Online Resource Library
Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.com | DownloadJames Nisbet Commentary - John 12:32 - 12:32
(Show All Books | Show All Chapters)
This Chapter Verse Commentaries:
‘I, If I be lifted up from the earth, will draw all men unto Myself.’
Joh_12:32 (R.V.)
I. What, then, is the wonder of His having realised them?—Upon any theory, this claim was put on record while the Kingdom of Heaven was like a grain of mustard, the least of all seeds. Here and there, in the midnight of heathendom, glimmered a spark of light—the stars of the Apocalypse, scarcely visible in the gloom. Do you think that any uninstructed eye could have foretold from these the glory of the morning and the noon? And yet, here is the assertion. And it might help some perplexed student, who fails to satisfy himself with the evidence of minute and detailed predictions (simply because they are minute, and the distance in history is great), if he would fix his attention rather upon two vast and commanding portents—in the Old Testament the expectation of a suffering Hero, a world-wide Benefactor stricken by God and afflicted, this hope cherished by a nation which dwelt alone, and which maintained that the bones of the righteous should be made fat; and again, in the New Testament, the universal claims put forward by Jesus, and accepted by various centuries and diverse civilisations.
II. Christ lifted up has, indeed, demanded and received the homage of all men.
(a) He came to the Jew, and melted his formalism, kindled his narrow bigotry into a generous world-embracing ardour, lighted up his shadowy truths like the pictures on a lampshade when the flame is kindled, and bade him convert the world. Whereupon all of Judaism that refused to join the new movement died; it exists only as a fossil.
(b) Christ came to the Greek, and used his exquisite language, his logic, and his sense of beauty, to acknowledge and celebrate, as fairer than the sons of men, the visage that was more marred than that of any man.
(c) He turned to the Roman and bade him organise the world-empire which asks neither weapons nor territories, and set the crown of the world upon a Christian head.
And the Greek and the Roman obeyed.
(d) He confronted the naked and bloody races which rent in pieces the laws, the civilisation, and the empire of the ancient world—and they, so strangely unlike His earlier converts, they also fell upon their knees before the Cross of Jesus.
Was it a delusion, this, which was predicted and came true, that the same influence which fascinated the Greek and the Roman should draw to itself also the Vandal and the Goth, and float like an ark of refuge, bearing the old literature and the old arts, above the deluge in which all else of beauty or splendour was submerged? As the name of Christ went out among the nations, all who accepted Him were elevated—a strange result of any superstition; all who rejected Him were left like stranded hulks upon a desolate beach, and to-day the fullest light of prosperity and splendour of civilisation and power is shining upon those nations who have the freest and most unimpeded access to the four pamphlets which record His story, and kindle the love of Him amid new generations and lands unknown to those who preached Him first.
III. To-day the experiment is being tried by Christian missions upon the vastest scale.—Does He really draw all men unto Himself? Go, it is said to the missionary—go and try whether the same story which kindles the soul of statesman and poet and sage at home can also attract and elevate the South Sea islander, the African, the Brahmin with his dreamy intellect and his debased and debasing creed. They went, and now Central Africa is ruled by Christian kings, and the whole of India is moving and turning in her sleep.
IV. Further, it is He, Himself, as He declared, Who is the secret of His unparalleled attraction.—Men are not won by any doctrine, however momentous, they are drawn to Himself; and many a strange but well-attested fact is evidence that no man is always and really insensible to His power.
—
Bishop Chadwick.
Illustration‘In the year of revolutions, in ’48, when every throne in Europe was shaken, the fierce and godless mob of Paris, having expelled their king, broke into the royal palace, and, after plundering it, proceeded to wreck the chapel. Down in promiscuous ruin went carvings and precious stones, golden vessels and gorgeous robes, until in their hottest rage, they found themselves face to face with a picture of their Lord and ours. And those furies recognised their Friend; the leaders recoiled, their followers stopped and gazed. Some one cried “Hats off!” and in dead silence, bareheaded, they bore out the picture to a place of safety before returning to prove that nothing else was sacred to them.’
THE CHRISTIAN IDEAL
I. There are certain main types of character to which the best Englishmen always respond; that, whatever other qualifications they may require, there are certain main characteristics which every one who is to secure their admiration must possess. Let me very briefly notice three of the most prominent of these.
(a) First comes a strong sense of duty. Whether or not Englishmen themselves obey the law of duty, they nearly always respect the man who does. This characteristic certainly lies at the very foundation of their conception of manhood. No man who is deficient in this respect will be accepted by them as realising their ideal.
