John 12:31-33
31 “Now judgment is upon this world; now the ruler of this world will be cast out. 32 “And I, if I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all men to Myself.” 33 But He was saying this to indicate the kind of death by which He was to die.
The knowledge that the entire membership roll of the Nazi Party, containing some eight million names, was found soon after the collapse of the German army was no joyous news to those whose names were thereon. Once these people were proud to be numbered with the ruling party. Once it had meant power and prestige, and in many cases wealth. This master file had been the key to places of honor and authority for those whose names were listed, but now it was different. Now it meant sharp investigation, prison for many and death for others.
—G. Franklin Allee
Throughout the history of nations and cultures the tides of attitude toward God and His truth have ebbed and flowed between honoring Him, depending on Him, worshiping Him as a people, to drifting away, looking to worldly things for provision and support, questioning His truth and abandoning His precepts and falling finally into apostasy.
In those final stages one of the earmarks of abandonment of God and spiritual collapse is the increase in willingness to openly scoff at true believers and mock God’s written Word.
We’ve witnessed a couple examples of that very recently from television personalities and politicians who have brazenly derided Christianity and Christians as unable to think; as losers. But the ones in the public eye are not alone, they’re just the ones who have a large audience because of their name and position.
In the American society and indeed around the world we are now in a day that parallels the last days of many ancient societies, when on a grand scale people were turning their back on anything Godly, denying openly the claims of Christ and His people, and manifesting in their very words and actions the indictment of Romans chapter 3 when it says, “There is no fear of God before their eyes”.
Just like those days of the power of the Third Reich; men and women are so busy reveling in the comforts and pursuits of worldly and fleshly position and prestige that they have no time for thought as to what might come later. No ear for warning, no place for thoughts of accountability to any Authority above themselves, phoo-phoo-ing at the very mention of a judgment to come.
I think the state of the collective modern psyche is captured in the chorus of a song by rock group Megadeth, on an album curiously titled, “The World Needs a Hero”.
“What if I do get caught? What if there is no judgment?
If I’m right I lose nothing, if you’re right I lose it all
I ought to get caught because I’m doing something wicked
I’m guilty haunted by my fear and the only consequences
Are Dread and the Fugitive Mind.”
What’s the message? That there is no judgment forthcoming. Yes, I’m guilty. Yes, I’m wicked. Yes, I am haunted. But if the only consequence of my actions is this dread that I go to bed with every night, and the insistence of my mind to run away from any thought of retribution or judgment, hey, I can hang with that.
But I want you to listen to me today because I have news that flies in the face of every reference to future judgment that I was able to dig up in my research. Everything I found, every quote, every song, every mention of judgment put it in either the realm of future reality, future myth, or future never.
What have they missed? They’ve missed the declaration of Jesus Christ that judgment has come to this world.
What if there is no judgment? The question of the ignorant and fools. The horses are gone; forget the barn door. Forget piling good deeds on the scales, you’ve already been weighed and found wanting. Nevermind ‘IF’; judgment has come and you are judged already!
THE SON OF MAN HAS COME
I see something else of interest for us in these verses of John 12.
In verse 23 Jesus makes the statement that the time has come for the Son of Man to be glorified.
Now in the minds of His hearers, the term “Son of Man” was immediately recognizable from the seventh chapter of Daniel, verses 13 and 14; so let’s look at those first.
Daniel 7:13 (NASB95)
13 “I kept looking in the night visions, And behold, with the clouds of heaven One like a Son of Man was coming, And He came up to the Ancient of Days And was presented before Him.
14 “And to Him was given dominion, Glory and a kingdom, That all the peoples, nations and men of every language might serve Him. His dominion is an everlasting dominion Which will not pass away; And His kingdom is one Which will not be destroyed.
Now go back to John 12 and look at verse 32. Here Jesus says, “And I, if I be lifted up from the earth, will draw all men to Myself.”
