tears.

I. THE SAVIOURS INTERNAL SUFFERINGS. When the mind is free from uneasiness it is said to be calm like the bosom of the lake when no breath of wind ruffles its glassy surface. When sorrow and terror takes possession of it, it is said to be agitated, like the ocean in a storm. The latter was the case with Christ here, and Joh 13:21, and Mat 26:36-46.

1. Its cause

(1) not external circumstances. There was no scourge or cross here, or at Gethsemane. On the contrary, there was much to please. The people had just shouted their Hosannahs to His Messiahship; the Greeks had fulfilled the promise of Isa 49:6.

(2) Not remorse. In no case could He wish that He had thought, or felt, or acted differently from what He had done.

(3) Not fear of impending bodily sufferings (though no doubt they did give rise to uneasy feelings), for He knew that these would be momentary and would be abundantly compensated.

(4) There is but one way of accounting for it. The invisible arm of Omnipotence smites Him. On the head of the spotless, perfect man, Jehovah made to meet, as the victim for human transgression, the iniquities of us all, in all their odiousness and malignity. The more He loved those in whose room He stood, the more would His trouble be increased, just as we are affected more by the crimes of a friend than by those of a stranger. And in addition He was exposed to the attack of malignant spiritual beings whose was that hour and power of darkness.

2. Its purpose.

(1) To make Him perfect, i.e., fully to accomplish Him as Saviour. It formed one important part of His expiation. Mere bodily sufferings could not expiate spiritual wickedness.

(2) To complete His example. This had been incomplete had He not showed His people how to conduct themselves under inward troubles which often form the severest part of their trials.

(3) To render Him sympathetic with His people under those trials which most need His sympathy.

II. THE EXERCISE OF OUR LORDS MIND UNDER THESE SUFFERINGS.

1. What shall I say? has been regarded as a further expression of suffering–My sorrows are too great to be uttered in words. Father, save me from my impending sufferings. Christs sorrows were indeed unspeakable, but He could hardly have asked to be saved from death when He rebuked His disciples for attempting to dissuade Him, and when He was straitened till the baptism of blood was accomplished.

2. The words express the deliberating of our Lords mind as to what course He should follow–to what quarter shall I turn for relief. Men are not disposed to pity Me, and cannot relieve Me. I turn to God: what shall I say to Him? He can sustain and deliver Me. Shall I ask Him to release Me from My covenant engagements? No: for this cause I came to this hour. I will not ask it. I will say, Glorify Thy name; finish Thy work in righteousness. Let the end be gained: I quarrel not with the means.

3. What a display of

(1) Love to God in entire devotedness to His glory!

(2) Love to man in becoming obedient to death.

4. What a call for gratitude, love and devotion from us!

III. THE FATHERS APPROBATION OF THE SAVIOURS EXERCISE OF MIND UNDER THESE SUFFERINGS. I have both glorified it, etc. The whole universe glorifies Gods name, the whole history of the past and future. But this refers to the glorification of Gods name

1. In Christ Jesus. His faithfulness in fulfilling His great promise to His Church; His power in bringing into personal union, the Divine and human natures; His mercy in not withholding His only Son. Gods glory was seen in Christs life, teaching, miracles.

2. In the awful events of that hour.

3. In the glorious results of Christs death (Psa 16:10-11; Exo 1:1-22; Exo 2:8; Isa 53:12; Isa 49:6; Isa 40:5). The Resurrection and Ascension of Christ;the effusion of the Spirit; the salvation of an innumerable company.

The subject

1. Tells the impenitent sinner what he must endure if he refuses to avail himself of the redemption that is in Christ Jesus.

2. Bids the Christian rejoice that the cup of wrath he deserved has been drunk by Christ.

3. Urges us often to show forth the Lords death in His own ordinance. (J. Brown, D. D.)

The soul trouble of Christ

I. THE MYSTERY OF THE SAVIOURS SORROW. It is usual to explain that the human nature of Jesus shrank from death. But this view lowers Him below the level of the martyrs, and is inconsistent with the haste with which He journeyed to Jerusalem to meet His death; and we cannot think of Him as losing courage.

II. SOME LIGHT ON THE MYSTERY. We are apt to take too corporeal a view of Christs sacrifice. The bodily pain was an essential part of the suffering, but only a part. It was something all His own in dying, from which He shrank, and the shrinking from which He had to conquer. He saw the sin-wrought woes and horrors of all the generations before and after, to the day of judgment, and there was a sense of their being upon Him, and enveloping Him. And so we may hear Him cry, Spare Me not the scourging, the death agony, etc., but the being made one with the world in its sin.

III. THE MEANING OF THE PRAYER. This experience had not been altogether measured beforehand, and now the agony of the incorporation of the sinless with sin is before Him, He prays for deliverance from conscious sin-bearing.

IV. THE ANSWER TO THE PRAYER. There came a voice. Modern unbelief scoffs at voices from heaven. Reverence will not pass hasty judgments. One said, It thundered; another, an angel spoke to Him. Christ alone hears the audible words, and interprets them when He is alone with His people. I have glorified it and will glorify it.

V. PRACTICAL LESSONS.

1. My soul is troubled. Christ is not alone in that experience; but His troubles were not His own; ours are our own.

2. Save Me from this hour. Not that He would not suffer for others; but that this going fearfully into the very heart of sin seemed terrible. We may pray this prayer; but let us take care to remember how different is our trouble; and to add, Glorify Thy name, whatever it may cost us.

3. Can we pray, Glorify Thy name? Whatever I suffer for my own sin or for my brothers, only may God be glorified; only may God be seen as He is in His power to save. May this thought take root and grow in us! (Dean Vaughan.)

The sorrow and resignation of Christ

I. THE HOUR WHICH THE SAVIOUR MET. He names it twice in a very emphatic manner: and there is repeated notice of the fact that it had not yet come. There have been many important hours, but none like this. It was the hour

1. For which time was made.

2. To which all the dispensations referred–Adamic, Abrahamic, Mosaic.

3. Which all the prophets foretold (1Pe 1:11).

4. In which the grandest work was accomplished, and the grandest victory achieved.

5. In which all intelligent creation was concerned.

(1) Angels were not indifferent spectators, for they were confirmed in their bliss.

(2) Devils, for they were deprived of their last expiring hope.

(3) Man, for a full atonement for his sin was made.

II. THE AFFLICTION HE FELT. He hardly knew how to express Himself in the prospect; what then must have been the agony itself? No one had ever such reason to meet death with calmness. He had no guilt, was assured of immortality, and saw the blessed issue. Martyrs–mere men–have suffered with magnanimity and joy. Yet He was troubled. Why? Because He was the surety for sinners and suffered for sin. Learn, then

1. The extreme evil of sin.

2. The greatness of the love of Christ.

3. The indispensable necessity of faith in His atonement.

III. THE RESIGNATION HE EXEMPLIFIED. Father, save Me, etc., is not a petition, but an interrogation. Note that

1. Christs undertaking for sinners was voluntary. He came to this hour, which teaches His inviolable faithfulness, and should encourage our trust.

2. He saw this hour in every period of His existence. It was not unexpected–For this cause.

3. The motives which had influenced Him to suffer were still the same; and as the hour approached they gathered weight.

4. It was but an hour. The conflict was severe but transient. Such considerations contributed to work this resignation.

IV. THE PRAYER HE OFFERED. Father, glorify Thy name is more than resignation; it is a consecration of His sufferings to Gods glory. How is the Father glorified thus?

1. In His perfections. Already His wisdom, power, and mercy were displayed in the Saviours mission and miracles: but now He was to display His holiness and justice.

2. As regards His dispensations. (T. Kidd.)

The Redeemer contemplating His hour as come

I. THE UNIQUE SIGNIFICANCE OF THE LANGUAGE.

1. The nature of the hour–the time appointed for the vindication of the Divine government outraged by man, and for the manifestation of Divine love. The world had been spared for this hour.

2. The mysterious agitation with which it was approached. This was natural. Who has not spent anxious days and sleepless nights over an unfinished work, and who does not know the tension as the hour for its completion arrives.

3. The grand consideration which induced Christ to meet this hour–the fact that all the past was summed up in it to the glory of God, and that the glory of God would stream from it.

II. ITS APPLICATION TO US.

1. There is an hour in the life of every man, Christian, Church, for which every previous hour is a designed preparation.

2. Seasons of special service and sacrifice have actually occurred in the history of the Church–Israel on the confines of the promised land; the Reformation; the mission of Wesley; the great missionary movement.

3. Such times of effort should be expected, prayed for, ascertained.

4. The due apprehension of our hour would invest us with a consecrating sense of opportunity.

5. On our discharge of impending responsibilities may be suspended consequences of unknown magnitude.

6. Is not the urgency of the hour now greater than ever? (J. Harris, D. D.)

The hour of atonement

The Redeemer

I. CONTEMPLATED AN IMPORTANT PERIOD.

1. As involving intense and infinite agony–betrayal, desertion, ignominy, corporeal torture, agony in the endurance of imputed sin.

2. As connected with and founding His exaltation (Joh 12:23).

(1) The glory of His personal dignity in His resurrection, ascension, enthronement, and dominion.

(2) The glory of the universal efficacy of His atonement (Joh 12:24, Isa 53:10-12).

II. WAS AFFECTED BY A POWERFUL EMOTION.

1. He was perturbed with anxiety arising from the prospect of His sufferings, which incidentally proves that His death was an atonement. How else shall we explain this intense agitation?

2. He was resolute in determination. For this cause come I to this hour.

3. He was fervent in prayer. Father, glorify Thy name.

III. RECEIVED A REMARKABLE TESTIMONY.

1. Its mode–a voice from heaven.

2. Its announcement–an approval of the invocation.

Conclusion:

1. Honour the hour of atonement by admitting its unparalleled importance.

2. Seek with supreme earnestness a personal interest in the redemption this period has provided.

3. Promote the glory of the Father and the Son by the zealous diffusion of that gospel which conveys it. (J. Parsons.)

Fuente: Biblical Illustrator Edited by Joseph S. Exell

Verse 27. Now is my soul troubled] Our blessed Lord took upon him our weaknesses, that he might sanctify them to us. As a man he was troubled at the prospect of a violent death. Nature abhors death: God has implanted that abhorrence in nature, that it might become a principle of self preservation; and it is to this that we owe all that prudence and caution by which we avoid danger. When we see Jesus working miracles which demonstrate his omnipotence, we should be led to conclude that he was not man were it not for such passages as these. The reader must ever remember that it was essentially necessary that he should be man; for, without being such, he could hot have died for the sin of the world.

And what shall I say? Father, save me from this hour] , which may be paraphrased thus: And why should I say, Father, save me from this hour? when for this cause I am come to this hour. The common version makes our blessed Lord contradict himself here, by not attending to the proper punctuation of the passage, and by translating the particle what, instead of why or how. The sense of our Lord’s words is this: “When a man feels a fear of a sudden or violent death, it is natural to him to cry out, Father, save me from this death! for he hopes that the glory of God and his welfare may be accomplished some other way, less dreadful to his nature: but why should I say so, seeing for this very purpose, that I might die this violent death for the sins of mankind, I am come into the world, and have almost arrived at the hour of my crucifixion.”

Fuente: Adam Clarke’s Commentary and Critical Notes on the Bible

Now is my soul troubled; by soul is not here to be understood only the sensitive part of the soul, but his whole human soul. So Joh 13:21, He was troubled in spirit. Our inward troubles arise from our passions; and there are passions of grief and fear, which give us most of our inward trouble; fear respecteth some evil at a distance from us; grief is caused by evil fallen upon us, or so near that we seem to be already in the power of it. The word here used is , which signifieth no mean, but a great and more than ordinary, degree of trouble. Christ was greatly troubled, though not so as we sometimes are, when our trouble leadeth us to despair: Christ was capable of no sinful trouble. Hence two questions arise:

1. For what the soul of Christ was troubled?

2. How such a degree of trouble could agree to the Lord Jesus Christ?

He tells us, Mat 26:38, that he was exceedingly sorrowful, so as sorrow was one part of his trouble; and we may learn from what he afterward saith in this verse, Father, save me from this hour, that fear made up the other part of it. He was grieved, and he was afraid; some say it was at the apprehension of that miserable death he was to die; others say, at the sense of the Divine wrath which he was to undergo, death being not yet overcome, and his conflict with his Fathers wrath for the sins of men being yet to be endured. Though Christ at this time was in the most perfect obedience to his Fathers will, offering up a most acceptable and well pleasing sacrifice unto God; yet he, sustaining our persons, had a conflict to endure even with his Fathers wrath upon that account, though not upon his own personal account; for so he was at this time doing that which was most acceptable and well pleasing in his sight. As to the second question, nothing could more agree to Christ than this, both with respect to his human nature, which had the same natural (though not sinful) infirmities which other men have; and with respect to his design and end, to help and relieve his people under their troubles of spirit; and, as the apostle saith, Heb 2:15, to deliver them who through fear of death are all their lifetime subject to bondage. So as this trouble of spirit agreed to him both as man and as Mediator. But there must be a vast difference observed between this trouble of spirit in Christ, and that which is in us. Our troubles are upon reflections for our own sin, and the wrath of God due to us therefore; his trouble was for the wrath of God due to us for our sins. Our troubles are because we have personally grieved God; his was because those given to him (not he himself) had offended God. We are afraid of our eternal condemnation; he was only afraid by a natural fear of death, which naturally riseth higher according to the kind of death we die. Our troubles have mixtures of despair, distrust, sinful horrors; there was no such thing in his trouble. Our troubles in their natural tendencies are killing and destroying; only by accident, and the wise ordering of Divine providence, prove advantageous, by leading us to him, as the only remedy for troubled souls: his trouble was, in the very nature of it, not only pure and clean, but also sanative and healing. But that he was truly troubled, and that in his whole soul, and that such a trouble did very well agree, as to the human nature he had assumed, so to his office as our Mediator and Saviour, and the foundation of a great deal of peace, quiet, and satisfaction to us, is out of question. The chastisement of our peace in this particular lay upon him; and they were some of those stripes of his, by which we are healed.

And (saith he) what shall I say? It is the natural language of a spirit troubled.

Father, save me from this hour; this hour of my passion; it is the same with that in our Saviours last prayer, Let this cup pass from me; and must be understood with the same qualifications there expressed, if it be thy will, if it be possible, &c. By his blessed example he hath taught us, under the distresses of our spirits, whither to flee, what to do.

For my love (saith David to his enemies, Psa 109:4) they are mine adversaries: but I give myself unto prayer; I give up myself to prayer. God hath bidden us, Psa 50:15, call upon him in the day of trouble; and St. James saith, Jam 5:3, Is any among you afflicted? Let him pray. Herein Christ hath himself set us an example, that we should follow his steps. But how doth our Saviour pray to be saved from that hour, when for this cause he came into the world? Here was in Christ a conflict between the flesh and the Spirit; not like ours, which is between corrupt flesh and the Spirit, but between his natural flesh, and the natural affections of it, and his spirit; that was fully conformed to the will of God, and gets a present conquest.

But for this cause (saith he) came I to this hour: he checks himself, correcteth the language of his natural flesh, acquiesceth, rejoiceth in the will of God. I was not (saith he) forced, I came of my own good will to this hour; and I came on purpose to die for my people.

Fuente: English Annotations on the Holy Bible by Matthew Poole

27, 28. Now is my soul troubledHemeans at the prospect of His death, just alluded to. Strange view ofthe Cross this, immediately after representing it as the hour of Hisglory! (Joh 12:23). But thetwo views naturally meet, and blend into one. It was the Greeks, onemight say, that troubled Him. Ah! they shall see Jesus, but to Himit shall be a costly sight.

and what shall I say?Heis in a strait betwixt two. The death of the cross was, and could notbut be, appalling to His spirit. But to shrink from absolutesubjection to the Father, was worse still. In asking Himself, “Whatshall I say?” He seems as if thinking aloud, feeling His waybetween two dread alternatives, looking both of them sternly in theface, measuring, weighing them, in order that the choice actuallymade might be seen, and even by himself the more vividly felt,to be a profound, deliberate, spontaneous election.

Father, save me from thishourTo take this as a question”Shall I say, Father,save me,” c.as some eminent editors and interpreters do, isunnatural and jejune. It is a real petition, like that in Gethsemane,”Let this cup pass from Me” only whereas there Heprefaces the prayer with an “If it be possible,” hereHe follows it up with what is tantamount to that”Neverthelessfor this cause came I unto this hour.” The sentiment conveyed,then, by the prayer, in both cases, is twofold: (1) that only onething could reconcile Him to the death of the crossits being HisFather’s will He should endure itand (2) that in this view of itHe yielded Himself freely to it. What He recoils from is notsubjection to His Father’s will: but to show how tremendous aself-sacrifice that obedience involved, He first asks the Fatherto save Him from it, and then signifies how perfectly He knows thatHe is there for the very purpose of enduring it. Only by lettingthese mysterious words speak their full meaning do they becomeintelligible and consistent. As for those who see no bitterelements in the death of Christnothing beyond mere dyingwhatcan they make of such a scene? and when they place it over againstthe feelings with which thousands of His adoring followers havewelcomed death for His sake, how can they hold Him up to theadmiration of men?

Fuente: Jamieson, Fausset and Brown’s Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible

Now is my soul troubled,…. At the hardness and unbelief of the Jews, and the rejection of them, when the Gentiles would be called, and converted, by which he would be glorified: and at the conduct and carriage of his disciples to him, he had a foreknowledge of; at the betraying of him by one, and the denial of him by another, and the flight of them all from him; and at the devil, and the furious and violent attack he knew he would make upon him, though he had obliged him to leave him, when he assaulted him before, and knew he could find nothing in him now, and that as God, he was able to destroy him; but this was to be done by him, as man, and by lying too: he was in his human soul troubled at the thoughts of his death, though it was his Father’s will, and he had agreed to it, and was for the salvation of his people, his heart was so much set upon; yet it was terrible to the human nature, and especially as attended with the wrath of God; at the apprehensions of which, his soul was exceedingly troubled; not as about to fall on him on his own personal account, but as being the surety of his people, and as having their sins upon him to satisfy angry and injured justice for:

and what shall I say? this question he puts, as being in the utmost distress, and difficulty, as if he knew not what to say; and yet not as advising with his disciples, what was to be said or done in his case; but is rather used to introduce another question, as the following words may be formed: shall I say,

father, save me from this hour? as requesting his Father, that he might be strengthened under his sufferings and death, and carried through them, and out of them; or rather as deprecating them, desiring the cup might pass from him, as he afterwards did; and then the sense is, shall I put up such a petition to my Father, to save me from sorrows, sufferings, and death? no, I will not: the human nature through frailty might prompt him to it, and he be just going to do it, when he corrects himself, saying;

but for this cause came I unto this hour: this hour or time of sorrow and suffering was appointed for him; it was fixed in the covenant of grace, and Christ had agreed to it; he was sent into this world, and he came into it, on account of this hour; and was preserved hitherto for this purpose; and was now come to Jerusalem, and was there at this instant, for that very reason, namely, to suffer and die. And since this was the case, he would not put up such a petition to his Father, but the following one.

Fuente: John Gill’s Exposition of the Entire Bible

The Divine Attestation to Christ; Christ’s Discourse with the People.

27 Now is my soul troubled; and what shall I say? Father, save me from this hour: but for this cause came I unto this hour. 28 Father, glorify thy name. Then came there a voice from heaven, saying, I have both glorified it, and will glorify it again. 29 The people therefore, that stood by, and heard it, said that it thundered: others said, An angel spake to him. 30 Jesus answered and said, This voice came not because of me, but for your sakes. 31 Now is the judgment of this world: now shall the prince of this world be cast out. 32 And I, if I be lifted up from the earth, will draw all men unto me. 33 This he said, signifying what death he should die. 34 The people answered him, We have heard out of the law that Christ abideth for ever: and how sayest thou, The Son of man must be lifted up? who is this Son of man? 35 Then Jesus said unto them, Yet a little while is the light with you. Walk while ye have the light, lest darkness come upon you: for he that walketh in darkness knoweth not whither he goeth. 36 While ye have light, believe in the light, that ye may be the children of light. These things spake Jesus, and departed, and did hide himself from them.

Honour is here done to Christ by his Father in a voice from heaven, occasioned by the following part of his discourse, and which gave occasion to a further conference with the people. In these verses we have,

I. Christ’s address to his Father, upon occasion of the trouble which seized his spirit at this time: Now is my soul troubled, v. 27. A strange word to come from Christ’s mouth, and at this time surprising, for it comes in the midst of divers pleasing prospects, in which, one would think, he should have said, Now is my soul pleased. Note, Trouble of soul sometimes follows after great enlargements of spirit. In this world of mixture and change we must expect damps upon our joy, and the highest degree of comfort to be the next degree to trouble. When Paul had been in the third heavens, he had a thorn in the flesh. Observe,

1. Christ’s dread of his approaching sufferings: Now is my soul troubled. Now the black and dismal scene began, now were the first throes of the travail of his soul, now his agony began, his soul began to be exceedingly sorrowful. Note, (1.) The sin of our soul was the trouble of Christ’s soul, when he undertook to redeem and save us, and to make his soul an offering for our sin. (2.) The trouble of his soul was designed to ease the trouble of our souls; for, after this, he said to his disciples (ch. xiv. 1), “Let not your hearts be troubled; why should yours be troubled and mine too?” Our Lord Jesus went on cheerfully in his work, in prospect of the joy set before him, and yet submitted to a trouble of soul. Holy mourning is consistent with spiritual joy, and the way to eternal joy. Christ was now troubled, now in sorrow, now in fear, now for a season; but it would not be so always, it would not be so long. The same is the comfort of Christians in their troubles; they are but for a moment, and will be turned into joy.

2. The strait he seems to be in hereupon, intimated in those words, And what shall I say? This does not imply his consulting with any other, as if he needed advice, but considering with himself what was fit to be said now. When our souls are troubled we must take heed of speaking unadvisedly, but debate with ourselves what we shall say. Christ speaks like one at a loss, as if what he should choose he wot not. There was a struggle between the work he had taken upon him, which required sufferings, and the nature he had taken upon him, which dreaded them; between these two he here pauses with, What shall I say? He looked, and there was none to help, which put him to a stand. Calvin observes this as a great instance of Christ’s humiliation, that he should speak thus like one at a loss. Quo se magis exinanivit glori Dominus, eo luculentius habemus erga nos amoris specimen–The more entirely the Lord of glory emptied himself, the brighter is the proof of the love he bore us. Thus he was in all points tempted like as we are, to encourage us, when we know not what to do, to direct our eyes to him.

3. His prayer to God in this strait: Father, save me from this hour, ek tes oras tautes—out of this hour, praying, not so much that it might not come as that he might be brought through it. Save me from this hour; this was the language of innocent nature, and its feelings poured forth in prayer. Note, It is the duty and interest of troubled souls to have recourse to God by faithful and fervent prayer, and in prayer to eye him as a Father. Christ was voluntary in his sufferings, and yet prayed to be saved from them. Note, Prayer against a trouble may very well consist with patience under it and submission to the will of God in it. Observe, He calls his suffering this hour, meaning the expected events of the time now at hand. Hereby he intimates that the time of his suffering was, (1.) A set time, set to an hour, and he knew it. It was said twice before that his hour was not yet come, but it was now so near that he might say it was come. (2.) A short time. An hour is soon over, so were Christ’s sufferings; he could see through them to the joy set before him.

