In the first of the passages considered it may be well to recall that the saints of this period are especially in view; in the second it is the Jew; and now, as we may see reason to conclude, in the third (John 12:3232And I, if I be lifted up from the earth, will draw all men unto me. (John 12:32)) all men of every nation and of every tongue are embraced. It is indisputable that Christ glorified, after He was lifted up, became, as is often said, the point of attraction for all; and the moment the Spirit of God came down to testify of His glory at the right hand of God, souls were drawn to Him on every hand by His mighty attracting power. Still, as that was and is, the promise contained in this scripture is world-wide and universal; and it refers in its fullest meaning, we cannot doubt, to the coming age in which Christ will have the dominion throughout the world, when the knowledge of the Lord will cover the earth as the waters cover the sea, and all men, either really or with “feigned obedience,” will be drawn to His feet and own His blessed sway.
If now we attend a little to the connection of the passage, this conclusion will, we judge, be clearly substantiated. It may then be seen, first of all, that the whole of this scripture, from verse 23 to verse 36, springs from the incident of the Greeks who came up to worship at the feast, and who embraced the opportunity of expressing to Philip their desire to see Jesus. When Andrew and Philip mentioned this desire to Jesus, He answered, “The hour is come, that the Son of man should be glorified. Verily, verily, I say unto you, Except a [the] corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone: but if it die, it bringeth forth much fruit.” The application of these Greeks to see Jesus became to Him the promise of the day of His glory, in which all kings will fall down before Him and all nations shall serve Him, when God will give to Him the nations for His inheritance, and the uttermost parts of the earth as His possession.
Bearing this in mind, we shall be enabled to apprehend the meaning of His reply to Andrew and Philip. There are, at least, three important truths contained in it. The fundamental one is that He could have no link with man in the flesh — this is, in perhaps simpler language, that grateful as the desire of the Greeks might have been to His heart, He could not then accept their homage, representative as they were of the nations any more than He could yield to the design of the people in an earlier part of this Gospel, to take Him by force and make Him a king (John 6:1515When Jesus therefore perceived that they would come and take him by force, to make him a king, he departed again into a mountain himself alone. (John 6:15)). Second, He teaches that the pathway to His glory in this world lay through death, resurrection, and exaltation to the right hand of God; and last, that it could only be on the platform of resurrection that He could have His people in association with Himself. This principle holds good, whether for believers now or in the world to come — the coming age.
So far, therefore, in the all-embracing significance of the Lord’s words all believers are included; for the first fruits of the death of the corn of wheat were seen on the day of the resurrection, when for the first time the Lord claimed His own as His brethren, and when He put them into full association with Himself — as sons with Him before the Father’s face. And every believer from that day to this, and every believer from now until the Lord comes again, will be the produce of the Corn of wheat as having died, and is, and will be, of the same kind and order as risen together with Him. All this is blessedly true; but, as we cannot doubt, the Lord, when He comes down to verses 31 and 32, opens out a still wider prospect.
Before, however, we come to this, attention may be called to what is involved in this world for those who enter upon association with the risen One. In one word, it is fellowship with His death, identification with His rejection and death, and consequently the hating of their life in this world. Loving our life in this world is wholly irreconcilable with and exclusive of life eternal. But then what blessed encouragement He ministers to us to take up our cross and follow Him: “If any man serve Me, let him follow Me; and where I am, there shall also My servant be: if any man serve Me, him will My Father honor.”
Commending this to the meditation of the reader, we may arrest him for a moment to consider the marvelously solemn words which follow. We have spoken of the Lord’s pathway to glory as lying through death; and now this pathway in all its sorrow, and as He only could fathom it, opens out before His soul. The effect is that He exclaims, “Now is My soul troubled; and what shall I say?” It was the contemplation of the cross and its curse (Gal. 3:1313Christ hath redeemed us from the curse of the law, being made a curse for us: for it is written, Cursed is every one that hangeth on a tree: (Galatians 3:13)) as the judgment of God, with all that this involved for His holy soul in the hiding of God’s face, which wrung this troubled expression from His lips. And thus exceeding sorrowful as unto death, even as in Gethsemane, He cried, “Father, save Me from this hour.” It was a part of His perfection, the perfection of Him who was ever in the bosom of the Father, delighting in Him and being delighted in, in their mutual and complacent love, to shrink from the horror of that great and unrelieved darkness of Calvary; and, as He had come to do the will of God, His blessed and perfect obedience and devotedness shone forth in all their luster in His adding, “But for this cause came I unto this hour.” Then, lost as it were, if such language is permissible, in the absorbing desire of His soul to vindicate the Father’s name at all cost to Himself, whatever might be entailed upon Him of unspeakable sorrow and agony, He said, “Father, glorify Thy name.” Thus He offered Himself for the glory of God, and the conflict was ended!
