Bible Commentaries

Mixed Motives

John 12:9

These words may be read with marked and suggestive differences of emphasis. "Not for Jesus" sake only "would seem to be the natural emphasis; "Not for Jesus" sake only" would seem to convey another suggestion and meaning.

I. Take the words thus: "Not for Jesus" sake only," though that might be the principal reason, but also for another reason, namely, that they might see the man whom Jesus Christ had raised from the dead. They did not want to exclude Jesus, but they wanted to see some one else. So they went for a double motive. How difficult it is in life to come squarely down on one simple direct motive or purpose! The subject, therefore, may well be Mixed Motives—coming not for one reason, but for another reason, and for a third reason that may not take upon itself the form of words—that other reason that always lies back of everything, that will not come to the front, that influences the whole intellectual and spiritual movement, and is yet an unconfessed or unavowed reason. Then what wonder that we should be the subjects of mixed motives in relation to the Christian religion when we act under mixed motives in our own household economy, in the whole circle of friendship, in the whole position and activity of commercial life, in political life, and in all the spheres and aspects of human development.

Now let us apply this test to everything in life, and we shall find how merciful God is in taking us at our best For example, in making a Christian profession we do not always make it "for Jesus" sake only". There are many reasons why some men attach themselves to the Church. A man may be in the Church and out of it at the same time; the soul may be far away from the very altar at which the knees are bent. We are here today, as on every other day, under the influence of divers feelings, mixed feelings, and God knows where the manhood is weakest and where it is strongest. Throw yourselves into the hands of God, and even your imperfect prayers and professions may be completed according to the scale of God's benevolence.

So it is in the matter of general Christian service. Who dare analyse his motives for preaching? Who dare analyse his motives for opening the doors, lighting the lamps, and helping in the general economy of the Church? None. We are in this respect as in others, wounds and bruises and putrefying sores. We dare not analyse our own motives; we sometimes, so to speak, slur them over, encouraging, it may be, the best of them, but still being profoundly conscious of the worst of them. My dear brother, engaged in any department of Christian service, preaching, or music, or visiting, or writing books, or doing anything whatsoever, take heart of grace in this thought, that God knows all about it. It is better to fall into the hands of God than into the hands of men. When you hear the voices of hostile criticism do not be too much cast down by it; there is another voice—God grant that we may hear it!—saying, well done so far, try again, you have not yet attained, but keep on pressing toward the mark for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ; though you are faint, yet be pursuing, and though there may steal in upon your most spiritual moments some secular anxieties and degradations, leave all to God, and He will be just, gracious, and tender exceedingly.

II. The people went "Not for Jesus" sake only". Observe that "only"; there is a saving point even in that solitary word. They went to see Jesus and to see Lazarus also; we might read the text thus, and escape the whole idea of mixed motive as in any sense weakening or degrading spiritual life; but the text is not read in that easy way, it has in it a hesitation, a point of doubt, a curious and inexplicable uncertainty as to the motive, so that if you had detained some of these people and said to them, "Now, answer distinctly and directly, for what purposes have you come?—from a single and unmixed motive?" no man could tell. The question ought not, indeed, to be put by man; there are some questions that should be spoken only by the lips of God. It is God that searches the heart, it is God that knows the weight of the prayer, it is God that knows how many tears there are in the John 12:21

This John 12:21

I want to ask you why it is that we should desire to see Jesus.

I. He Wishes Us to See Him.—In the first place because the whole tenor of Scripture makes it plain that He wishes us to do so. Surely He who said "Look unto Me and be saved, all ye ends of the earth," and blamed His ancient people because they looked not to the Holy One of Israel—surely we cannot expect Him to have changed in this respect Who can doubt that He will welcome everybody who strives to see Him as He is?

II. He is Now on the Throne of Grace.—And the second reason why we should desire to see Jesus is that He is now seated on the throne of grace, whereas one day we must see Him seated on a throne of judgment. You may depend upon it that, if ever you and I are to die in peace, it can only be on the ground of having seen Jesus us our sanctification, righteousness, and redemption. As we pass through life we see many people and things, and these all impress our characters; but what if, when we come to the dark valley at last, we have never seen Him Who alone can safely guide us through the dark valley?

