But Jesus answered them saying, The hour is come that the Son of man should be glorified.
Greeks who had come to worship ask to see Jesus, and instead of meeting them He announces that His hour has come. His answer looks straight past their request to a glory that runs through His death.
The Request Behind the Answer
These Greeks had no share in the promises God gave Israel. One writer links their arrival to why Jesus speaks of death:
They came to worship at Jerusalem, but they were strangers to the covenants of promise. God had to bring in a whole new order of things to give them a place in it. They had no right to the promises. Jesus must die to lay the foundation for this new order of things. Here Jesus is not the promised Messiah. He is the second Man, head of all things God created — all things He Himself created. But He must win them by redemption, and above all His co-heirs.
Son of Man, Not Israel's Messiah
He does not call Himself the Christ here. The title He picks reaches far beyond Israel:
Israel rejected Him as Messiah, so He would take the wider place of Son of man. As Psalm 8 shows, that title covers a much larger range than the "Anointed" of Psalm 2. But to fill that larger range, He must first die!
Another writer shows how far that place reaches:
As Son of man, all peoples, nations and languages will serve Him, in a kingdom that will never be destroyed (Dan. 7:14).
Glory Announced Before It Arrives
The cross and the ascension still lay ahead. Yet He speaks as if the hour had already struck. One writer reads these Greeks, who were not Jews, as the signal:
He was going to the cross and to death. Yet He declares that the hour had come for Him to be glorified. How could that be? If you read it in a flat, literal way, I think you lose the force of the passage. Jesus sees in the Greeks before Him a sample of the gathering in of the Gentiles. He knew that the only thing that would draw the Gentiles was His own cross and His glory in heaven. So He looks right through the whole scene in front of Him, because He had to complete redemption and go up on high. But from this small sample He connects everything with His glorification, and speaks of it as a present fact.
Cross or Kingdom
Commentators differ on what the hour of glorifying points to. Some take it as the far-off day when He will rule over all, brought to mind by the Greeks asking for Him:
When these Greeks asked to see Jesus, it became to Him the promise of the day of His glory. On that day all kings will fall down before Him and all nations will serve Him. God will give Him the nations as His inheritance, and the ends of the earth as His possession.
Others argue from the timing that the kingdom cannot be meant here, since that glory was not yet due:
The time for this glory had not yet come. So when the Lord says, "The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified," He has in view not the kingdom but the Cross. There the Son of Man is glorified by glorifying the Father.
Both readings meet at the same place. One writer puts it simply:
His death would be the foundation of all the glory in days to come.
One Hour Above All Others
One writer hears sorrow and glory sounding together in the same words:
Mixed in with the sorrow we find hints of brighter things — "The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified." For sorrow, joy and glory alike, that was "the hour." There has never been another hour like it, and there never can be.
The Servant's Path
What He says next turns the principle onto His followers, and one writer makes the demand concrete:
We must follow Him in this: "Whoever loves his life loses it, and whoever hates his life in this world will keep it for eternal life. If anyone serves me, he must follow me." That is a very important word. If you want to serve Christ, you must follow Him. You cannot do a certain amount of service on your own, apart from Him. If I serve Him, I must follow Him where He is.
Summary
- Occasion. Greeks asking to see Jesus set off this answer. They had no claim on Israel's promises, so Jesus had to lay a new foundation.
- Title. He names Himself Son of man, a place wider than Israel's Messiah, reaching to all nations.
- Cost. He could take that wider place only through death. He had to die to lay the foundation.
- Certainty. He speaks of the glory as present because He looks past the cross to the harvest the Greeks foreshadowed.
- Call. Serving Christ means following Him. There is no independent service.