Believe, prioritize, then serve in humility. The Lord is the Preeminent One. John 12:24-27

John 12:20 Now there were certain Greeks among those who were going up to worship at the feast;

 

John 12:21 these therefore came to Philip, who was from Bethsaida of Galilee, and began to ask him, saying, "Sir, we wish to see Jesus."

 

John 12:22 Philip came and told Andrew; Andrew and Philip came, and they told Jesus.

 

John 12:23 And Jesus answered them, saying, "The hour has come for the Son of Man [title to hypostatic union] to be glorified.

 

The literal translation of this is that “Jesus had an answer,” and that answer is for the Greeks.

 

The Greeks will understand this.

 

The seed must die before the wheat is produced. The cross must come before any blessing can come to mankind.

 

John 12:24 "Truly, truly, I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains by itself alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit.

 

This is the only way that Jesus Christ can communicate to Greeks resurrection. Resurrection is entirely foreign to the thinking of Greeks, it is entirely apart from Greek culture.

 

John 12:25 "He who loves his life loses it; and he who hates his life in this world shall keep it to life eternal.

 

This verse emphasises another aspect of it. Jesus now hits them with something which is clear to the Greeks and probably obscure to the Jews.

 

Now we move to the principle of the spiritual life after salvation while the believer is on the earth as well as the believer moving into eternity.

 

These Greeks would have understood exactly what He was talking about because it is an idiom that was part of their culture.

 

The real person is the soul. The real you is your soul. “He that keeps on loving his own soul” is an idiom of Greek culture in which the person involved has a false attitude toward himself, toward his life.

 

It means to have a false scale of values.

 

To love your own soul is an idiom for the Greek philosophy of hedonism. Hedonism means live it up as much as you can—self-gratification in one word.

 

This is actually the Greek idiom for self-gratification. It is comparable to putting your emphasis on the details of life. It actually indicates the condition of the soul that has self as its top priority.

 

 

So He says, “He that loves his own soul”—negative volition, scar tissue, emotional revolt, reversionism. All of these things put together.

 

“shall lose it.” It doesn’t mean to lose the soul, it means to lose the purpose of the function of life. Jesus is saying to the Greeks that life has purpose but you can lose out by neglecting doctrine, by getting into reversionism. But on the other hand, there is another side to it.

           

“he that hates his life” - this does not mean that you have to hate yourself. Again the word pseuche means soul and the word hate is the present active participle of misew, [miseo] which means to hate, but it also means to love less or to put something very low on your scale of values.

 

Here it means to have an attitude, a regard in which you take certain things as inconsequential. Things that were valuable as far as self-gratification is concerned are not of any consequence. Other things are of greater consequence, say, to put the spiritual things of life above the material. It is really the attitude of the supergrace life. It is the attitude that comes from doctrine.

           

“in this world” - an expression for the CWL in time.

           

“shall keep it to life eternal” - incorrect. It says, “he shall guard what belongs to another until he reaches eternal life.”

 

The word keep is fulassw[phulasso] and it is a military word which means to guard, to guard something that belongs to someone else.

 

Doctrine belongs to God and the person who has the attitude of orientation to grace de-emphasises those things that lead to self-gratification, de-emphasises hedonism—shall guard what belongs to another until he reaches eternal life.

 

Eternal life is phase three or the believer after physical death.

 

The believer takes doctrine with him into phase three. The soul leaves the body and goes to be with the Lord, and any Bible doctrine you have in your soul goes along. That is what “unto life eternal means.”

           

Now that doctrine has been emphasized in terms of priorities or a correct scale of values the Lord now moves to teach them another principle about the spiritual life. This is from the standpoint of the Greeks and is not a discipleship passage.

 

John 12:26 "If anyone serves Me, let him follow Me; and where I am, there shall My servant also be; if anyone serves Me, the Father will honor him.

 

“If anyone serve me” - 3^rd class condition. They are still free to make a choice.

 

They are being given very briefly all of the alternatives which belong to them if they choose for Jesus Christ.

 

Serve meis the present active subjunctive of diakoneo which means to start at the bottom, rowing on the bottom bank of the ship, the toughest place to row. Therefore it means to serve in the humblest frame of mind and circumstances.

 

 “and where I am” - this anticipates Christ at the right hand of the throne. Please notice Christ’s confidence in the success of His mission. He will be the seed that dies and bears much fruit. And if that fruit matures, they will sit with Him on His throne.

 

John 12:26 "If anyone serves Me, let him follow Me; and where I am, there shall My servant also be; if anyone serves Me, the Father will honor him.

 

“there shall [present tense of e)imi] my servant also be” - it is “there you shall be also my servant.” We serve Jesus Christ today who is at the right hand of the Father.

 

He is not on the earth, so we cannot walk around behind Him. We can only follow Him through what He has left for us to follow—Bible doctrine.

           

“if” is a 3^rd class condition indicating whether you learn doctrine or not determines whether you are going to serve or not; “any man serve” - diakonew.

