I want to draw your attention again to the beginning of this passage, where it say, “When he had gone out…” (John 13:31). Who is John talking about here? Who is it that has just “gone out”? It’s Judas, isn’t it? If you rewind a few verses in this thirteenth chapter of John, you see that Jesus is at table with His disciples. It is the last night before His crucifixion, and He says to the group, He says, “One of you will betray me” (v. 21). The disciples look at each other, not sure what to make of Jesus' words, but Peter wants to know who it is that Jesus is talking about. So, he motions to John, who’s sitting next to Jesus, to ask Him. And so John does. He asks, “Lord, who is it?” And Jesus tells him. “It’s the one,” he says, “to whom I will give this morsel of bread when I have dipped it.” And sure enough, our Lord gives it to Judas. And then He tells Judas, “What you are going to do, do quickly” (v. 27). And Judas leaves the room.
Now, what John says at this point is very interesting. It’s in verse 30. Check it out. It’s the verse right before the passage we just read. John says about Judas that “he immediately went out.” And then what does he say? He says, “And it was night.”
Now, what do you make of that? Is John doing nothing more than giving us a time reference? Is he simply telling what hour of the day it was? Or, is he doing something more than that? I think it’s something more. I think he’s telling us something about the state of Judas’ heart. In fact, I think he’s telling us something about the state of the world! The whole world is shrouded in darkness. “It was night,” John says. And it still is.
And that makes it all the more puzzling when we hear what Jesus says after Judas leaves. Look at the last part of verse 31. “Now,” he says, “now is the Son of Man glorified, and God is glorified in him.” By the Son of Man he means himself, of course. He’s saying, Now I am glorified—and, remember, He knows exactly what Judas is going to do. He’s going to betray Him. He’s going to strike a deal with the authorities to expose Jesus and finger him. He’s going to give our Lord over to His enemies, who want to rip Him to shreds. And Jesus says, “Now is the Son of Man glorified”? This doesn’t sound like a recipe for glory. Not to me. Does it to you?
What is about to happen to Jesus hardly seems to us—if we take the world’s point of view—to be ‘glory.’ Jesus is about to be betrayed and, as a result, arrested and, as a result of that, subjected to one bogus trial after another and then, of course, be flogged, mocked, spit upon, and ultimately crucified. Where is the glory in that? It seems to us more like disgrace, dishonor, and humiliation.
And, of course, it is! In the eyes of man. But in God’s eyes it is altogether something different, something noble, something precious, for Jesus’ suffering will be an act of obedience to God and a gesture that will have eternal benefit for God’s people. It will be glorious!
I never really thought about the meaning of the word glory until some years ago when I heard Manford Gutzke explain it. Dr. Gutzke was a professor at Columbia Seminary in Georgia, and he had a radio program in which he taught the Bible. On one occasion he addressed the meaning of the word glory. He said the glory of anything is the manifestation of its true nature. I think that’s a helpful definition, so let me repeat it. The glory of anything, Dr. Gutzke said, is the manifestation of its true nature. To illustrate, he explained that the glory of the apple tree is the apple in the barrel. I took it a step further and thought to myself, The glory of the apple tree is the sweet taste of the apple on the tongue. You want to know what the true nature of the apple tree is? Eat an apple.
So then, when Jesus says—after Judas has departed to betray Him, mind you—“Now is the Son of Man glorified,” what does He mean? He means just this: ‘Now that events have been set in motion to lead to the gory, grotesque, hideous outcome of the cross, My true nature is revealed.’
What happens, then, if we read verse 31, and the next verse, and substitute for the word “glorified” Gutzke’s definition, or words like it? If we do that, what we have is this: “Now is the true nature of the Son of Man revealed, and God’s true nature is revealed in Him. If God’s true nature is revealed in Him, God will also reveal His true nature in Himself, and reveal His true nature at once.”
So then, what is Jesus’ true nature? It is this. It is the love that impelled Him to embrace the cross. When He says in v. 33, “Where I am going you cannot come,” he is speaking of the cross on which He will lay down His life for the sins of the world. He is speaking of His sacrificial death by which He will reconcile sinners to God.