III. A View of the Saviour Transforms the Soul.—A third reason why we should desire to see Jesus can be stated thus: Because a view of the Saviour transforms our souls and moulds them into His likeness. "Beholding as in a glass"—which means, strictly speaking, one of the blurred mirrors of the ancients—"the image of the Lord, we are changed into the same image from glory to glory even as by the Spirit of the Lord". As I read my Bible I find a hundred instances of the operation of this law. I find in the Old Testament when Moses had been forty days and nights in communication with Almighty God he had to veil his face before the people. If you turn to the New Testament you will find that a view of the Saviour produces moral and spiritual, as well as physical, results. How else can you account for the fact that when the rulers of the Jews beheld St. John and St. Peter, and took note of their boldness, they immediately said, "These men have been with Jesus and they have learnt of Him". Or again, we read how Stephen cried," Behold, I see the heavens opened and Jesus standing at the right hand of God". What was the result on the dying martyr? Unconsciously he at once framed himself to the example of the Saviour, and prayed for the forgiveness of his murderers. If you want to live the Christ life strive to see Jesus and study His character.

IV. Is the Desire Capable of Fulfilment?—Is this desire to see Jesus capable of fulfilment in our present state, and, if John 12:21

"You take a journey to Olympia to see the famous statue by Phidias," says Epictetus, "and you all think it a misfortune to die without having seen things like that. But when you need take no journey, when a man has God's works before him wherever he John 12:24

In every corn of wheat that finds no congenial soil there are undeveloped possibilities of harvest; and that suggests to me the question that often vexes us, the question of undeveloped lives. Perhaps it is in the presence of early death that the thought reaches us with its full pressure. For the tragedy of early death is not its suffering: it is the blighted promise and the hope that is never crowned. I scarcely wonder that in wellnigh every cemetery you shall see a broken column as a monument. It is hardly Christian, but it is very human, and I do not think God will be hard on what is human. Wherever death is there you have mystery. But in the death of the young the mystery is doubled. The great mystery of the early grave is the sorrow of undeveloped lives. One of the first things to arrest me in Christ Jesus is His influence in developing the lives He touched. Jesus touched nothing which He did not adorn. What, then, were the great forces Jesus used in developing undeveloped life?

I. The first was His central truth that God is love. We all know how love develops character. That was the first power that Jesus used. He said to a repressed and fearful world, "God loves you".

II. But there was another power that Jesus used. It was the human instinct of self-surrender. It is the glory of Jesus that He called self-surrender into the service of our self-development.

III. Lastly, and this is the crowning inspiration, our Lord expanded life into eternity. Our life shall go on developing for ever, under the sunshine and in the love of God. I know no thought more depressing, as life advances, than the thought that all effort is to be crushed at death. But if death is an incident and not an end, if every baffled striving shall be crowned, if "All, I could never be, All, man ignored in me," is to expand into actuality when I awake, I can renew my struggle after every failure. It is that knowledge, given us by Jesus, that has inspired the development of Christendom.

—G. H. Morrison, Sunrise: Addresses from a City Pulpit, p84.

Life Out of Death

John 12:24

I. We must die to ourselves in order to receive life from Christ.

II. The life of the Christian is a daily dying.

III. The death of the Christian is the road to a nobler life.

—A. Maclaren.

John 12:4

The missionary Krapf, after the death of his beloved wife on the coast of East Africa, wrote home to the Committee of the Church Missionary Society: "Tell our friends at home that there is now on the East African coast a lonely missionary grave. This is a sign that you have commenced the struggle with this part of the world, and as the victories of the Church are gained by stepping over the graves of her members, you may be the more convinced that the hour is at hand when you are summoned to the conversion of Africa from its eastern shore."

References.—XII:24.—H. Bonar, Short Sermons for Family Reading, pp168,175. T. G. Bonney, Death and Life in Nations and Men, p20. H. Jeffs, Christian World Pulpit, vol. lxii. p44. Expositor (4th Series), vol. i. p165.