There is no specific mention of the Son of Man in that statement. But His hearers knew He was calling Himself the Son of Man that Daniel saw in a vision, and they also knew that the Son of Man was none other than the long-awaited Messiah, and they clearly understood that when He said, “…if I be lifted up…”, He was continuing with the claim to be that Son of Man.
We can know this by the content of the following verses. First note that they understand the Son of Man to be the Christ (the Messiah).
“We have heard out of the Law that the Christ is to remain forever…”
What are they talking about? Well, several passages. Psalm 110:4, Isaiah 9:7, Ezekiel 37:25, (the references are in your notes for later study) but staying with Daniel 7:14, “…His dominion is an everlasting dominion Which will not pass away; And His kingdom is one Which will not be destroyed.”
So they’re right in asserting that the Christ is to remain forever. But note that they clearly understand His claim to Messiahship and that He is still talking about the prophesied Son of Man when they ask, “…and how can You say, ‘The Son of Man must be lifted up’?
We also know by this that they understood He meant lifted up in crucifixion, just by the wording of their question.
I wanted to go over this just so there will be no doubt left in our own minds that He was claiming here to be the Son of Man and the Anointed One from God, and that those of His generation understood that. So we too can accept that the declaration of scripture, in numerous places but also here in John 12 and out of Jesus’ own mouth, is that as promised by the ancient prophets, God’s Anointed One, His promised One, His Christ, did indeed enter into this world, and with Him came judgment.
TO SEEK AND TO SAVE
Now at this point some alert Bible scholar is asking, ‘but didn’t Jesus say that He did not come to judge? Didn’t He say that He came to seek and to save that which was lost?’ And the answer would be ‘yes’.
In fact, if you just go to verse 47 of this chapter we’re studying you’ll see one of those statements.
“…I did not come to judge the world but to save the world…”
So we need to reconcile those statements of His with His declaration in our text.
First of all, a word study does us no good here. The Greek words used in these various verses that are translated, ‘judge’ and ‘judgment’ and so forth are all from the same root word and differ very slightly; in meaning, not at all. They mean just what we think they mean. Judgment. Condemnation.
The answer is in common sense and in the context of each place the words are used. Jesus did not come as a Judge to pass condemnation on the world. That day of Judgment will come later, and He will indeed be the One who sits on the Throne to decide every case in righteousness.
A Scottish lawyer was a wicked man. Once he rented a horse and, either through accident or ill-usage, killed the animal. Naturally the owner insisted on being paid its value, together with some compensation for the loss of its use. The man of law acknowledged his liability, and said he was perfectly willing to pay, but at the moment he was a little straightened for ready cash. Would the hirer of the animal accept a promissory note? “Certainly,” he said.
Whereupon the lawyer further said that he must be allowed a long date. “You can fix your own time,” said the creditor. The wicked man then drew the note, making it payable at the Day of Judgment.
Eventually the creditor took the matter to court, and there, in defense, the lawyer asked the judge to look at the note. He did so, and then replied: “The promissory note is perfectly good sir and as this is day of judgment, I decree that you pay tomorrow.”
—Methodist Recorder
Yes, Jesus will be the One to make that final decree and since none of us knows the day or the hour we will enter into eternity, now is the time to come to Him and appropriate to ourselves the pardon He has bought with His own blood.
But He did not come into the world as Son of Man to act as Judge, but as Redeemer. Seeker and Savior of that which was lost (Lk 19:10).
The difference, and what He is saying to us in our text, is that judgment of the world came with Him. Let me explain.
Let’s pretend that somewhere, a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away, there was a planet of crooked people. They didn’t differ much from one another as they were all crooked in the same way. What we call their left arm was bent in a peculiar way that was very unlike what we’d call their right arm, with a small percentage of the population having a crooked right arm and a straight left arm instead. Nevertheless, all were crooked.
