Synoptic Gospels John 12:32

John 12:32 and the Meaning of “Draw All Men”

We return to John Chapter 12. I guess it's technically a stepping out of synoptic study, but not really. I guess when we get done, we'll be able to say we covered all the Gospels, but we are in John Chapter 12.

And just for our recollection, we know that, boy, you know, the AC is set right where it normally is. Feels a lot warmer in here, doesn't it? It's set right where it normally is, but that 63 degree dew point certainly makes a bit of a difference, doesn't it?

We remember that some Greeks came seeking Jesus. They came to Philip, because Philip is a Greek name. Philip comes to Jesus, and this is the resultant conversation and discussion that actually results in Jesus going away and hiding himself from them.

He does not meet with them. And we had looked at the fact that Jesus foretells his death, beginning in verse 27. Did I specifically say we were going to start with 32? Or, yeah, okay, so I guess I'm just seeing some stuff in the preceding verses that I don't recall having clearly discussed, but I've slept since then, so I would explain that.

Anyway, it is a little bit ironic that since we last met, I think it was since we last met. Well, Mr. Porter might remember. You sent me a link to a book, The Disenchanted Calvinist. Was that? How long ago was that?

All right, so that's what I thought. Since we were last here, let's just put it that way,.

Looked at this book.

Southern Baptist Drift, Semi-Pelagianism, and the Sinner’s Prayer

For some of you who are not familiar with what's going on, I almost said across the pond, but that really would not be an appropriate analogy. But amongst our Southern Baptist friends, a few months ago, there was a bit of an uproar shortly before the Southern Baptist Convention.

I think it might have been in May. A group of Southern Baptists released a paper in which they outlined what they call a traditional Baptist understanding of salvation, which is not only thoroughly synergistic, not only thoroughly non-reformed, but as one Arminian writer, and he is one of the few people who will actually say, I am an Arminian.

Roger Olson, who teaches at the seminary attached to Baylor, who is no conservative by any stretch of the imagination, but he is an Arminian. Even Roger Olson, upon reading this statement, which has been signed by hundreds of Southern Baptist pastors and leaders now, including a couple of seminary presidents, certainly not our Albert Mohler, but anyway, identified it as minimally semi-Pelagian because it does make some pretty amazing statements within it.

Then a little bit after that, it was announced right at the time of the convention, which is normally in June, it was announced that one of the framers of that document, if I recall correctly, was going to be introducing a motion, whatever you call it, resolution, I think maybe, at the Southern Baptist Convention, about the propriety of the sinner's prayer.

Now, my understanding is that what happened, it was submitted, and then in committee, the committee gutted it and reformed it so that what eventually was voted on was not nearly as odious to some as it might have been otherwise, but it's been fairly well known for many years that after what's called the conservative resurgence in the Southern Baptist Convention, and it is funny to hear people say.

The Southern Baptist Convention.

Is the largest Protestant denomination in the world, when the Southern Baptists have to admit they cannot find about 75 of the people who they think call themselves a Southern Baptist, so it's a little bit about how most Southern Baptist churches determine their attendance too.

It's not actually counting people, I can assure you of that, or their church membership for that matter.

But anyway,.

After the Southern Baptist resurgence, where the conservatives took back a couple of the seminaries and sort of beat back a fairly obvious influx of liberalism, though to be honest with you, I'm not certain just if that was a victory or if the liberalism simply wanted to ground, similar to, oh, we beat communism, not so much, I think they're in charge.

But anyway,.

The next target of the conservatives, they were very clear about,.

Was Calvinism, the Calvinists.

And so all of this to mention this book that Brother Porter referred me to, it's amazing today, you can be referred to a book and I had it listened to. I downloaded it, it was available on Kindle, download it, record it that night, listen to it the next day on a ride.

And it was sort of the next shot, I guess you might say, in this particular battle. One of the statements made it a couple of times.

Was the author says something along the lines of,.

And he claims to be a former Calvinist, actually, he was a quote unquote, four point Calvinist. And in my experience, and maybe yours as well, unless I'm talking to someone who says, actually, I am an Emeraldian, and they've actually read the writings of the man named Emerald, almost every single person I've ever talked to, who was a four point Calvinist, what was the one point they rejected?

Limited atonement. That's what they thought. And once I start pushing this little bit, start asking some questions, what I discover is their objections to L are actually objections to unconditional election.

