Scripture Reading: John 12:23-28; 13:31-32; 15:8; 17:1-5, 22
We may understand the Gospel of John in a natural way. Of course, it is easy to see that this book is on life, eternal life, that is, the life of God. However, we may not have penetrated into the depths of this book.
I have been seeking to understand the Gospel of John for more than fifty years. It was in 1950 that this book began to be opened to me in a new way. Although I was very familiar with the Gospel of John, the depths of this book were not opened to me until after I left mainland China. Only then did I begin to enter into its depths. However, I did not see the whole right away; rather, I began to see one part at a time. First, the Lord showed me that in the first eleven chapters of this Gospel, John, the writer, uses nine cases to illustrate the function of the divine life.
The Gospel of John is not composed according to historical facts arranged in historical sequence. Instead, in writing this book John put together a number of different cases in order to give us a clear view of the divine revelation. John indicates this when he says, “Many other signs also Jesus did before His disciples, which are not written in this book. But these have been written that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that believing, you may have life in His name” (20:30-31). As a whole, the Gospel of John gives us a full and complete picture of the divine working. Therefore, in contrast to the Gospel of Luke, which gives us a history, the Gospel of John gives us a view, a revelation, of the divine working.
Some Bible teachers say that the Gospel of John was composed according to doctrine. However, I do not believe that this is accurate. In his Gospel John is not teaching doctrine; he is showing us a revelation. The revelation presented in the Gospel of John is that the Triune God — God the Father, God the Son, and God the Spirit — is dispensing Himself into His chosen, redeemed, and regenerated people in order to make Himself absolutely one with them. It is by His life with the divine nature that God is making Himself one with His redeemed people. This means that the Triune God wants to enter into His people to be their life and even their nature so that they may have the same life and nature as He.
Because this Gospel reveals that God desires to enter into His people to be their life and nature, this Gospel speaks of regeneration, the new birth: “Truly, truly, I say to you, Unless one is born anew, he cannot see the kingdom of God” (3:3). In the same chapter the Lord went on to say, “Unless one is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God. That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit” (vv. 5-6). This is also the reason that the Gospel of John tells us that we become children of God by believing in Christ the Son: “As many as received Him, to them He gave the authority to become children of God, to those who believe into His name” (1:12). Hence, whoever believes in the Son of God is born of God. Because we have been born of God, we have His life and nature.
We may use human life and animal life as illustrations of this fact. A child always has the same life and nature as his father. This is also true of animals. A dog, for example, will have the same life and nature as the dog that begot him. In other words, he will be of the same kind. Because we all are children of Adam, we are of Adam’s kind; that is, we have the life and nature of Adam. Actually, all the children of Adam are of one family. In a similar way, we who believe in the Son of God have been born of God. Now we are God’s children with the divine life and the divine nature. Therefore, we all are of one kind, one family.
In order to make Himself one with created mankind, God desires to impart Himself into the man created by Him for His purpose. This is the divine revelation presented in the Gospel of John.
We have seen that John selected nine cases and arranged them in a particular sequence in chapters 3 through 11. The first case, that of Nicodemus, is a case of regeneration. The last case, that of Lazarus, is a case of resurrection. Both regeneration and resurrection are according to the same principle, a new beginning for something that is of the old creation. With both regeneration and resurrection something of the old creation has a new beginning. In fact, all the nine cases recorded by John in his Gospel follow this principle.
According to John 12, after the nine cases, the Lord Jesus enjoyed a feast in Bethany. During that feast there was a strong testimony of resurrection, a testimony of the old becoming new. After attending that feast, the Lord Jesus received a warm welcome by the crowd in Jerusalem.
When the Pharisees realized that the Lord was welcomed by the crowd, they said to one another, “You see that you are not doing anything worthwhile; behold, the world has gone after Him” (v. 19). It seemed to the Pharisees, those who opposed the Lord Jesus, that the whole world was welcoming Him. The following verses indicate that He was received not only by Jews but also by Greeks: “Some Greeks...came to Philip...and asked him, saying, Sir, we wish to see Jesus” (vv. 20-21). Philip told Andrew about this, and together they spoke to the Lord concerning it (v. 22). No doubt, this was a golden time for the Lord, a time when He could have been exalted by men. If we had been the Lord Jesus, we probably would have been thankful for this opportunity to receive men’s exaltation.
However, the Lord’s response was quite unexpected: “Jesus answered them, saying, The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified” (v. 23). When they heard this, the disciples may have said to themselves, “That’s right, Lord. This is the time for You to be exalted and glorified. For years You have been regarded by others merely as a lowly Nazarene. Now is the time for You to be exalted. This is the opportunity for You to be glorified.” If we had been there, we probably would have had such an understanding of the Lord’s word concerning being glorified. According to the human concept, to be glorified is to be exalted in the presence of others. For example, if a young person is elected as president of his class at school, he will feel that he is exalted and glorified.
In verse 24 the Lord Jesus went on to explain what it means for Him to be glorified: “Truly, truly, I say to you, Unless the grain of wheat falls into the ground and dies, it abides alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit.” Here the Lord indicates that for Him to be glorified does not mean that He will be exalted; it means that He will fall into the ground as a grain of wheat and die in order to rise up and bear much fruit. Hence, to be glorified is to bear much fruit. This means that glorification is a matter of fruit-bearing.
