John 12:44-50

II. The Consequences of Faith and Unbelief: John 12:44-50.

Israel was not only blinded with reference to the signs; it was deaf as regarded the testimonies which accompanied them, and this is what finally renders its unbelief unpardonable. Such is the meaning and spirit of this passage; it is not a summary of the teaching of Jesus in general. It is a resume made from the special standpoint of Jewish unbelief. The first part sets forth the privilege connected with faith (John 12:44-46); the second, the condemnation which will strike unbelief (John 12:47-48); the third, the reason of the gravity of these two moral facts which was so decisive (John 12:49-50). Criticism rightly disputes the view that Jesus ever delivered the following discourse; it alleges, with good grounds, the absence of all indication relative to the occasion and locality in connection with which this discourse was given, as well as the want of any new idea (see Keim, for example). But it falls into error in concluding from this that there is an artificial composition here which the evangelist places in the mouth of Jesus (de Wette), and in extending this conclusion to the discourses of Jesus, in general, in the fourth Gospel, discourses which are only the expression of the author's own thoughts (Baur, Reuss, Hilgenfeld).

Is it admissible that the evangelist himself would have ever dreamed, at this point of his narrative, of presenting to us a discourse of Jesus as really uttered by him? This is, indeed, what those suppose who make Him speak thus on going out from the temple (Lampe, Bengel), or at the time when he re- entered it again after the departure mentioned in John 12:36 (Chrysostom, Hengstenberg), or in a private conversation in presence of His disciples (Besser, Luthardt, 1st ed.). Of these three suppositions, the first two clash with John 12:36, which evidently indicates the closing of the public ministry of Jesus. The third, withdrawn by Luthardt himself (2d ed.), has against it the term ἔκραξε (he cried aloud.) What, in addition, excludes the idea of a discourse really delivered by Jesus at this time, is that the passage contains only a series of reminiscences of all the previous teachings, and that it is the only one which is destitute of any indication of occasion, time and place. The evangelist has with John 12:36 ended his part as narrator as to this portion of the history. In John 12:37 he contemplates the mysterious fact which he has just described and meditates on its causes and consequences. There is then here a discourse composed by John, indeed; but he does not attribute it as such to Jesus; he gives it as the summary of all the testimonies of Jesus which the Jews ought to have believed, but which they rejected. Here precisely is the reason why this passage contains no new idea, and bears no indication of time or place. The aorists (ἔκραξε, εἶπεν), recall all the particular cases in which Jesus had pronounced such affirmations respecting Himself; they must be rendered thus: “And yet He had sufficiently said..., He had sufficiently cried aloud...” Or as Baumlein expresses it: “Jesus hatte aber laut erklart.” This interpretation forces itself more and more upon modern exegesis. Hence it follows that each one of the following declarations will rest upon a certain number of passages included in the preceding discourses. To the rejection of the miracles of Jesus which were the testimony of God, (John 12:37-43), Jewish unbelief has added the rejection of the testimony of Jesus respecting Himself.