4. His acquiescence in his Father’s will, notwithstanding. He presently corrects himself, and, as it were, recalls what he had said: But for this cause came I to this hour. Innocent nature got the first word, but divine wisdom and love got the last. Note, those who would proceed regularly must go upon second thoughts. The complainant speaks first; but, if we would judge righteously, we must hear the other side. With the second thought he checked himself: For this cause came I to this hour; he does not silence himself with this, that he could not avoid it, there was no remedy; but satisfies himself with this, that he would not avoid it, for it was pursuant to his own voluntary engagement, and was to be the crown of his whole undertaking; should he now fly off, this would frustrate all that had been done hitherto. Reference is here had to the divine counsels concerning his sufferings, by virtue of which it behoved him thus to submit and suffer. Note, This should reconcile us to the darkest hours of our lives, that we were all along designed for them; see 1 Thess. iii. 3.

5. His regard to his Father’s honour herein. Upon the withdrawing of his former petition, he presents another, which he will abide by: Father, glorify thy name, to the same purport with Father, thy will be done; for God’s will is for his own glory. This expresses more than barely a submission to the will of God; it is a consecration of his sufferings to the glory of God. It was a mediatorial word, and was spoken by him as our surety, who had undertaken to satisfy divine justice for our sin. The wrong which by sin we have done to God is in his glory, his declarative glory; for in nothing else are we capable of doing him injury. We were never able to make him satisfaction for this wrong done him, nor any creature for us; nothing therefore remained but that God should get him honour upon us in our utter ruin. Here therefore our Lord Jesus interposed, undertook to satisfy God’s injured honour, and he did it by his humiliation; he denied himself in, and divested himself of, the honours due to the Son of God incarnate, and submitted to the greatest reproach. Now here he makes a tender of this satisfaction as an equivalent: “Father, glorify thy name; let thy justice be honoured upon the sacrifice, not upon the sinner; let the debt be levied upon me, I am solvent, the principal is not.” Thus he restored that which he took not away.

II. The Father’s answer to this address; for he heard him always, and does still. Observe, 1. How this answer was given. By a voice from heaven. The Jews speak much of a Bath-kl–the daughter of a voice, as one of those divers manners by which God in time past spoke to the prophets; but we do not find any instance of his speaking thus to any but to our Lord Jesus; it was an honour reserved for him (Mat 3:17; Mat 17:5), and here, probably, this audible voice was introduced by some visible appearance, either of light or darkness, for both have been used as vehicles of the divine glory. 2. What the answer was. It was an express return to that petition, Father, glorify thy name: I have glorified it already, and I will glorify it yet again. When we pray as we are taught, Our Father, hallowed be thy name, this is a comfort to us, that is it an answered prayer; answered to Christ here, and in him to all true believers. (1.) The name of God had been glorified in the life of Christ, in his doctrine and miracles, and all the examples he gave of holiness and goodness. (2.) It should be further glorified in the death and sufferings of Christ. His wisdom and power, his justice and holiness, his truth and goodness, were greatly glorified; the demands of a broken law were fully answered; the affront done to God’s government satisfied for; and God accepted the satisfaction, and declared himself well pleased. What God has done for the glorifying of his own name is an encouragement to us to expect what he will yet further do. He that has secured the interests of his own glory will still secure them.

III. The opinion of the standers-by concerning this voice, v. 29. We may hope there were some among them whose minds were so well prepared to receive a divine revelation that they understood what was said and bore record of it. But notice is here taken of the perverse suggestion of the multitude: some of them said that it thundered: others, who took notice that there was plainly an articulate intelligible voice, said that certainly an angel spoke to him. Now this shows, 1. That it was a real thing, even in the judgment of those that were not at all well affected to him. 2. That they were loth to admit so plain a proof of Christ’s divine mission. They would rather say that it was this, or that, or any thing, than that God spoke to him in answer to his prayer; and yet, if it thundered with articulate sounds (as Rev 10:3; Rev 10:4), was not that God’s voice? Or, if angels spoke to him, are not they God’s messengers? But thus God speaks once, yea twice, and man perceives it not.

IV. The account which our Saviour himself gives of this voice.

1. Why it was sent (v. 30): “It came not because of me, not merely for my encouragement and satisfaction” (then it might have been whispered in his ear privately), “but for your sakes.” (1.) “That all you who heard it may believe that the Father hath sent me.” What is said from heaven concerning our Lord Jesus, and the glorifying of the Father in him, is said for our sakes, that we may be brought to submit to him and rest upon him. (2.) “That you my disciples, who are to follow me in sufferings, may therein be comforted with the same comforts that carry me on.” Let this encourage them to part with life itself for his sake, if they be called to it, that it will redound to the honour of God. Note, The promises and supports granted to our Lord Jesus in his sufferings were intended for our sakes. For our sakes he sanctified himself, and comforted himself.

2. What was the meaning of it. He that lay in the Father’s bosom knew his voice, and what was the meaning of it; and two things God intended when he said that he would glorify his own name:—

(1.) That by the death of Christ Satan should be conquered (v. 31): Now is the judgment. He speaks with a divine exultation and triumph. “Now the year of my redeemed is come, and the time prefixed for breaking the serpent’s head, and giving a total rent to the powers of darkness; now for that glorious achievement: now, now, that great work is to be done which has been so long thought of in the divine counsels, so long talked of in the written word, which has been so much the hope of saints and the dread of devils.” The matter of the triumph is, [1.] That now is the judgment of the world; krisis, take it as a medical term: “Now is the crisis of this world.” The sick and diseased world is now upon the turning point; this is the critical day upon which the trembling scale will turn for life or death, to all mankind; all that are not recovered by this will be left helpless and hopeless. Or, rather, it is a law term, as we take it: “Now, judgment is entered, in order to the taking out of execution against the prince of this world.” Note, The death of Christ was the judgment of this world. First, It is a judgment of discovery and distinction–judicium discretionis; so Austin. Now is the trial of this world, for men shall have their character according as the cross of Christ is to them; to some it is foolishness and a stumbling-block, to others it is the wisdom and power of God; of which there was a figure in the two thieves that were crucified with him. By this men are judged, what they think of the death of Christ. Secondly, It is a judgment of favour and absolution to the chosen ones that are in the world. Christ upon the cross interposed between a righteous God and a guilty world as a sacrifice for sin and a surety for sinners, so that when he was judged, and iniquity laid upon him, and he was wounded for our transgressions, it was as it were the judgment of this world, for an everlasting righteousness was thereby brought in, not for Jews only, but the whole world, 1Jn 2:1; 1Jn 2:2; Dan 9:24. Thirdly, It is a judgment of condemnation given against the powers of darkness; see ch. xvi. 11. Judgment is put for vindication and deliverance, the asserting of an invaded right. At the death of Christ there was a famous trial between Christ and Satan, the serpent and the promised seed; the trial was for the world, and the lordship of it; the devil had long borne sway among the children of men, time out of mind; he now pleads prescription, grounding his claim also upon the forfeiture incurred by sin. We find him willing to have come to a composition (Luk 4:6; Luk 4:7); he would have given the kingdoms of this world to Christ, provided he would hold them by, from, and under him. But Christ would try it out with; by dying he takes off the forfeiture to divine justice, and then fairly disputes the title, and recovers it in the court of heaven. Satan’s dominion is declared to be a usurpation, and the world adjudged to the Lord Jesus as his right, Psa 2:6; Psa 2:8. The judgment of this world is, that it belongs to Christ, and not to Satan; to Christ therefore let us all atturn tenants. [2.] That now is the prince of this world cast out. First, It is the devil that is here called the prince of this world, because he rules over the men of the world by the things of the world; he is the ruler of the darkness of this world, that is, of this dark world, of those in it that walk in darkness,2Co 4:4; Eph 4:12. Secondly, He is said to be cast out, to be now cast out; for, whatever had been done hitherto towards the weakening of the devil’s kingdom was done in the virtue of a Christ to come, and therefore is said to be done now. Christ, reconciling the world to God by the merit of his death, broke the power of death, and cast out Satan as a destroyer; Christ, reducing the world to God by the doctrine of his cross, broke the power of sin, and cast out Satan as a deceiver. The bruising of his heel was the breaking of the serpent’s head, Gen. iii. 15. When his oracles were silenced, his temples forsaken, his idols famished, and the kingdoms of the world became Christ’s kingdoms, then was the prince of the world cast out, as appears by comparing this with John’s vision (Rev. xii. 8-11), where it is said to be done by the blood of the Lamb. Christ’s frequent casting of devils out of the bodies of people was an indication of the great design of his whole undertaking. Observe, With what assurance Christ here speaks of the victory over Satan; it is as good as done, and even when he yields to death he triumphs over it.

(2.) That by the death of Christ souls should be converted, and this would be the casting out of Satan (v. 32): If I be lifted up from the earth, I will draw all men unto me. Here observe two things:–

[1.] The great design of our Lord Jesus, which was to draw all men to him, not the Jews only, who had been long in a profession a people near to God, but the Gentiles also, who had been afar off; for he was to be the desire of all nations (Hag. ii. 7), and to him must the gathering of the people be. That which his enemies dreaded was that the world would go after him; and he would draw them to him, notwithstanding their opposition. Observe here how Christ himself is all in all in the conversion of a soul. First, It is Christ that draws: I will draw. It is sometimes ascribed to the Father (ch. vi. 44), but here to the Son, who is the arm of the Lord. He does not drive by force, but draws with the cords of a man (Hos 11:4; Jer 31:3), draws as the loadstone; the soul is made willing, but it is in a day of power. Secondly, It is to Christ that we are drawn: “I will draw them to me as the centre of their unity.” The soul that was at a distance from Christ is brought into an acquaintance with him, he that was shy and distrustful of him is brought to love him and trust in him,–drawn up to his terms, into his arms. Christ was now going to heaven, and he would draw men’s hearts to him thither.

[2.] The strange method he took to accomplish his design by being lifted up from the earth. What he meant by this, to prevent mistake, we are told (v. 33): This he spoke signifying by what death he should die, the death of the cross, though they had designed and attempted to stone him to death. He that was crucified was first nailed to the cross, and then lifted up upon it. He was lifted up as a spectacle to the world; lifted up between heaven and earth, as unworthy of either; yet the word here used signifies an honourable advancement, ean hypsotho—If I be exalted; he reckoned his sufferings his honour. Whatever death we die, if we die in Christ we shall be lifted up out of this dungeon, this den of lions, into the regions of light and love. We should learn of our Master to speak of dying with a holy pleasantness, and to say, “We shall then be lifted up.” Now Christ’s drawing all men to him followed his being lifted up from the earth. First, It followed after it in time. The great increase of the church was after the death of Christ; while Christ lived, we read of thousands at a sermon miraculously fed, but after his death we read of thousands at a sermon added to the church. Israel began to multiply in Egypt after the death of Joseph. Secondly, It followed upon it as a blessed consequence of it. Note, There is a powerful virtue and efficacy in the death of Christ to draw souls to him. The cross of Christ, though to some a stumbling-stone, is to others a loadstone. Some make it an allusion to the drawing of fish into a net; the lifting up of Christ was as the spreading of the net (Mat 13:47; Mat 13:48); or to the setting up of a standard, which draws soldiers together; or, rather, it refers to the lifting up of the brazen serpent in the wilderness, which drew all those to it who were stung with fiery serpents, as soon as ever it was known that it was lifted up, and there was healing virtue in it. O what flocking was there to it! So there was to Christ, when salvation through him was preached to all nations; see Joh 3:14; Joh 3:15. Perhaps it has some reference to the posture in which Christ was crucified, with his arms stretched out, to invite all to him, and embrace all that come. Those that put Christ to that ignominious death thought thereby to drive all men from him; but the devil was outshot in his own bow. Out of the eater came forth meat.

V. The people’s exception against what he said, and their cavil at it, v. 34. Though they had heard the voice from heaven, and the gracious words that proceeded out of his mouth, yet they object, and pick quarrels with him. Christ had called himself the Son of man (v. 23), which they knew to be one of the titles of the Messiah, Dan. vii. 13. He had also said that the Son of man must be lifted up, which they understood of his dying, and probably he explained himself so, and some think he repeated what he said to Nicodemus (ch. iii. 14), So must the Son of man be lifted up. Now against this,

1. They alleged those scriptures of the Old Testament which speak of the perpetuity of the Messiah, that he should be so far from being cut off in the midst of his days that he should be a priest for ever (Ps. cx. 4), and a king for ever (Ps. lxxxix. 29, c.), that he should have length of days for ever and ever, and his years as many generations (Psa 21:4Psa 61:6), from all which they inferred that the Messiah should not die. Thus great knowledge in the letter of the scripture, if the heart be unsanctified, is capable of being abused to serve the cause of infidelity, and to fight against Christianity with its own weapons. Their perverseness in opposing this to what Jesus had said will appear if we consider, (1.) That, when they vouched the scripture to prove that the Messiah abideth for ever, they took no notice of those texts which speak of the Messiah’s death and sufferings: they had heard out of the law that Messiah abideth for ever; and had they never heard out of the law that Messiah should be cut off (Dan. ix. 26), and that he should pour out his soul unto death (Isa. liii. 12), and particularly that his hands and feet should be pierced? Why then do they make so strange of the lifting up of the Son of man? Note, We often run into great mistakes, and then defend them with scripture arguments, by putting those things asunder which God in his word has put together, and opposing one truth under pretence of supporting another. We have heard out of the gospel that which exalts free grace, we have heard also that which enjoins duty, and we just cordially embrace both, and not separate them, nor set them at variance. (2.) That, when they opposed what Christ said concerning the sufferings of the Son of man, they took no notice of what he had said concerning his glory and exaltation. They had heard out of the law that Christ abideth for ever; and had they not heard our Lord Jesus say that he should be glorified, that he should bring forth much fruit, and draw all men to him? Had he not just now promised immortal honours to his followers, which supposed his abiding for ever? But this they overlooked. Thus unfair disputants oppose some parts of the opinion of an adversary, to which, if they would but take it entire, they could not but subscribe; and in the doctrine of Christ there are paradoxes, which to men of corrupt minds are stones of stumbling–as Christ crucified, and yet glorified; lifted up from the earth, and yet drawing all men to him.

2. They asked hereupon, Who is the Son of man? This they asked, not with a desire to be instructed, but tauntingly and insultingly, as if now they had baffled him, and run him down. “Thou sayest, The Son of man must die; we have proved the Messiah must not, and where is then thy Messiahship? This Son of man, as thou callest thyself, cannot be the Messiah, thou must therefore think of something else to pretend to.” Now that which prejudiced them against Christ was his meanness and poverty; they would rather have no Christ than a suffering one.

VI. What Christ said to this exception, or rather what he said upon it. The objection was a perfect cavil; they might, if they pleased, answer it themselves: man dies, and yet is immortal, and abideth for ever, so the Son of man. Therefore, instead of answering these fools according to their folly, he gives them a serious caution to take heed of trifling away the day of their opportunities in such vain and fruitless cavils as these (Joh 12:35; Joh 12:36): “Yet a little while, and but a little while, is the light with you; therefore be wise for yourselves, and walk while you have the light.“

1. In general, we may observe here, (1.) The concern Christ has for the souls of men, and his desire of their welfare. With what tenderness does he here admonish those to look well to themselves who were contriving ill against him! Even when he endured the contradiction of sinners, he sought their conversion. See Prov. xxix. 10. (2.) The method he takes with these objectors, with meekness instructing those that opposed themselves, 2 Tim. ii. 25. Were but men’s consciences awakened with a due concern about their everlasting state, and did they consider how little time they have to spend, and none to spare, they would not waste precious thoughts and time in trifling cavils.

2. Particularly we have here,

(1.) The advantage they enjoyed in having Christ and his gospel among them, with the shortness and uncertainty of their enjoyment of it: Yet a little while is the light with you. Christ is this light; and some of the ancients suggest that, in calling himself the light, he gives a tacit answer to their objection. His dying upon the cross was as consistent with his abiding for ever as the setting of the sun every night is with his perpetuity. The duration of Christ’s kingdom is compared to that of the sun and moon, Psa 72:17; Psa 89:36; Psa 89:37. The ordinances of heaven are unchangeably fixed, and yet the sun and moon set and are eclipsed; so Christ the Sun of righteousness abides for ever, and yet was eclipsed by his sufferings, and was but a little while within our horizon. Now, [1.] The Jews at this time had the light with them; they had Christ’s bodily presence, heard his preaching, saw his miracles. The scripture is to us a light shining in a dark place. [2.] It was to be but a little while with them; Christ would shortly leave them, their visible church state would soon after be dissolved and the kingdom of God taken from them, and blindness and hardness would happen unto Israel. Note, It is good for us all to consider what a little while we are to have the light with us. Time is short, and perhaps opportunity not so long. The candlestick may be removed; at least, we must be removed shortly. Yet a little while is the light of life with us; yet a little while is the light of the gospel with us, the day of grace, the means of grace, the Spirit of grace, yet a very little while.

(2.) The warning given them to make the best of this privilege while they enjoyed it, because of the danger they were in of losing it: Walk while you have the light; as travellers who make the best of their way forward, that they may not be benighted in their journey, because travelling in the night is uncomfortable and unsafe. “Come,” say they, “let us mend our pace, and get forward, while we have day-light.” Thus wise should we be for our souls who are journeying towards eternity. Note, [1.] It is our business to walk, to press forward towards heaven, and to get nearer to it by being made fitter for it. Our life is but a day, and we have a day’s journey to go. [2.] The best time of walking is while we have the light. The day is the proper season for work, as the night is for rest. The proper time for getting grace is when we have the word of grace preached to us, and the Spirit of grace striving with us, and therefore then is the time to be busy. [3.] We are highly concerned thus to improve our opportunities, for fear lest our day be finished before we have finished our day’s work and our day’s journey: “Lest darkness come upon you, lest you lose your opportunities, and can neither recover them nor despatch the business you have to do without them.” Then darkness comes, that is, such an utter incapacity to make sure the great salvation as renders the state of the careless sinner quite deplorable; so that, if his work be undone then, it is likely to be undone for ever.

(3.) The sad condition of those who have sinned away the gospel, and are come to the period of their day of grace. They walk in darkness, and know neither where they go, nor whither they go; neither the way they are walking in, nor the end they are walking towards. He that is destitute of the light of the gospel, and is not acquainted with its discoveries and directions, wanders endlessly in mistakes and errors, and a thousand crooked paths, and is not aware of it. Set aside the instructions of the Christian doctrine, and we know little of the difference between good and evil. He is going to destruction, and knows not his danger, for he is either sleeping or dancing at the pit’s brink.

(4.) The great duty and interest of every one of us inferred from all this (v. 36): While you have light, believe in the light. The Jews had now Christ’s presence with them, let them improve it; afterwards they had the first offers of the gospel made to them by the apostles wherever they came; now this is an admonition to them not to out-stand their market, but to accept the offer when it was made to them: the same Christ saith to all who enjoy the gospel. Note, [1.] It is the duty of every one of us to believe in the gospel light, to receive it as a divine light, to subscribe to the truths it discovers, for it is a light to our eyes, and to follow its guidance, for it is a light to our feet. Christ is the light, and we must believe in him as he is revealed to us; as a true light that will not deceive us, a sure light that will not misguide us. [2.] We are concerned to do this while we have the light, to lay hold on Christ while we have the gospel to show us the way to him and direct us in that way. [3.] Those that believe in the light shall be the children of light; they shall be owned as Christians, who are called children of light (Luk 16:8; Eph 5:8) and of the day, 1 Thess. v. 5. Those that have God for their Father are children of light, for God is light; they are born from above, and heirs of heaven, and children of light, for heaven is light.

VII. Christ’s retiring from them, hereupon: These things spoke Jesus, and said no more at this time, but left this to their consideration, and departed, and did hide himself from them. And this he did, 1. For their conviction and awakening. If they will not regard what he hath said, he will have nothing more to say to them. They are joined to their infidelity, as Ephraim to idols; let them alone. Note, Christ justly removes the means of grace from those that quarrel with him, and hides his face from a froward generation, Deut. xxxii. 20. 2. For his own preservation. He hid himself from their rage and fury, retreating, it is probable, to Bethany, where he lodged. By this it appears that what he said irritated and exasperated them, and they were made worse by that which should have made them better.

Fuente: Matthew Henry’s Whole Bible Commentary

My soul ( ). The soul () here is synonymous with spirit () in 13:21.

Is troubled (). Perfect passive indicative of , used also in John 11:33; John 13:21 of Jesus. While John proves the deity of Jesus in his Gospel, he assumes throughout his real humanity as here (cf. 4:6). The language is an echo of that in Ps 6:4; Ps 42:7. John does not give the agony in Gethsemane which the Synoptics have (Mark 14:35; Matt 26:39; Luke 22:42), but it is quite beside the mark to suggest, as Bernard does, that the account here is John’s version of the Gethsemane experience. Why do some critics feel called upon to level down to a dead plane every variety of experience in Christ’s life?

And what shall I say? ( ;). Deliberative subjunctive which expresses vividly “a genuine, if momentary indecision” (Bernard). The request of the Greeks called up graphically to Jesus the nearness of the Cross.

Father, save me from this hour (, ). Jesus began his prayers with “Father” (11:41). Dods thinks that this should be a question also. Westcott draws a distinction between (out of) and (from) to show that Jesus does not pray to draw back from the hour, but only to come safely out of it all and so interprets in Heb 5:7, but that distinction will not stand, for in Joh 1:44 and are used in the same sense and in the Synoptics (Mark 14:35; Matt 26:39; Luke 52:42) we have . If it holds here, we lose the point there. Here as in Gethsemane the soul of Jesus instinctively and naturally shrinks from the Cross, but he instantly surrenders to the will of God in both experiences.

But for this cause came I unto this hour ( ). It was only a moment of human weakness as in Gethsemane that quickly passed. Thus understood the language has its natural meaning.

Fuente: Robertson’s Word Pictures in the New Testament

My soul. See reff. on ver. 25. The soul, yuch, is the seat of the human affections; the spirit [] of the religious affections.

Is troubled [] . The perfect tense; has been disturbed and remains troubled. The same verb as in Joh 11:33. Notice that there it is said He groaned in the spirit [ ] . His inward agitation did not arise from personal sorrow or sympathy, but from some shock to His moral and spiritual sense.

What shall I say? A natural expression out of the depths of our Lord ‘s humanity. How shall I express my emotion? Some commentators connect this with the following clause, shall I say, Father, save me, etc. But this does not agree with the context, and represents a hesitation in the mind of Jesus which found no place there. 41 Save me. The shrinking from suffering belongs to the human personality of our Lord (compare Matthew 39); but the prayer, save me from this hour, is not for deliverance from suffering, but for victory in the approaching trial. See Heb 5:7. The expression is very vivid. “Save me out of this hour.”

