📖 The Gospel of John — Unit 9: The Hour of Glory

Introduction — The Hour Has Come

All through this Gospel a clock has been ticking quietly in the background. Again and again John tells us that men could not lay hands on Jesus, "because His hour had not yet come." Now, in John 12, the hour strikes. And it is announced in a striking way: not by an army, not by a throne, but by a small group of foreigners with a simple request. Some Greeks who had come up to worship at the feast found Philip and said, "Sir, we would see Jesus." When the word reached Him, Jesus answered, "The hour has come that the Son of Man should be glorified" (John 12:23). The strange thing is what that glory turns out to look like. In this hour the glory of God is revealed through a grain of wheat that dies, a voice from heaven, and a towel and a basin. Let us follow it through.

I. "Sir, We Would See Jesus"

The request of the Greeks is one of the great longings of the human heart. They had crossed cultures and traveled far, and what they wanted was not a doctrine or a debate but a Person: "We would see Jesus." People still come that way. In a world torn by stress, puzzled by hard questions, anxious about the future, men and women still come to a place of worship hoping, beneath all their other reasons, to see Jesus — to be reminded that their lives matter, that God cares, that there is hope. I once read of a nine-year-old girl, dying of leukemia, whose faith gave her such peace that just before the end she told her family, "I am going to be the first to see Jesus — what would you like me to tell Him for you?" When a soul truly sees Him, everything changes. As one believer put it, "When you really see Jesus, I defy you to doubt Him." The hour of glory opens with the world beginning to seek the Lord.

II. The Grain of Wheat

But how would these seekers, and all the world after them, come to see Him? Jesus answered with a picture from the farmer's field: "Unless a grain of wheat falls into the ground and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it produces much grain" (John 12:24). A seed kept safe on a shelf stays exactly what it is — one lonely seed. Only by being buried, broken open, and seemingly lost does it rise into a harvest. So it would be with the Son of Man: the path to His glory, and to a world full of redeemed people, ran straight through His death. The cross was not the failure of the hour but the very means of its glory. And He pressed the same law upon every would-be follower: "He who loves his life will lose it, and he who hates his life in this world will keep it for eternal life" (John 12:25). The clenched fist keeps nothing; the open, surrendered hand is the one that bears fruit.

We resist this with everything in us, for it runs against the grain of our self-protecting hearts. We want glory without a cross, fruit without a grave, a crown without surrender. But the Lord of glory Himself would take no shortcut around the buried seed, and He offers His followers none either. The way up, in the kingdom of God, has always run down through the soil.

III. The Voice from Heaven

The hour was real, and so was its cost. "Now My soul is troubled," Jesus said, "and what shall I say? Father, save Me from this hour? But for this purpose I came to this hour. Father, glorify Your name." And then something happened that happened only a few times in all His earthly life: "Then a voice came from heaven, saying, 'I have both glorified it and will glorify it again'" (John 12:28). The crowd standing there heard the sound but not the same way: some said it had thundered, and others said an angel had spoken to Him. Even an audible voice from heaven is heard differently by different hearts, according to their openness to God. But the meaning was plain: the Father would be glorified in the Son, both in the signs already given and in the cross now near. What, then, is this glory? Glory is the holiness of God made visible. No one could look on it directly — even Moses was shown only its afterglow. But "the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we beheld His glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father" (John 1:14). In Jesus, and supremely in His self-giving death, the hidden glory of God steps into the open where human eyes can see it.

IV. The Towel and the Basin

If you still want to know what the glory of God looks like, go with Him into the upper room. On the very night He was betrayed, with the cross only hours away, His disciples were arguing about which of them was the greatest. The roads of that land were thick with dust and mud, and sandalled feet came in filthy; in any proper household a servant waited at the door with water to wash the guests' feet. But this little band had no servant, and not one of these proud men would stoop to the task. So Jesus, "knowing that He had come from God and was going to God," rose from supper, laid aside His outer garments, tied a towel around His waist, took a basin, and washed His disciples' feet (John 13:3–5). Here is the Son of God, hours from Calvary, kneeling at the dirty feet of fishermen. This is the glory the Greeks asked to see.

It overturns the world's whole scale of greatness. The world measures greatness by how many people work for you; the Lord measures it by how many people you work for. "The greatest among you," He had taught, must "be your servant." A missionary in China once asked a group of believers what had won them to Christ over the religions they had known. It was not the miracles, they said; their old religions had wonders too. It was not even the teaching. At last an old man said simply, "It was Jesus washing His disciples' feet. We had nothing like that — God, stooping down with a towel and basin." When we are tempted to stand on our dignity, our rights, our place, we must see that picture again: the Lord of glory on His knees with a towel. And He turned it into a command: "If I then, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another's feet. For I have given you an example, that you should do as I have done to you" (John 13:14–15). We wash feet still — when we care for the sick, feed the poor, honor aging parents, drive a neighbor to the doctor, open our homes. Greatness in the kingdom wears an apron.

V. The New Commandment

Before that night was over, Jesus gathered all of it — the grain that dies, the glory revealed, the towel taken up — into one new commandment: "A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another; as I have loved you, that you also love one another. By this all will know that you are My disciples, if you have love for one another" (John 13:34–35). The world that says, "Sir, we would see Jesus," will see Him most clearly not in our arguments or our buildings but in a people who lay down their lives for one another as He laid down His. That is the hour of glory still breaking in. So the chapter turns and asks us plainly: do you want to see Jesus? Then look first at the grain of wheat that fell into the ground and died for you — and then, having seen Him, take up the towel.

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