The Sacrificial Symbolism of Nature

John 12:24-25

In the first of these verses the great Teacher indicates the need there is for His own vicarious death; and in the second, He asserts a practical principle which must have its place in the lives of His followers, a principle which borrows its crowning sanction and its energising motive from His own death.

I. Jesus affirms a necessary connection between His own death and the triumph of His cause: "Except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone". "Much fruit" The metaphor points to the vast discipleship which shall yet gather round His person, and respond to the spirit of His matchless life. Jesus did not desire a nominal discipleship, however influential and widely extended. There must be moral oneness, the sense of a common life, participation in the same great experience. (1) This saying does not directly raise the abstract question of the nature or necessity of a redemptive sacrifice, but it implies the human mind is so constituted that some such doctrine is a primary demand in any system which aims at deep and worldwide success. (2) The need that Jesus should die to vivify others with the principles of His own life does not rest only upon the constitution of the human mind, but has its Divine side also. God could not bless, accept, and sanctify a sinful world, bringing it into mystic union with Himself, apart from the processes of an atoning death.

II. Jesus lays aside the symbolism of the seed-corn, and states a plain principle of sacrifice through which the lives of the disciples must be conformed to His own. Whilst affirming a common law of surrender for Himself and His disciples, Jesus in no sense obliterates the stupendous dividing line between His sacrifice and the self-abnegation of those whom He fills with His spirit. Redemption was a solitary act to which one holy and unspotted Being alone was equal, and we are neither called upon nor competent to lay down our lives to redeem men. Vivified by Christ's death and made to share His spirit, we ourselves must become a seed-corn, and go into the darkness and humiliation of the earth, to continue for others the life we ourselves have received. We must sacrifice the lower allurements to taste the higher joy and blessedness of our Lord.

References.—XII:24 , 25.—D. Fraser, Metaphors in the Gospels, p328. XII:24-26.—Expositor (6th Series), vol. iv. p226. XII:25.—H. Bonner, Sermons and Lectures, p133. Expositor (5th Series), vol. iv. p460.

Following Christ

John 12:26

I want to deal with the missionary life from this point of view: that the missionary life gives an opportunity for the exactest imitation of the life of our Lord Jesus Christ I want then to put before younger men the nobility of the missionary call. Now, you have in this verse these three things: the missionary call, the missionary promise, and the missionary reward.

I. You have the missionary call. "If any man serve Me." If you want to follow Christ exactly, the missionary life gives you opportunities for so doing which you cannot have elsewhere. (1) Notice, first of all, the call to follow Christ implied in some cases the giving up of every other calling. As Jesus Christ called the disciples from all their secular calling, so the missionary is called from all his secular calling to go forth and to follow Christ. (2) Or again. In another instance the call to follow Christ was a call to leave all earthly wealth. (3) The call to follow Christ implies, in some cases, the leaving of friends and family, and those whom you hold most dear. (4) The call to follow Christ is sometimes a call to self-denial.

II. And what are the promises? The promises are many. (1) In the first place, you read in the fourth chapter of St. John 12:27-28

There are three great fundamental suggestions in this prayer: First, the suggestion of the humanity of Jesus. Second, the mission of Jesus. Third, the identification of Jesus with His Father.

I. The Humanity of Jesus.—First, the humanity of Jesus; and we will get it in part by coupling the introductory statement, "My soul is troubled" with "Save Me from this hour". In the use of this word "trouble" we get a glimpse of the humanity of Jesus. There are people who say that trouble is sin, but that is because they confuse trouble with worry. It is one thing to be troubled. It is another thing to worry. Jesus was both God and man. He was a perfect John 12:29

