John 12:23 Commentary and Bible Study

This brings us to the voice of Christ. It is the sixth voice. ‘And Jesus answered them, saying, The hour is come.’ That mysterious hour that we have been reading about. Previously they have tried to arrest him and take him. They were determined to do it, and they could not do it because his hour was not yet come. It was going to be done when Christ said it would be done, not when they wanted to do it. And somehow, by an act of divine power he would pass through the midst of them and they could not touch him. Glorified? Glorified, revealed as glorious, shown to be the one we should worship, the one to be admired and esteemed. That is what it means. When we look at the death of Christ, we see it as something glorious. A playwright who has no light and understanding writes a play about Christ, and he makes it a kind of comic-tragedy: the one who was a superstar, and it all comes to nothing on Calvary’s cross, with his death. But when you look at Calvary’s cross with the eye of faith, and you understand the Scriptures, it glorifies him.What did he do on Calvary’s cross? What no one else in history could ever have done. God the Father laid upon him the guilt and the sin of all who would be saved, and he willingly took it. He punished him with an eternal quantity of punishment, and he purged away our sin, and bore it and paid the price for us, the greatest price that ever could be paid. He suffered it as a man, he survived it as God. His Godhead sustained his manhood, and he suffered it all and drank the cup fully. What a glorious thing, what a Godlike thing.