For this cause. Explained by glorify thy name. For this use, namely, that the Father ‘s name might be glorified.

Fuente: Vincent’s Word Studies in the New Testament

1) “Now is my soul troubled;” (nun he psuche mou tetaraktai) “Now, and to continue, my soul has been troubled,” with anxious care and emotional conflict, as He knew what kind of humiliation and death He faced, in a few hours. This is proof of His humanity, as well as His need of rest, food, and sleep, yet without sin, Heb 4:15-16; Heb 7:26.

2) “And what shall I say?” (kai ti eipo) “And what may I say?” Shall I question your judgement, even of my own decision? The answer is “no.” For the spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak. The spirit is the stronger, to do and to suffer all that the Father wills, which He had come to do, Joh 6:38.

3) “Father, save me from this hour: (pater soson me ek tes horas tautes) “Father save me out of this hour,” or deliver me from this experience? Nay, His spirit repelled the weak desire of the flesh, as He suffered and tasted death for all, for every man, Heb 2:9; Php_2:5-7; 1Pe 2:24.

4) “But for this cause came I unto this hour.” (alla dia touto elthon eis ten horan tauten)”But on account of this I came into this hour,” or for this purpose, to suffer, to die, to rise again, to glorify your name, uphold or reflect your honor and integrity, Luk 22:53; Joh 18:37. For without death His life would have been fruitless, as a seed preserved, but never sown.

Fuente: Garner-Howes Baptist Commentary

27. Now is my soul troubled. This statement appears at first to differ widely from the preceding discourse. He had displayed extraordinary courage and magnanimity by exhorting his disciples not only to suffer death, but willingly and cheerfully to desire it, whenever it is necessary; and now, by shrinking from death, he confesses his cowardice. Yet there is nothing in this passage that is not in perfect harmony, as every believer knows by his own experience. If scornful men laugh at it, we need not wonder; for it cannot be understood but by practice.

Besides, it was highly useful, and even necessary for our salvation, that the Son of God should have experience of such feelings, In his death we ought chiefly to consider his atonement, by which he appeased the wrath and curse of God, which he could not have done, without taking upon himself our guilt. The death which he underwent must therefore have been full of horror, because he could not render satisfaction for us, without feeling, in his own experience, the dreadful judgment of God; and hence we come to know more fully the enormity of sin, for which the Heavenly Father exacted so dreadful a punishment from his only-begotten Son. Let us therefore know, that death was not a sport and amusement to Christ, but that he endured the severest torments on our account.

Nor was it unsuitable that the Son of God should be troubled in this manner; for the Divine nature, being concealed, and not exerting its force, may be said to have reposed, in order to give an opportunity of making expiation. But Christ himself was clothed, not only with our flesh, but with human feelings. In him, no doubt, those feelings were voluntary; for he feared, not through constraint, but because he had, of his own accord, subjected himself to fear. And yet we ought to believe, that it was not in pretense, but in reality, that he feared; though he differed from other men in this respect, that he had all his feelings regulated in obedience to the righteousness of God, as we have said elsewhere.

There is also another advantage which it yields to us. If the dread of death had occasioned no uneasiness to the Son of God, (25) which of us would have thought that his example was applicable to our case? For it has not been given to us to die without, feeling of regret; but when we learn that He had not within him a hardness like stone or iron, (26) we summon courage to follow him, and the weakness of the flesh, which makes us tremble at death, does not hinder us from becoming the companions of our General in struggling with it.

And what shall I, say? Here we see, as it were, before our eyes, how much our salvation cost the Son of God, when he was reduced to such extremity of distress, that he found neither words to express the intensity of his sorrow, nor yet resolution as man. He betakes himself to prayer, which is his only remaining resource, and asks to be delivered from death. Again, perceiving also that, by the eternal purpose of God, he has been appointed to be a sacrifice for sins, he suddenly corrects that wish which his prodigious sorrow had wrung from him, and puts forth his hand, as it were, to pull himself back, that he may entirely acquiesce in the will of his Father.

In this passage we ought to observe five steps. For, first, there is the complaint, which breaks out from vehement sorrow. Secondly, he feels that he needs a remedy, and, in order that he may not be overwhelmed with fear, he puts the question to himself, what he ought to do. Thirdly, he goes to the Father, and entreats him to deliver him. Fourthly, he recalls the wish which he knows to be inconsistent with his calling, and chooses rather to suffer anything than not to fulfill what his Father has enjoined upon him. Lastly, he is satisfied with the glory of God alone, forgets all things else, and reckons them of no value.

But it may be thought, that it is unbecoming in the Son of God rashly to utter a wish which he must immediately retract, in order to obey his Father. I readily admit, that this is the folly of the cross, which gives offense to proud men; but the more the Lord of glory humbled himself, so much the more illustrious is the manifestation of his vast love to us. Besides, we ought to recollect what I have already stated, that the human feelings, from which Christ was not exempt, were in him pure and free from sin. The reason is, that they were guided and regulated in obedience to God; for there is nothing to prevent Christ from having a natural dread of death, and yet desiring to obey God. This holds true in various respects: and hence he corrects himself by saying,

For this cause came I into this hour. For though he may lawfully entertain a dread of death, yet, considering why he was sent, and what his office as Redeemer demands from him, he presents to his Father the dread which arose out of his natural disposition, in order that it may be subdued, or rather, having subdued it, he prepares freely and willingly to execute the command of God. Now, if the feelings of Christ, which were free from all sin, needed to be restrained in this manner, how earnestly ought we to apply to this object, since the numerous affections which spring from our flesh are so many enemies to God in us! Let the godly, therefore, persevere in doing violence to themselves, until they have denied themselves.

It must also be observed, that we ought to restrain not only those affections which are directly contrary to the will of God, but those which hinder the progress of our calling, though, in other respects, they are not wicked or sinful. To make this more fully evident, we ought to place in the first rank the will of God; in the second, the will of man pure and entire, such as God gave to Adam, and such as was in Christ: and, lastly, our own, which is infected by the contagion of sin. The will of God is the rule, to which every thing that is inferior ought to be subjected. Now, the pure will of nature will not of itself rebel against God; but man, though he were wholly formed to righteousness, would meet with many obstructions, unless he subject his affections to God. Christ, therefore, had but one battle to fight, which was, to cease to fear what he naturally feared, as soon as he perceived that the pleasure of God was otherwise. We, on the other hand, have a twofold battle; for we must struggle with the obstinacy of the flesh. The consequence is, that the most valiant combatants never vanquish without being wounded.

Father, save me. This is the order which ought to be maintained, whenever we are either distressed by fear, or oppressed with grief. Our hearts ought instantly to be raised up to God. For there is nothing worse, or more injurious, than to nourish inwardly what torments us; as we see a great part of the world consumed by hidden torments, and all who do not rise to God are justly punished for their indolence by never receiving any alleviation.

(25) “ Le Fils die Dieu.”

(26) “ Une durete de pierre et de fer.”

Fuente: Calvin’s Complete Commentary

THE MAGNETIC CROSS

Text 12:27-36

Now is my soul troubled; and what shall I say? Father, save me from this hour. But for this cause came I unto this hour.

Father, glorify thy name. There came therefore a voice out of heaven, saying, I have both glorified it, and will glorify it again.

The multitude therefore, that stood by, and heard it, said that it had thundered: others said, An angel hath spoken to him.

Jesus answered and said, This voice hath not come for my sake, but for your sakes.

Now is the judgment of this world: now shall the prince of this world be cast out.

And I, if I be lifted up from the earth, will draw all men unto myself.

But this he said, signifying by what manner of death he should die.

The multitude therefore answered him, We have heard out of the law that the Christ abideth forever: and how sayest thou, The Son of man must be lifted up? who is this Son of man?

Jesus therefore said unto them, Yet a little while is the light among you. Walk while ye have the light, that darkness overtake you not: and he that walketh in the darkness knoweth not whither he goeth.

While ye have the light, believe on the light, that ye may become sons of light. These things spake Jesus, and he departed and hid himself from them.

Queries

Why tell the people that the voice of God was for their sake?

How will He draw men to Him by being lifted up?

Why hide from the people?

Paraphrase

Now my own soul is deeply distraught at the present reminder of my impending death, and shall I say, Father (if it be possible) save me from this hour? But (not My will but Thine be done) for this very purpose I came unto this hour. Father, I pray only that your name may be glorified. There came a sonorous voice booming from heaven, saying, I have glorified My name in the past and will glorify it again through You. The multitude standing near heard it and some said it had thundered but others said, An angel has spoken to Him. Jesus said, That voice from heaven came for your sake, not for mine, that you might have faith in me by this supernatural manifestation. Now is the critical hour coming in the entire history of the world in which it will be judged for its rejection of the Son of God; but at the same time and through the same means will the prince of this world, the Adversary and Accuser, also be defeated and rendered powerless. And I, if I be lifted up from the earth upon a cross of death, will draw all men who allow themselves to be drawn unto myself. (This He said to show what sort of death He would die.)

The multitude understood his figure of speech and said, We have heard teaching from the Law that the Christ lives forever. Why do you say in contradiction to this that the Son of Man must be lifted up in death? Who is this Son of Man of whom you speak? Jesus answered them by saying, You have the Light with you only a little while longer. You should walk in the illumination of the Light while you have the Light in order that the darkness of unbelief may not overwhelm you and imprison you. The person that walks in the darkness of unbelief is blind to his spiritual destiny. While you have the Light with you, walk and believe in the Light in order that you may become sons of Light and know your eternal destiny. Jesus said all these things, and went away and hid Himself from the multitudes.

Summary

The Greeks seeking Jesus remind Him of His impending sacrificial death, His sinless soul shrinks from the coming sentence of sin He must bear, but He is surrendered to the will of the Father. The Father strengthened Him by a manifestation to the multitude. Jesus warns that His death will be the critical point in all history for the world and that the Accusers power will be broken. He is the Light of the world and men must believe in Him and walk in His light to know their eternal destiny.

Comment

The Lord now becomes more explicit in showing the agitation of His own soul which has been caused by the seeking of the Greeks. Their request has reminded Him of the fast-approaching hour when the barrier between Jew and Gentile will be taken out of the way. He is reminded of the moment when all men will be provided a way of reconciliation with GodHe is reminded that the very purpose for His coming, just a few hours away, is death for all sin!

There are two major interpretations of Joh. 12:27. One makes Jesus utter a prayer similar to His agonizing prayer of Gethsemane, i.e., Father, save me from this hour (let this cup pass from me), but for this cause came I unto this hour (nevertheless, not my will but thine be done). The other interpretation places a question mark after the phrase, . . . what shall I say, Father save me from this hour? No, I will not say that because for this very purpose came I unto this hour.

Either interpretation, as far as we can see, is in perfect harmony with other accounts of the Lords deep feelings concerning the hour of the cross. The matter of punctuation (whether declarative or interrogative) is academic anyway, since the original Greek contained no punctuation marks. Jesus was tempted from the very beginning of His ministry, by the devil himself, to forego the way of the cross (cf. Mat. 4:8-10). Again, when Peter refused to accept the doctrine of the cross for the Messiah (cf. Mat. 16:21-28) it was a temptation that disturbed the depths of the Masters soul. When Mary anointed His head and feet with perfume at Bethany it reminded Him of His imminent death (cf. Joh. 12:7). So His agitated soul again considers the cross and He prays, Father, save me from this hour (if it be possible), but for this cause came I unto this hour (and so my prayer is not my will be done, but thine), Father, glorify thy name. It was the same prayer He would cry even more strongly in Gethsemane (Mat. 26:39; Heb. 5:7-8). The shadow of the cross was upon Jesus from the day of His birth (cf. Luk. 2:34-35). It was not the physical torture from which He shrank, but the curse of sin He took (2Co. 5:21) which caused the Father to turn His face from the Son (Mat. 27:46).

There is one other interpretation of this 27th verse. It is based on the Greek preposition ek (out, from). It might be paraphrased thusly: Father, bring me safely out of this conflict (a prayer for glorification through resurrection from the death of the cross).

Whatever be the interpretation we cannot fail to see the unwavering determination of the Son to carry out the eternal purpose of the Father! (cf. Joh. 4:34; Joh. 5:30; Heb. 10:7; Heb. 10:9). The utmost concern of Jesus was to glorify the name of the Father. Throughout His earthly life He glorified the Father, but the culminating glorification was to be the death and resurrection of the Christ, and the establishment of the church. The death of Jesus was no accident. It came by the deliberate foreknowledge and counsel of God (cf. Act. 2:23; Rev. 13:8).

Gods answer from heaven (Joh. 12:28) includes more than the approaching suffering. God repeatedly glorified His name through the miraculous ministry of Jesus (cf. Joh. 5:23; Joh. 11:40); but especially in the crises of Jesus ministry: (a) The Baptism (Mat. 3:17; Luk. 3:21-22); (b) The Transfiguration (Mat. 17:5); (c) and here. The promise of future glorification includes the death, resurrection exaltation of Christ and the world-wide proclamation of the gospel of which Jesus was reminded when the Greeks sought Him in the temple.

Gods voice speaking from heaven must have been a great booming, thunderous crash (cf. Exo. 19:16-20). Many of the multitude that stood near Jesus heard only the sonorous thunder-like sound and thought that it had thundered (cf. Act. 9:7; Act. 22:9; Act. 26:13). Others thought they heard articulate language, perhaps of an angel, being spoken to Jesus. John the Apostle heard the words and later the Holy Spirit caused John to remember and record them in his gospel.

The voice was not primarily for the benefit of Jesus (Joh. 12:30). But how could the voice benefit the people if they could not understand what was spoken? Evidently the sound was of such magnitude and extraordinary character that it showed itself to be a supernatural phenomena. Thus it was manifestly a supernatural response to the heavenly-directed prayer of Jesus. The voice was to engender faith in Jesus. To show that Jesus was in direct communication with heaven.

The word judgment in Joh. 12:31 is, in the Greek, krisis from which the English language gets crisis and critical. The hour of His death about which Jesus has been speaking and praying is to be the critical hour of all the history of the world! To quote Barnes, Now is approaching the decisive scene, the eventful periodthe crisiswhen it shall be determined who shall rule this world. Satan had very effectually ruled the souls of men in ages past, especially among the Gentile nations. He ruled through ignorance, superstition, fleshly passion and fear (cf. Heb. 2:14-15). It is rather presumptuous for us to think we can understand the infinite relationships between the devils domain and Gods omnipotence. The devil is called here prince of this world and in other places god of this world, etc. (cf. Luk. 4:6; 2Co. 4:4; Eph. 2:2; Eph. 6:12). But even in ages past, before Christ defeated him at the cross, the Scriptures indicate the devils power was subject to the omnipotent restrictions of God (cf. Job. 1:6-12; Job. 2:1-6). Of one thing we may be certainthe death of Christ was the moment of casting out for the devil. Satans power was broken when Jesus suffered the penalty and condemnation of sin for man. Satan is the Adversary (cf. Zec. 3:1; 1Pe. 5:8)the Accuser (Rev. 12:10). But the atoning blood of Christ which paid the debt for mans sins nullified the accusations of the Accuser and defeated the Adversary. The glorification of Jesus (His death, resurrection and exaltation) would be the supernatural power that would destroy the rule of fearful bondage the Accuser held over all mankind and would be the drawing power whereby the Son of God would set up His kingdom of love, righteousness, faith and hope.

Hendriksen has connected this casting out of the prince of this world (cf. Joh. 12:31-32) with the binding of Satan for a thousand years (Rev. 20:1-3), in his commentary on Revelation entitled, More Than Conquerors. We believe Hendriksen has the most reasonable, sensible and Scriptural approach to the book of Revelation yet made. Mr. Hendriksens view is that before the birth of Christ, the nations (all except the Jews) were in bondage to the kingdom of darknessof Satan (by their own choosing, of course). There was no way for them, of their own merit, to break the shackles of the Adversary. But God spoke through His prophet Isaiah (and others) that those who were enslaved to darkness would one day see a great light (Isa. 9:1-7; Isa. 42:1-7cf. Luk. 1:79; Luk. 4:16-32). The Old Testament prophecied that the spiritual bondage of the Gentiles to the prince of this world would be brokenlight would come. Jesus is born and demonstrates His power to cast out the demons (emissaries of Satan) (read carefully, Mat. 12:29note the word bind), The work of binding Satan begins with the ministry of Jesus (cf. Luk. 10:17-18; Col. 2:15 and our passage here in John, Joh. 12:20-32). This binding and casting out or falling of Satan is in some way associated with the first coming of Jesus. It is immediately connected with the work of preaching the gospel to all nations throughout the world. The binding of Satan begins with Christs first coming and extends nearly to His second coming (at which time the devil will be loosed for a short season). But the devil is not bound completely and in every sense. A vicious dog securely bound to a tree with a long, heavy chain can still do great harm within the circle of his imprisonment if a person becomes flirtatious or unaware by indifference. Satan is definitely chained, but within the sphere in which he is permitted to exert his influence for evil he rages most furiously and woe to the man who wilfully or indifferently steps inside that circle! In other words, Hendriksen believes that the Scriptures substantiate best the amillenial view of Revelation, i.e., we are now living in the millennium (the thousand year reign of Christ). Whether our readers agree with this view or not, we are persuaded they would profit from reading Mr. Hendriksens book, More Than Conquerors, published by Baker Book House, Grand Rapids, Michigan.

Of one thing we are certain, because of the death and resurrection of Christ we are more than conquerors (cf. Rom. 8:31-39). The lifting up of the Redeemer has accomplished the victory over the AccuserIf God be for us, who can be against us? Who shall lay anything to the charge of Gods elect? It is God that justifieth.

It is said of Napoleon that toward the end of his life as he lived it out in exile, he pointed one day to a red dot on a map that marked the place called Waterloo and said to a friend, Had it not been for that small red dot there on the map I would have conquered the world. Satan and his cohorts are pointing to the one red, blood-stained moment in history called Calvary and saying, Had it not been for that moment, I would have conquered the world.
Some commentators believe that because the Greek preposition ek (out) is used again in Joh. 12:32, Jesus means to include not only His death on the cross in the lifting up but also His being lifted up out from the earth (i.e., His resurrection also). The drawing power of His resurrection certainly cannot be denied, and neither can it be denied that His resurrection is also a part of His glorification (along with His ascension and exaltation). But perhaps it is wiser to simply take Johns clear statement (Joh. 12:33) that Jesus was speaking of the manner of His forthcoming death, and let it go at that.

The multitude understood plainly what Jesus meant by being lifted up. But they stumbled over the idea that the Son of Man should die. It is the ever recurrent stumbling-block of the Jewsthey simply could not comprehend the Messiah dying a humiliating death. Perhaps they even thought the Son of Man was to remain an eternal, temporal ruler (cf. Psa. 110:4; Isa. 9:6-7; Eze. 37:25; Dan. 7:14)they had heard that the Christ would remain forever. For an excellent discussion of the title Son of Man and other Messianic titles, see The Self-Disclosure of Jesus, by Vos. The title, Son of Man, is a term used by the prophets to speak of the Messiah. Jesus seems to have a special fondness for the term, perhaps because it indicated more clearly His divine-human nature.

The main point of Joh. 12:34-36 is the misconception by the multitudes of the nature of the Messiah and the explanation Jesus gives. The significance of the three verses hinges on the therefore of Joh. 12:35. What follows the therefore is Jesus explanation of the spiritual nature of the Messiah.

The figure of light Jesus applies to Himself as He has done before. The contrast is between His doctrine concerning the Messianic kingdom which is truth and their ideas of the Kingdom which are false. The difference is between belief and unbelief. The person who walks in the darkness of unbelief is blind to his spiritual destiny. He does not know where he is from, why he is here nor where he is going. On the other hand, when men believe in the true Light and become sons of light they know their purpose and eternal destiny (cf. Joh. 1:4; Joh. 8:12; Joh. 9:5). These Jews were warned that they should make use of the privilege of having the Light while He is still with them. Days of darkness were soon to come upon the nation because it rejected its Saviour.

The situation was becoming critical. The events of the latter part of Joh. 12:1-50 probably took place on Tuesday of the last week, the great day of questions and challengesthe day when Jesus eluded the traps of the Herodians, Pharisees and Sadducees; the day when He publicly denounced them as hypocrites (cf. Mat. 23:1-39) (cf. Map #7, Joh. 14:25-31.). But there was an appointed hour for His death and He would not permit Himself to be put to death until the time and in the manner ordained by the Father. He did not hide because of cowardice; to the contrary, His complete mastery of the situation shows His omnipotence! He would not use miraculous means to prevent His death when the natural would suffice and so He retired, probably to Bethany (cf. Luk. 21:37), and hid from His enemies.

Quiz

What are three interpretations of Joh. 12:27?

Why did the prospect of the cross trouble the soul of Jesus?

How could Jesus say the voice out of heaven was for the benefit of the multitude when they did not hear the words?

To what extent was the prince of this world cast out at the death of Jesus?

What is the drawing power in the lifting up of Jesus?

Why would the people say they had heard the Christ abides forever?

What is the light Jesus speaks of in Joh. 12:35-36? Why does He answer their question about the Son of Man in this manner?

Fuente: College Press Bible Study Textbook Series

(27) Now is my soul troubled; and what shall I say?The word rendered soul is the same word as that rendered life in Joh. 12:25. (Comp. especially Mat. 16:25-26.) It is the seat of the natural feelings and emotions, and, as the fatal hour approaches, our Lord is in that region of His human life troubled. There is a real shrinking from the darkness of the death which is at hand. The conflict exists but for a moment, but in all its fearfulness is real, and then the cup of the worlds woe is seized and drunk to its bitter dregs. Men have sometimes wondered that St. John passes over the agony of the garden of Gethsemane, but the agony of Gethsemane is here, and the very words of Mat. 26:39 are echoed. Men have wondered, too, that in the life of the Son of man a struggle such as this could have had even a moments place. Not a few, indeed, would at any cost read the words otherwise. But they cannot be read otherwise, either on the written page or in the hearts of men. That troubled soul asked, What shall I say? Blessed reality! In that struggle humanity struggled, and in that victory humanity won.

Father, save me from this hour: but for this cause came I unto this hour.It is uncertain whether the first words of this sentence are a prayer, or whether they should be read as a question. In the latter case the meaning would be, What shall I say? Shall I say, Father save Me from this hour? But no: for this cause came I unto this hour. I cannot shrink back or seek to be delivered from it. As a prayer the meaning would beFather, save Me from this hour; but for this cause, that I may be saved from it, came I unto this hour. The moment of agony is the moment of victory.

The real difficulty of the verse lies in the words for this cause, for which a meaning must be sought in the context. No interpretation of them is free from objection, but that which seems to have, upon the whole most probability, understands them as referring to the words which follow, and reads the clause, Father, glorify Thy name, as part of this verse. The sense of the whole passage would therefore be, Father, save Me from this hour; but Thy will, not Mine, be done; for this cause came I unto this hour, that Thy name be glorified; Father, glorify Thy name. (Comp. Note on Luk. 12:49-50.)

