John 12:23Meaning & Commentary from the Church Fathers

Therefore, since He intended to send His disciples to the Gentiles after the Cross, and meanwhile sees that the Gentiles themselves are coming to Him, He says: it is time to go to the Cross. He did not send them earlier, so that this might serve as testimony against the Jews. Until the Jews had rejected Him by their very deed, and until they had handed Him over to be crucified, He did not say, “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations,” Mt 28:19. On the contrary, He said: “Do not go into the way of the Gentiles,” Mt 10:5. And again: “I was not sent except to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.” And again: “It is not good to take the children’s bread and throw it to the dogs,” Mt 15:24, 26. But when they hated Him, and hated Him so much that they handed Him over to death, it was useless to continue occupying Himself with them while they rejected Him. They did indeed renounce Him, saying: “We have no king but Caesar,” Jn 19:15. Then He also left them, when they had left Him. For this reason He says: “How often would I have gathered your children together, and you would not,” Mt 23:37.

Afterward they will be without any excuse, since I shall rightly leave them as crucifiers and murderers. I shall turn to the Gentiles, who have already begun to come to My teaching. For it would be most unjust to give nothing to the Gentiles, who thirst for the word and salvation, while giving abundantly to the Jews, who trample upon what is given them and plot evil against their Benefactor.

Yet He had always been glorified by the Angels in heaven. The Cross, however, was the beginning of His glorification as God on earth among the Gentiles. When He left the Jews who had insulted Him, He went over to the Gentiles and is glorified as God among them. They await His coming in the glory of the Father, Mt 16:27. He does not say that the bare, bodiless Word will be glorified. Rather, showing the one Son, ineffably understood from humanity and Godhead, He says: “the Son of Man.” For there is one Son and Christ, admitting no division after the Incarnation, but existing and being conceived as God even with flesh. There is one Son and Christ, admitting no division after the Incarnation. Yet, as we have said, we recognize separately the nature of the Word and the nature of the flesh. They are not the same in our mental apprehension. For although He is begotten from the essence of God the Father, He also has His origin on earth from the Holy Virgin. Nevertheless, there is one Christ from the two, who is not divided into a duality of sons after the union of those two natures. Rather, in the power of the Godhead, He remains and is conceived with flesh.

He saw that after His Passion and after His Resurrection, the Gentiles from all nations would believe in Him. As the Apostle said, “a partial hardening has come upon Israel, until the fullness of the Gentiles comes in,” cf. Rom 11:25. Therefore, in connection with these Gentiles who longed to see Him, He announces the coming fullness of the Gentiles. He promises that the hour of His glory is already about to come. After that glory takes place in heaven, the Gentiles will believe. Therefore it was foretold: “Be exalted above the heavens, O God; let Your glory be over all the earth,” Ps 107:6. This is the fullness of the Gentiles of which the Apostle speaks: “A partial hardening has come upon Israel, until the fullness of the Gentiles comes in,” cf. Rom 11:25.

But why, then, did Jesus Christ not go to the Gentiles at that time? So that the Jews might have no excuse for their unbelief. Not only did He Himself not go, but He also commanded His disciples not to go into the way of the Gentiles. Although He endured much from the ungrateful Jews, He did not abandon them. He taught, healed, and bestowed other benefits on them until they killed Him.

Because we know the Lord’s power from the fact that He changed reproach into glory, dishonor into honor, curse into blessing, gall into sweetness, vinegar into milk, a slave’s blow into freedom, and death into life. “The hour has come that the Son of Man should be glorified.” He called the Cross glory. And behold, from the beginning until now, the Cross is glorified. This same Cross even now magnifies kings, enlightens the priesthood, preserves virginity, strengthens ascetic struggle, binds marriage, guards widowhood, protects orphans, multiplies good offspring, increases the Church, sanctifies the people, protects the wilderness, opens paradise, shows the way to the thief, drives out enmity, quenches envy, destroys the enemy’s power, and puts the ranks of demons to flight.

To the question when the sheep not of this fold, that is, non-Jews, would be drawn by Jesus and hear His voice, He Himself answered: “When I am lifted up from the earth, I will draw all to Myself,” Jn 12:32. Therefore the mission of Jesus was to draw people to Himself by His teaching: the Jews personally, and the Gentiles through the Apostles after His death on the Cross. Thus the coming of these Gentiles, the Greeks, had to remind Jesus that His mission to the Jews was complete and the calling of the Gentiles was beginning. Yet this calling had to be preceded by His death on the Cross, and then by His Resurrection and Ascension, that is, His glorification. Yes, the time had come to reject the people once chosen by God and to call the Gentiles in their place. The time had come to go to the Cross. Under the influence of such thoughts, Jesus said: “The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified.”

Gentiles who had accepted Judaism were not satisfied by it and came directly to Him with their religious needs and thoughts. They hoped to find in Him their satisfaction and resolution. This was like the first appearance of the morning dawn of a new world. In that world the barrier separating the people of God from the Gentiles would fall. In it the Kingdom of Christ would spread over the whole world, where there would be one spiritual flock and one Shepherd, Jn 10:16. But He knew that the way to this Kingdom was the way of the Cross and death. Now, before these Greeks, the Cross and death appear before His spiritual gaze with special vividness and shake His soul. He had often said that from the tree of the Cross He would draw all to Himself, Jn 2:19; Jn 3:14 and following; Jn 10:15. Yet never had this thought produced such a shaking impression on Him as it did now, apart from the struggle and trembling in the garden of Gethsemane. This is why, instead of giving a direct answer to the request of the Greeks presented through Andrew and Philip, the Lord seems to plunge in thought into the boundless idea of His Cross and His death. The Gentiles are knocking at the doors of the Kingdom of God. This is the sign of the coming decisive hour for Him Himself, Jn 12:23-30; for all humanity, Jn 12:31-33; and in a special way for Israel, Jn 12:34-36. “The hour has come”: the time has arrived, cf. Jn 5:25, 28. In this expression, as in a seed, the whole following discourse of the Lord is contained. In it He explains from different sides the meaning, the immeasurable meaning, of this great hour. It is the hour of His glorification. Specifically, it is the hour of His ascent through suffering and death into His heavenly and eternal glory, Lk 24:26; Jn 17:5; Jn 6:62; 1 Pet 1:11. “To the Son of Man”: this title is deliberately used here to denote His human nature, according to which He will suffer and enter His glory as the God-man. The Lord first presents figuratively the necessity of precisely this path of glorification, the path of death, Jn 12:24. Then He presents it directly, Jn 12:25. Only by this path of death, says the Lord, can the great work of revealing and spreading My Kingdom over the whole earth be accomplished. This includes all peoples, including the Gentiles, whose representatives at this moment were the Greeks. It follows the same law by which, in nature, a grain of wheat, for example, must necessarily die in order to bear fruit. Otherwise it remains fruitless.

“The hour has come that the Son of Man should be glorified.” As in the conversation with the Samaritan woman He revealed that the time was near when a new worship of God would appear, not limited by place and not burdened by many rites, Jn 4:21-24, so now He speaks in the hearing of the firstfruits of Gentile conversion. He says that the time has come for the Son of Man to be glorified. The time has come when the teaching of the Son of Man will become the subject of study not in Palestine alone, but in the whole universe.