We would like for you to consider the 12th chapter of John to determine just what makes one responsible to the judgment seat of Christ. This is a wonderful section of John’s epistle. Between John 12 and 13 appears to be an impressive break in the life of the Master.
Jesus Had Many Conflicts With the Jews Over His Pedigree
As we go through the early sections of John we see the number of conflicts that the Lord Jesus has had with the Jews over his pedigree, who he is, where he came from, the number of arguments that occurred in the earlier part of the life of the Lord. When we get to chapter 13, it seems that what we embark on now are a number of dialogues between Jesus and his immediate disciples.
So the words of chapter 12, the latter part of the chapter, specifically, are a salutatory warning to all of those Jews in particular who heard his words. Now we see in verse 44 “and Jesus cried out and said, he who believes in me believes not in me but in Him who sent me, and he who sees me sees Him who sent me. I have come as a light into the world, and whoever believes in me may not remain in darkness. If anyone hears my saying and does not keep them, I do not judge him, for I did not come to judge the world but to save the world, and he who rejects me and does not receive my sayings has a judge, and the word that I’ve spoken will be his judge on the last day.” So what Jesus is doing in this last section of John’s gospel is highlighting the responsibility of the person who hears the words of the Lord.
If you notice, it wasn’t only Hebrew speaking Jews or Aramaic speaking Jews. Look at verse 20 “Now among those who went up to worship at the feast were some Greeks.” They may have been Greek speaking Jews, they may have been Greeks. So these came to Philip, who was from Bethsaida in Galilee, and said to him, “Sir we wish to see Jesus.” Even in the context, the words, although primarily relating to the Jews, can’t be confined to them.
The Pharisees Asked Jesus If They Were Blind
It is true the Jews incurred additional responsibility. If you look at John 9, this is highlighted. In verse 38, “For judgment I came into this world.” verse 39, “that those who do not see may see, and those that see may become blind. And some of the Pharisees near him heard this and they said to him, Are we also blind ? And Jesus said to them, if you were blind, you would have no guilt; but now that you say we see, your guilt remains.” So the fact that they acknowledged their blindness incurred on their part additional guilt. Now Jesus was to say of them later in chapter 15:22, a parallel passage. “If I had not come and spoken to them they would not have sinned, but now they have no excuse for their sins; and he also that hates me hates my Father also. If I had not done among them the works which no one else did, they would not have sin; but now they have seen and hated both me and my Father.” So the Jew incurs this additional responsibility.
There was the Messiah in their midst. He was shortly to die and by his resurrection God would attest to his credentials to be the Messiah. So we have in John 12:47, “Anyone who hears my sayings and does not keep them, I do not judge him, for I did not come to judge the world but to save the world.” Now if we look at these expressions, as they occur here, it is interesting to follow them through. It is certain that Jesus will give judgment when he returns. This is singled out for us in John’s gospel elsewhere. John 5:21 for example. In view of this, where the Son of Man obviously will judge, what do we make of the words of Jesus “I judge him not.” Well I guess here is a case where the Bible student has
Jesus Came to be a Savior . . . He Will Be a Judge When He Returns
to put Scripture alongside Scripture. If you see the flow of thought in chapter 12, Jesus says in verse 45, “and he who sees me sees Him who sent me.” If we were to supply the ellipses there I suppose that we intuitively supply it really means, “and he who sees me, sees Him that sent me.” And that’s rather characteristic of much of the language of Jesus. He says in verse 47, “If anyone hears my sayings and does not keep them I do not judge him.” (I do not judge him now). He didn’t come then to be the judge; he came to be the savior, the lamb to take away the sin of the world. But he would come as judge, as John 5 and many other references in John’s gospel would allow. But when he would come as judge, this that had been committed to the son in John 5, “and the Son who would quickeneth whom he will” would not come in judgment then but to save. His words were from God, and therefore, the word that he had spoken would be the judge at the last day. Now this significance is highlighted in John 17.
In John 17, Jesus said to his disciples, in verse 6, “I have manifested thy name to the men whom thou gayest me out of the world. Thine they were and thou gayest them to me, and they have kept thy words;” verse 7, “now they know that everything that thou hast given me is from thee for I have given them the words which thou gayest me.” So he was the faithful and true witness. Then in verse 14, “I have given them thy word and the world has hated them because they are not of the world, even as I am not of the world;” verse 17, “sanctify them in the truth. Thy word is truth;” verse 20, “I do not pray for these only but also for those who believe in me, through their word, that they may all be one; even as thou, Father, art in me, and I in thee, that they also may be in us.” So you see the significance of the word in John’s gospel. It was a word that came from his Father. It didn’t originate with him, and it would be the word that would be the judge for those who heard the words of Jesus.
Now the question is, can the words of Jesus then be restricted to Jews only? Now as we read through John’s gospel, is it true to say that “If I had not done among them the works which no one else did they would not have sinned.” that what we read in June 12 is an indictment of the Jews only and does not apply to someone reading Scripture many centuries later? Now I think we have to look at this view of Scripture very seriously.
Dare We Say Jesus’ Discourses Do Not Apply to Us Today?
If we have to go through Scripture and commence to eliminate discourses between Jesus and the Jews or Jesus and the Samaritans and to argue that they do not apply to people who read the Scriptures later, then we would have a very abbreviated gospel account.
When we read of Jesus in dialogue with the woman of Samaria would anyone argue that it doesn’t apply to a believer today because Jesus said those word to a woman of Samaria? We realize that it does apply to us today. When Jesus said “salvation is from the Jews” and that “God is spirit and those who worship him, must worship him in spirit and in truth,” we would all agree that those words would equally apply to us today. The parable of the good Samaritan was given to Jews, but do we restrict the parable of the good Samaritan to Jews only? Of course not, and one can readily see the point.