Fuente: Ellicott’s Commentary for English Readers (Old and New Testaments)

27-33. A drop of his humiliation thus described, a moment of anticipated agony, is, in the presence of these Greeks, experienced by Jesus. It is as it were a premonitory pang of Gethsemane. But instantly the glorification follows. A voice from God the Father endorses the Son, and he responsively predicts before these Greeks his triumph over the prince of this world. Thus vividly is enacted before them in quick succession the Redeemer’s cross and coronation.

Fuente: Whedon’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments

27. My soul troubled The term soul here, in contrast with the word spirit, designates the lower sensitive part of the human nature. As at Gethsemane, so here, the conceptions of sin and hell, which are to be exemplified in the cross, fill his vision with amazement. By the punctuation which we should adopt, an interrogation point should be placed after the word hour. In his amazement therefore, the Lord exclaims, What shall I say? Shall I say, Father, save me from this hour? But no, he would add, For this cause, for the endurance of this agony, came I unto this hour. His sensitive nature would have cried for exemption; his higher spirit realized the greatness and the necessity of his mission. Between the two the great struggle results in the persistence in the path of suffering and glory.

Fuente: Whedon’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments

“Now is my soul troubled, and what shall I say? Father, save me from this hour? No, for this purpose have I come to this hour. Father, glorify your name!”

The coming of these earnest Greeks had brought home to Him the closeness of His hour, and He shuddered as He considered what lay before Him. ‘Father, save me from this hour’. The statement was both a question and a prayer. It was not a mere academic query. Even as He asked, He prayed, ‘Father, may I ask this question?’ His inner soul shrank from facing the consequences. There was no shame in that. But His cry must not be to be saved from it at any cost, for it is the purpose for which He has come. However much He would shrink from it He was determined to face it boldly. Rather does He long for His Father to be glorified through what He must face. And glorified He will be.

Fuente: Commentary Series on the Bible by Peter Pett

The manner of Christ’s glorification:

v. 27. Now is My soul troubled; and what shall I say? Father, save Me from this hour; but for this cause came I unto this hour.

v. 28. Father, glorify Thy name. Then came there a voice from heaven, saying, I have both glorified it, and will glorify it again.

v. 29. The people therefore that stood by and heard it said that it thundered; others said, An angel spake to Him.

v. 30. Jesus answered and said, This voice came not because of Me, but for your sakes.

v. 31. Now is the judgment of this world; now shall the prince of this world be cast out.

v. 32. And I, if I be lifted up from the earth, will draw all men unto Me.

v. 33. This He said, signifying what death He should die.

The thought of the coming ordeal, in a way, filled the soul of Christ with dread, He was deeply moved and agitated at the prospect. He felt something of the dread and fear of death. For Jesus was true man, whose flesh and blood shrank from the idea of death. Death is a judgment of God upon sins and sinners. To die in the stead of all men, as their substitute, and thus as the greatest sinner of all times, was a thought which filled the soul of Jesus with dread. He hardly knows what to say in this emergency. As though seeking counsel from His disciples, He asks: Shall I say, Father, deliver Me out of this hour? Should He plead to be saved the ordeal which His human nature dreaded? Every Christian may say a similar prayer when the hour of tribulation comes upon him; only he must never set his own will above the will of his heavenly Father. But even the thought of becoming unfaithful to His Father’s trust Jesus repudiates, since it is for this reason that He came into this hour. It is the goal and culmination of His life’s work. He cannot disappoint His Father at this time. Without His death His life would be fruitless. And so He corrects His prayer by asking that the work for which He came into the world continue: Father, glorify Thy name Jesus had fully regained His assurance, the spiritual balance necessary for the carrying out of the plan for the salvation of men. His death would redound to the glory of the Father, as would the whole work of salvation. And so Christ was ready, even at the cost of the greatest agony. And no sooner had He finished His prayer than a voice from heaven came in answer that God both had glorified, and would again glorify, His name. His name had been glorified in countless instances, but especially at the incarnation of the Son, and it would be glorified in a still more wonderful manner by the great Passion. So the answer of the Father was both an assurance and a promise. But it was made principally for the sake of the people. They should understand that it was God giving testimony of His Son, on account of the essential intimacy that obtained between them. The ignorant Jews had heard the sound, but had not understood the words. And so they expressed their opinion, some thinking that there had been a clap of thunder, others, that an angel had spoken with Jesus. The Lord therefore explains to them that the voice came for their sakes, in order that, if possible, they might accept Him as their Savior even now yet, in the eleventh hour, and thus be saved. For in the events that were beginning now, and that would transpire in the next few days, they should know that a great judgment was taking place, that the universe was on trial. The time of Christ’s suffering and death was the hour of decision for the whole world, and especially in this, that the prince of the world, the devil, would be cast out, conquered, and subdued. Through His Passion and death Christ took from the devil the right which he had assumed on account of the sins of mankind, namely, of keeping all men in subjection to him. By bearing the sins of the world and by effecting a complete reconciliation for them all, Jesus has taken away from the devil the power to keep men in his service. In this. way the hour of the world’s redemption is also the hour of decision, the hour of trial. In the end, the question will be whether men will stand by Christ, the Redeemer, or by Satan, the destroyer of their souls. To gain this great victory and eject the devil from his dominion, it was necessary that Jesus be lifted up from the earth, that He be elevated on the cross. But the accursed tree in this case was transformed into a throne of victory and grace. Through His death on the cross He would make it possible for all men to be drawn to Him; the redemption would be complete; the reconciliation would be assured to all men without exception. The cross of Christ is the ladder between earth and heaven. Here is glorious comfort for every person in all the great wide world.

Fuente: The Popular Commentary on the Bible by Kretzmann

Joh 12:27-28. Now is my soul troubled: Having taken a view of his own sufferings, and proposed them as an example to his disciples, the prospect moved him to a great degree, and he discovered to them the conflict which he felt in his bosom: “Now is my soul troubled; and what shall I say? Shall I say, Father, save me from this hour? (for so the passage evidently should be read and pointed) No, I will not say this, since for this very cause I came unto this hour.” Our Lord’s application to his heavenly Father, on this occasion, shews us what is the best method of easing the mind in deep distress. At the same time that he expressed an entire resignation to the will of his heavenly Father, he has taught us, that although the weakness of human nature may shrink at the first thoughts of suffering, his disciples are not to yield, but ought to fortify themselves through divine grace by just reflections on the wisdom of God, and on the happy end that he proposes by their afflictions. Our Saviour adds, “Father, glorify thy name;” which was a further expression of resignation, importing that he was willing to submit to whatever the Father should judge necessary for the manifestation of his perfections: “For this cause came I unto this hour; therefore, O Father, do to me as it shall seem good to thy divine wisdom, for the glorification of thy name in the redemption of mankind.” But the words were no sooner spoken, than a voice from heaven was heard, I have both glorified it, and will glorify it again. “I have glorified it by the miracles which thou hast already performed, and will continue to glorify it by other miracles yet to be performed.” The further glorification of God the Father promised to Jesus by the voice, signified the honour which should accrue to the Father from the new proofs wherewith his mission would be adorned; particularly the great miracles of his resurrection from the dead, of the effusion of the Spirit, and of the conversion of the Gentile world to the Christian religion.

Fuente: Commentary on the Holy Bible by Thomas Coke

Joh 12:27-28 . The realization of His sufferings and death, with which His discourse from Joh 12:23 was filled, shakes Him suddenly with apprehension and momentary wavering, springing from the human sensibility, which naturally seeks to resist the heaviest suffering, which He must yet undergo. To define this specially as the feeling of the divine anger (Beza, Calvin, Calovius, Hengstenberg, and many others), which He has certainly appeased by His death, rests on the supposition, which is nowhere justified, that, according to the object of the death (Joh 1:29 , Joh 3:14 , Joh 10:11-12 ; Mat 20:28 ; Rom 8:3 ; Rom 3:25 ; 2Co 5:21 , et al. ), its severity also is measured in the consciousness. Bengel well says: “ concurrebat horror mortis et ardor obedientiae .” The Lord is thus moved to pray; but He is for the moment uncertain for what ( ), , Euth. Zigabenus. First , a momentary fear of the sufferings of death (comp. on Luk 12:50 ) obtains the upper hand, in virtue of that human weakness, in which even He, the Son of God, because He had become man, had His share (Heb 4:15 ; Heb 5:7-8 ), and He prays: Father, save me from this hour , spare me this death-suffering which is awaiting me, quite as in Mat 26:39 , so that He thus not merely “cries for support through it, and for a shortening of it” (Ebrard). But immediately this wish, resulting from natural dread of suffering and death, [109] yields to the victorious consciousness of His great destiny; He gives expression to the latter ( , . . . ), and now prays: Father, glorify Thy name; i.e ., through the suffering of death appointed to me, let the glory of Thy name (of Thy being in its self-presentation, comp. on Mat 6:9 ) be manifested. The fulfilment of this prayer was brought about in this way, that by means of the death of Jesus (and of His consequent ) the divine decree of salvation was fulfilled, then everywhere made known through the gospel, in virtue of the Holy Spirit (Joh 14:16 ff.), and obedience to the faith established to the honour of the Father, which is the last aim of the work of Christ, Phi 2:11 .

] not as a designation of individual grief (Olshausen), but as the seat of the affections generally. He might also have said (comp. Joh 11:33 ; Joh 11:38 ), but would then have meant the deeper basis of life, to which the impressions of the , which is united with the , are conveyed. Comp. on Luk 1:46-47 .

, , . . . ] The hour of suffering is regarded as present, as though He were already at that hour . To take the words interrogatively: shall I say: save me? etc. (so Chrysostom, Theophylact, Jansen, Grotius, Lampe, and many others, including Lachmann, Tholuck, Kling, Schweizer, Maier, Lange, Ewald, Godet) yields the result of an actual prayer interwoven into a reflective monologue, and is therefore less suitable to a frame of mind so deeply moved.

] objecting, like our but no! See Hartung, Partikell . I. p. 36; Baeumlein, Partik . p. 13 f.

] Wherefore , is contained in the following prayer, , , . . . Consequently: therefore, in order that through my suffering of death Thy name may be glorified . The completion: in order that the world might be redeemed (Olshausen and older commentators), is not supplied by the context; to undergo this suffering (Grotius, De Wette, Luthardt, Lange, Ebrard, Godet; comp. Hengstenberg: “in order that my soul may be shaken”) is tautological; and Lampe: to be saved, is inappropriate. The is here preparative ; let only be enclosed within dashes, and the sense is made clearly to appear: but no therefore I came to this hour

Father, glorify , etc. Jesus might have said: , , , . . . . But the language, deeply emotional, throbs more unconnectedly, and as it were by starts.

The repetition of corresponds to the thrill of filial affection.

stands emphatically, in the first place, in antithesis to the reference which the previous prayer of Jesus contained to Himself. On the subject-matter, comp. Mat 26:39 .

] corresponding to this petition.

. .] The voice which came from heaven: I have glorified it (in Thy mission and Thy whole previous work), and shall again (through Thine impending departure by means of death to the ) glorify it , [110] is not to be regarded as actual, natural thunder (according to the O. T. view conceived of as the voice of the Lord, as in Psa 29 , Job 37:4 , and frequently), in which only the subjective disposition , the so-attuned inner ear of Jesus (and of the disciples), distinguished the words , . . .; while others, less susceptible to this divine symbolism of nature, believed only in a general way, that in the thunder an angel had spoken with Jesus; while others again, unsusceptible, understood the natural occurrence simply and solely as such, and took it for nothing further than what it objectively was. So substantially, not merely Paulus, Kuinoel, Lcke, Ammon, De Wette, Maier, Baeumlein, and several others, but also Hengstenberg. [111] Several have here had recourse to the later Jewish view of Bath-Kol (by which, however, only real literal voices, not natural phenomena, without speech, were understood; see Lbkert in the Stud. u. Krit . 1835, 3), as well as to the Gentile interpretations of thunder as the voice of the gods (see Wetstein). Against this entire view, it is decisive that John himself, the ear-witness, describes a , which was an objective occurrence; that he further repeats its express words; that, further, to take the first half of these words referring to the past, as the product of a merely subjective perception, is without any support in the prayer of Jesus; that, further, Jesus Himself, Joh 12:30 , gives His confirmation to the occurrence of an actual voice; that, finally, the also, Joh 12:29 , must have heard a speech . Hence we must abide by the interpretation that a voice actually issued from heaven , which John relates, and Jesus confirms as an objective occurrence. It is a voice which came miraculously from God (as was the case, according to the Synoptics, at the baptism and the transfiguration), yet as regards its intelligibility conditioned by the subjective disposition and receptivity of the hearers (so also Tholuck, Olshausen, Kling, Luthardt, Hofmann, Schriftbew . I. p. 391 f., Lange, Ebrard, Godet following the old commentators), which sounded with a tone as of thunder , so that the definite words which resounded in this form of sound remained unintelligible to the unsusceptible, who simply heard that majestic kind of sound, but not its contents, and said: ; whereas, on the other hand, others, more susceptible, certainly understood this much, that the thunder-like voice was a speech , but not what it said, and thought an angel (comp. Act 23:9 ) had spoken in this thunder-voice to Jesus. This opinion of theirs, however, does not justify us in regarding the divine word which was spoken as also actually communicated by angelic ministry (Hofmann), since, in fact, the utterance of the is not adduced as at all the true account, and since, moreover, the heavenly voice, according to the text, appears simply and solely as the answer of the Father .

[109] Which in itself is not only not immoral, but the absence of which would even lower the moral greatness and the worth of His sacrifice. Comp. Dorner, Jesu sndlose Vollkommenh . p. 6.

[110] The reference of to the O. T. revelation , which is now declared to be closed (Lange, L. J. II. p. 1208), is without any foundation in the context.

[111] See, in answer to him, some appropriate observations in Engelhardt, in the Luth. ZeitsChr. 1865, p. 209 ff. He, however, refers the to the fact that the Son, even in His sufferings, will allow the will of God entirely to prevail with Him. The glorifying of God, however, by means of the death of Jesus, which was certainly the culminating point of His obedience to the Father, reaches further, namely (see especially Joh 17:1-2 ) to God’s honour through the Lord’s attainment of exaltation throughout the whole world by means of His death. As refers to His munus propheticum , so to the fact that He attains to the munus regium through the fulfilment of the munus sacerdotale .

Fuente: Heinrich August Wilhelm Meyer’s New Testament Commentary

DISCOURSE: 1673
CHRISTS RESIGNATION

Joh 12:27-28. Now is my soul troubled; and what shall I say? Father save me from this hour: but for this cause came I unto this hour. Father, glorify thy name.

THE sight of one in affliction necessarily produces some emotion of pity in our breasts, if we be not dead to all the feelings of humanity. But if there be majesty in distress, and that majesty be accompanied with consummate goodness, we take a deeper interest in all the circumstances exhibited to our view. Behold then a spectacle, such as the world never saw before, never will see again! a sufferer, infinitely superior to the highest archangel in dignity and worth! a suffering God! Let us draw nigh with reverence, and learn from his own lips,

The depth of his troubles

Man had not yet touched his body; nor, whatever weight we may give to his apprehension of bodily sufferings, can we suppose that it was that alone, or that chiefly, which drew forth these bitter complaints.

His soul was now enduring the severest agonies
[He particularly says, Now is my soul troubled. If it be asked, What was the source of his troubles? we answer, he was now sustaining the wrath of God, and conflicting with all the powers of darkness.

It had been foretold that the Father should bruise his Son [Note: Isa 53:10. first part.], and smite him with the sword [Note: Zec 13:7.] of his inexorable justice. And now the season was come for the accomplishment of these prophecies. The wrath of God was the punishment due to sin: and that wrath Jesus was now enduring: yes; in order that he might redeem us from the curse of the law, he himself was become a curse [Note: Gal 3:10; Gal 3:13.].

But it had also been foretold that the Serpent should bruise his heel [Note: Gen 3:15.]. And he himself had just before said, that the prince of this world was coming to assault him [Note: Joh 14:30; Joh 12:31.]. Satan, when first our Lord entered on his ministry, had made repeated efforts to destroy him [Note: Luk 4:2-12.]; and, though foiled and vanquished, he retreated only for a season [Note: Luk 4:13.], determining to renew his assaults with increased vigour. This therefore seeming an opportunity peculiarly favourable to his designs, he failed not to improve it. He summoned all his principalities and powers to unite their efforts [Note: Col 2:15.]: and O, how desperate was their attack! Our blessed Lord himself, though victorious in the conflict, had almost fainted, if angels had not been sent from heaven to succour and support him [Note: Mat 4:11.].]

Under these agonies he was reduced to the greatest embarrassment
[Never was he embarrassed through the persecutions or cruelties of man: but when he endured the wrath of God, and the assaults of Satan, he could not but complain of his accumulated troubles: yea, so was he distressed, that he was at a loss what to say, or what to do. His nature dictated a prayer, which however he afterwards saw occasion to revoke. He begged that the cup might pass from him, and that he might be saved from that tremendous hour [Note: Some read the words with an interrogation; thus: What shall I say? Father, save me from this hour? But our translation seems preferable, if we compare the account in Mat 26:38-42.]. Nor was this petition in the least degree inconsistent with his fortitude or resignation. It shewed him to be a man; and it was such a petition as he might offer with perfect innocence; seeing that to dread and deprecate the wrath of God is not only lawful but our bounden duty.]

Recovering himself, however, he welcomes his afflictions, and states,

II.

The grounds of his submission to them

It was with a view to those very sufferings that he had come to that hour

[These sufferings had been foreseen, when he first engaged to redeem a fallen world [Note: Isa 53:10. latter part.]; and he had then stipulated to bear them for our sakes [Note: Psa 40:7-8.]. It was with a view to them that he had assumed our nature, without which he would have been incapable of bearing them [Note: Heb 2:9; Heb 2:14-15.]. And throughout the whole of his ministry he had frequently adverted to them as what he should undergo, as soon as his hour was fully come [Note: Luk 18:32-33.]. Yea, he had reproved Peter with great severity for attempting to dissuade him from his purpose [Note: Mat 16:21-23]: and had expressed his eager desire to be baptized with that bloody baptism, being greatly straitened till it should be accomplished [Note: Luk 12:50.]. And would he now recede? would he shrink from the trial now it was come upon him? would he rescind his own voluntary engagements, and abandon the work he had undertaken? No: difficult as it was to submit to these sufferings, he determined to endure them, since the purposes of his grace could in no other way be accomplished.]

They were necessary for the promoting of his Fathers glory

[This is strongly intimated in the latter petition. The Fathers justice could not have been so much glorified even in the destruction of the whole human race, as in the sufferings of his co-equal co-eternal Son: in these it appeared altogether inflexible. And how glorious would be the display of the Fathers love, when it was seen that he had adopted such a method of restoring man to his favour! Yea, how would every perfection shine forth in this stupendous mystery! Would Jesus then sacrifice the Fathers glory to his present feelings? When the Father had already glorified him by repeated attestations from heaven, and by so many miracles, would Jesus now draw back, and rob the Father of all the glory that was to accrue to him from this dark and painful dispensation? No, by no means; and therefore he not only acquiesces in the appointment, but even prays, that, whatever he himself might endure, God would glorify his own name.]

This subject is capable of most useful improvement
1.

For the awakening of our fears

[These sorrows were the just reward of our sins: and every one on whom sin shall be found must sustain them. Go then, ye who make a mock at sin, go follow at your ease the imaginations of your own hearts. Ye who think it unnecessary to repent of sin, go on in your impenitence; but consider, and learn, if these things were done in the green tree, what shall be done in the dry [Note: Luk 23:31.]? If the curse due to sin so overwhelmed the Lord of glory himself in the space of one hour, what effect shall it produce on you to all eternity? Then no supplication can remove, nor any submission mitigate, our anguish. This, this alone, is the time for prayer. If then we would escape the wrath of Almighty God, let us flee instantly to this very Saviour, whose blood can cleanse us from the guilt of sin, and whose grace can rescue us from its dominion.]

For the encouraging of our hopes

[What do we owe to the adorable Saviour, for that, in the hour of his extremity, he did not recede? But he saved not himself, that he might save us: He gave up his own life, that he might ransom us; and drank, even to the dregs, the cup of bitterness, that he might take it out of our hands for evermore. Let all then rest assured, that the debt once discharged by our great Surety, shall never be required at our hands, provided we believe in him.]

For the regulating of our conduct

[There is no sin in praying for the removal of afflictions, provided we be willing, on the whole, that Gods will should be done in preference to our own. But, when we see what the Lords will is, we must say, The cup which my Father has given me, shall I not drink it? We must desire above all things the glory of God: and cheerfully acquiesce in any dispensation, provided God may be honoured by it.]

Fuente: Charles Simeon’s Horae Homileticae (Old and New Testaments)

Now is my soul troubled; and what shall I say? Father, save me from this hour, but for this cause came I unto this hour. (28) Father, glorify thy name. Then came there a voice from heaven, saying, I have both glorified it, and will glorify it again. (29) The people therefore, that stood by, and heard it, said that it thundered: others said, An angel spake to him. (30) Jesus answered and said, This voice came not because of me, but for your sakes.

In reading the first of these verses, in consequence of the words of the Lord Jesus being improperly marked in the stops, the sense is apt to be overlooked. The Lord speaks of his soul being troubled. And, as the words are in our Bibles, it seems to convey an idea, as if the Lord was at a loss what to say. And what shall I say? But this could not be the case. He, in whom are hid all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge, could never pause, by way of considering what to say. Neither do our Lord’s words convey any such meaning, when the words themselves are placed as they ought to have been. Now is my soul troubled. And what. Shall I say Father save me from this hour? As if the Lord had said. Now is my soul troubled. And what if it be so. Shall I call upon the Father to save me from this hour? Oh! no. This were to defeat the very purpose for which I came. But for this cause came I unto this hour. I will therefore say, Father glorify thy Name. By reading the verse in this manner, we have the whole rendered perfectly clear and intelligible, And what a blessed view, the words give us of the Lord Jesus, at this solemn season. He had in full prospect before him, those tremendous exercises both of body and soul, which as the Head and Surety of his people, he had to go through. He felt, all that human nature could feel, upon the occasion. (See Heb 5:7-9 ) But in the midst of all, nothing of personal sorrow would he allow to stand in the way to obstruct the divine glory. Yea, the Lord intimated by his expressions, that in those humiliations, the divine glory should be the more manifested.

