John 12:37-43

Well, I’m back in John. Jesus has just finished talking about His messianic mission to bring glory to His Father by His own death. After saying these things, he went away and hid Himself. His message was not popular. John goes on to talk about people’s responses, explaining them by Old Testament prophecies.

 

First, there was a response of disbelief. Although Jesus had performed signs that verified His claims, people did not believe in Him. John tells us that this was so that Isaiah’s prophecies would be fulfilled. Isaiah had written, “Lord, who has believed our message? And to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed?” These questions come from Isaiah 53:1, and no one has received the Lord’s servant. They’ve all rejected Him. So these questions and the way that Isaiah answered them were being fulfilled right here in Jesus’ ministry. As Jesus is within the last week of His earthly ministry prior to the cross, no one has recognized the truth of His teaching; no one has received Jesus as the Christ, God’s servant. At least, almost no one. Jesus and His teachings were, for the most part, rejected. And within the context of Isaiah 53’s prophecy, it is not surprising to see that this rejection comes with Jesus’ crucifixion. Jesus knows full well what is coming.

 

Why did they not believe? John explains with another prophecy: “He has blinded their eyes and hardened their hearts, so that they will not see with their eyes and understand with their hearts and turn – and I will heal them.” God Himself blinded these people and hardened their hearts, and they cannot see or understand Jesus’ message. It sounds so unfair, doesn’t it? But we might want to ask when their eyes were blinded and when their hearts were hardened. Is this a sudden thing that God has just now done? Is the Bible saying that these people were good enough on their own, but that God prevented them from responding to Him? I don’t think so. God hardens sinners in their own sins and disbelief (look at Romans 1 and Genesis 1-3 and Exodus 7-14). What God is doing here is preventing them from justifying themselves; these sinful people will never be able to say, “I figured it out.” God has bound them in their sins and is preventing them from seeing the truth now to confirm to them that they are sinful.

 

The last phrase is often translated, “And I would heal them” or “and I heal them,” implying that God has specifically blinded these people because He does not intend to heal them, to save them. I’m not sure that’s all that God is saying. In the Old Testament, the quote is “and (someone) will heal them” or “and (it) will heal them.” In other words, in the Old Testament is seems that God wants to keep the people from turning and being healed on the basis of their own understanding. This judgment could last forever; sinners certainly deserve to be condemned in their sins. But maybe God intends to limit the judgment.

 

In the New Testament, it actually says, “and I will heal them.” It is certainly possible that this means that God has prevented them from understanding to prevent healing them. But it also seems possible that the subtle shift from the Old Testament to the New Testament is more than a clarification of what the Old Testament was teaching. It could be that John is showing that God has bound all men in their disobedience so that He can show Himself to be the only source of their salvation (Paul teaches such a concept – Rom. 11:32; I’m not sure whether it’s a stretch to see this idea here in John). If this understanding is right, then God bound these people in their disbelief not to keep from saving them, but to show them how utterly incapable they were of saving themselves and then to save them once they understood how sinful they were. They are totally blind… “and I will save them.” I could be going too far within this passage, but either way, God is justified. Either He is justly condemning sinners to stay lost in their sins, or He is proving that He is the only hope of salvation.

 

Isaiah said these things because He saw Jesus’ glory and spoke about Him. Jesus’ glory is not about sinners being able to work their way toward Him; it is about how Jesus works salvation in His own power, dying on the cross to save people from their sins. And we learn these things from the first response.

 

The second response is almost as bad. Many people – even among the rulers – actually believed in Jesus. But then John writes that they did not tell anyone that they believed in Him. Why not? Because they were scared that the Pharisees would put them out of the synagogue. The judgment about this behavior is chilling: “They loved the glory of men more than the glory of God.” They wanted to be accepted by men, recognized as spiritual, counted worthy of participation with men in the man-made synagogue. They chose this path rather than the path of following God no matter what men thought, even though they believed in Jesus. No king would be glad to have such disloyal followers.

 

Essentially, the response of men was to reject Jesus, to reject His messianic mission, to reject the glory and wisdom of God. We are weak creatures. We do not deserve eternal life, we are incapable of earning eternal life, and even when we believe in Jesus we do not deserve His salvation because we tend to be too afraid of men to stand up for our King.

 

Father, forgive us. Even those of us who are your followers. We fail You so often. Thank You for sending Jesus to die for us even though we are sinful, disloyal subjects.