Sword & Trowel 2018: Issue 2


Execution is their only solution. They will in due course seize him and deliver him to crucifixion, but they are driven by having no answer to his authenticity. Now they say among themselves – ‘Perceive ye how ye prevail nothing?’ Our decisions until now have not worked, ‘Behold the world is gone after him.’ By the world, they clearly mean all the Jews, but they say more than they realise, because in the very next verse, we see how foreigners are also seeking after Christ.


5 THE VOICE OF THE GENTILES The fifth voice, named in verse


20, is the voice of the Gentiles. It is only briefly stated by the apostle John but it is of immense significance. ‘And there were certain Greeks.’ This is not referring to Greek-speaking Jews, or Hellenists; it is speaking of ethnic Greeks that came up to wor- ship at the feast, proselytes, tired of polytheism who had turned to the one true and living God. These said (I enlarge their words), ‘We have come to believe in the God of Israel and we want to worship as they do, but what is this about a Messiah, the suffering servant? Who is the one who will come, and who will redeem, and through whom foreign nations will also be blessed? Is it Jesus of Nazareth, of whom we have heard so much? We long to see him and to hear him and to know more of him.’ What a contrast is this voice from that of the opponents, the chief priests, the scribes, and the Phari- sees! The Greeks ‘came therefore to


Philip, which was of Bethsaida of Galilee, and desired him, saying, Sir, we would see Jesus.’ Philip did not know what to do. He did not expect foreigners, and in all probability he shared his nation’s disdain for them, for he did not yet understand. He tells Andrew, but neither knew how to respond to enquiring Greeks. But Christ gives a message for the Greeks and for Jews. Tell them, he says, and tell everyone, that I have come as a Saviour to suffer and to die on a cross. That is in essence the message.


6 THE VOICE OF CHRIST This brings us to verse 23, the


voice of Christ, the sixth voice. ‘And Jesus answered them, saying, The hour is come.’ That mysterious hour that we have read about. Previously when they have tried to attack or ar- rest him, they have been unable to do it because his hour had not yet come. Somehow, by an act of divine power he would pass through the midst of them. But now ‘the hour is come, that the Son of man should be glorified,’ or revealed as glorious, and shown to be the one to be wor- shipped and esteemed. To the eye of faith he was glorified in his death. To all eyes he was glorified in his resur- rection. A playwright with no understand-


ing wrote a play about Christ, in the form of a comic-tragedy. He saw one who was a superstar, whose life came to nothing on Calvary’s cross. But when you look at the cross with the eye of faith, understanding the


Seven Voices of Calvary page 7


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