And the answer from heaven became the most blessed confirmation of what Christ had said. I have both glorified it, and will glorify it again. This was the third time, during our Lord’s ministry upon earth, in which God the Father had publicly proclaimed his perfect approbation to the Person, and Office-work, as Mediator, of his dear Son. Once, at Christ’s entrance upon it at his baptism, Mat 3:16-17 . Once again at Mount Tabor, at the transfiguration. Mat 17:5 . And now just before the close of his ministry, in the garden, and at the cross. I beg the Reader to ponder the subject well, for it is most blessed. All the words of the Lord are precious words, when at any time he speaks in love and mercy to his Church. But those are eminently so, in which God the Father, or God the Holy Ghost, speak to Christ as Mediator. For they confirm Christ’s authority, and prove that he was called of God, to be the servant and High Priest of Jehovah, as was Aaron. Heb 5:4-5 . The perfection of Christ’s person, and the perfection of his office, as our surety, are blessed things. But it forms a most essential part to our assurance in pleading both before God, when we can and do tell him, that the Lord himself both ordained the plan of mercy, and consecrated Christ his dear Son into the office of performing it. For when Christ took both the names and the nature of his people, to bear their sins, and to become their righteousness; the whole was in consequence of covenant-agreement between the persons of the Godhead. Hence the Church is represented as pleading this in prayer, and in which every child of God, truly taught of God, finds joy and comfort to join. Behold, O God! our shield! and look upon the face of thine anointed! Psa 84:9 .

In relation to the soul-troubles of Christ, and God’s glorifying his name in Christ; these are subjects in which our most earnest enquiries go but a little way. Who indeed can be competent to the apprehension of the soul agonies of the Redeemer, when the frowns and rebukes of his Father, as the Sinner’s Surety, went so near, as he saith himself, to break his heart, Psa 69:20 . And we must be possessed of somewhat more than human, or even angelic intellect, before we can enter into an apprehension of the full extent of the glory of Jehovah’s name, in the great events connected with the person and offices of Christ. It may not be improper, however, to attend to the scriptural account of this wonderful subject, in order to gather some few glimpses of the Lord’s manifested glory, when in answer to Christ’s prayer for the glorifying of his name, the Lord said, I have both glorified it, and will glorify it again.

That Jehovah in his three-fold character of person can receive no possible addition to his essential glory, by any act of his creatures, is a truth which both Scripture and reason loudly confirm. The everlasting obedience of the whole creation of God, had it been so without interruption, could not have added to God’s glory. Yea, the obedience and death of Christ did not. For the being and glory of Jehovah is incapable of accession or increase. And hence Christ himself, under the spirit of prophecy, saith, My goodness extendeth not to thee, but to the saints that are in the earth, and to the excellent, in whom is all my delight. Psa 16:2-3 . But, there is a glory which the Lord hath been pleased to manifest of himself, in his three-fold character of person, in covenant engagements towards the Church, whereby his name is glorified in every display of it, when at any time the Lord is pleased to make it known in any of the departments of nature, providence, and grace. And it is in this sense we are to consider the words of the Lord, when in answer to Christ’s prayer, God the Father said, I have both glorified it, and will glorify it again,

And hath not the Lord done so, in all the revelations he hath been pleased to make of himself, in his three-fold character of person, when in Christ, God-Man united, he hath communicated all that is capable of communication, in relation to his love to the Church from all eternity? Hath he not glorified himself to our apprehension, in the personal glory put upon Christ, as God-Man, when before a single revelation was made of him to the Church, yea, before the Church had been called into being, in this time-state of her existence, Christ was set up from everlasting, the wonder of heaven, the adoration of angels, and the present, future, and eternal praise of all his saints? Pro 8:22-23 ; Isa 9:6 ; Heb 1:6 ; Psa 148:14 .

And, to come down to the time-state of the Church, when we behold with what a vast apparatus Jehovah introduced Christ into the world, commanding all the angels to worship him, and the Church to love and adore him, what greater demonstrations could be given of Jehovah’s glorifying his name, than in such decided tokens of glory? In short, what is the Bible itself, from beginning to end, but one continued manifestation of Jehovah’s glory, set forth and magnified in all the riches of it, in the Person, Work, Offices, Relations, and Characters of the Lord Jesus Christ? And what but Jehovah’s glory is the ultimate object of the innumerable instances of love shewn to the Church in the Father’s favor, the Redeemer’s grace, and the communion and fellowship of the Holy Ghost? Rev 4:11 .

And, as in every manifestation Jehovah hath glorified his name in all that is past, so will he glorify it again in all that is to come. Particularly in reference (as this scripture might be supposed to have in view) to what remained, in the personal work and offices of Christ. God’s glory had been displayed in the whole of Christ’s ministry to the present hour, and God the Father engaged that it should be to the end . And when did ever the glory of God shine with more lustre than in the day of Christ on the cross, when he made his soul an offering for sin. Reader! let you and I attend to those gracious words of our God and Father to his dear Son, as they relate to the divine glory in Jesus Christ; and then, under the Holy Ghost’s teaching, we shall have a more sure word to take heed to, than all our own reasoning’s, or all those men here spoken of debated upon, whether it thundered, or whether it was an angel which spake to Jesus.

Fuente: Hawker’s Poor Man’s Commentary (Old and New Testaments)

27 Now is my soul troubled; and what shall I say? Father, save me from this hour: but for this cause came I unto this hour.

Ver. 27. Now is my soul troubled ] Christi perturbatio nos tranquillat, et infirmitas firmat, saith Augustine.

Father, save me from this hour ] As man, he naturally feared and deprecated death; such a dreadful death especially as he was to suffer. , saith the Greek litany; by thine unknown sufferings, good Lord, deliver us. Howbeit, this was but with his sensitive will; for his rational will was ever the same with that of his Father.

Fuente: John Trapp’s Complete Commentary (Old and New Testaments)

27. ] “Concurrebat horror mortis et ardor obedienti” (Bengel). And to express both these together in human speech was impossible: therefore ;

The following words must not be taken interrogatively (as by Theophyl., Grot., Tholuck, alli [165] .) [as if our Lord were doubting whether to say them or not]: for thus the whole sense is destroyed, besides the sentiment being most unworthy of Him who uttered it. The prayer is a veritable prayer; and answers to the prophetic Messianic prayers in the Psalms, which thus run “My soul is troubled; Lord, help me” (Psa 69:1 ; Psa 40:12-13 ; Psa 25:17 ; Psa 6:3-4 alli [166] .); and to that prayer afterwards in Gethsemane, Mat 26:39 .

[165] alli = some cursive mss.

[166] alli = some cursive mss.

] The misunderstanding of these words has principally led to the erroneous punctuation just noticed. = . ‘I came to this hour for this very purpose, that I might be saved from this hour:’ i.e. ‘ the going into, and exhausting this hour, this cup, is the very appointed way of my glorification .’ Das Hineinkommen ist selbst das Hindurchkommen, das Leiden selbst die Erldsung! Stier, ver. 77, edn. 2: so also Lampe. This interpretation does not, as Luthardt says, fall with the interrogative punctuation of the previous clause, but holds equally good when that is relinquished. The other interpretation, that of Meyer, alli [167] ., is, that Thy Name may be glorified . But surely this is to do violence to the order of thought. This particular does not come in till the next clause, and cannot without an improbable trajection be drawn into this.

[167] alli = some cursive mss.

Fuente: Henry Alford’s Greek Testament

Joh 12:27 . The distinct and near prospect of the cross as the path to glory which these Greeks called up in His thoughts prompts Him to exclaim: , “Now is my soul troubled”. is, as Weiss remarks, synonymous with , see Joh 13:21 . A conflict of emotions disturbs His serenity. “Concurrebat horror mortis et ardor obedientiae.” Bengel. ; “And what shall I say?” This clause certainly suggests that the next should also be interrogative, “Shall I say, Father, save me from this hour? But for this cause (or, with this object) came I to this hour.” That is, if He should now pray to be delivered from death this would be to stultify all He had up to this time been doing; for without His death His life would be fruitless. He would still be a seed preserved and not sown.

Fuente: The Expositors Greek Testament by Robertson

NASB (UPDATED) TEXT: Joh 12:27-36 a

27″Now My soul has become troubled; and what shall I say, ‘Father, save Me from this hour’? But for this purpose I came to this hour. 28Father, glorify Your name.” Then a voice came out of heaven: “I have both glorified it, and will glorify it again.” 29So the crowd of people who stood by and heard it were saying that it had thundered; others were saying, “An angel has spoken to Him.” 30Jesus answered and said, “This voice has not come for My sake, but for your sakes. 31Now judgment is upon this world; now the ruler of this world will be cast out. 32And I, if I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all men to Myself.” 33But He was saying this to indicate the kind of death by which He was to die. 34The crowd then answered Him, “We have heard out of the Law that the Christ is to remain forever; and how can You say, ‘The Son of Man must be lifted up’? Who is this Son of Man?” 35So Jesus said to them, “For a little while longer the Light is among you. Walk while you have the Light, so that darkness will not overtake you; he who walks in the darkness does not know where he goes. 36While you have the Light, believe in the Light, so that you may become sons of Light.”.

Joh 12:27 “My soul has become troubled” This is a perfect passive indicative. The agent (the Father, Satan, circumstances, etc.) is not expressed. It is a strong term used in several ways in the NT.

a. Herod’s fear (Mat 2:3)

b. the disciples’ fear (Mat 14:26)

c. Jesus’ unsettled anxiety (Joh 12:27; Joh 13:21; also note Mat 26:38; Mar 14:34)

d. the Church in Jerusalem (Act 15:24)

e. false teachers’ disruption of the churches of Galatia (Gal 1:7)

This was John’s way of relating Jesus’ human struggle with the upcoming trauma of His crucifixion (cf. Mar 14:32 ff). John does not record Jesus’ agony in Gethsemane, but this is the same occasion.

“save Me from this hour” There is much discussion about the exact meaning of this statement. Is this a prayer (i.e., Mat 26:39)? Is this a surprised reaction at what should not be done (NET Bible)?

“for this purpose I came to this hour” Jesus’ life unfolded according to a divine plan (cf. Luk 22:22; Act 2:23; Act 3:18; Act 4:28) which Jesus fully understood (cf. Mat 20:28; Mar 10:45).

Joh 12:28 “glorify Your name” The Father responds in Joh 12:28 b. This term “glorify” is very fluid. It can refer to

1. pre-existent glory (cf. Joh 17:5)

2. Jesus’ revelation of the Father (cf. Joh 17:4)

3. Jesus’ crucifixion and resurrection (cf. Joh 17:1)

See note at Joh 1:14.

“a voice out of heaven” The rabbis called this a bath-kol. Since the time of Malachi there had been no prophetic voice in Israel. If God’s will was to be confirmed, it would be done by a voice from heaven. The Gospels record that God spoke three times during Jesus’ life.

1. at Jesus’ baptism, Mat 3:17

2. at the transfiguration, Mat 17:5

3. here in this verse

Joh 12:29 “So the crowd of people who stood by and heard it were saying” There are two interpretations of what happened: (1) it was thunder. This was used of God speaking in the OT (cf. 2Sa 22:14; Job 37:4; Psa 29:3; Psa 18:13; Psa 104:7) or (2) an angel spoke to Him. This is similar to the confusion about Saul’s experience in Act 9:7; Act 22:9.

Joh 12:30 “Jesus answered and said, ‘This voice has not come for My sake, but for your sakes'” This phrase is a Semitic comparison. This means it was not solely for them but primarily for them (cf. Joh 11:42).

Joh 12:31 “Now judgement is upon this world” This is a parallel construction with the following phrase (“the ruler of this world will be cast out”). The time when this occurred is not specified (see Special Topic following).

I surely agree with F. F. Bruce, Answers to Questions (p. 198), that Joh 12:31 is another example of what C. H. Dodd called “realized eschatology.” For John, Jesus has already brought both salvation to believers and judgment to unbelievers. In a sense this is similar to a grammatical form called “prophetic perfect.” A future something is so certain that it is expressed as already occurring!

“the ruler of this world” This refers to a personal evil force (cf. Joh 14:30; Joh 16:11) known in Hebrew as “Satan” or “adversary” (cf. Job 1-2) or in Greek as “the devil” or “slanderer” (cf. Mat 4:1; Mat 4:5; Mat 4:8; Mat 4:11; Mat 13:39; Mat 25:41; Joh 6:70; Joh 8:44; Joh 13:2; 2Co 4:4; Eph 2:2). These two names are synonymous in Mat 4:1-11 and Joh 13:2; Joh 13:27. He is cast out of heaven so that he cannot continue to accuse/slander Jesus’ followers.

SPECIAL TOPIC: PERSONAL EVIL

“will be cast out” This is a future passive indicative. Scripture does not indicate the exact time of Satan’s fall from heaven. Satan may be discussed in Isaiah 14 and Ezekiel 28 in a secondary sense. The prophetic passages deal with the prideful kings of Babylon and Tyre. Their sinful arrogance reflects Satan’s (cf. Isa 14:12; Isa 14:15; Eze 28:16). However, Jesus said He saw Satan fall during the mission trip of the seventy (cf. Luk 10:18).

There is a development of Satan throughout the OT. Originally he was a servant angel, but through pride, became an enemy of God. The best discussion of this controversial subject is in A. B. Davidson’s Old Testament Theology pp. 300-306.

SPECIAL TOPIC: WAR IN HEAVEN

Joh 12:32 “and I, if I am lifted up” This is a third class conditional sentence which meant potential action. This term can mean

1. lifted up (cf. Joh 3:14)

2. crucified (cf. Joh 8:28)

3. exalted (cf. Act 2:33; Act 5:31)

4. highly exalted (cf. Php 2:9)

It is this multiple connotation of terms (double entendre) that characterizes John’s Gospel.

“will draw all men to Me” This may be an allusion to YHWH’s covenant love for Israel in Jer 31:3 which, of course, is the passage on “the new covenant” (cf. Jer 31:31-34). God woos people by His love for and actions toward them. This same metaphorical use of this term is in Joh 6:44 and explained in Joh 6:65.

Here the “all” is the universal invitation and promise of redemption (cf. Gen 3:15; Gen 12:3; Exo 19:5; Isa 2:2-4; Joh 1:9; Joh 1:12; Joh 1:29; Joh 3:16; Joh 4:42; Joh 10:16; 1Ti 2:4; 1Ti 4:10; Tit 2:11; 2Pe 3:9; 1Jn 2:2; 1Jn 4:14)!

There is a significant variant in this phrase. The “all” can be masculine, which would be translated “all men” and is found in the ancient Greek manuscripts P75 (VID), i2, B, L, and W, while the neuter, which would be translated “all things,” is found in P66 and . If it is the NEUTER it would speak of the cosmic redemption of Christ similar to Col 1:16-17, which would probably reflect the Gnostic heresy so evident in 1 John. The UBS4 gives the masculine a “B” rating (almost certain).

Joh 12:33 “He said this to indicate the kind of death by which He was to die” This is yet another editorial comment by John. This is related to Deu 21:23 where hanging on a tree was termed “cursed by God.” This was why the religious leaders wanted Jesus crucified, not stoned. Jesus bore the curse of the Law for us (cf. Gal 3:13).

Joh 12:34 “The crowd then answered Him. . .the Christ is to remain forever” This may be an allusion to Psa 89:4; Psa 89:29; Psa 89:35-37. The OT expected only one coming of the Messiah and His establishing of a Palestinian reign of world peace (cf. Psa 110:4; Isa 9:7; Eze 37:25 and Dan 7:14). For “forever” see Special Topic at Joh 6:58.

“Son of Man” The crowd (see Contextual Insights, C) must have heard Jesus teach/preach (possibly in Joh 12:23-24 for the title and Joh 12:30-32 for the verb “lift up”) because they use His unique self-designation. This is the only place it is used by others. It was not a standard title or Messianic designation within Judaism.

Joh 12:35 “Walk while you have the Light” Jesus is urging His hearers to respond immediately to His words. His time on earth was limited. He was about to enter His last week on earth. His predestined hour had come (Joh 12:23).

In a sense this phrase (as so much in John) has a historical referent and an existential referent. What Jesus said is true for everyone who hears the gospel (i.e., the Parable of the Soils).

This is the metaphorical use of “walk” as lifestyle (cf. Eph 4:1; Eph 4:17; Eph 5:2; Eph 5:15). This is a present active imperative, which continues Jesus emphasis on belief as an ongoing relationship and discipleship, not just an initial decision (cf. Joh 12:44-46).

Joh 12:36 This theme of Jesus as the light of the world was a major recurrent emphasis in John (cf. Joh 1:4-5; Joh 1:7-9; Joh 3:19-21; Joh 5:35; Joh 8:12; Joh 9:5; Joh 11:9-10; Joh 12:35-36; Joh 12:46). Darkness and light were also contrasting spiritual realities in Jewish Wisdom Literature and the Dead Sea Scrolls.

Fuente: You Can Understand the Bible: Study Guide Commentary Series by Bob Utley

Now = At this moment. Not the “Now” of Joh 11:1, Joh 11:5.

soul. Greek. psuche; here used in the personal sense = I myself: App-110.

troubled. Compare Joh 11:33; Joh 13:21; Joh 14:1, Joh 14:27.

and what shall I say?, &c. Supply the Ellipses (App-6) that follow, thus: (Shall I say) “Father, save Me from this hour? “(No!) It is for this cause I am come to this hour. (I will say) “Father, glorify Thy name”.

Father. App-98. See Joh 1:14.

Fuente: Companion Bible Notes, Appendices and Graphics

27.] Concurrebat horror mortis et ardor obedienti (Bengel). And to express both these together in human speech was impossible: therefore ;

The following words must not be taken interrogatively (as by Theophyl., Grot., Tholuck, alli[165].) [as if our Lord were doubting whether to say them or not]: for thus the whole sense is destroyed, besides the sentiment being most unworthy of Him who uttered it. The prayer is a veritable prayer; and answers to the prophetic Messianic prayers in the Psalms, which thus run-My soul is troubled; Lord, help me (Psa 69:1; Psa 40:12-13; Psa 25:17; Psa 6:3-4 alli[166].); and to that prayer afterwards in Gethsemane, Mat 26:39.

[165] alli = some cursive mss.

[166] alli = some cursive mss.

] The misunderstanding of these words has principally led to the erroneous punctuation just noticed. = . I came to this hour for this very purpose,-that I might be saved from this hour: i.e. the going into, and exhausting this hour, this cup, is the very appointed way of my glorification. Das Hineinkommen ist selbst das Hindurchkommen, das Leiden selbst die Erldsung! Stier, ver. 77, edn. 2: so also Lampe. This interpretation does not, as Luthardt says, fall with the interrogative punctuation of the previous clause, but holds equally good when that is relinquished. The other interpretation, that of Meyer, alli[167]., is, that Thy Name may be glorified. But surely this is to do violence to the order of thought. This particular does not come in till the next clause, and cannot without an improbable trajection be drawn into this.

[167] alli = some cursive mss.

Fuente: The Greek Testament

Joh 12:27. , now) Jesus had various foretastes of His passion, by which lie prepared Himself for it. This now, , has great weight: a second now occurs, Joh 12:31, Now is the judgment of this world. [So also ch. Joh 13:31, Now is the Son of man glorified. In both instances there follows after the now, etc., a declaration of the shortness of the time yet left to Him: in this passage, at Joh 12:35, Yet a little while is the light with you: in the other passage (ch. Joh 13:31), at Joh 12:33, Yet a little while I am with you.-V. g.]-, is troubled) A becoming declaration. The horror of death, and the ardour of His obedience, were meeting together.[320]- , and what shall I say) Jesus immediately sustains [buoys up] His soul in that very , now. A double-membered speech follows this formula; and the formula itself has this force, that His thought is to be regarded as having conceived the whole idea expressed [sentiment, viz., not only natures instinctive shrinking from suffering, but also full approval of Gods will] in one moment, although human language could not comprise the full expression of the whole in one moment; hence, as it were for the sake of [precaution, lest His following words should be misunderstood, as though He were doubting, should He choose suffering], He saith, what SHALL I Say? not, what shall I choose? with which comp. [the rather different experience of Paul] Php 1:22, What I shall choose I wot not: for I am in a strait betwixt two, having a desire to depart.- , save Me) The expression, Let this cup pass [Mat 26:39], is akin to the expression here.- ) from this hour of suffering. For the soul of Jesus was vividly realizing to itself this [hour of suffering], Joh 12:23.-, but however) Akin to this is tint expression, , nevertheless, not as I will, but as Thou wilt [Mat 26:39].- , for this cause) Therefore came I to this hour, that I might come to this hour, and drain its cup of suffering to the dregs. An elliptical Ploce. [See Appendix. This figure is, when the same expression is put twice, once in the simple sense of the word itself, and once to express an attribute of it.]

[320] Truly both the glory and humiliation of Jesus Christ, the Son of GOD, exceed all comprehension. Thence resulted the marvellous attempering [temperamentum; mixture in due proportions] of the sacred affections of mind in the same Divine Being, of His thoughts, words, and whole course of action, in relation to the Father, to His disciples, and to all other men; whilst at one time the one state [that of His humiliation], at another time the other state [that of His Divine glory], claimed to itself the prominent place: with however this proviso, that in both cases the Becoming, that is, what was worthy of His own Divine Majesty, and condescension to His wretched brethren, in an altogether incomparable manner harmonise with one another, and agree together. To express these with propriety, not either the wisdom or skill of man would have sufficed: but the altogether exquisite success of the Evangelists, in this respect, plainly betrays the fact that they used a style divinely taught them.-Harm., p. 451.

Fuente: Gnomon of the New Testament

Joh 12:27

Now is my soul troubled;-[The full shadow of the awful experience through which he is so soon to pass falls across his pathway and overwhelms him with its darkness. The humanity shuddered with a horror that only proved its humanity, and brought into clearer relief the grandeur of its final victory over itself.]

and what shall I say?-What prayer shall I offer to my Father and with what words shall it be clothed? In anticipation of the sufferings and death, he in his human feelings shrank back from it, and pondered whether he should ask God to save him from the sufferings that were before him.

Father, save me from this hour.-He now thought of his having come into the world to endure the very sufferings from which he now shrank so he did not make the prayer. [A footnote has the interrogative hour? Some think this to be the only form that can be reconciled with the character of Jesus, and the outcome of the struggle. Passing through the profound trouble of his soul, he soliloquizes in the presence of those surrounding him: Oh, what shall I do? Shall I yield to my human shrinking, and ask my Father to save me from this supreme hour which is approaching?]

But for this cause came I unto this hour.-[All that has preceded, the incarnation, the life, the teachings, the miracles, leading up to this hour, were important because of their relations to this hour. The atonement is the climax of all that has preceded.]

Fuente: Old and New Testaments Restoration Commentary

is: Joh 11:33-35, Joh 13:21, Psa 69:1-3, Psa 88:3, Isa 53:3, Mat 26:38, Mat 26:39, Mat 26:42, Mar 14:33-36, Luk 22:44, Luk 22:53, Heb 5:7

what: Isa 38:15, Luk 12:49, Luk 12:50

Father: Joh 11:41, Mat 26:53, Mat 26:54

but: Joh 18:37, Luk 22:53, 1Ti 1:15, Heb 2:14, Heb 10:5-9

Reciprocal: Lev 2:4 – meat offering Lev 4:8 – General 2Sa 24:14 – I am in 1Ch 21:13 – I am in Psa 22:14 – I am Psa 31:15 – My times Psa 55:4 – My Psa 69:20 – I am Psa 109:22 – and my Pro 14:10 – heart Isa 53:11 – see Mat 26:37 – sorrowful Mar 9:19 – O faithless Mar 14:34 – My soul Mar 14:36 – nevertheless Mar 14:41 – the hour Luk 3:21 – and praying Luk 22:42 – Father Joh 11:42 – I knew Joh 14:1 – not Joh 14:31 – that the Joh 17:1 – the hour Joh 18:11 – my Joh 21:18 – thou wouldest not Rom 15:3 – Christ Phi 1:20 – whether Heb 12:2 – endured

Fuente: The Treasury of Scripture Knowledge

THE SANCTIFICATION OF SORROW

Now is My soul troubled: and what shall I say? Father, save Me from this hour: but for this cause came I unto this hour. Father, glorify Thy Name.