(b) Then, secondly, the man who is to attract the admiration of Englishmen must be a manly man. No one-sided development will do so. That is why introspective devotionalism on the one hand, the severe and sombre type of saintliness on the other, have never commended themselves to the popular imagination here in England. They may command respect, but only in exceptional instances do they arouse the desire for imitation. Our ideal man must be made of living flesh and blood. However well disciplined his passions and desires, they must be there, and we must know that they are there. His humanity, his kindliness, his sympathy, must express themselves spontaneously and naturally. We must be able not merely to respect, but to love him, to feel at ease with him, to know that in our frailties and weaknesses—nay, even in our sins and meannesses—we can readily turn to him for help and encouragement and support.
(c) And, thirdly, the man whom Englishmen respond to must, under the conditions of our modern life, be a man who actively recognises his social responsibilities. Even men who shirk these responsibilities themselves know in their hearts that they are wrong in doing so, and show that they know it by the admiration they bestow on unselfish social work of any kind. Indeed, the fact that a man is doing such work causes the ordinary Englishman to overlook a great deal in his opinions or methods which may be distasteful to him. ‘After all,’ he will say, ‘he is doing his best; he is really trying to make a difference to people’s lives. He may not be doing it the way which I think best, or from motives which I can understand; but he is doing it, that is the great thing!’ A man who places duty first, a man who is thoroughly human in his instincts and sympathies, a man who is taking an active share in the struggle for the alleviation of the evils which oppress his fellow-men, and for the establishment of more perfect social conditions among them—whatever else the man may be, he must be all this if the ordinary Englishman is to respond to him, and to see himself at his best in him.
II. How far can the Christian ideal of manhood be said, without any strained interpretation, to meet these requirements?—How far can we legitimately present it in terms to which the ordinary Englishman will readily respond? Now what strikes many of us as remarkable is this, that not merely is the Christian ideal capable of meeting these demands, but that the characteristics which I have mentioned are its leading and fundamental characteristics. Take them one by one.
(a) The recognition of the supremacy of the law of duty.—What is the master-note of Christ’s life—“I came not to do My own will, but the will of Him Who sent Me”—but this recognition expressed in its highest terms? What was His appreciation of the centurion’s exceptional spiritual insight—“I have not found so great faith; no, not in Israel”—but the emphatic declaration that the principle of authority lies at the very root of the ordered Christian life? What is sacerdotalism, properly interpreted, but the application of this principle to the life of each member of the body? The Christian, so far as he is a true Christian, is primarily a man under authority—a priest, a man with a special vocation; a man sent, consecrated, set apart to do a certain work allotted to him by a higher Power.
(b) Then, again, the characteristic of full human sympathy and sensibility.—Can we give a higher expression to this than that which is given in the fact of the Incarnation—the fact that God Himself used every faculty of our common human nature to express His Divine activity? Nor is this merely a temporary union of two incongruous elements. It is the manifestation of an eternal principle. The grave was empty on the third day. ‘Handle Me and see,’ said the risen Christ. ‘Hath a spirit flesh and blood as ye see Me have?’ The ideal which Christianity presents is that of human nature expressing itself in its fullness, not merely in time, but through all eternity as well. Christianity knows nothing of disembodied spirits, whether in this world or the next.
(c) Once more, the claim that the true man should take his full share in the movement which makes for social alleviation and progress; that this ideal must include the establishment of perfect social conditions amongst his fellow-men—what is this but the foreshadowing of, and the reaching out towards, that ideal of the Kingdom of God established here on earth which stood in the forefront of the Gospel message, and became the dominating vision of those who accepted that message?
Let the Christian ideal be presented to the English people with that special regard for their distinctive ways of thought and feeling which Christ ever showed in dealing with men, and we need not despair of the awakening of a response which will add to the membership of His Church all that is best and strongest in our manhood.
—
Canon Carnegie.
Illustration‘We still speculate upon what might have happened if the august and far-reaching plans of Julius Cæsar had not been cut short. William the Silent, and Gustavus, and many a hero, and many a reformer died, we say, not too soon for his own fame, but too soon for the nation, perhaps for the race which he would have blessed had time been granted him. Only One ever said: “I, if I be prematurely cut down, cut off in the midst of my days, shall then become mighty. Mine is the vitality of a seed, which when it dies begins to live.” Yet another wonder. The speaker was a Jew. And Judaism, by the mouth of all its prophets, had bidden men to turn not to them, but to Jehovah. They were the mere “voice of One crying” through their lips: of One Who would not give His glory to another. And yet, in the very heart of this Hebrew race, One Whose teaching is steeped in the prophetic thought boldly proclaims that His function is to draw all men unto Himself; and the two emphatic words in the sentence are “I” at the beginning, and “Myself” at the close—“I, if I be lifted up from the earth, will draw all men unto Myself.” Nor is there any more pronounced characteristic of His teaching, always and everywhere, than the daring appropriation of the functions of Deity.’
