John 12:20 Commentary and Bible Study

The fifth voice is the voice of the Gentiles. It is only briefly put by the apostle John but it is unmistakeable. This is not talking about Greek-speaking Jews, or Hellenists. It is talking about Greeks that came up to worship at the feast, proselytes, Greeks, a party of them. Tired of Greek polytheism, and seeing through it, they turned to the one true and living God, admiring the God of the Hebrews, reading for themselves the Old Testament Scriptures.Saying perhaps – and I speculate now – ‘Yes, we have come to believe in the God of Israel, the God of the Hebrews. We want to worship as they do. But what is this about the Messiah? About the suffering servant? About one who would come, who would redeem, through whom all the foreign nations would also be blessed? That is us.’ And they say, ‘Jesus of Nazareth is the Messiah, the expected one. We long to see him and to hear him and to know of him.’So here is a voice, what a contrast from the enemies, the opponents, the chief priests and the scribes and the Pharisees. The Greeks who come – ‘We would see Jesus.’ Their voice is a record that they find him authentic. All that they hear, they want, and they want to hear of him.