Joh 12:27-28

Joy and sorrow are the warp and woof of human life. No life is wholly free either from the one or from the other. They are intimately bound together, but in no life was the juxtaposition of joy and sorrow more striking than in the life of our Divine Lord. The transition from the hosannas and rejoicings of the admiring crowd to the deep agony of the Passion, and then the new birth of joy and triumph on the morning of Easter Dayall this teaches an impressive lesson for human hearts. It was at the moment of His exaltation that He shed His tears over the devoted city of His race. It was the voices which cried, Blessed be He that cometh in the Name of the Lord, Hosanna, which should soon cry, Crucify Him, crucify Him!

I. There are two ways of regarding the sorrows of life.To one whose view of life is only worldly, the sorrow which occurs in it can seem only as a drawback, a misfortune, a diminution of lifes true purpose; but in the Christian view sorrow is the occasion of setting forth the glory of God. Father, glorify Thy Name. For, first of all, the sorrow or the suffering which comes to us is the Will of God. Suffering is a mark not of His anger but of His love, and as the Saviour of the world is made perfect through suffering, so by our sufferings, if we do but bear them aright, we are fellow-sufferers with Him. We fill up what is lacking, as St. Paul says, in His sufferings, and there is no sorrow and no suffering which is not sanctified to the children of earth, if only that small prayer be theirsFather, not my will, but Thine be done.

II. Again, there are lessons in sorrow which cannot be learned anywhere else.It is sorrow more than joy that seems to open the gate of heaven. It is in the school of suffering, though we be but in the lowest forms of that school, that we learn lessons of patience and of the discipline of the soul, and of the insight into Divine things. It is there that those of us who have sufferedand who has not?there that we have seemed to know something of the infinite depth of the Divine compassion. Yes; and there is in sorrow the lesson which it is hard to learn elsewherethe lesson of sympathy. By our own sorrows and sufferings we can feel not only for, but with, those of others. It is only too easy in this world to pass by on the other side when men are in trouble. Of this I am quite surethat it is at the foot of the Cross alone that that lesson is learned.

III. There is one sorrow, the greatest of all, which needs its explanation from the life of Jesus Christ.I would not make light of it. Every year as we grow older the vacant spaces in the circle of those whom we have loved seem to grow more numerous and more pitiful, and, if this world be all, the pitifulness of them remains insoluble; but the Christian who knows that this life, truly regarded, is a discipline, a preparation for a higher life hereafter, feels the blessing that lies beyond the pain. Each departed friend, says a great German thinker, is a magnet that attracts us to the next world. And as the years pass, and those whom we have known rise one after another from our side and lift the veil and pass out into the darkness, it comes to be that we seem to have more friends over there than here. Our heart is more and more where our friends arein heaven; and for us, too, when the time comes, the transition maywillin the mercy of the most Merciful, be but a step. So it is that the sanctification of sorrow does indeed glorify Gods holy Name.

Bishop Welldon.

Illustration

To say, as some do, that the only cause of our Lords trouble was the prospect of His own painful death on the Cross, is a very unsatisfactory explanation. At this rate it might justly be said that many a martyr has shown more calmness and courage than the Son of God. Such a conclusion is, to say the least, most revolting. Yet this is the conclusion to which men are driven if they adopt the modern notion that Christs death was only a great example of self-sacrifice. Nothing can ever explain our Lords trouble of soul, both here and in Gethsemane, except the old doctrine, that He felt the burden of mans sin pressing Him down. It was the mighty weight of a worlds guilt imputed to Him and meeting on His head, which made Him groan and agonise, and cry, Now is my soul troubled.

Fuente: Church Pulpit Commentary

Troubled means to be agitated, which was the condition of mind that was upon the Saviour. He was beginning to feel the awful emotions that came to him in greater force later in the garden. Save me from this hour was equivalent to his prayer for the removal of the “cup,” mentioned in Mat 26:39. More will be said on that subject when we come to Joh 18:11. Jesus asked his Father to save him from this hour (not the cross). When later He prayed “if it be possible” let the cup pass, it meant virtually the same resignation of spirit that is expressed here in the words, for this cause came I unto this Dour. The human nature of Jesus longed for relief from his mental suffering, but his divine knowledge told him that he must endure it.

Fuente: Combined Bible Commentary

THESE verses show us what Peter meant, when he said, “There are some things hard to be understood” in Scripture. (2Pe 3:16.) There are depths here which we have no line to fathom thoroughly. This need not surprise us, or shake our faith. The Bible would not be a book “given by inspiration of God,” if it did not contain many things which pass man’s finite understanding. With all its difficulties it contains thousands of passages which the most unlearned may easily comprehend. Even here, if we look steadily at these verses, we may gather from them lessons of no mean importance.

We have, first, in these verses, a great doctrine indirectly proved. That doctrine is the imputation of man’s sin to Christ.

We see the Savior of the world, the eternal Son of God troubled and disturbed in mind: “Now is my soul troubled.” We see Him who could heal diseases with a touch, cast out devils with a word, and command the waves and winds to obey Him, in great agony and conflict of spirit. Now how can this be explained?

To say, as some do, that the only cause of our Lord’s trouble was the prospect of His own painful death on the cross, is a very unsatisfactory explanation. At this rate it might justly be said that many a martyr has shown more calmness and courage than the Son of God. Such a conclusion is, to say the least, most revolting. Yet this is the conclusion to which men are driven if they adopt the modern notion, that Christ’s death was only a great example of self-sacrifice.

Nothing can ever explain our Lord’s trouble of soul, both here and in Gethsemane, except the old doctrine, that He felt the burden of man’s sin pressing Him down. It was the mighty weight of a world’s guilt imputed to Him and meeting on his head, which made Him groan and agonize, and cry, “Now is my soul troubled.” Forever let us cling to that doctrine, not only as untying the knot of the passage before us, but as the only ground of solid comfort for the heart of a Christian. That our sins have been really laid on our Divine Substitute, and borne by Him, and that His righteousness is really imputed to us and accounted ours,-this is the real warrant for Christian peace. And if any man asks how we know that our sins were laid on Christ, we bid him read such passages as that which is before us, and explain them on any other principle if he can. Christ has borne our sins, carried our sins, groaned under the burden of our sins, been “troubled” in soul by the weight of our sins, and really taken away our sins. This, we may rest assured, is sound doctrine: this is Scriptural theology.

We have, secondly, in these verses, a great mystery unfolded. That mystery is the possibility of much inward conflict of soul without sin.

We cannot fail to see in the passage before us, a mighty mental struggle in our blessed Savior. Of its depth and intensity we can probably form very little conception. But the agonizing cry, “My soul is troubled,”-the solemn question, “What shall I say?”-the prayer of suffering flesh and blood, “Father, save Me from this hour,”-the meek confession, “For this cause came I unto this hour,”-the petition of a perfectly submissive will, “Father, glorify Thy name,”-what does all this mean? Surely there can be only one answer. These sentences tell of a struggle within our Savior’s breast, a struggle arising from the natural feelings of one who was perfect man, and as man could suffer all that man is capable of suffering. Yet He in whom this struggle took place was the Holy Son of God, “In Him is no sin.” (1Jn 3:5.)

There is a fountain of comfort here for all true servants of Christ, which ought never to be overlooked. Let them learn from their Lord’s example that inward conflict of soul is not necessarily in itself a sinful thing. Too many, we believe, from not understanding this point, go heavily all their days on their way to heaven. They fancy they have no grace, because they find a fight in their own hearts. They refuse to take comfort in the Gospel, because they feel a battle between the flesh and the Spirit. Let them mark the experience of their Lord and Master, and lay aside their desponding fears. Let them study the experience of His saints in every age, from Paul downwards, and understand that as Christ had inward conflicts so must Christians expect to have them also. To give way to doubts and unbelief, is certainly wrong, and robs us of our peace. There is a faithless despondency, unquestionably, which is blameworthy, and must be resisted, repented of, and brought to the fountain for all sin, that it may be pardoned. But the mere presence of fight and strife and conflict in our hearts, is in itself no sin. The believer may be known by his inward warfare as well as by his inward peace.

We have, thirdly, in these verses, a great miracle exhibited. That miracle is the heavenly Voice described in this passage-a voice which was heard so plainly that people said “it thundered,”-proclaiming, “I have glorified my name, and will glorify it again.”

This wondrous Voice was heard three times during our Lord’s earthly ministry. Once it was heard at His baptism, when the heavens were opened and the Holy Ghost descended on Him.-Once it was heard at His transfiguration, when Moses and Elias appeared for a season with Him, before Peter, James, and John.-Once it was heard here at Jerusalem, in the midst of a mixed crowd of disciples and unbelieving Jews. On each occasion we know that it was the Voice of God the Father. But why and wherefore this Voice was only heard on these occasions, we are left to conjecture. The thing was a deep mystery, and we cannot now speak particularly of it.

Let it suffice us to believe that this miracle was meant to show the intimate relations and unbroken union of God the Father and God the Son, throughout the period of the Son’s earthly ministry. At no period during His incarnation was there a time when the eternal Father was not close to Him, though unseen by man.-Let us also believe that this miracle was meant to signify to bystanders the entire approval of the Son by the Father, as the Messiah, the Redeemer, and the Savior of man. That approval the Father was pleased to signify by voice three times, as well as to declare by signs and mighty deeds, performed by the Son in His name. These things we may well believe. But when we have said all, we must confess that the Voice was a mystery. We may read of it with wonder and awe, but we cannot explain it.

We have, lastly, in these verses, a great prophecy delivered. The Lord Jesus declared, “I, if I be lifted up from the earth, will draw all men unto Me.”

Concerning the true meaning of these words there can be but one opinion in any candid mind. They do not mean, as is often supposed, that if the doctrine of Christ crucified is lifted up and exalted by ministers and teachers, it will have a drawing effect on hearers. This is undeniably a truth, but it is not the truth of the text. They simply mean that the death of Christ on the cross would have a drawing effect on all mankind. His death as our Substitute, and the Sacrifice for our sins, would draw multitudes out of every nation to believe on Him and receive Him as their Savior. By being crucified for us, and not by ascending a temporal throne, He would set up a kingdom in the world, and gather subjects to Himself.

How thoroughly this prophecy has been fulfilled for eighteen centuries, the history of the Church is an abundant proof. Whenever Christ crucified has been preached, and the story of the cross fully told, souls have been converted and drawn to Christ, just as iron-filings are drawn to a magnet, in every part of the world. No truth so exactly suits the wants of all children of Adam, of every color, climate, and language, as the truth about Christ crucified.

And the prophecy is not yet exhausted. It shall yet receive a more complete accomplishment. A day shall come when every knee shall bow before the Lamb that was slain, and every tongue confess that He is Lord, to the glory of God the Father. (Php 2:10-11.) He that was “lifted up” on the cross shall yet sit on the throne of glory, and before Him shall be gathered all nations. Friends and foes, each in their own order, shall be “drawn” from their graves, and appear before the judgment-seat of Christ. Let us take heed in that day that we are found on His right hand!

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Notes-

v27.-[Now is my soul troubled, etc., etc.] This remarkable verse comes in somewhat abruptly. Yet the connection is not hard to trace. Our Lord had just been speaking of His own atoning death. The thought and prospect of that death appears to draw from Him the expressions of this verse, which I will now examine in order.

[Now is my soul troubled.] This sentence implies a sudden, strong mental agony, which came over our Lord, troubling, distressing, and harassing Him.-What was it from? Not from the mere foresight of a painful death on the cross, and the bodily suffering attending it. No doubt human nature, even when sinless, naturally revolts from pain and suffering. Yet mere bodily pain has been endured for weeks by many a martyr, and even by heathen fanatics in India, without a groan or a murmur.-No: it was the weight of the world’s imputed sin laid upon our Lord’s head, which pressed Him downward, and made Him cry, “Now is my soul troubled.” It was the sense of the whole burden of man’s transgression imputed to Him, which, as He drew near to the cross, weighed Him down so tremendously. It was not His bodily sufferings, either anticipated or felt, but our sins, which here, at Gethsemane, and at Calvary, agonized and racked His soul.

Let us notice here the reality of Christ’s substitution for us. He was made “a curse” for us, and “sin” for us, and He felt it for a time most deeply. (Gal 3:13; 2Co 5:21.) Those who deny the doctrine of substitution, imputation, and atonement, can never explain the expressions before us satisfactorily.

Poole remarks, “There is a vast difference between this trouble of spirit in Christ, and that which is in us. Our troubles are upon reflection for our own sins, and the wrath of God due to us therefore; His troubles were for the wrath of God due to us for our sins.-Our troubles are because we have personally grieved God; His were because those given to Him had offended God.-We are afraid of our eternal condemnation; He was only afraid by a natural fear of death, which naturally rises higher according to the kind of death we die.-Our troubles have a mixture of despair, distrust, sinful horror: there was no such thing in His trouble.-Our troubles, in their natural tendency, are killing and destroying: only by accident and the wise ordering of Divine providence do they prove advantageous, and lead us to Him. His trouble, in the very nature of it, was pure, and clean, and sanative, and healing.-But that He was truly troubled, and that such a trouble did truly agree to His office as Mediator, and is a great foundation of peace, quiet, and satisfaction to us, is out of question. By some of these stripes we are healed.”

We should remember and admire the prayer in the Litany of the Greek Church: “By Thine unknown sufferings, good Lord deliver us.”

Rollock observes here, “If you ask me what the Divine nature in Christ was doing when He said, ‘My soul is troubled,’ and whether it was divided asunder from His human nature? I reply that it was not divided, but contained itself, or held itself passive, while the human nature was suffering. If it had exercised itself in its full power and glory, our Lord could not possibly have suffered.”

(The whole of Rollock’s remarks on this difficult verse are singularly good, and deserve close study.)

Hutcheson observes, “The rise and cause of this trouble was thus: the Godhead hiding itself from the humanity’s sense, and the Father letting out not only an apprehension of sufferings to come, but a present taste of the horror of His wrath due to man for sin. Christ was amazed, perplexed, and overwhelmed with it in His humanity. And no wonder, since He had the sins of all the elect laid upon Him, by imputation, to suffer for.”

Hengstenberg remarks, “The only solution of this extreme trouble is the vicarious significance of the sufferings and death of Christ. If our chastisement was upon Him, in order that we might have peace, then in Him must have been concentrated all the horror of death. He bore the sin of the world, and the wages of that sin was death. Death therefore must to Him assume its most frightful form. The physical suffering was nothing compared to the immeasurable suffering of soul which impended over the Redeemer, and the full greatness and depth of which He clearly perceives. Therefore, in Heb 5:7, “a fear” is described as that which pressed with such awful weight upon our Lord. When God freed Him from that He saved Him from death. Thus, when the suffering of Christ is apprehended as vicarious and voluntary, all the accompanying circumstances can be easily understood.”

Let us note the exceeding guilt and sinfulness of sin. The thing which made even God’s own Son, who had power to work works that none else did beside Him, groan, and cry, “My soul is troubled,” can be no light thing. He that would know the full measure of sin and guilt should mark attentively this verse, and the expressions used by our Lord at Gethsemane and Calvary.

It is worth noticing that this verse, Mat 26:38, and Mar 14:34, are the only three places in the Gospels where our Lord speaks of “My soul.”

The word “now,” I suspect, is emphatic: “Now, at this special time, my soul has begun to be specially troubled.”

[And what shall I say?] These words are thought by some, as Theophylact, Grotius, Bloomfield, and Barnes, to be wrongly translated in our English version. They would render them, “And what? What is my duty? What does the hour require of Me? Shall I say, Save Me,” etc., etc.-I much prefer our English version as it is. I believe the question is strongly significant of the agony and conflict through which our Lord’s soul was passing.-“What shall I say under this sense of pressing, overwhelming trouble? My human nature bids me say one thing,-acting alone and urging me alone. My knowledge of the purpose for which I came into the world bids me say another thing. What then shall I say?” Such a question as this is a strong proof of our Lord’s real, true humanity.

Rollock observes, ” ‘What shall I say?’ is the language of the highest perplexity and anxiety of mind. In the height of anguish is the height of perplexity, so that a man knows not what to say or do. The Lord found deliverance in prayer. But the perpetual cry of the lost will be, ‘What shall I say? What shall I do?’ From that perplexity and anguish they will never be delivered.”

Bengel remarks, “Jesus says, ‘What shall I say?’ not, ‘What shall I choose?’ Compare with this the different expression of Paul, ‘What I shall choose I wist not, for I am in a strait betwixt two, having a desire to depart.’ ” (Php 1:22-23.)

Ecolampadius thinks the question means, “In what words shall I unfold my pain, or the bitterness and ingratitude of the Jews?” I prefer taking it as the language of perplexity and distress.

The presence of two natures in our Lord Jesus Christ’s person seems clearly taught when we compare the language used by our Lord in this verse, with the language of the fifth and seventeenth chapters of this Gospel. Here we see unmistakably our Lord’s true humanity. There, on the other hand, we see no less plainly His divinity. Here He speaks as man: there as God.

[Father, save Me from this hour.] This is undoubtedly a prayer to be saved from, or delivered from the agony and suffering of this hour. It is the language of a human nature which, though sinless, could suffer, and instinctively shrank from suffering. It would not have been real human nature if it had not so shrunk and recoiled.

The idea of the prayer is just the same as that of the prayer in Gethsemane: “Let this cup pass from Me.” (Mat 26:39.)

Let us learn from our Lord’s example that there is nothing sinful in praying to be delivered from suffering, so long as we do it in submission to the will of God. There is nothing wrong in a sick person’s saying, “Father, make me well,” so long as the prayer is offered with proper qualification.

Rollock observes, “In agony there is a certain forgetfulness of all things except present pain. This seems the case of our Lord here. Yet even here He turns to His Father, showing that He never loses the sense of the Father’s love. The lost in hell will never turn to the Father.”

It is worth noticing that our Lord speaks of “the Father” and “My Father” at least 110 times in John’s Gospel.

[But for this cause came I unto this hour.] This sentence is an elliptical way of declaring our Lord’s entire submission to His Father’s will, in the matter of the prayer He had just prayed. “But I know that for this cause I came into the world and have reached this hour, to suffer as I am now suffering, and to agonize as I am now agonizing. I do not refuse the cup. If it be Thy will, I am willing to drink it. Only I tell Thee my feelings, with entire submission to Thy will.”

We may surely learn from the whole verse that Christians have no cause to despair because they feel trouble of soul,-because they feel perplexed, and know not what to say in the agony of inward conflict,-because their nature shrinks from pain, and cries to God to take it away. In all this there is nothing wicked or sinful. It was the expression of the human nature of our Lord Jesus Christ Himself. And in Him was no sin.

Rollock says, “This is the language of one recollecting himself, and collecting his thoughts to remember something besides his agony and pain.”

v28.-[Father, glorify Thy name.] This passage seems the conclusion of the strife and agony of soul which came over our Lord at this particular period. It is as though He said, “I leave the matter in Thy hand, O My Father: do what Thou seest best. Glorify Thy name and Thy attributes in Me: do what is meet for setting forth Thy glory in the world. If it be for Thy glory that I should suffer, I am willing to suffer even unto the bearing of the world’s sins.”

I see in the whole event here described, a short summary of what took place afterwards more fully at Gethsemane. There is a remarkable parallelism at every step.

(a) Does our Lord say here, “My soul is troubled”? Just so He said in Gethsemane: “My soul is exceeding sorrowful, even unto death.” (Mat 26:38.)

(b) Does our Lord say here, “Father, save Me from this hour”? Just so he says in Gethsemane: “O My Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from Me.” (Mat 26:39.)

(c) Does our Lord say here, “For this cause came I unto this hour”? Just so he says in Gethsemane: “If this cup may not pass away from Me except I drink it, Thy will be done.” (Mat 26:42.)

(d) Does our Lord say, finally, “Father, glorify Thy name”? Just so our Lord says, lastly, “The cup which my Father hath given Me, shall I not drink it?” (Joh 18:11.)

The brief prayer which our Lord here offers, we should remember, is the highest, greatest thing that we can ask God to do. The utmost reach of the renewed will of a believer, is to be able to say always, “Father, glorify Thy name in Me. Do with Me what Thou wilt, only glorify Thy name.” The glory of God after all is the end for which all things were created. Paul’s joyful hope, he told the Philippians, when a prisoner at Rome, was “that in all things, by life or by death, Christ might be magnified in his body.” (Php 1:20.)

Rollock says, “This is the language of one who now forgets the agony and pain, remembers only His Father’s glory, and desires it even together with His own passion and death.”-He also remarks that the experience of God’s saints in great trouble, is in a sense much the same. For a time they forget everything but present pain. By and by they rise above their sufferings, and remember only God’s glory.

[Then came there a voice from heaven.] This voice was undoubtedly a great miracle. God the Father was heard speaking audibly with man’s voice to the Son. Three times in our Lord’s ministry this miracle took place: first, at His baptism; secondly, at His transfiguration; thirdly, just before His crucifixion. Rarely has the voice of God been heard by large crowds of unconverted men. Here, at Mount Sinai, and perhaps at our Lord’s baptism, are the only three occasions on record.

Of course we can no more explain this wonderful miracle, than any other miracle in God’s Word. We can only reverently believe and admire it. The intimate nearness of the Father to the Son, all through His ministry, is one of the many thoughts which may occur to our minds as we consider the miracle. Our Lord was never left alone. His Father was alway with Him, though men knew it not. How could it indeed be otherwise? So far as concerned His Divine nature, He and the Father were “one.”

How anyone in the face of this passage can deny that the Father and the Son are two distinct Persons, it is very hard to understand. When one person is heard speaking to another, common sense seems to point out that there are two persons, and not one.

Hammond maintains that there really was a loud clap of thunder, as well as a voice from heaven. Burkitt also seems to think the same, and compares it to the thunder which accompanied the giving of the law at Sinai.

[I have both glorified it and will glorify it again.] This solemn sentence,-far more solemn in the pithy and expressive Greek language than it can possibly be made in our translation,-admits, as Augustine says, of being interpreted two ways.

(a) It may be applied solely and entirely to the Lord Jesus Christ Himself. It would then be a special declaration of the Father to the Son. “I have glorified my name in Thy incarnation, Thy miracles, Thy words, Thy works; I will yet glorify it again in Thy voluntary suffering for mankind, Thy death, Thy resurrection, and Thy ascension.”

Lightfoot thinks there is a special reference to our Lord’s conflict with the devil. “I have glorified my name in the victory Thou formerly didst obtain over Satan’s temptation in the wilderness. I will glorify my name again, in the victory Thou shalt have in this conflict also.”