1. There are many things to which we can give lower or higher meanings, and we see how clearly this is illustrated in the scene from which I have taken our text. There came a voice from heaven: it was the voice of God. And to some it was nothing but the roll of thunder, there was nothing miraculous or supernatural about it; but to others, gifted with finer sense, and among them it may be the shepherds who had been on the hills at Bethlehem, there was something in the sound that was inexplicable unless it had fallen from the lips of angels. It was the same note that struck on every ear. It was not the same note that struck on every heart. At the back of all we see and hear there is our character, and our character reacts on everything that reaches it. Now I might illustrate this truth in many spheres. (1) Let me ask you to think of the world of Nature. It is the same world to every one of us, yet to every one of us how different it is. To a poet there is a voice in every breeze, sermons in stones, books in the running brooks; but to Eugene Aram, cursed with a sense of guilt, every branch in the forest seemed to point a finger, and every zephyr whispered of detection. One world—yet some will call it a machine, and others will find it instinct with Divinity. (2) Or turning from Nature we might think of human life, the common life we are all leading. It is very surprising, when you get deep enough, to discover the oneness of all human hearts. But then the strange thing is that men should take that life, that common stock and harvest of experience, and should view it so differently and give it such different colourings as it passes through the alembic of their characters, that for one man life becomes a glory and for another man life becomes a curse. (3) Then I often think of our text and of its bearings when I read the Gospel-story of the life of Jesus. What a moral test and touchstone was that life—take some of His great miracles and see what happened. "He casteth out devils by Beelzebub," the scribes said; and His friends and relatives said, "He is beside Himself. But the common people when they saw the miracles, immediately glorified the God of Israel. II. It is when we give such things their higher meaning that we are nearer to the truth. Now I ask you to observe in the passage of our text that none of the bystanders gauged the voice correctly. Whose was the voice that spake? It was the voice of God. The chances are that in nine-tenths of our judgments, you and I like these Jews are quite astray. But whatever you are judging, lean to the nobler side. If it is thunder or angels, vote you for the angels.

—G. H. Morrison, The Unlighted Lustre, p198.

References.—XII:29.—R. Collyer, Christian World Pulpit, vol. liv. p104. C. F. Aked, The Courage of the Coward, p187. XII:31.—C. F. Aked, Christian World Pulpit, vol. xlvii. p197. J. M. Whiton, Beyond the Shadow, p165. Expositor (5th Series), vol. x. p224. XII:31 , 32.—G. Campbell Morgan, Christian World Pulpit, vol. lx. p69. XII:31-33.—Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xxxix. No2338.

The Magnetism of the Uplifted Lord

John 12:32

I. Our Lord declares that it is in the energy of His transcendent sacrifice that His personal magnetism is to be found. The energy of His love as displayed in His life, compared with the energy of His love as displayed in His death, is as dispersed sunshine compared with focussed sunshine, sunshine concentrated in a burning heat. And it is this focussed sacrificial energy of His death, "The lost pregnant syllable of God's great utterance of love," which our Lord declares is to be the ministry of attraction, by which all men are to be drawn to Him. There is nothing like that magnet (1) Test it by the individual testimony. Nothing so overcomes the deathly and the deadly in men as "the preaching of Jesus Christ and Him crucified". (2) Test the energies of this magnet by the testimony of history as to what is the power which has most conspicuously swayed great masses of mankind. No one has ever moved the multitudes except the men with the magnet of the uplifted Lord.

II. In the energies of this sacrificial Christ we are not only to find the dynamic of redemption, but the secret of human brotherhood. If men are drawn to Him they will be drawn nearer to one another. The secret of brotherhood is found in common nearness to the Lord.

—J. H. Jowett, The British Congregationalist, 9th May, 1907 , p438.

The Attraction of the Cross

John 12:32

We shall do well to consider the appeal which the cross has made to the world; to see why it is that in all ages when Christ has called to His disciples to follow Him, they have joyfully responded to the summons which has drawn them to share His cross and to be partakers of His sufferings. The Christ of Thorwaldsen, beautiful as it John 12:32

I. Christ upon the cross is the pledge of the fellowship of all mankind—of men as men. We say commonly that all men are brethren as descended from a common father—brethren as heirs of a common nature—brethren as condemned to a common death. Much more are they brethren for whom Christ died.

