John 12:23

And Jesus answered them, saying, The hour is come, that the Son of man should be glorified.

EXPOSITORY (ENGLISH BIBLE)

Ellicott's Commentary for English Readers

(23) And Jesus answered them, saying.—The words are rather the utterance of the thoughts of His own mind, which this visit of the Greeks suggests, than an answer. They are spoken to the Apostles, but the narrative is too compressed for us to know whether any answer was given to the Greeks apart from this. The explanation which is most probable is that the Greeks heard this discourse, and that it is in reality an answer to the thoughts of their hearts, and to the words they wished to have spoken to Him.

The hour is come.—This approach of men from outside the limits of Judaism who have been admitted within its pale, and who now, when priests and rulers are seeking to kill Him, are seeking to render Him homage, brings back again the thought of the scattered sheep, for whose gathering the Shepherd’s life must be laid down (John 10:16-19). They are the first-fruits of the great flocks of humanity, and their presence is as the first stroke of the bell which sounds the fatal but glorious hour. That hour marked out in the counsels of God, and ever present in His own thoughts, has now come.

That the Son of man should be glorified.—This is to be accomplished in His ascension and return to the glory of Heaven. (Comp. Notes on John 17:1-2; John 17:5.) But the immediate connection implies that He regards the extension of his Messianic work, and the acceptance of His truth by the nations of the earth, as part of the glory of the Son of man. The connection implies also that He regards His own death as the dark path which must be trodden before the path of glory can be entered.

Benson Commentary

John 12:23-26. Jesus answered, saying — This phraseology intimates the suitableness of the following discourse to this particular occasion; by attending to which, many of the beauties of it will be discovered. Our Lord might, perhaps, enlarge on some of these hints; and if his hearers took a due notice of them, and made a proper report on their return home, it might prepare the way for the apostles, when they came, by their preaching, more fully to unfold and illustrate these important doctrines. The hour is come that the Son of man should be glorified — Meaning, that he should soon be honoured by the conversion of many of the Gentiles. At the same time he told them, that he was to suffer death before he arrived at this glory; and illustrated the necessity of his dying, by the similitude of grain cast into the earth. Verily, Except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone: but if it die, &c. — As if he had said, As the only way to make grain produce fruit is to bury it in the ground; so, the most proper method of bringing about the conversion and salvation of the world is, that I die and be buried. To omit other things, our Lord’s resurrection, the grand miracle on which the truth of Christianity is founded, and by which the conversion of the world was effected, happened in consequence of his death. The late resurrection of Lazarus gave our Lord a natural occasion of speaking on the subject. “And agreeable to his infinite knowledge, he singles out from among so many thousands of seeds almost the only one that dies in the earth, and which, therefore, was an exceeding proper similitude, peculiarly adapted to the purpose for which he uses it. The like is not to be found in any other grain, except millet, and the large bean.” — Wesley. He that loveth his life — More than the will of God; shall lose it eternally. He further told them, that as he, their Master, was to suffer before his exaltation, so were all they, his disciples; for which reason they were to expect persecution, firmly resolving to lose even life itself, after his example, when called to do it; and in that case he promised them a share in his crown and glory: saying, He that hateth his life — In comparison of the will of God, and therefore exposes it to great dangers in the cause of the gospel; shall keep it unto life eternal — And secure a state of immortal glory and happiness. If any man serve me — If any one would become a faithful servant of mine, would do my will, (for his servants we are whom we obey, Romans 6:16,) and would serve the cause in which I am engaged; let him follow me — Let him attach himself to me as one of my disciples, even although his doing so should expose him to the loss of his life; and let him drink into my Spirit, and imitate my example. And where I am — Where I shall shortly take up mine abode, even in the eternal kingdom of my Father; there shall also my servant be — In the same felicity and glory. Yea, if any man serve me — And live no longer to himself, but unto me, of whatever nation he may be, or whatever his religious profession may before have been; him will my Father honour — Unspeakably and for ever. Perhaps, in speaking thus, Jesus intended tacitly to intimate, that the strangers who wished to be introduced to him, would be greatly disappointed, if their desire of conversing with him proceeded from a hope of recommending themselves to earthly preferments through his favour.