THE MAJESTY OF THE DIVINE HUMILIATION
I. What does He mean by the expression ‘If I be lifted up from the earth’?
(a) His primary reference, no doubt, is to His Crucifixion, which was so soon to take place. It was, indeed, His ‘lifting up from the earth’ in a literal and very painful sense. And from John’s comment in the verse immediately following, ‘This He said, signifying what death He should die,’ it is clear that the inspired Apostle so understood the words. But I cannot think that this is their only meaning; for the word here used is one which generally has an honourable sense. It is hardly likely that our Lord would have used it in a connection which would convey to His hearers only the idea of shame. So, while retaining this as part of their meaning, we must look for a wider reference in His words.
(b) They probably refer, secondly, to the translation of His work from an earthly to a heavenly sphere. Henceforward that work was not to be the close contact with human suffering and the battle with human sin that characterised His earthly ministry. It was to be the exhibition of His triumph over death and of the glory of the Resurrection Body. This was to be followed by His continued intercession for us at the throne of grace, and the assurance of His real though invisible Presence with the Church to the end of time. This sense is very clearly brought out in the other two passages in which this word is used by our Lord in reference to Himself, both of which occur in the Gospel of John. In one He says that as Moses lifted up the brazen serpent in the wilderness, so shall the Son of Man be lifted up. In the other He tells His hostile hearers, ‘When ye have lifted up the Son of Man, ye shall know that I am He.’ In both these passages the primary reference is to the Crucifixion; in the latter it is very clearly so. But in both there is a reference to something more, viz. successful work and acknowledged power.
(c) This last passage carries us a step further and introduces the idea of glory. The Son of Man is to be lifted up, not only to do His great work, but to receive the worship which is His due. This is the exaltation to the right hand of the Father of which St. Paul speaks. He uses—though in an intensified form—the same word which our Lord uses here: ‘hath highly exalted Him.’ And the tense of the Greek word shows that it refers to a definite act of exaltation, which must be the Ascension. So in the ‘lifting up from the earth’ there is a threefold thought—suffering, triumph, and glorification. These connect themselves with the great events which were so soon to occur, and which we commemorate on Good Friday, Easter, and Ascension Day.
II. Our second question is what our Lord means by saying ‘I will draw all men unto Me.’ As to this also there are three things to notice.
(a) First, the fact of attraction involves the exercise of power. Our Lord is therefore making a definite claim for Himself to power over men. But the drawing is with ‘the cords of a man,’ with ‘the bands of love,’ as Hosea had expressed it long before (Hos_11:4). It is irresistible, but not violent; the magnetic attraction of a great personality, not the compulsion of overpowering strength. It has that highest attribute of supreme power—that it not only controls the action, but captivates the will, of its subjects.
(b) Secondly, we note that this attraction is to be exercised on all men. It is not only irresistible in its power, but universal in its scope. No race or order of men is exempt from it. In this the claim made by our Lord for Himself goes far beyond that expected by most Jews from the promised Messiah. He was to be a mighty ruler of the Jews, and the restorer of their national greatness. And it far exceeds the success attained by the founders of other religions. Gautama and Mohammed have drawn millions to their teaching, and have made Buddhism and Islam the faith of great communities; but each has found the limit which it cannot pass—the nations that will have none of it, and amongst whom it has hardly made a proselyte. Christ alone has founded a religion which knows no limit of language, race, or territory, but which has met the needs of all who would accept it in every place and time.
(c) Thirdly, the result of our Lord’s uplifting is to draw all men to Himself. You will have noticed that the Revised Version has ‘unto Myself’ instead of ‘unto Me. This slight change of rendering is important, as it marks the personal character of the attraction. Our Lord does not say that He will draw all men to His Church or to His teaching, or even to a higher mode of life, but to Himself. Herein He gives us a lesson most necessary in these days. A great German scholar has set the religious world asking ‘What is Christianity?’ He invites us to find its essence in the teaching of Christ on matters concerning this life and the world to come. Our Lord shows that the essence of Christianity consists in the revelation of Himself. This is a tremendous claim to make, and one which, if made by a merely human teacher—however holy his life and lofty his teaching—would repel rather than attract his hearers. It is inconceivable that the Preacher of the Sermon on the Mount could have made it had He been less than the Incarnate Son of God.