II. Not only is Christ crucified the point of union of mankind. In a more peculiar sense He is the centre of Christendom. For this let us thank God heartily. And exactly as our faith is lively and our hope steadfast, when we are brought face to face with error, sorrow will take the place of anger, love will take the place of bitterness, zeal will take the place of strife. We shall not cherish the truth which we hold less fervently, we shall not hate the falsehood which Christ hates less sincerely, but withal we shall rejoice to know that beyond and below all our differences there lies this foundation which none can shake, even Christ crucified. We shall hail this beginning as the sign of a glorious future when His promise shall have a full accomplishment.

III. Christ crucified, Who is the bond of mankind, the bond of Christendom, is in a yet closer sense for us the bond of this His family here assembled to seek His presence and to commemorate His death.

—Bishop Westcott, Village Sermons, p128.

References.—XII:32.—J. Fleming, Christian World Pulpit, vol. xlix. p261. J. Keble, Sermons for the Holy Week, p173. J. B. Brown, The Divine Mystery of Peace, p42. A. C. Laidlaw, Christian World Pulpit, vol. xlviii. p156. C. Bickersteth, The Gospel of Incarnate Love, p167. A. M. Fairbairn, Christian World Pulpit, vol. xlix. p225. G. T. Newton, Preacher's Magazine, vol. xii. p340. A. Stewart, Eden and Gethsemane, p11. Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. iii. No139 , and vol. xiii. No775. G. H. Morrison, Scottish Review, vol. i. p589. J. M. Neale, Sermons Preached in Sackville College Chapel, vol. i. p214. C. S. Home, Christian World Pulpit, vol. lxvii. p4. W. Robertson Nicoll, Sunday Evening, p263. Expositor (4th Series), vol. ii. pp62 , 65; ibid. vol. x. pp117 , 134. A. Maclaren, Expositions of Holy Scripture—St. John 12:43

"I have been tired with the applause of the world," said Mrs. Fry towards the end of her career, "and none knows how great a trial that has been, and the deep humiliation of it; and yet I fully believe it is not nearly so dangerous as being made much of in religious society. I have sometimes felt it was not so dangerous to be made much of in the world as by those whom we think highly of in our own society."

John 12:43

Undue solicitude about popular estimation is a weakness against which all real Christians must guard with the most jealous watchfulness. The more you can retain the impression of your being surrounded by a cloud of witnesses of the invisible world, to use the Scripture phrase, the more you will be armed against this besetting sin—for such it is—though styled the last infirmity of noble minds (Wilberforce to his son Samuel).

References.—XII:44-60.—Expositor (6th Series), vol. vii. p141. XII:45.—J. Johns, Preacher's Magazine, vol. xix. p356. XII:47.—T. Arnold, Sermons, vol. i. p121. W. R. Inge, All Saints" Sermons, 1905-1907 , p1. XII:47 , 48.—H. P. Liddon, Sermons Preached on Special Occasions, p138.

Christ and His Mission

John 12:49

I. There was no uncertainty in the mind of Jesus Christ. The Evangelist John tells us distinctly that He knew that He had come from God and went to God. He Himself said, when nigh death, that He was going to Him that sent Him.

II. He had come from God, and had come from God with a great purpose attached to His life. If we may say it reverently, He was God's great Missionary, the one "sent" of God, the one commissioned of God to enter the dark places of the earth. One of the chief and prominent traits in John's portrait of the Master is of One with a great mission attached to His life. God had sent Him into the world; not by force—that would be to rob Him of His glory. Christ was not forcibly compelled to enter this world; His was a voluntary sacrifice. The Father sent Him, but it was also love which drew Him—love for men.

III. And what was this mission? There are various ways in which we can express it, but there is one broad expression which we may give to this mission, and it is to save the world, to redeem humanity. All He was, all He spoke, all He did, all He suffered, contributed to give to His life the great character of Saviour.

IV. Is there this mission attached to our lives? Yes. He was greater and holier than we; but, nevertheless, His mission is ours. He saves men through men.

—J. Alford Davies, Seven Words of Love, p108.