Once again we may refer to a carnation flower as an illustration of glorification. If a carnation seed is left alone and is not sown into the ground, it will be impossible for the glory within the seed ever to come forth and be expressed. The glory of a carnation seed can be seen only when the seed is sown into the soil. In a sense, by being sown, the seed dies and eventually grows up in resurrection. This thought is similar to that of Paul in 1 Corinthians 15, where he uses the sowing of a seed as an illustration of resurrection. When a seed of a carnation plant dies by being sown into the earth, it will grow up, and this growing up will be the resurrection of the carnation seed. Eventually, the plant will blossom, and this blossoming will be its glorification. A grain of wheat, on the contrary, will eventually produce fruit, and this fruit-bearing will be its glorification. Both the blossoming of a carnation plant and the fruit-bearing of a grain of wheat illustrate glorification. A carnation seed is glorified when the plant blossoms, and a grain of wheat is glorified when the wheat brings forth fruit.
Jesus Christ is God incarnate. When He was incarnated, He entered into humanity and put on humanity as a shell. As a result, the Lord’s divine life and nature were confined and concealed within the shell of His humanity. Through incarnation He became a seed that needed to bear fruit. This fruit-bearing was to be the Lord’s glorification. The only way for a grain of wheat to be glorified is for it to fall into the ground and die and then grow up. In this way the life within the seed is released to bring forth much fruit, and this fruit-bearing is glorification. By going through the process of death and resurrection, the Lord terminated the old creation and germinated the new creation in resurrection. In this resurrection He produced many grains. Those who believe in Christ are these many grains. As the many grains brought forth by Christ in His resurrection, eventually we are ground and blent together to be one loaf, one Body. This loaf, the Body, is the church. According to the New Testament, this church is the house of God, which will consummate in the New Jerusalem.
If we understand this matter, we will be able to grasp the main point in chapter 12 of the Gospel of John. After the Lord Jesus took care of the nine cases recorded in chapters 3 through 11, there was no need for Him to do anything further except to fall into the ground as a grain of wheat and then rise up in resurrection in order to have Himself released and expressed in the many grains. This is what it means for the Lord to be glorified.
In my study of the Gospel of John, I first came to understand chapters 1 through 11. But for a long time I did not know what it meant for the Lord to be glorified. Now I see that there is a section of five and a half chapters, from the middle of chapter 12 to the end of chapter 17, and that the subject of this section of John’s Gospel is the divine glorification. In this section of the Gospel of John we see how Jesus is glorified, that is, how He, the one grain, is multiplied to become many grains. As we have pointed out, the Lord’s multiplication was His glorification. Let us, then, keep in mind that the main topic of this section is how the Lord Jesus is multiplied in order to be expressed and glorified.
In 12:27 the Lord Jesus said, “Now is my soul troubled; and what shall I say? Father, save Me out of this hour. But for this reason I have come to this hour.” As a man, the Lord was troubled in His soul by the suffering of His coming death. So He prayed, “Father, save Me out of this hour.” He knew that He had come to earth in order to be multiplied and that the hour for this had come. But He also realized that in order to be multiplied it was necessary for Him to pass through great suffering. Therefore, His soul was troubled. On the one hand, He prayed that the Father would save Him out of that hour. On the other hand, He went on to say, “But for this reason I have come to this hour.”
Then the Lord went on to say, “Father, glorify Your name.” A voice then came out of heaven, saying, “I have both glorified it and will glorify it again” (v. 28). The meaning of the Lord’s prayer to the Father for the Father to glorify His name is that when the Lord Jesus was glorified, the Father’s life within Him would also be glorified. To glorify the name of the Father is to cause the Father’s divine element, the eternal life, which was in the incarnated Son, to be released and expressed through the Son’s death and resurrection.
The prayer in 12:28 is very similar to the prayer in chapter 17. John 17:1 says, “These things Jesus spoke, and lifting up His eyes to heaven, He said, Father, the hour has come; glorify Your Son that the Son may glorify You.” Now we can see that before the Lord gave the message recorded in chapters 14, 15, and 16, He prayed concerning glorification. Then after giving this message, He again prayed concerning His glorification. This is another indication that these chapters are one section concerning the glorification of the Lord Jesus. As we have pointed out, for the Lord to be glorified is for Him to be multiplied, and this means that the divine life within Him, the Father’s life, would be multiplied and thereby be glorified.
In 12:32 the Lord said concerning His death, “I, if I be lifted up from the earth, will draw all men to Myself.” This is a matter of the Lord’s multiplication. Through His death the Lord attracted many to Himself, and all those who have been attracted to Him have become the many grains in His resurrection. These many grains are the Lord’s multiplication and glorification.
Let us go on to 13:31 and 32, where “Jesus said, Now has the Son of Man been glorified, and God has been glorified in Him. If God has been glorified in Him, God will also glorify Him in Himself, and He will glorify Him immediately.” These verses concerning the glorification of the Son of Man are another indication that this section of the Gospel of John is concerned with the divine glorification. Once again, for the Son of Man to be glorified is for Him to have His divine element released, expressed, and multiplied through death and resurrection. In this way God the Father is glorified in the Son’s glorification.
Shortly after uttering these words in chapter 13, the Lord went on to give His disciples a message in which He spoke concerning the Father’s house, the true vine, and the new man. As we have seen, these matters all refer to one thing, and they are all related to the divine glorification. Following this message, the Lord prayed in chapter 17 concerning His glorification. The divine glorification is the key that opens this portion of the Gospel of John. If we do not see the matter of glorification, we will not be able to understand this section of John’s Gospel. We have seen clearly that the main subject of these five and a half chapters is the glorification of the Son for the glorification of God the Father.
