Jesus Predicts His Death
20Now there were some Greeks among those who went up to worship at the Feast. 21They came to Philip, who was from Bethsaida in Galilee, with a request. "Sir," they said, "we would like to see Jesus." 22Philip went to tell Andrew; Andrew and Philip in turn told Jesus.
23Jesus replied, "The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified. 24I tell you the truth, unless a kernel of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains only a single seed. But if it dies, it produces many seeds. 25The man who loves his life will lose it, while the man who hates his life in this world will keep it for eternal life. 26Whoever serves me must follow me; and where I am, my servant also will be. My Father will honor the one who serves me.
Dig Deeper
I recall as a small child being fascinated by the story "Jack and the Beanstalk." Actually we had a book that was the Mickey Mouse version called "Mickey and the Beanstalk," but it was a similar story line. The part that really grabbed my attention was the magic beans. They didn’t seem very special and certainly didn’t seem worth the cow that Mickey traded for the beans. In fact, the beans seemed to be worthless. Until, that is, his mother threw them out of the window. Once they went into the ground, the magic part of them took hold and a giant beanstalk grew overnight. That story left me quite interested in this whole seed business. The idea that you could put something into the ground and it might eventually develop into a living plant was amazing to me. I tried burying tree leaves, chestnuts that had fallen off of trees, dandelion heads, almost anything that I could find that looked like it might grow after I buried it. Nothing worked until the summer that my mother decided to grow a garden in our back yard. I got to help put the seeds in the ground but after a few days nothing was coming up. It seemed to me that there was going to be another disappointment. Then, suddenly one morning, I went outside into the backyard and I saw dozens of little shoots coming up out of the ground. I was amazed. Life had sprouted from the act of burying what seemed like a dead seed.
The incredible things about seeds is that it truly seems like a death has occurred. You take a lifeless rather nondescript thing and bury it into the ground, yet somehow life springs forth from that act of death and burial. Jesus used the imagery of the seed quite often to speak of life coming forth from death. In doing so, he was using something that was common and understandable to the agrarian culture in which he lived, but that also got across the important point that in order for him to truly bring forth the new life of the new creation, death like that of a seed being buried in the ground, was absolutely necessary.
John tells us that there were some Greeks who had come among the pilgrims to worship at the Passover Feast in Jerusalem. "Greek" was kind of a catch-all word that included virtually any Gentiles in the Greco-Roman world. We’re not told who these Greeks were or where they came from but it was likely that they were from a specific group called "God-fearers" and came from the Decapolis. God-fearers were Gentiles that deeply admired and adhered to Jewish monotheism and the reverent way of life consistent with Judaism but did not get circumcised and thus go all the way to becoming proselytes. These God-fearers were allowed in the outer courts of the Temple but could not go into the inner courts under the penalty of death.
These Greeks have heard about Jesus and so they approach Philip to gain an audience with him. It might be just a coincidence that they approach Philip, but his name is a Greek name, so that might have led to them seeking out Philip. When they ask to see Jesus, though, that doesn’t just mean that they want to take a look at him, that meant that they wanted to question him and inquire about his teaching. Philip tells Andrew and they both go and tell Jesus. It’s not clear whether Jesus addresses the Greeks directly or if he simply responds to Philip and Andrew, giving them a message to take back to the Greeks. Either way, we have a bit of a riddle it seems. The Greeks want to learn about Jesus’ teaching, so what on earth does his response have to do with any of that?