And when you find out what their objections on the conditional election are, they actually don't really believe in total depravity. And once you find out about that, you don't really believe they have an eternal decree, so you don't believe in the sovereignty of God.

And actually, they were like one point Calvinists. And it's normally the last point, which makes absolutely no sense to reject the first four.

And then you got yourself into this freely, but once you're in it, you're stuck.

It just doesn't make a sense. So anyway, he was never truly, truly reformed. But be it as it may, he says in the book, he says, I don't know how Calvinists can sign the Southern Baptist faith and message,.

Which is the statement of faith, Southern Baptist Convention.

Because it says at one point that God deals with all of his creatures in a fatherly manner. Well, I'm really not 100 certain exactly what that's supposed to mean. The Baptist faith and message was specifically written to not really say much of anything except something real broadly and generally and in a foggy sense of things.

So you could allow for different interpretations. It still does very clearly indicate that regeneration precedes faith,.

Which now these folks should be able to sign it if they actually were convinced of that either.

Anyway, in listening to this book, I was actually, I was offended. The author says, well, it's written so that every chapter can stand on its own. That's a nice way of saying, I put my sermon notes together.

And I didn't want to edit them.

And if he had edited the book, it would have been about a third of the length that it ends up being as it was. 10 times I counted them. It was amazing. I was climbing South Mountain and I listened and I caught nine repetitions of this.

And when I got back, I checked with Kindle. It was 10 times, but I hadn't actually finished.

The entire book.

There was one after I got done. So I actually kept track of exactly how many times the author repeated this exact same phraseology. He would quote John 644 and he would say, no one can be saved outside of drawing of the father, but then he would quote John 1232.

And without any comment, he would say the very same Greek term, Helcuo is used in both John 644 and in John 1232. And then you go on from there. 10 times, not changing a word, changing a comma. Just repeat it over and over and over and over and over again.

Now there is an argument being made there. It just wasn't an argument that was ever expanded upon. It was never explained. There is no discussion of the vast difference in context between John 6 and John 12.

There was no discussion of the fact that in John 6, Jesus is explaining the unbelief of the people who were following after him. He was talking about false disciples. He was talking about people who just rode their boats across the lake to come here and speak again because they had seen miracles and they wanted to see more miracles and they wanted to eat more miracle food.

And in explaining their unbelief, he said there is a particular people the father has given to me. And of those, I'll never lose any of those. And no one is able to come to me unless the father sent me draws him and I'll raise him up in the last day.

So that's John 6. You get to John 12 and you're talking about some people who again are pursuing Jesus.

But Jesus doesn't even meet with them.

He's not addressing unbelief or anything else. He is addressing some other issues as we're going to see. And so nothing about the context is discussed. And nothing about the fact that if you just take John 12, 32 and I, if I am lifted up from the earth, would draw all men to myself.

If you just, you just go,.

Well, the same Greek word is used there. Well, that's nice. Michelangelo drew beautiful paintings. I drew my gun.

Well, those must mean the same thing.

Same English word, right?

Oh, it's ridiculous.

And yet it is amazing how many people will just go, well, it's the same Greek word. Our Greek speaking. Brother, have you ever used Greek word in more than one way?

Yeah, of course.

It's sort of obvious, isn't it?

It's ridiculous.

It's just amazing. And yet people do go, well, same word. So what's the unspoken assumption? It has the same meaning. Well, every language, we all know that we can use the same word and we can use it in different contexts.

What's more, have you ever noticed something? Who does the drawing in John 6, 44? No one can come to meet the father. No one comes to meet unless the father who sent me draws him. But in John 12, who does the drawing?

It's Jesus.

Now, we are good enough Trinitarian theologians to recognize that the father, the son, the spirit, while they are united in the accomplishment of salvation, they take different roles in salvation. The son reveals the father.

That is a specific element of his role that he has taken in what's called the economic trinity, which is where the divine persons choose to take different roles in the accomplishment of salvation and therefore we can distinguish between them.

And so, upon what basis do we automatically assume that the drawing of John 12, 32 is identical to the drawing of John 6, 44, especially since different persons in Trinity are doing it? No discussion of that is provided by this particular pastor in his book.

The Cross, the Greeks, and the Universalist Objection

But of course, as I pointed out, if you take the interpretation that is understood, and that is that all men of verse 32 is every single human being who has ever lived,.

Ever will live,.

Then you're stuck with a real major problem. If you read that backwards, and hopefully we all recognize that going six chapters into the future, interpreting a text, then reading that backwards into another text means the people at that time could not have had any earthly idea.

