John 12

Subdivision 4. (John 12:1-50; John 13:1-38; John 14:1-31; John 15:1-27; John 16:1-33; John 17:1-26.)Mercy for the path. Israel has now fully manifested her unbelief, and the Lord has been dwelling upon His lifting up at their hands, -on their parts, the most complete and contemptuous rejection, though to be overruled of God for widest blessing. He was going back to the Father, the glorious work being fully accomplished for which He had come. That accomplishment has been indeed anticipated all through the Gospel, as we have seen. Apart from it no blessing at all could have been for man; and the hands to which it had been committed were fully competent. God could own from the beginning with the most open testimony His delight in Him, even as upon the Cross itself He could turn away His face from Him who in human weakness hung there, and leave Him unassisted to the struggle and the victory, upon which hung all the issues of eternity. He was to be thus the “Father of eternity” (Isaiah 9:6; Heb.) which was to take shape and pattern in the womb of the Cross. Now He stood on the eve of His actual departure. One brief awful moment past, Heaven beckoned Him; the glory from which He had come was hailing Him back; the Father’s greeting of His Royal Priest, -the Father’s throne awaited Him: all things were in His hand; yet He has upon earth an interest that detains Him, which in the glory of God is to occupy Him still. He is leaving upon earth the chosen companions of His path; those indeed that have hardly ever understood Him, -whose lack of sympathy has been itself one of the bitterest trials, of those that made Him the Man of sorrows" that He was. Yet they are. His hard-won spoils from the hand of the enemy, -the first-fruits of the spiritual harvest coming in. They are His own, the gift of His Father, the work of His Spirit, the purchase of His blood, by and by to tell out and for the ages to come, divine love and power to all His intelligent creation.

Nor, spite of their feebleness, can He forget how their hearts awakened by His call, have clung to Him in the scene of His rejection, how they have left their little all to follow Him. Now He is going to leave them in that world whose enmity they must for His sake incur, and in which they would fill up that which was behind of His afflictions for His body’s sake, which is the Church (Colossians 1:24). In human tenderness His heart overflows towards them, while in divine fulness; and this is what we find before us now. It is peculiar to John, and furnishes them for the way, and arms them for the impending conflict. This therefore is the true wilderness section of the Gospel, -not the history of the wilderness, but the preparation for it; what is to it as the early part of Numbers to the latter part. Alas, such a history was to follow -and has followed; yet in which divine grace has abounded over human failure. So must it ever be.