The response was immediate — the delighted response of the Father to the perfect submission of His beloved Son. As He elsewhere said, “Therefore doth My Father love Me, because I lay down My life, that I might take it again. No man taketh it from Me, but I lay it down of Myself. I have power to lay it down, and I have power to take it again. This commandment have I received of My Father.” (John 10:17-1817Therefore doth my Father love me, because I lay down my life, that I might take it again. 18No man taketh it from me, but I lay it down of myself. I have power to lay it down, and I have power to take it again. This commandment have I received of my Father. (John 10:17‑18)).
The answer was that the Father had already glorified His name surely, in the raising of Lazarus, and that He would glorify it again; that is, as we understand, in the resurrection of Christ Himself (compare Psalm 21:4-64He asked life of thee, and thou gavest it him, even length of days for ever and ever. 5His glory is great in thy salvation: honor and majesty hast thou laid upon him. 6For thou hast made him most blessed for ever: thou hast made him exceeding glad with thy countenance. (Psalm 21:4‑6); Heb. 5:7-87Who in the days of his flesh, when he had offered up prayers and supplications with strong crying and tears unto him that was able to save him from death, and was heard in that he feared; 8Though he were a Son, yet learned he obedience by the things which he suffered; (Hebrews 5:7‑8)). The victory was therefore won in the assurance of resurrection, and the full results of the cross, as a consequence, opened out before His soul. First, the world was already judged; all its tarnished and defiled glory came morally to an end in the cross, and with it the assurance that its prince would be cast out. Finally, the Father glorified, the world judged, and Satan cast out, the Lord adds, “And I, if I be lifted up from the earth, will draw all men unto Me.”
As we have seen, it was in the first place, “The Son of man must be lifted up”; then, “When ye have lifted up the Son of man”; and now it is, “And I, if I be lifted up from the earth.” And then we are explicitly told, “This He said, signifying what death He should die.” Our attention is therefore called to the fact that He was cast out of this world, lifted up from the earth, and crucified on that shameful cross. But we behold in this God’s triumph over man’s sin, and the Lord’s own victory over death, the grave, and Satan’s power. Man lifted Him up from the earth, as unworthy to live any more upon it; and there they, to add to the ignominy of His death, crucified Him between two thieves; but God stepped in and after His burial lifted Him up still higher, to the highest spot in the universe, to His own right hand, where He had given Him the name which is above every name, and decreed that every knee in all His dominions shall bow to Him, and every tongue confess that He is Lord to the glory of God the Father. Such was God’s response to the rejection of His beloved Son.
It only remains to consider once again the force of the expression, “Will draw all men unto Me.” We have already said that while Christ is the point of attraction for all during this period, and that while every believer is a demonstration of it, we must look further for the entire fulfillment of this prediction. In Psalm 22, for example, we are told that as a consequence of the death and resurrection of Christ, all the ends of the world shall remember and turn unto the Lord, and that all the kindreds of the nations shall worship before Him (vs. 27). So here, in our judgment, the Lord looks onward to the day of His glory in the coming age when all men will be drawn to His feet, and when all alike shall be constrained from the heart, or otherwise, to own Him in His exaltation as Lord and King. It is then that His salvation will go forth, and His arm will judge the peoples, the isles that wait upon Him, and on His arm they trust. It is our privilege, in anticipation of that day, to know Him now as the Sun of Righteousness, and to rejoice in the prospect of that time when His blessed beams will reach the remotest ends and corners of the earth.