Is there any reason then for restricting the words of John 12? It is true that the Jews incurred the indictment of Jesus because there were signs that attested the words at the time of the Jews, there were miracles and signs in John’s gospel recorded there that gave the Jews unimpeachable evidence that he was the Messiah, and they rejected him.
The Words of Jesus Are Powerful Enough to Make One Eligible For Eternal Life
Now here we are, with a risen Messiah, and that God has borne witness to his credentials in raising him from the dead with the mighty evidences of his resurrection and the subsequent history of fulfilled prophecy. Are we in less of a position than a Jew simply because the Jew had the miracles that were there? We’ve got the completed scriptures able to make a man wise unto salvation through faith in Christ Jesus.
We look at the words of Jesus in John’s gospel preserved elsewhere. They are powerful enough to enable a person to become baptized to become a candidate for eternal life. Then why are they any less powerful to make a man amenable to the same judgment that Jesus speaks about in John 12. This is a very serious matter in our handling of Scripture. When you look at Jesus you see the word made flesh. We don’t know that much about his appearance, his visage was so marred that it was beyond human semblance we are told. When we look at John the Baptist, who was he, why the voice crying in the wilderness. Just a voice. What we see is the word, that we must appreciate with all its precise beauty without embellishing it, without embroidering it.
John 12 is almost certainly alluding to Deuteronomy 18, and when we go back to Deuteronomy 18, we have the great prophecy about the prophets that God would raise up like unto Moses. Deuteronomy 18:15, “The LORD your God will raise up for you a prophet like me from among you, from your brethren — him you shall heed —” Oh, they rejected that visible theophany on the part of God Almighty. “And the LORD said to me, “They have rightly said all that they have spoken. I will raise up for them a prophet like you from among their brethren; and I will put my words in his mouth, and he shall speak to them all that I command him.” Declare to them the full counsel of God, and he shall speak to them all that I command him.” Declare to them the full counsel of God, as Paul said, and then look at the general terms in which the accountability is touched. “Whoever will not give heed to my words which he shall speak in my name, I myself will require it of him.”
The Words Jesus Spake Were His Fathers
You see the accountability of the persons that would reject the words of the prophet ? They weren’t the words of Jesus per se, they were the words of his Father; and as a faithful and true witness, he had given all of these words to the disciples. When you commission them to go out that they might believe on them, as ambassadors carrying that word forth with all its power to save, and its power for accountability. In John 12, there was a word used here “He that rejecteth me.” Not that it’s any great point in the exposition that we’re outlining, but this word ‘to reject’ is the word that means to set aside or to disregard in each of two passages where it’s used. Where he says “receiveth not my words,” it really is a good example of John 5:45, “I have come in my Father’s name and you do not receive me, but if another comes in his own name him ye will receive.” There was a testimony at hand for the Jew, and
was the word. If you’d believe Moses, you would believe me for he wrote of me. But if you do not believe his writings, how would you believe my words? So they stubbornly refused to accept their Messiah when their circumstances were such as to leave them no excuse for what they did.
John 12 Refers to a Personal Judgment
When we look at John 12, you can see here that there is a personal application of the judgment referred to. It’s not an impersonal type judgment where a person may not be personally there to give account for what he has done. “If anyone hears my words and does not keep them I do not judge him.” he says: “He who rejects me and does not receive my sayings has a judge, and the word that I have spoken will be his judge on the last day. I will require it of him.” So it’s that personal judgment that’s the subject of attention in John 12. Although it has sometimes been suggested that this is a picture of national judgment on the part of Jewry, I think the flow of thought in the context would indicate that this is not the case; and although it is true to say that God did judge the Jews nationally in A.D. 70, this isn’t what John 12 is speaking about. In fact, if you look at the statements that relate to the national judgment, they are couched in quite different language in the gospels. For example, in Luke 21:24, it speaks about “great distress shall be upon the earth,” and “wrath upon this people,” “They will fall by the edge of the sword,” “be led captive among all nations,” “Jerusalem will be trodden down by the Gentiles,” and so on. It’s “they” — their enemies shall lay a seige,” John 12 is not the language of the national judgment of the gospels in Luke 21 and Luke 19.
We Conclude that the Word of God Is Just as Powerful Today As it Was When Written
What conclusion do we draw then on the basis of John 12? We draw the conclusion that the word of God is as powerful today as it was then. The word of God is able to work effectually in you, says the Apostle. We are born new by the word of God. We desire the sincere milk of the word that we might grow thereby. The word is powerful to save, and the word is equally powerful in the person who rejects it to make him accountable in the day when he will give an account of that refusal, that rejection of the word. For as Jesus says, “The word that I have spoken the same shall judge him in the last day.”
When he speaks of the last day, the last day in the recorded speeches of Jesus in John almost always refer to the last day in terms of the judgment. Look at John 5 for example, there are numerous examples of this all the way through here, “He that believeth on me hath everlasting life and I will raise him up at the last day.” Similarly, in John 6:40, “For this is the will of my Father that everyone who sees the son and believes in him should have eternal life, and I will raise him up at the last day.” With the exception of the last day of the feast that is used in John, the expression “the last day” is reserved for the last day in which the dead are raised.
So you can see that there is an accountability that the word produces. Now that it is a principle, but it is an uncertain detail as to who specifically it applies to. We can have someone go through the Sunday School and we don’t know the extent to which he has appropriated the understanding of Scripture.
The personal application of that principle is an uncertain detail. But as for the accountability, responsibility incurred when one hears the word of God, it seems to me that’s clearly set out in John’s gospel. There are no barriers that we see here to God calling a person from the grave to give an account for his rejection on the last day.
The Origin of the Organic World – Part One