Matthew Henry's Concise Commentary

12:20-26 In attendance upon holy ordinances, particularly the gospel passover, the great desire of our souls should be to see Jesus; to see him as ours, to keep up communion with him, and derive grace from him. The calling of the Gentiles magnified the Redeemer. A corn of wheat yields no increase unless it is cast into the ground. Thus Christ might have possessed his heavenly glory alone, without becoming man. Or, after he had taken man's nature, he might have entered heaven alone, by his own perfect righteousness, without suffering or death; but then no sinner of the human race could have been saved. The salvation of souls hitherto, and henceforward to the end of time, is owing to the dying of this Corn of wheat. Let us search whether Christ be in us the hope of glory; let us beg him to make us indifferent to the trifling concerns of this life, that we may serve the Lord Jesus with a willing mind, and follow his holy example.

Barnes' Notes on the Bible

The hour is come - The time is come. The word "hour" commonly means a definite part or a division of a day; but it also is used to denote a brief period, and a fixed, definite, determined time. It is used in this sense here. The appointed, fixed time is come - that is, is so near at hand that it may be said to be come.

The Son of man - This is the favorite title which Jesus gives to himself, denoting his union with man, and the interest he felt in his welfare. The title is used here rather than "The Son of God," because as a man he had been humble, poor, and despised; but the time had come when, as a man, he was to receive the appropriate honors of the Messiah.

Be glorified - Be honored in an appropriate way - that is, by the testimony which God would give to him at his death, by his resurrection, and by his ascension to glory. See John 7:39.

Jamieson-Fausset-Brown Bible Commentary

23-26. Jesus answered them, The hour is come that the Son of man should be glorified—that is, They would see Jesus, would they? Yet a little moment, and they shall see Him so as now they dream not of. The middle wall of partition that keeps them out from the commonwealth of Israel is on the eve of breaking down, "and I, if I be lifted up from the earth, shall draw all men unto Me"; I see them "flying as a cloud, and as doves to their cotes"—a glorious event that will be for the Son of man, by which this is to be brought about. It is His death He thus sublimely and delicately alluded to. Lost in the scenes of triumph which this desire of the Greeks to see Him called up before His view, He gives no direct answer to their petition for an interview, but sees the cross which was to bring them gilded with glory.

Matthew Poole's Commentary

Christ replies, that the time was now come when he (who was the Son of God)

should be glorified; that is, by the Gentiles receiving of the gospel, according to the many prophecies of it in the Old Testament; but he goeth on telling them that he must first die.

Gill's Exposition of the Entire Bible

And Jesus answered them,.... Not directly and particularly; he did not in plain terms signify what was his will, whether these Greeks should be admitted or not; and yet expressed himself in such a manner as shows he was not averse to it, but was pleased with it, and takes notice of it, as an evidence of the near approach of his glorification:

saying, the hour is come, that the son of man should be glorified; by rising from the dead, ascending to heaven, sitting at the right hand of God, and from thence pouring forth the Spirit upon his disciples, who should go and preach the Gospel to the Gentiles, as well as Jews; and which would issue in the conversion of many of them, and so in his glory, of which the coming of these Greeks was an earnest. But he intimates, in the next verse, that he must first die.

Geneva Study Bible

And Jesus answered them, saying, The hour is come, that the Son of man should be glorified.

EXEGETICAL (ORIGINAL LANGUAGES)

Meyer's NT Commentary

John 12:23. The proposal of the Gentiles which had been brought to Him, awakens in Jesus, with peculiar force and depth, the thought of His approaching death; for through His death was His salvation in truth to be conveyed to the Gentiles (John 10:16-17).

