Children of Light

Read: John 12.20-50

Today’s reading begins with a request from some Greeks who were worshipping at the festival. Apparently, John is identifying them as Gentiles who had converted to the Jewish faith (known as proselytes). These Greeks wanted to meet with Jesus, so they approached the disciple Philip and asked for his help. Philip in turn recruited the disciple Andrew’s help, and together the two disciples told Jesus of the request.

John doesn’t tell us whether the meeting took place. Instead, he notes Jesus’ immediate response to the Greeks’ inquiry: “The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified.” According to John, the issue at hand was the request itself: Gentiles now sought Jesus! This was sufficient to signal the arrival of “the hour” which Jesus had been anticipating all along: the hour of His glorification in suffering and dying. In his commentary, Dr. Joseph Dongell writes:

“The glorification Jesus now awaited would take place not after His death, but in His death. His full obedience to the Father’s will and the death included in that will would demonstrate the glory of Jesus through His perfect unity with the Father. Jesus illustrated the principle of glorious benefit in and through obedient death by appealing to a simple seed: ‘Unless a kernel of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains only a single seed. But if it dies, it produces many seeds.’”

Jesus’ words in John 12.32 foreshadow His coming cross: “And I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all people to myself.” A time of darkness is approaching: “You are going to have the light just a little while longer. Walk while you have the light, before darkness overtakes you. Whoever walks in the dark does not know where they are going. Believe in the light while you have the light, so that you may become children of light” (John 12.35-36).

In the words of Dr. Paul Louis Metzger, as children of light “we must come to know that Jesus is like the Father. Only then will we realize that there is no dark side to God and that Jesus truly is the light of the world. The light of Jesus’ life and words will lead us forward, preparing all of us to pass safely through the dark valley of the shadow of death on our way to the Father’s house.”