Many centuries have gone by that people have had these crooked left arms; so long that the common condition has been long since accepted as the norm. Tools, furniture, office machines and so forth have all been designed to accommodate a crooked left arm and a straight right arm until the only people who are really inconvenienced at all by this condition are the ones with crooked right arms…but they have also learned to deal with it. They are kiddingly referred to as ‘East paws’.
One day a space ship lands and from the ship emerges a man with two straight arms. He goes about telling the people that they all belong to a King who is not of their world, but from whom they were separated many centuries ago. This good King wants to be reconciled to them as he knows what is good for them and can provide them with all they need and more. In addition, he wants them to see that they could live a much higher quality of life if they had two straight arms instead of one ~ a claim they can easily see is true by the ease and deftness of motion they witness in the new stranger ~ and he tells them that if they come with him they will all be made straight and live on a wondrous new planet with the King, enjoying his company forever, and perhaps he finished his invitation saying, “Trust me; I’m being straight with you”.
Now we could go on with this allegory and just get deeper and deeper in trouble. So let’s stop here and make the point.
The people of that world have now seen what is right. They’ve been shown their wrongness, by virtue of being compared to what is right.
The stranger off the space ship, by his very presence and his demonstrable wholeness and completeness has shown them their distortion; their corruption; their predicament.
Because it doesn’t matter how many are wrong. Even if only one is right, he represents the standard for what is right. He does not become wrong because he is alone.
Jesus was the plumbline; the standard; God’s standard. In the light of His glory all that was wrong and out of place was exposed. He was alone. There was none like Him. But He was the only Straight One, nonetheless.
By Him, all the world is judged and found guilty; crooked; lost; ruined; no one righteous, no, not one.
He lived a life of perfect patience, faithfulness and obedience to the Father, and by His submission to the cross He perfectly fulfilled that obedience, and by His obedience, even unto death, all the world was judged.
IF I BE LIFTED UP
Now I want you to see that in the same act of bringing judgment to the world, He also provided salvation for the world.
In Numbers 21 is the account of the children of Israel grumbling against Moses in the wilderness, and God sending serpents among them as punishment. It says that many died, but Moses interceded for the people. So God gave him these instructions:
“Make a fiery serpent, and set it on a standard; and it shall come about, that everyone who is bitten, when he looks at it, he shall live.”
So Moses made a bronze serpent and set it on the standard and anyone bit by the serpents, if he lifted his eyes to the bronze serpent, lived.
In John chapter 3 Jesus made reference to this incident and applied it to Himself and His own raising up, as He is doing also here in our text.
As the bronze serpent was a representation of that which was killing the people, so Jesus, on the cross, became the personification of that which has killed all of mankind; sin.
And just as those who through faith in the promise looked up to see the serpent on the staff and lived, so all who come by faith to the cross of Christ and look on Him for salvation will live.
He is at once your judge and your Savior. He came into the world to save sinners, and with Him judgment came so that all who were exposed in the light of that judgment might see their true condition, look up to the One who was raised up for them, and be saved.
Notice also that in Numbers God tells Moses to make a ‘fiery serpent’. Fire, in the scriptures, is symbolic of God’s wrath. And we know that God’s wrath against sin was poured out on His Son as He hung there on Calvary’s cross.
Jesus brought judgment to the world, then carried that judgment on his own shoulders to the cross and carried it away forever, for all who believe in Him.
Is there a future judgment? Yes, in the sense that there is a day fixed in which God will call every man to stand before His seat to hear his own case so that all will be left without excuse.
But no, in the sense that that which has already come is not in the future, and Jesus has announced that judgment has come to this world; it came when the perfect Standard, the Plum line; the Son of Man was demonstrated to be the Son of God with power by His resurrection from the dead.
Those in the world apart from Christ are judged already.
Listen to Jesus’ words from John chapter 3
John 3:18 (NASB95)
18 “He who believes in Him is not judged; he who does not believe has been judged already, because he has not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God.