Accordingly, that wish of the Gentiles must appear to Him as already a beginning of that which was to be effected by His death. Hence His answer to those two disciples (not to the Ἕλληνες, Ebrard), which is pervaded by a full presentiment of the crisis at hand, and at the close, John 12:27, resolves itself into a prayer of deep emotion, but, by means thereof, into complete surrender to the Father. This answer is consequently neither inappropriate (De Wette), nor does it contain an indirect refusal of the request of the Greeks (Ewald, Hengstenberg, Godet); nor is the granting of it to be thought of as having taken place before, and as having been passed over in silence by John (Tholuck, B. Crusius, and older commentators), which the text refutes by the words ἀπεκρίνατο αὐτοῖς, which continue the narrative without any further remarks; nor is the petition of the Gentiles to be regarded as indirectly complied with, namely, by the fact that the apostles brought it before Jesus, and that the latter then began to speak (Luthardt)—which amounts to the improbability that Jesus, by the following speech, desired to make a display before those Gentiles (whom Ewald also supposes to have been present); but the admission of the Gentiles which was to have taken place after this outpouring of emotion, did not, however, take place, because the voice from heaven, John 12:28, interrupted and changed the scene.[108] The theory that in John 5:23 ff. the synoptical accounts of the transfiguration, and of the conflict of soul in Gethsemane, are either fused into a historical mixture (Strauss), or formed into an ideal combination (Baur), proceeds from presuppositions, according to which it is possible to adduce even Galatians 2:9 as a witness against John 12:20 (see against this, Bleek, p. 250 ff.), as Baur has done.

ἐλήλυθεν] Placed first with emphasis.

ἽΝΑ] Comp. John 13:1, John 16:2; John 16:32. The hour is conceived of absolutely (in the consciousness of Jesus the present hora fatalis κατʼ ἐξοχήν), and that which is to take place in it, as the divine appointment for its having arrived.

ΔΟΞΑΣΘῇ] through death, as the necessary passage to the heavenly glory. Comp. John 17:5, John 6:62; 1 Peter 1:11.

[108] According to Ewald, Gesch. Chr. p. 527, Jesus would, in granting the request, be exposed to a temptation, and have done something at this last development out of keeping with His previous ministry, which would have awakened disquiet, furnished a new embarrassment to the hierarchs, etc. But we may also conversely pass the judgment that Jesus, on the very threshold of His death, could not have designed to refuse an actual manifestation of His universal destination, which He, moreover, had expressed in John 10:16,—offered so accidentally, as it were,—especially since the conversion of the Gentiles to the Messiah was grounded in prophecy. To yield to the prayer was, further, by no means to make a full surrender to the petitioners.

Expositor's Greek Testament

John 12:23. ὁ δὲ Ἰησοῦς ἀπεκρίνατο αὐτοῖς, “Jesus answers them,” i.e., the two disciples, but probably the Greeks had come with them and heard the words: Ἐλήλυθεν ἡ ὧρα ἵνα δοξασθῇ ὁ υἱὸς τοῦ ἀνθρώπου. ἔρχεται ὧρα is followed by ὅτε in John 4:21, John 5:25, and by ἐν ᾗ in John 5:28. Burton calls it “the complementary” use of ἵνα. “The hour is come that the Son of Man should be glorified.” Directly the glorification of the Son of Man or Messiah consisted in His being acknowledged by men; and this earnest inquiry of the Greeks was the evidence that His claims were being considered beyond the circle of the Jewish people.

Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges

23. And Jesus answered] Better, But Jesus answereth. He anticipates the Apostles and addresses them before they introduce the Greeks. We are left in doubt as to the result of the Greeks’ request. Nothing is said to them in particular, though they may have followed and heard this address to the Apostles, which gradually shades off into soliloquy.

These men from the West at the close of Christ’s life set forth the same truth as the men from the East at the beginning of it—that the Gentiles are to be gathered in. The wise men came to His cradle, these to His cross, of which their coming reminds Him; for only by His death could ‘the nations’ be saved.

The hour is come] The verb first for emphasis in the Greek as in John 4:21; John 4:23 : ‘it hath come—the fated hour.’ Comp. John 13:1.

that the Son of man] Literally, in order that, of the Divine purpose, as in John 11:50 and John 13:1, where see notes. See also the last note on John 1:51.

glorified] By His Passion and Death through which He must pass to return to glory. See on John 7:39 and John 11:4.