What Jesus was saying.

Are you really comfortable with that? There's a lot of interpretation that does that kind of thing. I'm going to grab something over here,.

Grab something over here,.

Put this here, put this here, sort of jigsaw puzzle interpretation. That's really not how you should do things. But if you do, if you read that back into John 6, 44, then you're stuck with something. Because Jesus says in John 6, 44, the Father, unless the Father draws him and I will raise him up on the last day, if every single person who's ever lived,.

Ever will live,.

Is the one who's drawn, which is an amazing thing to say. I mean, just think of how many people lived in the days of Moses who were not drawn. So the firstborn of Egypt were drawn as equally as the disciples of Jesus.

I mean, it just, you can't even begin to make heads or tails.

Out of this kind of stuff,.

But it's what's commonly out there. But if you do, then you have no defense against universalism. You have no defense against those who say, yeah, God's going to save everybody. Everyone's going to be saved because all men are drawn and Jesus says he will draw all, he will raise up all those who are drawn.

So it's kind of, and being raised up is raised up to eternal life in the Gospel of John. So there it is. There's universalism. And it's like some of these folks have never had to deal with a universalist.

They've never had to deal with universalistic arguments. It's just, well, we want to warn people against that terrible, horrible, nasty Calvinism. So we'll just, we'll not worry about the fact that we're actually setting our people up to end up being universalists or at least be defenseless against universalism.

Well, all that having been said, if you've ever presented John chapter six to someone, if you've ever tried to say, you know, I've told the story before, but Kelly remembers we met with one of her employers many, many, many moons ago.

Well, it was many, many moons ago for me. It was just a little while ago for her because it was like over 20 years ago. But anyway, she was working as a child, but, and we had lunch with this fellow and he wanted to know why we believe this reform stuff.

And specifically Perseverance of the Saints and so I turned to Ephesians chapter one and he said, no, no, no, no, not, not in Paul. I want to see it in the words of Jesus. And this is one of my first encounters with what I call it a hyper red letterism.

If it's written in the red letters, then it's more inspired than if it's written in the, in the black ones. Does Codex Ricottonius have red letters? Wow, that means it goes way, way back. It really does because it's an ancient concept.

Yeah, very ancient. But anyways, and the red hasn't faded any. It was good scribes that worked on that particular codex. But anyway, and I, so I, you know, I'm like, okay. Then I went to John chapter six.

If that's what he considered to be authoritative of, I didn't think it was appropriate time to be challenging his deficient bibliology. But we often go to John chapter six and if you have, then you know that, that one of the most common responses is to go, well, okay, yeah.

No one tells me as far as he draws them, but God draws everybody equally. And then they leap out of John chapter six.

Over to John chapter 12.

And unfortunately, a lot of folks are not really familiar with the context of John chapter 12 as to be able to explain it in a meaningful, in a meaningful fashion. John 12, 32 is the end of the statement where Jesus is explaining what the father has said to him.

He is talking about judgment coming upon this world. He's talking about something, something major is going to happen in his death. The death of Christ is going to result in a major reorientation of things.

The cross truly is the center point of history. If Jesus was who he claimed to be, how could it be anything other? He said it's necessary that the son of man go and he didn't do these things. And he taught his own disciples that this was central to the purpose of his coming.

Is he going to give his life a ransom for many? He's going to be buried. He's going to rise again the third day. And the lifting up from the earth is specifically said in verse 33, but he was saying this to indicate the kind of death by which he was to die.

So, it wasn't just a happenstance that Jesus just happened to die by crucifixion. This was the intention of God. And so, and I, if I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all men to myself. I suggest to you, this is really the explanation of why Jesus doesn't meet with these Greeks.

That time is about to come. The gospel is about to go out to all the earth. Up until this point, Jesus has had a specific purpose in training the disciples, preparing them, delivering the message to the Israelites, those who already possess the word of God, to whom the oracles of God have been committed as Romans chapters two and three tell us.

But the time is going to come when this risen Messiah is going to say, all authority is given to me in heaven and earth. And then in the light of that authority, he sends his people out to all men, Jews and Greeks, all around the globe.

And as a result, if I am lifted up, I will draw all men to myself. The idea, this means every single human being, again, when I hear people interpreting this text this way, I go, have you talked to many people in our society?

Have you talked to them about the cross?

Have you talked to them about what the cross means? Because you see, you can't talk about it. If you start trying to explain the cross to someone, how are you going to do that? Sadly, a lot of people in our society.