Judgment is not some future thing for the man or woman outside of Christ, they only await sentencing.
I guess this is my day for quoting secular songs. I came across some song lyrics from a group called “The Virus”, and I can’t imagine that if one had a steady diet of this kind of music they would ultimately be a very cheerful person to be around; but the words capture a truth that is more true than perhaps even the writer understood:
“See the death on the horizon - We’re already dead
Don’t open up yours eyes- We’re already dead
You know the end is coming soon- We’re already dead
Destruction and demise- We’re already dead
[Chorus:]
So take a look around
The world has fallen
Problems everywhere
Your life is stolen
We’re already dead
See the rubble on the city streets- We’re already dead
Can’t escape the aftermath- We’re already dead
Monuments of power at our feet- We’re already dead
A world torn in half- We’re already dead
[Repeat Chorus:]
Leaders get what they want in vain-We’re already dead
A country torn by war-We’re already dead
And the children feel the pain-We’re already dead
So many victims of this horror-We’re already dead
[Repeat Chorus:]
We’re already dead, dead, dead
We’re already dead
THE DRAWING OF ALL MEN
Before we finish we need to address this claim of Jesus that He would draw ‘all men’ to Himself.
I’d like to read a portion to you from one of C.H. Spurgeon’s sermons.
… “the whole world has gone after him” Did all the world go after Christ? “then went all Judea, and were baptized of him in Jordan.” Was all Judea, or all Jerusalem, baptized in Jordan? “Ye are of God, little children”, and the whole world lieth in the wicked one”. Does the whole world there mean everybody? The words “world” and “all” are used in some seven or eight senses in Scripture, and it is very rarely the “all” means all persons, taken individually. The words are generally used to signify that Christ has redeemed some of all sorts—some Jews, some Gentiles, some rich, some poor, and has not restricted His redemption to either Jew or Gentile …
—C.H. Spurgeon from a sermon on Particular Redemption.
So when Christ declared that He would draw all men to Himself, He was effectively refuting the bias of the Jews that they were the only ones who could stand in God’s favor, and He was once more proclaiming that without distinction ‘all’ could come to Him.
Hearer (reader), the ground is level at the foot of the cross of Christ. He has made no distinctions among you, as you might make. He has said that all who look up to Him, raised up and glorified, will be saved.
You may interject a ‘but’ in there, according to your own guilty past, or your prejudices against others, but He does not.
This is good news, if the hearer is willing to accept it, acknowledge it, and look to the Standard that has been raised. It was recognition of their dire need and the fact that judgment had already come that brought the children of Israel to look up to the brazen serpent.
It is recognition that there is not some future judgment to be avoided, not some potential danger lurking if the final balance weighs against us, but that judgment has come to this world and all is lost and all is dead already, that will cause the desperate lost one to be drawn to Him who was lifted up and be saved.
John 5:24 (NASB95)
24 “Truly, truly, I say to you, he who hears My word, and believes Him who sent Me, has eternal life, and does not come into judgment, but has passed out of death into life.
Do you hear the past tense of doom, and the past tense of glory won?
Judgment HAS come into the world, but for those who hear the word of God and believe, they HAVE passed out of death into life.
Who is this Son of Man? He is Jesus. He is the Plumb line. He is the Standard. He is the Light. He is the Straight One, who draws all men to Himself.
He invited the Father to glorify His name through His Son, and the Father’s response was that His name had indeed been glorified, indicating His approval and pleasure in the life of His Messiah, and then he said it would be glorified again, indicating His determination to have His name glorified through the death of His Messiah.
Because you see, God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Spirit knows what it seems very difficult for us to grasp. That ‘…unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains by itself alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit.’ (vs 24)
Judgment has come to this world, but the Son of Man has been lifted up so that He might draw all men to Himself. In so doing, the Son has glorified the Father’s name and the Father has glorified the Son, so that for all who look up He might bring His glory to them also.
Have you looked up?