We might think that Jesus would be encouraged by their inquiries and would respond with a call for them to come to him and learn from him, but we don’t get that. Instead Jesus talks of seeds, dying, losing your life, being his servant, in short, a bunch of things that don’t seem to be a proper response to what the Greeks want to know. Verse 23 is the key, though, to understanding the nature of Jesus’ response. The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified. The time has come. Everything else that John has told us about Jesus’ time or hour has been to demonstrate that it was not yet time (2:4; 7:6; 7:8; 7:30; 8:20), but finally the time has come. The hour has arrived. It almost seems as if the act of the Gentiles seeking out Jesus is his final sign, in some sense, that the time has now arrived. This Passover would be the moment when God would unveil his full will and the Son of Man will be glorified. Any other time, there might be more time for Jesus to fully explain his teaching and launch into a parable about the Kingdom of God, but now that the hour has come, it calls for him to be as succinct and direct as possible. Jesus will sum up his ministry, God’s will for him, and the call to those who would follow him, in a few short enigmatic sentences.
What exactly is Jesus teaching? Why did he come to Jerusalem during with such dangerous circumstances swirling about him? And what did the imagery and symbolism of Passover and Hanukkah have to do with all of this? What seems like unrelated teachings actually has everything to do with answering those types of questions that the Greeks may well have wanted to ask him.
How would the Son of Man be glorified? In a way that no one could imagine. Not in some powerful or impressive manner but through death. Just as a kernel of wheat falls to the ground and dies so would Jesus. But that’s not the end of the story for the kernel, nor would it be for Jesus. The kernel must die in a sense before it can produce many seeds. That’s what must happen for Jesus. If the Greeks want to know what his mission is and what he’s about, that’s it in a sentence. The son of man must die and fall to the ground so that many might have life.
Yet, that wasn’t merely the formula for Christ. It wasn’t that he would die and then everyone else could simply continue to live and enjoy the life that he brought them. It was true that "in him was life" (Jn. 1:4) but in order to enter into that life those who would come after him would have to die as well. This is the great paradox of the Christian reality. The man who loves his life will lose it. The very thing that men try to cling to will cost the destruction of the thing they love most, themselves. On the other hand, the man who hates his life in this world will keep it for eternal life. The life of Christ is the only life that will enter the age to come, it is the only way to eternal life both now and forever. The language of love and hate comes from Jewish idioms for inheritance rights where "love" means to accept as the rightful way or heir and "hate" means to reject as the rightful way or heir (cf. Mal. 1:2-3). Thus, the one who thinks that there is value to his way, his will, and his life will die in that life of sin (cf. Rom. 3:23). Those who reject their life as worthy of entering into God’s presence and who recognize that Jesus is the way, the truth and the life (Jn. 14:6) will gain the eternal life of Christ as their own.
Verse 26 makes perfect sense when we understand the Jewish concept of a teacher and a disciple. Although an organized system of Rabbinic training and system would not be formalized until the 2nd century, the Jewish concept of disciple and teacher were surely, firmly established by Jesus’ day. In that way of thinking, the student did not just learn from his teacher but he followed him. He went where his rabbi went and did what his teacher did. His goal was to become like the rabbi and become what he was. Jesus picks up on that belief saying that whoever served him must follow him. (Although Jesus was occasionally called "Rabbi" out of respect, there is no evidence for saying that Jesus was formally a Rabbi. Many of the modern claims that Jesus was an official Rabbi come from projecting 2nd century AD practices back onto Jesus’ time.) The Greeks shouldn’t think that following his teaching was like Greek students and teachers where the knowledge of the teacher was simply gleaned from the teacher for the intellectual benefit of the student. No, if they wanted to know about him, they had to follow him and do what he did, and become what he was. He would die to bring life and so would they have to die to enter into true life.
Jesus is the one who does the will of the Father who sent him and nothing else, so he again stresses the unity between he and the Father. Those who serve him, who follow him, bring glory to the Father and the Father will honor them. They are so indistinguishable in will and mission that to enter into the life of the Messiah is to bring glory to the Father and bring the honor of the Father onto oneself.
Devotional Thought
Jesus died so that we could die to ourselves and have the free gift of his life. Do you see dying to self as an opportunity and a gift or do you tend to view it as something restrictive and burdensome. Spend some time today meditating on the gift that God has truly given you through the life of Jesus Christ.
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