Johannes 12:23

The Pharisees were bitterly mortified... But among certain Greeks who had come up to the feast there was a spirit of enquiry and their desire to see Jesus was the pledge of a day when "the Gentiles shall come to Thy light, and king's to the brightness of Thy rising" (Isa. 60:3). And indeed now was the moment when He should have been received and acclaimed by His own people. The hour had struck when as the Son of Man He should have been glorified. As regards the Lord Himself, He knew well that as the rejected One nothing but death lay before Him — the death which would be the foundation of all the glory in days to come.

A living Messiah is the crown of glory to Israel; a rejected One, the Son of man, by death opened the door, for the Gentile even, into heavenly things, and is the pattern thenceforth... It is by death that He takes the place, not of Son of David, according to promise..., but of Son of man, and thus have all things and all men, Greeks no less than Jews, according to the counsels of God, heirs of God, and joint heirs with Christ. There was no other way for guilt to be effaced, for heaven to be opened and enjoyed by those who were once lost sinners.

Everything was ready for the glory of the kingdom, as it were. Israel for the moment received Him, the Gentiles come up and want to see Him, just what will come out at the coming day. The Spirit of God gives you a beautiful picture of the coming glory in all this: Israel and the Gentiles, and Christ the Centre... Mark the words: "Verily, verily, I say unto you, Except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone." ... He was alone — He remained alone, alone in His perfection, alone in His blessedness, alone in all the preciousness of what He was in His own Person to God in all His life; but now, mark, "if it die, it bringeth forth much fruit."

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..." 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.

The hour had come for the Son of Man to be glorified. For that to be effected death first lay in His path, and that the death of the cross. Would He shrink back? No. He had come to die, ere He should return to the glory. His prayer, then, would not be that He might escape death. It was, on the contrary, that the Father's name should be glorified... Here, with the cross before Him, and fully conscious of all that it involved, He could say, "Father, glorify Thy name."