III. What is the practical lesson for us of this inspiring truth?
(a) First, it reminds us of the infinite range of our Lord’s sympathy. He shares with us all the sentiments of human nature except those arising directly from sin, and in sharing He sanctifies them. So, whatever our lot in life may be, let us remember that He knows it from experience, and can enter into all our feelings. And surely there is a special lesson for those who are called upon to endure disappointment and humiliation in the sight of their fellow-men. Let such take comfort from the knowledge that humiliation is not degrading, but elevating. It is often the sign of real success, the veil of true dignity.
(b) Secondly, the text bids us remember that our Lord is drawing us to Himself. We may, if we choose to do anything so terrible, resist that Divine attraction, and render it useless so far as we are concerned. But we cannot say that it has never been exercised on us. So, my friends, let us remember the great responsibility which rests on us by reason of this part of our Lord’s work. We actually have the power to render a portion of that work useless, to deprive our Lord of part of His reward. For is not every soul precious in His sight, so that the loss even of one leaves some place in His diadem unfilled? So let the text lead us to Him; not to any speculations as to the mystery of His nature, or to special explanations of His teaching, but simply to a more devout, intelligent, and single-hearted love towards Himself.
—
Rev. Barton R. V. Mills.
Illustration‘The fulfilment of this prediction is one of the most striking facts in history. From whichever point of view we regard it nothing has had such an influence on the world as the Christian religion. Different thinkers have explained this in very different ways, but none venture to deny the fact. And another thing which is no less true, though perhaps less generally realised, is that the dominant feature in the Christian religion is adoration of the Person of our Lord. The great men of the world are remembered mainly for their teaching or their work—Plato for his philosophy; Shakespeare for his poetry, Raffaelle for his pictures, Newton for his scientific discoveries. In all these and in many other cases the work is greater than the man. But when we read of our Lord we think far less of His teaching or of His miracles than of Himself. We honour Aristotle because he wrote the Ethics. We reverence the Sermon on the Mount because it was uttered by Christ. Such is the instinctive and almost unconscious testimony of the human mind to His Divinity.’
‘THE POWER OF GOD’
I. It is surely, first of all, the appeal of sympathy.—This world—if you have not found it out yet you speedily will—is a world of suffering, deep-seated, widespread. Much is being done to alleviate physical pain; much is being done to make existence here more cushioned and comfortable; but there are troubles which no surgeon can touch, no benevolence alleviate, no forethought avert.
Man seems to himself sometimes to be playing a game of chess with an unseen adversary, where a mistake is met with a blow, and that a blow without a word. Think of the tragedies which are grouped together within the walls of even one of our hospitals. It is well to face the fact that God allowed suffering, that He even inflicts suffering, lest we should be tempted to imitate the impenitent thief, that unworthy communicant in the sacrament of suffering, and blaspheme God, and doubt His wisdom, and reject His love, in the shattering of our hopes, the desolation of our life, in the pain and anguish which He thinks fit to put upon us. It is in the face of a suffering world that the Cross is raised. And I repeat that the appeal of the Crucified is the appeal of intense sympathy. It has been said that our Blessed Lord never experienced human sickness. It may well be that the Lamb without spot and blemish might not experience this sign of human imperfection. But He did feel and did bear the extremity of physical, mental—yes, even spiritual—pain, so that His sympathy is literally the suffering with those towards whom He exercises His tender love; and this is wide and far-reaching. ‘The infinite goodness has arms so wide’—says the great poet—‘that it receives that which turns back to it.’ ‘The Eternal God is thy refuge, and underneath are the everlasting arms.’ Round the sacred pool of Christ’s Blood lie a great number of impotent folk, blind, halt, withered, waiting for the moving of the water. ‘Come unto Me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.’ This is the message of intense sympathy, with which the Saviour draws all men unto Him with the cords of a man, with bonds of love.