(b) It may be applied to the whole course of God’s dealings with creation from the beginning. It would then be a declaration of the Father: “I have continually glorified my name in all the dispensations which have been,-before the flood, in the days of the Patriarchs, in the time of Moses, under the Law, under the Judges, under the Kings. I will yet glorify it once more at the end of this dispensation, by finishing up the types and figures, and accomplishing the work of man’s redemption.”

Which of these views is the true one, I cannot pretend to decide. Either makes excellent divinity, and is reasonable and consistent. But we have no means of ascertaining which is correct. If I have any opinion on the point I lean to the second view.

v29.-[The people therefore, etc.] This verse apparently is meant to describe the various opinions of the crowd which stood around our Lord, about the voice which spoke to Him.-Some who were standing at some little distance, and were not listening very attentively, said it thundered. Others, who were standing close by, and paying great attention, declared that an invisible being, an angel, must have spoken.-Both parties entirely agreed on one point: something uncommon had happened. An extraordinary noise had been heard, which to some sounded like thunder, and to others like words. But nobody said they heard nothing at all.

That the voice must have been very loud, seems proved by the supposition that it was “thunder.” That the reality and existence of angels formed part of the popular creed of the Jews, seems proved by the readiness of some to take up the idea that an angel had spoken.

Some think that the Greeks before mentioned, not knowing the Hebrew language, in which probably the voice spoke, fancied the voice was thunder, and the Jews of the crowd thought it an angel’s voice.

v30.-[Jesus answered…This voice…not…Me…your sakes.] In this verse our Lord tells the Jews the purpose of this miraculous voice. It was not for His sake,-to comfort Him and help Him; but for their sakes,-to be a sign and a witness to them. The voice could tell Him nothing that He did not know. It was meant to show them what they did not know or doubted.-The sentence would be more literally rendered, “Not on account of Me was this voice, but on account of you.” It was just one more public miraculous evidence of His Divine mission, and apparently the last that was given. The first evidence was a voice at His baptism, and the last a voice just before His crucifixion.

Augustine remarks, “Here Christ shows that this voice was not to make known to Him what He already knew, but to them to whom it was meet to be made known.”

v31.-[Now is the judgment of this world.] This is undeniably a difficult saying. The difficulty lies principally in the meaning of the word “judgment.”

(a) Some, as Barnes, think that it means, “This is the crisis, or most important time in the world’s history.” I cannot receive this. I doubt whether the Greek word used here will ever bear the signification of our word “crisis.” That our Lord’s atoning death was a crisis in the world’s history, is undoubtedly true. But that is not the question. The question is, What do the Greek words mean?

(b) Some, as Theophylact, and Euthymius, think it means “Now is the vengeance of this world.”-“I will cast out him by whom the world has been enslaved.”-I doubt this also.

(c) Some, as Zwingle, think that “judgment” means the discrimination or separation between the believing and the unbelieving in the world. (Compare Joh 9:39.)

(d) Some, as Calvin, Brentius, Beza, Bucer, Hutcheson, Flacius, and Gualter, think that “judgment” means the reformation, or setting in right order of the world.

(e) Some, as Grotius, Gerhard, Poole, Toletus, and Lapide, think “judgment” means the deliverance, and setting free from bondage, of this world.

(f) Some, as Pearce, think it means, “Now is the Jewish world or nation about to be judged or condemned for rejecting Me.”

(g) Some, as Bengel, think it means, “Now is the judgment concerning this world, as to who is hereafter to be the rightful possessor of it.”

I take it that the word we render “judgment,” can only mean condemnation, and that the meaning of the sentence is this: “Now has arrived the season when a sentence of condemnation shall be passed by my death on the whole order of things which has prevailed in the world since the creation. The world shall no longer be let alone, and left to the devil and the powers of darkness. I am about to spoil them of their dominion by my redeeming work, and to condemn and set aside the dark, godless order of things which has so long prevailed upon earth. It has been long winked at and tolerated by my Father. The time has come when it will be tolerated no longer. This very week, by my crucifixion, the religious systems of the world shall receive a sentence of condemnation.” This seems the view of Bullinger and Rollock, and I agree with it.

In order to realize the full meaning of this sentence, we must call to mind the extraordinary condition of all the world with the exception of Palestine, before Christ’s death. To an extent of which now we can form no conception, it was a world without God, plunged in idolatry, worshipping devils,-in open rebellion against God. (Compare 1Co 10:20.) When Christ died, this order of things received its sentence of condemnation.

Rollock says, “I understand by this judgment, the condemnation of that sin of which the world was so full when Christ came, and which had reigned from Adam to Moses.” Of this undisturbed reign of idolatry Christ’s advent made an end.

Augustine, on this verse, says: “The devil kept possession of mankind, holding men as criminals bound over to punishment by the handwriting of their sins, having dominion in the hearts of the unbelieving, dragging them, deceived and captive, to the worship of the creature, for which they had deserted the Creator. But by the faith of Christ, confirmed by His death and resurrection, through His blood shed for the remission of sins, thousands of believing persons obtain deliverance from the dominion of the devil, are joined to the body of Christ, and quickened by His Spirit, as faithful members under so great a Head. This it was that He called judgment.”

[Now shall…prince of this world…cast out.] In this remarkable sentence there can be no doubt that Satan is meant by the “prince of this world.” Up to the time of our Lord’s redeeming work, the entire world was in a certain sense completely under his dominion. When Christ came and died for sinners, Satan’s usurped power was broken, and received a deadly blow. Heathenism and idolatry and devil worship no longer governed all the earth, except Palestine, as they had done for four thousand years, because undisturbed. In a wonderful and mysterious manner Christ on the cross “spoiled principalities and powers, and made a show of them openly, triumphing over them.” (Col 2:15.) To this victory our Lord clearly refers. “Now in this week, by my vicarious death as man’s Redeemer on the cross, Satan, the Prince of this world, shall receive a deadly blow, and be dethroned from his supremacy over man, and cast out. The head of the serpent shall be bruised.”

Of course our Lord did not mean that Satan would be “cast out” of this world entirely, and tempt it no more. That will be done at the second advent, we know from Rev 20:1-15; but it was not done at the first. It only means that he should be cast out of a large portion of the dominion, and power, and undisturbed authority he had hitherto exercised over men’s souls.-The result of the change which took place in this respect, when Christ died, is perhaps not enough considered by Christians. We probably have a very inadequate idea of the awful extent to which Satan carried his dominion over men’s souls, before the “kingdom of heaven” was set up. Bodily possession, familiar spirits, wizards, heathen oracles, heathen mysteries,-all these are things which before the crucifixion of Christ were much more real and powerful than we suppose. And why? Because the “prince of this world” had not yet been cast out. He had a power over men’s bodies and minds far greater than he has now. When Christ came to the cross He did battle with Satan, won a victory over him, stripped him of a large portion of his authority, and cast him out of a large portion of his dominion. Does not the whole of the vision in Rev 12:7-17, point to this? This view is supported by Lightfoot.

This sentence shows clearly the reality and power of the devil. How anyone can say there is no devil, in the face of such expressions as “the prince of this world,” is strange. How anyone can scoff and think lightly of a being of such mighty power, is stranger still. The true Christian, however, may always take comfort in the thought that Satan is a vanquished enemy. He was stripped of a large part of his dominion at Christ’s first advent. He is still “going to and fro,” seeking whom he may devour; but he shall be completely bound at the second advent. (1Pe 5:8; Rom 16:20; Rev 20:2.)

The whole verse appears to me inexplicable, unless we receive and hold the doctrine of Christ’s death being an atonement and satisfaction for man’s sin, and a payment of man’s debt to God. That thought underlies the deep statement here made of the mighty work about to be done by our Lord, in the week of His crucifixion, against the prince of this world. Once adopt the modern notion that Christ’s death was only a beautiful example of self-sacrifice and martyrdom for truth, like that of Socrates, and you can make nothing of this verse. Hold, on the other hand, the old doctrine that Christ’s death was the payment of man’s debt, and the redemption of man’s soul from the power of sin and the devil, and the whole verse is lighted up and made comparatively clear.

Augustine observes, “The Lord in this verse was foretelling that which He knew,-that after His passion and glorifying, throughout the whole world many a people would believe, within whose hearts the devil once was, whom when by faith they renounce, then is he cast out.” He also says that what formerly took place in a few hearts, like those of the patriarchs and prophets, or very few individuals, is now foretold as about to take place in many a great people.

Euthymius remarks, that as the first Adam by eating of the tree was cast out of Paradise, so the Second Adam by dying on the tree cast the devil out of his usurped dominion in the world.

Bucer thinks there is a latent reference to our Lord’s former words about the “strong man armed keeping his house,” till a stronger comes upon him and spoils him. (Luk 11:21-22.)

v32.-[And I…lifted up…draw all men unto Me.] In this remarkable verse our Lord plainly points to His own crucifixion, or being lifted up on the cross. It is the same expression that He used with Nicodemus: “As Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of Man be lifted up.” (Joh 3:14.)

The promise, “I will draw all men unto Me,” must, I think, mean that our Lord after His crucifixion would draw men of all nations and kindreds and tongues to Himself, to believe on Him and be His disciples. Once crucified, He would become a great center of attraction, and draw to Himself, and release from the devil’s usurped power, vast multitudes of all peoples and countries, to be His servants and followers. Up to this time all the world had blindly hastened after Satan and followed him. After Christ’s crucifixion great numbers would turn away from the power of Satan and become Christians.

The promise doubtless looks even further than this. It points to a time when every knee shall bow to the crucified Son of God, and every tongue confess that Jesus is the Lord. The whole world shall finally become the kingdom of our God and of His Christ.

Of course the words must not be pressed too far. We must not think that they support the deadly heresy of universal salvation. We must not suppose them to mean that all men shall be actually saved by Christ’s crucifixion, any more than we must suppose that Christ actually “lights” everyone in the world. (See Joh 1:9.) The analogy of other texts shows plainly that the only reasonable sense is, that Christ’s crucifixion would have a “drawing” influence on men of all nations, Gentiles as well as Jews. Scripture and facts under our eyes, both show us that all persons are not actually drawn to Christ. Many live and die and are lost in unbelief.

The word “draw” is precisely the same that is used in Joh 6:44-“No man can come to Me except the Father draw him.” Yet I doubt whether the meaning is precisely the same. In the one case it is the drawing of election, when the Father chooses and draws souls. In the other case, it is the drawing influence which Christ exercises on laboring and heavy-laden sinners, when He draws them by His spirit to come to Him and believe. The subjects of either “drawing” are the same men and women, and the drawing in either case is irresistible. All who are drawn to believe are drawn both by the Father and the Son. Without this drawing no one would ever come to Christ.

The idea of some, that the verse may be applied to the “lifting up” or exalting of Christ by ministers in their preaching, is utterly baseless, and a mere play upon words. That the preaching of Christ will always do good, more or less, and draw souls to Christ by God’s blessing, is no doubt true. But it is not the doctrine of this text, and ought to be dismissed as an unfair accommodation of Scriptural language.

Euthymius observes that the mission of Christ began to draw souls at once, as in the case of the penitent thief and the centurion.

v33.-[This He said…what death…die.] This explanatory comment of John on our Lord’s words is evidently intended to make His meaning plain. He spoke of “being lifted up” with a special reference to His being lifted up on the cross.-Of course it is just possible that the reference is to the drawing all men, and that it means, “He spoke of drawing all men, with a reference to His death being a sacrificial and atoning death, which would affect the position of all men.” But I doubt this being so correct a view as the other.

“He should die,” is literally, He was “about to die.”

It is curious that, in the face of this verse, some, as Bucer and Diodati, maintain that our Lord by “being lifted up,” refers to His exaltation into heaven after His resurrection. They think that then, and not till then, could He be said to “draw” men. I cannot see anything in this. Our Lord appears to me to teach plainly, that after His crucifixion, and through the virtue of His crucifixion, He would draw men. That “lifting up” means crucifixion is, in my judgment, plainly taught by Joh 3:14.

Fuente: Ryle’s Expository Thoughts on the Gospels

Joh 12:27. Now is my soul troubled. There is no want of connection between these words and the immediately preceding verses. The connection, on the contrary, is of the closest kind. Because this is the moment of highest exaltation in the contemplation of the universal triumph symbolized in the coming of the Greeks, it is also that when all the intensity of suffering by which the triumph is procured is most present to the mind of Jesus. The verb troubled is the same as in Joh 11:33, He troubled Himself,

And what shall I say? Not, What feelings shall I cherish at this hour, What mood of mind becomes the circumstances in which I am placed? but, How shall I find utterance for the emotions that now fill my heart?

Father, save me out of this hour. To understand these words interrogatively, Shall I say, Father, save me from this hour? as is done by many commentators, is to introduce a hesitation into the mind of Jesus which we may well believe never had place in it, and is almost, if we may venture to say so, to give the utterance a sentimental turn at variance with the solemn scene; on the other hand, viewed as a direct prayer to His Heavenly Father, they are the exemplification in His own case of the law of Joh 12:25. It is usually thought that Jesus prays that He may be spared the bitterness of this hour. Mat 26:39 shows that Jesus had the feelingone perfectly free from sinthat would lead Him to escape suffering and death; but the higher law immediately comes in. He has the Fathers will to do. To it He must yield His life, His self. Therefore He adds, But for this cause (that the Fathers name may be glorified, Joh 12:28) came I unto this hour. This prayer, however, is not save me from, but save me out of this hour,not for freedom from suffering, but (comp. Heb 5:7; Act 2:31) for deliverance out of it. Such a prayer is as consistent with His knowledge of the glory that should follow as is Mat 26:39 with Mat 16:21. But the very prayer for deliverance is checked. For this cause (that He may be delivered out of the hour) came I unto this hour: the object of the hour of suffering is to bring triumph. We must not miss the emphasis on the word Father; it is not simply Gods but the Fathers glory that he desires.

Fuente: A Popular Commentary on the New Testament

Whilst our Saviour was thus preaching of his own death and sufferings, a natural horror of his approaching passion (though such as was without sin) seizes upon him; his Father giving him a taste of that wrath which he was to undergo upon the cross for our sins.

Hereupon he takes himself to prayer, Father, save me from this hour; this was the harmless inclination of his sinless nature, which abhorred laying under wrath, and therefore prays again unto his Father to dispose of him as may most and best conduce to the purposes of his glory; Father, glorify thy name.

Learn hence, 1. That mere trouble is no sin; Christ’s soul was troubled; Christianity doth not make men senseless; grace introduceth no stoical stupidity.

2. That fear of death, especially when accompanied with apprehensions of the wrath of God, is most perplexing, and soul amazing. My soul is troubled, and what shall I say?

3. No extremity of sufferings ought to discourage us from laying claim to that relation, which God stands in to us as a Father; Our Saviour, in the midst of his distress, calls God Father: Father, save me from this hour.

4. In the extremity of our sufferings, we may be importunate, but must not be preemptory in our prayers; as Christ in his agony prayed more earnestly, so may we in ours, but always submissively; Father, save me from this hour: but for this cause came I unto this hour.

5. That our exemption from suffering may sometimes be inconsistent with the glory of God. Father, save me from this hour; Father glorify thy name.

Observe lastly, The Father’s answer to the Son’s prayer: There came a voice from heaven, saying, I have glorified it, and will glorify it again. That is, as God the Father had been already glorified in his Son’s life, doctrine, and miracles: so he would farther glorify himself in his death, resurrection, and ascension; as also by the mission of the Holy Ghost, and the preaching of the gospel for the conversion of the Gentiles to the ends of the earth;

Learn hence, That the whole work of Christ, from the lowest degree of his humiliation, to the hightest degree of his exaltation, was a glorifying of his Father: he glorified his Father by the doctrine which he taught, he glorified his Father by the miracles which he wrought, by the unspotted innocency of his life, and by his unparalleled sufferings at his death; by his victorious resurrection from the grave, and by his triumphant ascension into heaven.

Fuente: Expository Notes with Practical Observations on the New Testament

Joh 12:27. Now is my soul troubled Our Lord, having uttered what is above recorded, seems to have paused for a while, and entered on a deep contemplation of the very different scene which lay before him; the prospect of which moved him to such a degree, that he uttered his grief in these and the following doleful words. For he had various foretastes of his passion before he fully entered into it. And what shall I say? Not, What shall I choose? for his heart was fixed in choosing the will of his Father: but, What shall I say in prayer to my heavenly Father? What petition shall I offer to him on this occasion? Father, save me from this hour Dr. Campbell reads, What shall I say? [shall I say,] Father, save me from this hour? But I came on purpose for this hour; considering the words as containing two questions: the distress of Christs soul first suggesting a petition for deliverance, in which, however, he is instantly checked by the reflection on the end and design of his coming. The passage is understood by Dr. Doddridge in the same sense, who says, I suppose few need be told, that the pointing of the New Testament is far less ancient than the text. It is agreeable to observe, how many difficulties may be removed by varying it, and departing from the common punctuation: of which I take this to be one of the most remarkable instances. For as the text does not oblige us to it, it does not seem natural to suppose that our Lord actually offered this petition, and then immediately retracted it. But for this cause came I unto this hour For this cause was I born into the world, and came even to this present hour, that I might bear the sufferings on which I am entering, and might redeem my people by them; and far be it from me to draw back from such engagements and undertakings. By praying on this occasion, our Lord shows us what is the best method of obtaining support and comfort in deep distress. At the same time, as in his prayer he expressed an entire resignation to the will of his Father, he has taught us, that although the weakness of human nature may shrink at the first thoughts of suffering, his disciples ought not to yield, but to fortify themselves by just reflections on, and a firm faith in, the wisdom, power, and goodness of God, and the happy end he proposes to be answered by their afflictions.

Fuente: Joseph Bensons Commentary on the Old and New Testaments

Vv. 27, 28 a. Now is my soul troubled, and what shall I say? Father, save me from this hour? But for this cause came I unto this hour. 28a. Father, glorify thy name.

The soul, , is the seat of the natural emotions, asthe spirit, , is that of the religious emotions. Weiss disputes this distinction by appealing to the altogether similar emotion described in Joh 11:33. But it is precisely this expression, especially when compared with Joh 13:21, which confirms it. In these two passages the question is of a shuddering of a religious and moral nature at the evil which is approaching Him in the most hateful form. Here, on the contrary, it is the prospect of personal griefs and of death which so violently agitates Him.

The term , soul, is therefore perfectly in its place. I do not understand the import of the explanation of Weiss, which is intended to identify and : The spirit becomes the soul in man (see Keil). The perfect , is troubled, indicates a state in which the Lord feels Himself entirely overwhelmed. And this extraordinary trouble reveals itself especially to His consciousness by the hesitation which He feels, at the moment when He is seeking to pour out His emotion in prayer. Ordinarily, He has a distinct view of that which He should ask of His Father; now, this clearness fails Him. Like the believer in the state which St. Paul describes in Rom 8:26, He knows not how He should pray. He is obliged to lay before Himself for a moment the question: What shall I say? This question He does not address, properly speaking, to God, nor to man, but to Himself. The sacrifice of His own life is in itself a free act; He could still, if He saw fit, ask of God to release Him from it. And the Father would hear him, as always, even should it be necessary to send Him twelve legions of angels. But would not this prayer, while delivering Him, destroy mankind? Jesus does not feel Himself free to pray thus. He is already too far advanced on the path on which He is to realize the salvation of the world, to stop so near the end. The word now, which begins the sentence, characterizes this distress as an anticipation of that which awaits Him in the presence of the cross: already now, although the terrible hour has not yet struck. After the question: What shall I say? how are we to understand the words: Father, save me from this hour? Is this the real prayer wherein this moment of uncertainty through which He has just passed, terminates?

This is what is supposed by Lucke, Meyer, Hengstenberg, Ebrard, Luthardt, Westcott. What would be its meaning? Release me from the necessity of dying, as when He offers the prayer in Gethsemane: Let this cup pass from me? This is held by the first three. But there he adds: if it is possible, and by the which follows, He commits it immediately to the Father’s will (Mat 26:39). And how can we explain the sudden change of impression in the following clause? After having uttered seriously and without restriction the petition: Save me from this hour! could He add, as it were in a single breath: But for this hour am I come? Luthardt, Ebrard, and Westcott perceive this clearly. So they propose to understand the , save me, not in the sense: Deliver me from death, but in the sense: Bring me victoriously out of this present inward struggle, either by shortening it or by giving it a happy issue. But how are we to explain the following adversative particle , but? Here Westcott proposes an absolute tour de force. But to what purpose say this?

The favorable issue is not doubtful. This sense of but is altogether forced; and there is no more opposition between: to come forth from the struggle, and: to have come for it. However we may turn this phrase, we are always brought back to see in it a hypothetical prayer. It is the voice of nature which at first makes itself heard in answer to the question: What shall I say? Then, in the following words Jesus represses this voice. To address this petition to God would be to deny all that He has done and endured until now. And finally, giving vent to the voice of the spirit, He definitely stays Himself in the prayer which alone remains, when once this moment of trouble is past: Glorify thy name! that is to say: Derive from me Thy glory, by doing with me what Thou wilt. Nothing for me, everything for Thee! What more instructive than this conflict between these two factors which solicit the will of Jesus? It allows us to penetrate into the inmost recess of His heart. What do we there discover? Precisely the opposite of that impassive Jesus whom our critics assert the Christ of John to be.

The expressions: for this cause, and: for this hour, seem to constitute a pleonasm. We might make this clause a question: Is it then for this that I am come to this hour? that is, to try to put it off indefinitely? Or we may make the words for this hour an explanatory apposition to for this: It is for this that I am come, that is, for this hour. These two meanings are forced, the first, because of the two questions which already precede; the second, because the is not the natural resuming of the , but rather the direct objective word to and the antithesis of . Hengstenberg explains: It is that my soul may be troubled that I am come…, which is still more forced.Lucke and Meyer make the words for this bear upon the idea of the following prayer (Joh 12:28): Father, glorify thy name. This is to do violence to the sentence beyond measure. Is it not quite simple to see in the neuter this the expression, in a slight degree mysterious, of that something which has just brought trouble upon His soul, and which He is tempted to seek to remove by His prayer, the dark and unutterable contents of the hour which is approaching? It is because of this death which I am to undergo, that I have persevered in this path until this hour. All that he has done and suffered in view of the cross does not permit Him to give way at the moment when the hour of this terrible punishment is about to strike. Comp. Joh 3:14

The pronoun thy (Joh 12:28), by reason of the place which it occupies, is emphasized. It is opposed, as Weiss says, to the personal character of the preceding prayer which Jesus has set aside.

