W. T. P. Wolston

What the Lord brings out here will never be adequately understood, unless we bear in mind the fact that He was just going away; and not only was He going to the Father, but He was going back to heaven on new and righteous ground, that gave Him a just title to take others with Him to the place to which He was going. This comes out in what is found in chapters 12 and 13. In the twelfth chapter the Greeks came up, desirous of seeing Jesus (John 12:21). Philip and Andrew come and tell Jesus. He at once says, "The hour is come, that the Son of man should be glorified. Verily, verily, I say to you, Except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abides alone: but if it die, it brings forth much fruit." He brings out the stupendous truth that He must die, or be for ever alone — Himself the solitary, unique corn of wheat, the only sinless man whom the eye of God ever beheld. He must die, or abide alone for ever, as man before God. But He is prepared to die, to ensure having others with Him, and having died, and accomplished redemption, on that very basis it is, that He unites others with Himself in resurrection, and thus "brings forth much fruit." The blessed truths that the fourteenth, fifteenth, and sixteenth chapters of John unfold to us are based on the Lord's death, as foretold in John 12, and on His living ministry, as departed to the Father, given us in John 13.