So, we have this contrast, don’t we? On one hand, we have the darkness into which Judas slithers away to do his dirty work. And on the other hand, we have the Light that “shines in the darkness,” the Light Scripture says “the darkness has not overcome ” (John 1:5). On the one hand we have the hatred that swells in the heart of Judas, which at the time was really nothing more than the latest iteration of the contempt for God that permeates this world. So, hatred on the one hand. But on the other hand we have the love that John says “was made manifest among us, [in] that God sent his only Son into the world…to be the propitiation for our sins” (1 John 4:9, 10). Darkness and hatred on the one hand, light and love on the other.
And the Bible tells us in Romans 5:5 that, by grace, this love, “God’s love, has been poured into our hearts.” I prefer the King James rendering of that verse, when it says that “the love of God is shed abroad in our hearts”—shed abroad, like light. This light, this love—it gets into us, Romans says, “through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us.”
So, we are not only loved by Jesus, but we love like Jesus. And that’s where Jesus takes the matter next. He says to His disciples—and He says to us—“A new commandment I give you, that you love one another” (John 13:34). But notice that it’s not just that we are to love one another; we are to love the same way He loves. He goes on to say, “Just as I have loved you, you are also to love one another.”
You and I cannot be illumined by the Light without radiating the light. There’s only the night and the day—there’s nothing else—and 1 Thessalonians 5:5 says, “You are all children of light, children of the day. We are not of the night or of the darkness.” And so, we are to love one another as Jesus loves us. It is the highest aim of the life of faith. Paul says in 1 Corinthians 13 that we can do all the other things—‘speak in the tongues of men and of angels…, have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge…, and…have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but [if we] have not love,” we are “nothing” (vv. 1, 2). We can even give away all we have and die a martyr’s death, but “if [we] have not love, [we] gain nothing” (v. 3). Therefore, as he says in chapter 14, verse 1, we are to “pursue love”—or as the NIV puts it, to “make love [our] aim.”
If you look again at our passage in John 13, at the end of verse 33, you will see where Jesus says to His disciples, “Where I am going you cannot come.” He means at the very least the cross and, beyond that, His glorious ascension into heaven, into “the Father’s house,” as He puts it in chapter 14. “Where I am going you cannot come.” That’s what He says.
But then, in verse 36, when Peter asks Him where He is going, Jesus answers, “Where I am going you cannot follow me now, but you will follow afterward.” That’s a bit different—isn’t it?—from what Jesus said before. What’s the difference? It is just this. The cross of Calvary is Jesus’ cross alone. Only He can die for the sins of the world. But you and I have a cross to bear as well.
His path will also be our path. Our journey will also mean a cross. As we follow Him, we cannot skip a step. Beyond the cross is resurrection and ascension, but there is no escaping the cross. We must die with Him. He says to us, “Unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit. Whoever loves his life loses it, and whoever hates his life in this world will keep it for eternal life. If anyone serves me, he must follow me; and where I am, there will my servant be also. If anyone serves me, the Father will honor him” (John 12:24-26).
Cross-bearing for us may mean suffering—in some cases even dying—for the sake of the gospel. And we must cultivate the kind of fortitude it will take should we ever be asked by the Lord to endure persecution for His name.
But short of that, every follower is required to “deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow” Jesus. And, in this sense, cross-bearing involves abandoning the self-absorption and self-preoccupation that too often consume us. For these are the attitudes that lead us to sin. Paul amplifies this for us when he says, “We know that our old self was crucified with him in order that the body of sin might be brought to nothing, so that we would no longer be enslaved to sin” (Rom. 6:6).
So, we affirm not only that Christ died for us, which He surely did, but also that we die with Him, so that we “must consider [ourselves] dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus” (v. 11).
This is the path we must follow, but Christ goes before us. And just as the Cross was for Him the highest expression of love, so our crosses will be for us the means by which we express our love for one another.
“It was night” when Judas “went out” to betray Jesus. It still is. The world is filled with darkness, and the darkness is real. But light dispels darkness. Love overcomes hate. “I am the light of the world,” Jesus said. And it is His light we must reflect, like “a lamp shining in a dark place” (2 Pet. 1:19).