Colani, in his criticism of the Vie de Jesus by Renan, by a strange inadvertence makes Jesus say: Father, glorify my name, an expression which, he says, has no meaning except from the standpoint of the Logos- doctrine. The more involuntary this alteration is, the better is it fitted to make us see the difference between the profoundly human Jesus of John and the fantastic Christ whom criticism ascribes to the evangelist. That, after this, Colani sees in this scene only an emblematic, almost simulated, agony is easy to understand; to whom does the fault belong? Reuss, who claims that the silence of John respecting the scene of Gethsemane arises from the fact that even a passing weakness would have been a feature incompatible with the portrait of the Johannean Christ, finds himself greatly embarrassed by the narrative which occupies us. The following is the way in which he escapes from the difficulty. The emotion of Jesus is not that of a momentary and touching weakness…, it is that of a great soul, of a divine heroism…whose resolution is rather strengthened than shaken in the presence of the supreme catastrophe. We leave the reader to judge whether this exegesis reproduces or contradicts the true tone of the text to be explained, particularly of these words: Now is my soul troubled. What we admire in this passage, is the perfectly human character of the struggle which, at the thought of His approaching death, takes place in the heart of Jesus between nature and spirit. And then it is the sincerity, the candor, shall we say, with which He expresses His inmost feelings, His weakness (Heb 5:2), before all this company of people, not hesitating to make them acquainted with the perplexity into which the prospect of His approaching sufferings plunges Him.

This scene is, as has always been acknowledged, the prelude to the one in Gethsemane. Only in the latter, Jesus, at the highest point of His distress, really utters the cry: Save me from this hour! while at the moment which we have now reached, He only asks whether He shall pray thus. This delicate shade is suited to the difference of the two situations and proves the strictly historical character of each of them. The opinion that John suppressed the scene of Gethsemane as incompatible with the divine character of the Logos, falls of itself before this passage. Finally, let us establish the remarkable gradation in the three analogous scenes, Luk 12:49-50, Joh 12:27 and the one in Gethsemane. This comparison makes us understand the increasing emotion with which Jesus was slowly approaching the cross. These three features borrowed from the four narratives easily unite in one single picture. How can Reville express himself as follows, in the Revue de theologie, 1865, III., p. 316, The fourth Gospel makes Jesus an exalted being, as to His moral life, above temptation and internal conflict, and it removes from its narrative all the traditional statements which might suggest a contrary idea.Renan, on the contrary, observes with reference to this passage: Here are verses which have an indubitable historical stamp. They are the obscure and isolated episode of the Greeks who address themselves to Philip.

Fuente: Godet Commentary (Luke, John, Romans and 1 Corinthians)

Verse 27

For this cause; for the very purpose of enduring these sufferings.

Fuente: Abbott’s Illustrated New Testament

12:27 {6} Now is my soul troubled; and what shall I say? Father, save me from this {c} hour: but for this cause came I unto this hour.

(6) While Christ went about to suffer all the punishment which is due to our sins, and while his divinity did not yet show his might and power so that the satisfaction might be fully accomplished, he is stricken with the great fear of the curse of God, and so he cries and prays, and desires to be released: yet nonetheless he prefers the will and glory of his Father before all things, and his Father allows this obedience even from heaven.

Fuente: Geneva Bible Notes

The importance of believing now 12:27-36

Fuente: Expository Notes of Dr. Constable (Old and New Testaments)

Anticipation of the death that had to precede the glory troubled Jesus deeply (Gr. tataraktai, cf. Joh 11:33; Joh 14:1; Mar 14:32-42). It troubled Him because His death would involve separation from His Father and bearing God’s wrath for the sins of the world.

The sentence following, "What shall I say?" could be a question (NASB, NIV) or a prayer. The Greek text permits either translation. In either case the meaning is almost the same. If Jesus meant it as a question, He resolved the difficulty at once. [Note: Morris, pp. 528-29.] If He meant it as a prayer, it is the expression of His agony (cf. Mar 14:36). Immediately Jesus voiced His continuing commitment to His Father’s will. We see here the conflict that Jesus felt between His desire to avoid the Cross and His desire to obey the Father completely.

"Jesus instructed His disciples on the cost of commitment to the Father’s will by disclosing His emotions." [Note: Blum, pp. 317-18.]

John did not record Jesus’ struggle with God’s will in Gethsemane, as the Synoptics did (Mat 26:39; Mar 14:36; Luk 22:42). He narrated that struggle on this occasion instead.

Fuente: Expository Notes of Dr. Constable (Old and New Testaments)

IV. THE ATTRACTIVE FORCE OF THE CROSS.

“Now is my soul troubled; and what shall I say? Father, save Me from this hour. But for this cause came I unto this hour. Father, glorify Thy name. There came therefore a voice out of heaven, saying, I have both glorified it, and will glorify it again. The multitude therefore, that stood by, and heard it, said that it had thundered: others said, An angel hath spoken to Him. Jesus answered and said, This voice hath not come for My sake, but for your sakes. Now is the judgment of this world: now shall the prince of this world be cast out. And I, if I be lifted up from the earth, will draw all men unto Myself. But this He said, signifying by what manner of death He should die. The multitude therefore answered Him, We have heard out of the law that the Christ abideth for ever: and how sayest thou, The Son of man must be lifted up? who is this Son of man? Jesus therefore said unto them, Yet a little while is the light among you. Walk while ye have the light, that darkness overtake you not: and he that walketh in the darkness knoweth not whither he goeth. While ye have the light, believe on the light, that ye may become sons of light.”– Joh 12:27-36.

The presence of the Greeks had stirred in the soul of Jesus conflicting emotions. Glory by humiliation, life through death, the secured happiness of mankind through His own anguish and abandonment,–well might the prospect disturb Him. So masterly is His self-command, so steadfast and constant His habitual temper, that one almost inevitably underrates the severity of the conflict. The occasional withdrawal of the veil permits us reverently to observe some symptoms of the turmoil within–symptoms which it is probably best to speak of in His own words: “Now is My soul troubled; and what shall I say? Shall I say, ‘Father, save Me from this hour’? But for this cause came I unto this hour. Father, glorify Thy name.” This Evangelist does not describe the agony in the Garden of Gethsemane. It was needless after this indication of the same conflict. Here is the same shrinking from a public and shameful death conquered by His resolution to deliver men from a still darker and more shameful death. Here is the same foretaste of the bitterness of the cup as it now actually touches His lips, the same clear reckoning of all it meant to drain that cup to the dregs, together with the deliberate assent to all that the will of the Father might require Him to endure.

In response to this act of submission, expressed in the words, “Father, glorify Thy name,” there came a voice from heaven, saying, “I have both glorified it, and will glorify it again.” The meaning of this assurance was, that as in all the past manifestation of Christ the Father had become better known to men, so in all that was now impending, however painful and disturbed, however filled with human passions and to all appearance the mere result of them, the Father would still be glorified. Some thought the voice was thunder; others seemed almost to catch articulate sounds, and said, “An angel spake to Him.” But Jesus explained that it was not “to Him” the voice was specially addressed, but rather for the sake of those who stood by. And it was indeed of immense importance that the disciples should understand that the events which were about to happen were overruled by God that He might be glorified in Christ. It is easy for us to see that nothing so glorifies the Father’s name as these hours of suffering; but how hard for the onlookers to believe that this sudden transformation of the Messianic throne into the criminal’s cross was no defeat of God’s purpose, but its final fulfilment. He leads them, therefore, to consider that in His judgment the whole world is judged, and to perceive in His arrest and trial and condemnation not merely the misguided and wanton outrage of a few men in power, but the critical hour of the world’s history.

This world has commonly presented itself to thoughtful minds as a battle-field in which the powers of good and evil wage ceaseless war. In the words He now utters the Lord declares Himself to be standing at the very crisis of the battle, and with the deepest assurance He announces that the opposing power is broken and that victory remains with Him. “Now is the prince of this world cast out; and I will draw all men unto Me.” The prince of this world, that which actually rules and leads men in opposition to God, was judged, condemned, and overthrown in the death of Christ. By His meek acceptance of God’s will in the face of all that could make it difficult and dreadful to accept it, He won for the race deliverance from the thraldom of sin. At length a human life had been lived without submission at any point to the prince of this world. As man and in the name of all men Jesus resisted the last and most violent assault that could be made upon His faith in God and fellowship with Him, and so perfected His obedience and overcame the prince of this world,–overcame him not in one act alone–many had done that–but in a completed human life, in a life which had been freely exposed to the complete array of temptations that can be directed against men in this world.

In order more clearly to apprehend the promise of victory contained in our Lord’s words, we may consider:

(I.) the object He had in view–to “draw all men” to Him; and

(II.) the condition of His attaining this object–namely, His death.

I. The object of Christ was to draw all men to Him. The opposition in which He here sets Himself to the prince of this world shows us that by “drawing” He means attracting as a king attracts, to His name, His claims, His standard, His person. Our life consists in our pursuance of one object or another, and our devotion is continually competed for. When two claimants contest a kingdom, the country is divided between them, part cleaving to the one and part to the other. The individual determines to which side he shall cleave,–by his prejudices or by his justice, as it may be; by his knowledge of the comparative capacity of the claimants, or by his ignorant predilection. He is taken in by sounding titles, or he penetrates through all bombast and promises and douceurs to the real merit or demerit of the man himself. One person will judge by the personal manners of the respective claimants; another by their published manifesto, and professed object and style of rule; another by their known character and probable conduct. And while men thus range themselves on this side or on that, they really pass judgment on themselves, betraying as they do what it is that chiefly draws them, and taking their places on the side of good or evil. It is thus that we all judge ourselves by following this or that claimant to our faith, regard, and devotion, to ourself and our life. What we spend ourselves on, what we aim at and pursue, what we make our object, that judges us and that rules us and that determines our destiny.

Christ came into the world to be our King, to lead us to worthy achievements. He came that we might have a worthy object of choice and of the devotion of our life. He serves the same purpose as a king: He embodies in His own person, and thereby makes visible and attractive, the will of God and the cause of righteousness. Persons who could only with great difficulty apprehend His objects and plans can appreciate His person and trust Him. Persons to whom there would seem little attraction in a cause or in an undefined “progress of humanity” can kindle with enthusiasm towards Him personally, and unconsciously promote His cause and the cause of humanity. And therefore, while some are attracted by His person, others by the legitimacy of His claims, others by His programme of government, others by His benefactions, we must beware of denying loyalty to any of these. Expressions of love to His person may be lacking in the man who yet most intelligently enters into Christ’s views for the race, and sacrifices his means and his life to forward these views. Those who gather to His standard are various in temperament, are drawn by various attractions, and must be various in their forms of showing allegiance. And this, which is the strength of His camp, can only become its weakness when men begin to think there is no way but their own; and that allegiance which is strenuous in labour but not fluent in devout expression, or loyalty which shouts and throws its cap in the air but lacks intelligence, is displeasing to the King. The King, who has great ends in view, will not inquire what it is precisely which forms the bond between Him and His subjects so long as they truly sympathise with Him and second His efforts. The one question is, Is He their actual leader?

Of the kingdom of Christ, though a full description cannot be given, one or two of the essential characteristics may be mentioned.

1. It is a kingdom, a community of men under one head. When Christ proposed to attract men to Himself, it was for the good of the race He did so. It could achieve its destiny only if He led it, only if it yielded itself to His mind and ways. And those who are attracted to Him, and see reason to believe that the hope of the world lies in the universal adoption of His mind and ways, are formed into one solid body or community. They labour for the same ends, are governed by the same laws, and whether they know one another or not they have the most real sympathy and live for one cause. Being drawn to Christ, we enter into abiding fellowship with all the good who have laboured or are labouring in the cause of humanity. We take our places in the everlasting kingdom, in the community of those who shall see and take part in the great future of mankind and the growing enlargement of its destiny. We are hereby entered among the living, and are joined to that body of mankind which is to go on and which holds the future–not to an extinct party which may have memories, but has no hopes. In sin, in selfishness, in worldliness, individualism reigns, and all profound or abiding unity is impossible. Sinners have common interests only for a time, only as a temporary guise of selfish interests. Every man out of Christ is really an isolated individual. But passing into Christ’s kingdom we are no longer isolated, abandoned wretches stranded by the stream of time, but members of the undying commonwealth of men in which our life, our work, our rights, our future, our association with all good, are assured.

2. It is a universal kingdom. “I will draw all men unto Me.” The one rational hope of forming men into one kingdom shines through these words. The idea of a universal monarchy has visited the great minds of our race. They have cherished their various dreams of a time when all men should live under one law and possibly speak one language, and have interests so truly in common that war should be impossible. But an effectual instrument for accomplishing this grand design has ever been wanting. Christ turns this grandest dream of humanity into a rational hope. He appeals to what is universally present in human nature. There is that in Him which every man needs,–a door to the Father; a visible image of the unseen God; a gracious, wise, and holy Friend. He does not appeal exclusively to one generation, to educated or to uneducated, to Orientals or to Europeans alone, but to man, to that which we have in common with the lowest and the highest, the most primitive and most highly developed of the species. The attractive influence He exerts upon men is not conditioned by their historical insight, by their ability to sift evidence, by this or that which distinguishes man from man, but by their innate consciousness that some higher power than themselves exists, by their ability, if not to recognise goodness when they see it, at least to recognise love when it is spent upon them.

But while our Lord affirms that there is that in Him which all men can recognise and learn to love and serve, He does not say that His kingdom will therefore be quickly formed. He does not say that this greatest work of God will take a shorter time than the common works of God which prolong one day of our hasty methods into a thousand years of solidly growing purpose. If it has taken a million ages for the rocks to knit and form for us a standing-ground and dwelling-place, we must not expect that this kingdom, which is to be the one enduring result of this world’s history, and which can be built up only of thoroughly convinced men and of generations slowly weeded of traditional prejudices and customs, can be completed in a few years. No doubt interests are at stake in human destiny and losses are made by human waste which had no place in the physical creation of the world; still, God’s methods are, as we judge, slow, and we must not think that He who “works hitherto” is doing nothing because the swift processes of jugglery or the hasty methods of human workmanship find no place in the extension of Christ’s kingdom. This kingdom has a firm hold of the world and must grow. If there is one thing certain about the future of the world, it is that righteousness and truth will prevail. The world is bound to come to the feet of Christ.

3. Christ’s kingdom being universal, it is also and necessarily inward. What is common to all men lies deepest in each. Christ was conscious that He held the key to human nature. He knew what was in man. With the penetrating insight of absolute purity He had gone about among men, freely mixing with rich and with poor, with the sick and the healthy, with the religious and the irreligious. He was as much at home with the condemned criminal as with the blameless Pharisee; saw through Pilate and Caiaphas alike; knew all that the keenest dramatist could tell Him of the meannesses, the depravities, the cruelties, the blind passions, the obstructed goodness, of men; but knew also that He could sway all that was in man and exhibit that to men which should cause the sinner to abhor his sin and seek the face of God. This He would do by a simple moral process, without violent demonstration or disturbance or assertion of authority. He would “draw” men. It is by inward conviction, not by outward compulsion, men are to become His subjects. It is by the free and rational working of the human mind that Jesus builds up His kingdom. His hope lies in a fuller and fuller light, in a clearer and clearer recognition of facts. Attachment to Christ must be the act of the soul’s self; everything, therefore, which strengthens the will or enlightens the mind or enlarges the man brings him nearer to the kingdom of Christ, and makes it more likely he will yield to His drawing.

And because Christ’s rule is inward it is therefore of universal application. The inmost choice of the man being governed by Christ, and his character being thus touched at its inmost spring, all his conduct will be governed by Christ and be a carrying out of the will of Christ. It is not the frame of society Christ seeks to alter, but the spirit of it. It is not the occupations and institutions of human life which the subject of Christ finds to be incompatible with Christ’s rule, so much as the aim and principles on which they are conducted. The kingdom of Christ claims all human life as its own, and the spirit of Christ finds nothing that is essentially human alien from it. If the statesman is a Christian, it will be seen in his policy; if the poet is a Christian, his song will betray it; if a thinker be a Christian, his readers soon find it out. Christianity does not mean religious services, churches, creeds, Bibles, books, equipment of any kind; it means the Spirit of Christ. It is the most portable and flexible of all religions, and therefore the most pervasive and dominant in the life of its adherent. It needs but the Spirit of God and the spirit of man, and Christ mediating between them.

II. Such being Christ’s object, what is the condition of His attaining it? “I, if I be lifted up, will draw all men unto Me.” The elevation requisite for becoming a visible object to men of all generations was the elevation of the Cross. His death would accomplish what His life could not accomplish. The words betray a distinct consciousness that there was in His death a more potent spell, a more certain and real influence for good among men than in His teaching or in His miracles or in His purity of life.

What is it, then, in the death of Christ which so far surpasses His life in its power of attraction? The life was equally unselfish and devoted; it was more prolonged; it was more directly useful,–why, then, would it have been comparatively ineffective without the death? It may, in the first place, be answered, Because His death presents in a dramatic and compact form that very devotedness which is diffused through every part of His life. Between the life and the death there is the same difference as between sheet lightning and forked lightning, between the diffused heat of the sun and the same heat focussed upon a point through a lens. It discloses what was actually but latently there. The life and the death of Christ are one and mutually explain each other. From the life we learn that no motive can have prompted Christ to die but the one motive which ruled Him always–the desire to do all God willed in men’s behalf. We cannot interpret the death as anything else than a consistent part of a deliberate work undertaken for men’s good. It was not an accident; it was not an external necessity: it was, as the whole life was, a willing acceptance of the uttermost that was required to set men on a higher level and unite them to God. But as the life throws this light upon the death of Christ, how that light is gathered up and thrown abroad in world-wide reflection from the death of Christ! For here His self-sacrifice shines completed and perfect; here it is exhibited in that tragic and supreme form which in all cases arrests attention and commands respect. Even when a man of wasted life sacrifices himself at last, and in one heroic act saves another by his death, his past life is forgotten or seems to be redeemed by his death, and at all events we own the beauty and the pathos of the deed. A martyr to the faith may have been but a poor creature, narrow, harsh and overbearing, vain and vulgar in spirit; but all the past is blotted out, and our attention is arrested on the blazing pile or the bloody scaffold. So the death of Christ, though but a part of the self-sacrificing life, yet stands by itself as the culmination and seal of that life; it catches the eye and strikes the mind, and conveys at one view the main impression made by the whole life and character of Him who gave Himself upon the cross.

But Christ is no mere hero or teacher sealing his truth with his blood; nor is it enough to say that His death renders, in a conspicuous form, the perfect self-sacrifice with which He devoted Himself to our good. It is conceivable that in a long-past age some other man should have lived and died for his fellows, and yet we at once recognise that, though the history of such a person came into our hands, we should not be so affected and drawn by it as to choose him as our king and rest upon him the hope of uniting us to one another and to God. Wherein, then, lies the difference? The difference lies in this–that Christ was the representative of God. This He Himself uniformly claimed to be. He knew He was unique, different from all others; but He advanced no claim to esteem that did not pass to the Father who sent Him. Always he explained His powers as being the proper equipment of God’s representative, “The words that I speak unto you, I speak not of Myself.” His whole life was the message of God to man, the Word made flesh. His death was but the last syllable of this great utterance–the utterance of God’s love for man, the final evidence that nothing is grudged us by God. Greater love hath no man than this, that he lay down his life for his friends. His death draws us because there is in it more than human heroism and self-sacrifice. It draws us because in it the very heart of God is laid bare to us. It softens, it breaks us down, by the irresistible tenderness it discloses in the mighty and ever-blessed God. Every man feels it has a message for him, because in it the God and Father of us all speaks to us.

It is this which is special to the death of Christ, and which separates it from all other deaths and heroic sacrifices. It has a universal bearing–a bearing upon every man, because it is a Divine act, the act of that One who is the God and Father of all men. In the same century as our Lord many men died in a manner which strongly excites our admiration. Nothing could well be more noble, nothing more pathetic, than the fearless and loving spirit in which Roman after Roman met his death. But beyond respectful admiration these heroic deeds win from us no further sentiment. They are the deeds of men who have no connection with us. The well-worn words, “What’s Hecuba to me or I to Hecuba?” rise to our lips when we try to fancy any deep connection. But the death of Christ concerns all men without exception, because it is the greatest declarative act of the God of all men. It is the manifesto all men are concerned to read. It is the act of One with whom all men are already connected in the closest way. And the result of our contemplation of it is, not that we admire, but that we are drawn, are attracted, into new relations with Him whom that death reveals. This death moves and draws us as no other can, because here we get to the very heart of that which most deeply concerns us. Here we learn what our God is and where we stand eternally. He who is nearest us of all, and in whom our life is bound up, reveals Himself; and seeing Him here full of ungrudging and most reliable love, of tenderest and utterly self-sacrificing devotedness to us, we cannot but give way to this central attraction, and with all other willing creatures be drawn into fullest intimacy and firmest relations to the God of all.

The death of Christ, then, draws men chiefly because God here shows men His sympathy, His love, His trustworthiness. What the sun is in the solar system, Christ’s death is in the moral world. The sun by its physical attraction binds the several planets together and holds them within range of its light and heat. God, the central intelligence and original moral Being, draws to Himself and holds within reach of His life-giving radiance all who are susceptible of moral influences; and He does so through the death of Christ. This is His supreme revelation. Here, if we may say so with reverence, God is seen at His best–not that at any time or in any action He is different, but here He is seen to be the God of love He ever is. Nothing is better than self-sacrifice: that is the highest point a moral nature can touch. And God, by the sacrifice which is rendered visible on the cross, gives to the moral world a real, actual, immovable centre, round which moral natures will more and more gather, and which will hold them together in self-effacing unity.

To complete the idea of the attractiveness of the Cross, it must further be kept in view that this particular form of the manifestation of the Divine love was adapted to the needs of those to whom it was made. To sinners the love of God manifested itself in providing a sacrifice for sin. The death on the cross was not an irrelevant display, but was an act required for the removal of the most insuperable obstacles that lay in man’s path. The sinner, believing that in the death of Christ his sins are atoned for, conceives hope in God and claims the Divine compassion in his own behalf. To the penitent the Cross is attractive as an open door to the prisoner, or the harbour-heads to the storm-tossed ship.

Let us not suppose, then, that we are not welcome to Christ. He desires to draw us to Himself and to form a connection with us. He understands our hesitations, our doubts of our own capacity for any steady and enthusiastic loyalty; but He knows also the power of truth and love, the power of His own person and of His own death to draw and fix the hesitating and wavering soul. And we shall find that as we strive to serve Christ in our daily life it is still His death that holds and draws us. It is His death which gives us compunction in our times of frivolity, or selfishness, or carnality, or rebellion, or unbelief. It is there Christ appears in His own most touching attitude and with His own most irresistible appeal. We cannot further wound One already so wounded in His desire to win us from evil. To strike One already thus nailed to the tree in helplessness and anguish, is more than the hardest heart can do. Our sin, our infidelity, our unmoved contemplation of His love, our blind indifference to His purpose–these things wound Him more than the spear and the scourge. To rid us of these things was His purpose in dying, and to see that His work is in vain and His sufferings unregarded and unfruitful is the deepest injury of all. It is not to the mere sentiment of pity He appeals: rather He says, “Weep not for Me; weep for yourselves.” It is to our power to recognise perfect goodness and to appreciate perfect love. He appeals to our power to see below the surface of things, and through the outer shell of this world’s life to the Spirit of good that is at the root of all and that manifests itself in Him. Here is the true stay of the human soul: “Come unto Me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden”; “I am come a light into the world: walk in the light.”

Fuente: Expositors Bible Commentary

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