II. But the appeal of the Crucified is more than the appeal of sympathy. It is the appeal of power.—Christians are not scholars merely in the school of a master. They are sinners who have found their Saviour. Never let us forget that the Gospel is good news, the best of all news, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners. The Gospel of Christ is the power of God unto salvation, and the Cross is the message of power. We have thought already, perhaps you will say morbidly, of the suffering which is in the world. But what, after all, is the greatest pang that the human heart can suffer? It is surely the sense of sin. Do you want to know its malignity? Look at the Cross. Do you want to know its power? Look at the Cross. It is a real work to be good. We are not going to saunter into Heaven, or get there on the wings of sentiment, or the occasional uplifting of a Sunday heart, which we put on with our Sunday dress. It is a real work to be good. For sin must be crucified; it must form part of that burden on the Cross. We must die unto sin, in a way which is something more than a phrase or a sentiment. So that we may be able to say, ‘How shall we that are dead unto sin, live any longer therein?’ Is it true that the sense of sin in the world is diminishing, that there are few asking now, ‘What must I do to be saved?’ Are we listening to those who say that sin is inevitable, or at the worst only a struggle of the inner self to emancipate itself from its fleshy envelope, in an inevitable conflict of fluctuating issue? Are we folding our hands to submit to the fatalism which binds our freedom to inevitable heredity, against which it is useless to struggle or protest? Are we to give in to the straitened fetters of environment, and shift the blame for our wrong-doing upon circumstances over which we have no control? Are we to listen to the apostles of human self-complacency, who would have us believe that what we call sin is a positive good; who would say that sin so-called is a stage in man’s development, an experience which enlarges his ideas, and gives a foil to virtue, and is an incentive to it? We know how people shrug their shoulders and say, ‘Well, it does no man any harm to have a little knowledge of the world.’ ‘No one is the worse for having had a past.’ If temptation be substituted for sin, there may be a partial truth in these statements; but sin can never be anything else but that which the Bible calls it again and again—‘a missing of the mark, a failure in life’s aim, a throwing of ourselves away.’ Here, as we look at the Cross, there is power. Christ draws all sinners unto Him by an exhibition of power which triumphs over the malice of sin, and by a system of grace which abounds in fuller volume where sin did much more abound. Flowing from the Cross, as we know, there is a vast system of love which meets the sinner on every side with Divine strength. The Cross and all that flows from it makes it impossible for us to say that we sin because we cannot help ourselves. I know it is possible to frustrate the grace of God, to make all the provision for our salvation useless, by one simple thing on our part. All we have to do to make the Word of God of none effect, all we have to do to stultify the Cross, is to neglect it. There stretches the rope of rescue, which has been fixed with infinite pains and danger between the shore and the sinking ship; but here is one and here is another who will not commit himself to it. He is afraid, or he does not understand, or he is dazed, or he believes that the rescue will come in some other way; and he goes down with the sinking ship, simply because he neglects the salvation proffered to him, and proffered with much pain and peril. As you look at the Cross cast aside your weakness, drive away your fears; lay hold of salvation, lay hold of eternal life, for ‘Now is the accepted time; now is the day of salvation.’ The Cross of Christ is the power of God unto salvation to every one that believeth.
—
Canon Newbolt.
Illustrations(1) ‘A well-known man in London has recorded for us in his reminiscences the desolation of heart which he experienced when he learnt for the first time from the doctor whom he had gone to consult that he was the victim of a malignant and incurable disease. He tells us how completely, as he came out of that man’s house, the whole aspect of things seemed changed to him, as he came out a doomed man, condemned to bear his burden until death should release him. Sorrows like these burst in upon human life with startling suddenness, and reveal to us that we are all moving onward in a Dance of Death, such as Holbein’s pencil had delineated on the walls of the Pardon Cloister of Old St. Paul’s.’
(2) ‘As we travel in foreign countries we come quite unexpectedly sometimes on the image of a Great Agony, rudely moulded, placed with little respect to artistic fitness. It meets us as we land upon the busy pier; it stands by the roadside where the labourer passes to his work day by day, and the children race along in their glee chasing each other beneath its sombre shadow. Behind it and around it Nature laughs with her merry smile in clustering roses, green lanes, and waving cornfields. Or here it stands at the corner of some street in the grim, gaunt city where men pass and hurry on in the eager pursuit of wealth, or in the despair of dark hours, without one thought either of heaven or hell. “Surely,” we say, “this is out of place; it is an intrusion, this image of sorrow and sadness, in a world which has so much that is joyous in it. It is unwise to intrude this image of failure upon those who at least would fain forget their sorrows, and meet life’s duties as they come, for they are hard enough as it is.” And yet, did we but know it, there is many a soul sick with anguish, even amidst the joyous brightness of this world’s fairest scene. There are hearts feeling with ever-increasing bitterness that in the eagerness to gain this world, they are losing their own souls. If it be hid away it is no less there, this seamy side of life, on which that suffering Face looks down, and which that tender appeal alone can reach.’