Bengel's Gnomen

John 12:23. Ἡ ὥρα, the hour) Of this hour there is frequent subsequent mention: John 12:27, “Father save Me from this hour,” John 13:1, “When Jesus knew that His hour was come, that He should depart out of this world unto the Father,” John 16:32, “Behold the hour cometh, yea, is now come, that ye shall be scattered,” John 17:1, “Father, the hour is come: glorify Thy Son.”—ἵνα δοξασθῇ, that—should be glorified) with the Father: John 17:5, “And now, O Father, glorify Thou Me with Thine own self, with the glory which I had with Thee before the world was,” and in the sight of every creature. The glorification of Christ and the conversion of the Gentiles fall upon one and the same time.

Pulpit Commentary

Verses 23-26. -

(1) The glorification of the Son of man in and through death. Verse 23. - And Jesus answereth them. Many commentators (Ewald, Godet, Hengstenberg) think that Jesus did not address the following words to the Greeks, that until he had gone through the agony of death, and entered in human nature on his Divine and mediatorial reign, the mission to the Gentiles could not commence. Tholuck supposed that the interview was over, and that the solemn words are addressed to the disciples in the presence both of Greeks and of others afterwards; but there is no such break suggested. It is more probable (with Luthardt, Edersheim, Lunge) that the Greeks were close behind Andrew and Philip, and that our Lord at once, for their advantage, as well as for that of the disciples, proceeded to explain the solemn impression made upon himself by this remarkable desire. Surely it is unnecessary to say that our Lord was anxious not to give umbrage to the priests, or to rouse the animosity of the people. Every word of the terrible address of Matthew 23, all the controversies in the temple, even the triumphal entry itself, would and did give mortal umbrage to the priestly party and to the Sanhedrim He had boldly challenged their entire position, he had smitten down their prejudices and assailed their notions of exclusive privilege, and therefore would not have shrunk, on that ground, from intercourse with devout Greeks worshipping at the feast. The words are surely said to them and about them, but in the main for the instruction of the disciples themselves. The hour is come for which he had been waiting (see John 2:4; John 13:1)-the mysterious "hour" on which his glory would depend, and the destiny of the world turn. God not only contemplates great periods, eons of time, but "acceptable years," "days of the Lord," "moments of time," as parts of the eternal plan. That the Son of man should be glorified. The "Son of man," rather than "Son of God," is the term he uses in reference to, and in the presence of, the Greeks. The highest Man is now about to assume his supreme glory, to go forth, as the mighty Man, to rule the world of men. The Son of man is about to ascend into his eternal throne, to clothe himself with all authority of judgment and mercy in heaven and earth. The glorification of the Son of man is one of the high main themes of the Gospel, and its justification is to be found in the fact that the Son of man is indeed the Logos made flesh, and the Lamb slain, and like the Serpent is being lifted up, and as the true Shepherd is laying down his life that he might take it again. The advent of the Greeks opens prophetic vistas which involve tremendous experiences of his own, and also great principles of service for all his followers. His Passion was so inextricably interwoven with his glory, that the former becomes verily the prelude of his victory and supreme exaltation. His death is but his glory. Moreover, the approach of the Gentiles suggested the universal belief in him which would follow upon his Passion and resurrection, and he" foretells that the hour of his glorification was already come" (Augustine). (See remarks in Introduction, pp. 78-80, on the several epochs in this record of the Lord's life, where the "hour" seems to strike, but is again and again postponed with a view to fresh revelations, exactly as the climax is deferred throughout the Apocalypse.) John 12:23

Vincent's Word Studies

Answered (ἀπεκρίνατο)

The best texts read ἀποκρίνεται, answereth.

The hour is come, that (ἐλήλυθεν ἡ ὥρα ἵνα)

This is not equivalent to "the hour is come in which." The hour is used absolutely: the critical hour is come in order that the Son, etc.