           

“him [that individual believer] - this relates the believer to God the Father and His plan which gives his life meaning; “my Father will honour him” - the first person of the Trinity, eternal God, will—future active indicative of timaw[timao] “hold him in honour.”

 

This is the only way that the believer will ever be honourable in his phase two experience. The Father must honour His plan.

 

His plan begins with that seed that goes into the ground [the cross]. The Father has a grace plan after the cross—more grace, supergrace.

 

These Greeks now understand from a series of idioms of 3^rd class conditions that God has a plan for them that begins at the cross and continues forever in eternity, and has an interval of time in life when they can be related to the members of the Godhead in such a way that their life has purpose and meaning and definition.

 

The Lord Jesus Christ has been dealing with the Greeks, and now He switches over to the entire world.

 

John 12:27 "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.

 

“Now is my soul troubled.” The soul of the Lord Jesus Christ was perfect, exactly like the first Adam when the first Adam was in the garden. The only exception is that the first Adam did not have a troubled soul at any time. The last Adam now has a troubled soul. Why?

 

He had no sin, therefore He had never worried. The verb to be troubled is the perfect passive indicative of parassw [parasso].

 

It means to be agitated, or stirred up within, but it is in the passive voice here. It means to receive agitation, to receive trouble without any sin being involved. It means to be under pressure so that your soul is stirred up or agitated.

 

The perfect tense means that this had begun some time before with the result that it was now building up. It was less than a week from the cross.

 

 

 

The passive voice: He has received this because as God He is aware of what the cross means. As true humanity, having mastered the Old Testament scriptures and all other doctrines, He was aware of the significance of the spiritual death which He would have on the cross when He was bearing our sins.

 

The indicative mood is the reality of the fact that He was under great pressure to avoid the cross. The perfect tense indicates He was agitated to the point that He gave serious thought to accomplishing God’s plan some other way, but came to the conclusion that there was no other way, which intensifies the agitation.

 

John 12:27 "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.

 

“and what shall I say?” - aorist active subjunctive of legw[lego]. That is, how can Jesus communicate pressure, the horror of coming into contact with human sin? How can He express to us as a sinless person?

 

Nothing could be worse than bearing the sins of the world. He will come into contact with every sin that has ever been sinned up until the time that He dies, and every sin that will ever be sinned in the future, including all Millennial sins until the end of the Millennium.

 

He would bear the sins of all who would believe in Him; He would also bear the sins of all who would never believe. There never was a person who came into the world and sinned whose sins would not be judged on the cross.

 

He contemplates this; He anticipates this. No one hated sin more than Jesus Christ and no one was better qualified to hate sin.

 

He was qualified to hate sin because He did not have an old sin nature. He was qualified to hate sin because there was no personal sin in His life ever. He was qualified to hate sin because Adam’s sin was never imputed to Him and could not be imputed to Him because of the virgin birth. He also hated sin from observation.

 

He saw the horrible effects of sin on others. He had no fear but He witnessed the havoc that the sin of fear created in others. He had no jealousy, but he witnessed lives ruined by it, even in those whom He loved. He hated sin and yet in less than a week He would come in contact and judgement for more sin than anyone ever.

 

He hated sin as one who achieved the ECS at the earliest possible moment and who entered into supergrace at the earliest possible moment. He also hated sin because linked with His humanity is His deity and God can only despise sin. The righteousness of God hates sin. The justice of God not only hates sin but pronounces its doom. There is no part of the character of God that could ever like sin.

 

So this is approached from the standpoint of His hypostatic union. He despised the very thought of coming into contact with what was not even His own sin—actually bearing the sins of others.

There is no way to really illustrate this principle. As close as we can ever come to understanding what Jesus faced, have we ever been completely and totally innocent and yet took the rap for some sin that someone else committed?

 

It is one of those things that trouble the soul. Jesus Christ took the rap for all the sins of every member of the human race.

 

There is a build-up of pressure, not sinful pressure but sinless pressure. No sin was ever involved in His soul being troubled. Our Lord could never really explain how He felt on those few days before the cross where He would bear the sins of the world. There is no way He could explain it.

 

This is Palm Sunday. He will go to the cross on the next Wednesday, and it is the last three hours of the cross when He started screaming, “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?” And then at the end He said, “Tetelestai” - finished. When He said that He had completed His mission; salvation was completed at that point.

           

How can Jesus explain this? He is going to try, and He picks a short, hypothetical prayer to express it. He picks a prayer which He knows cannot be answered in the affirmative. Here is a prayer that could not be answered, because of us.

 

“Father save me from this hour” - that is the hypothetical prayer that could never be answered. He is going to try to explain to you and to me what it was like for Him to face the cross.

 

Imagine knowing that you’re going to take the rap for something horrible that you didn’t do and you knew that no matter how much you asked God to deliver you from it that He would just say no.

 

Now imagine the sinless one coming into contact with every single sin that everyone would commit. There are no words to explain it.