Just want to talk about,.

Well, that's where God demonstrated that he's a loving God.

Well, that's true.

But he had to send his son to die a gory and humiliating death to prove that he's loving. Why did he have to die? Why couldn't Jesus just come and just heal everybody? And empty every leper colony and every ancient hospital and just feed not 5 ,000, but 5 million because there was a lot more than 5 ,000 hungry people in Palestine that day.

Why couldn't he have done it that way? You know, Jesus could float above the clouds and preach from heaven.

And who would have disbelieved then? Why the cross? Why a humiliating, shameful death?

You can't explain the cross without talking about sin. And you can't talk about sin without talking about God's law. And let me tell you something. If you live in such an ivory tower, in such an isolated spot, that you don't realize that all men are not attracted to that message.

That all men just go, oh, that's just beautiful. We recognize the only people.

That are attracted to this are people, the Spirit of God.

Is active in their hearts and their minds. Otherwise, the hatred, the vile hatred that flows from people's mouths is amazing. I don't know if any of you have seen them, but there is a British atheist by the name of Pat Condell.

Have you seen any of Pat Condell's videos? No one. I guess I'm more familiar with him because he speaks out on issues in regards to Islam.

And the application of Sharia.

In other lands and things like that. And he's plain spoken. He often says very true things, but he is an atheist. And I actually saw a video, a new video of his this morning where he was actually condemning the quote-unquote Arab Spring because as you hopefully are aware, one of the primary results of the Arab Spring has been that more and more and more Christians are either being driven out of their countries or killed because the Arab Spring is nothing more than a Salafi Muslim uprising that, for example, every Syrian I know, and my Arabic tutor is Syrian,.

Every Syrian I know,.

In fact, my tutor told me a year before the uprising in Syria started that if it were to start, Christians would die by the droves because it was only the Assad regime.

That was keeping the Muslims.

From killing the Christians in Syria anyways. And so now that regime is collapsing. The people who are collapsing that regime are at the very same time, though they have absolutely no reason to do it other than religious bigotry, murdering Christians.

And that will only get worse. And there won't be almost any place left in the Middle East outside of Israel where a Christian can live in any semblance of peace or safety. So he was talking about that.

And he was pointing out the horrific nature of Islamic persecution of Christians. But he did so after having posted a video. He starts off by saying, I'm going to be defending Christians in this, but I hope you realize I think Christians are idiots.

Anyone who could believe, anyone past the age of six can believe such utter insanity as what Christians believe isn't fit for public office. This is the mindset. And you may remember the late Peter Hitchens, Christopher Hitchens, not Peter Hitchens, his brother, Christopher Hitchens.

Peter Hitchens is actually a Christian. Christopher Hitchens. And the vile words that he would say in regards to the cross.

And the sacrifice of Christ.

And as he put it, child sacrifice and so on and so forth. This is common amongst the people of the world. And I just ask the question, exactly how do you fit that in with this? If that's what Jesus is talking about, then Jesus failed with Christopher Hitchens and he is failing with Pat Condell and he is failing with the vast majority of people that I know of who find the message of God, his law, sin, judgment, wrath, the necessity of propitiation and the sacrifice of Christ to be ancient mythology, unworthy of any modern minds even begin to embrace.

And so the whole idea that,.

Well, yeah,.

OK, so Jesus is talking about this in the context of these Greeks coming to see him and he actually doesn't meet with them and he actually is going to go on and talk about judgment coming upon the earth and God hardening people's hearts and stuff like that.

Yeah, that's all there, but we're not going to worry about what that actually means. John 12, 32 is another example of traditionally driven eisegesis, reading into a text and meaning that it could never have had in the mind of the original author and the original readers to whom it was written.

And so Jesus knows that the time for the proclamation of the gospel to these Greeks is near, but there's something that needs to happen first. And yes, all men, Jews, Greeks, and as we are, of course, Greeks in the sense of Gentiles, non-Jews.

And of course, as we are here this day representing numerous ethnic backgrounds, we have all been drawn to Christ. And that has been the very essence of the work of the gospel in the building of the church ever since that time period.

And so to take a meaning that this text could never have indicated initially, which is completely contradictory to what the Bible says about how the cross is viewed by man. And to then take that inappropriate interpretation and cram it back into John 6 to just try to stop the wheels of the sovereignty of God and salvation is an utter act of desperation, but it is one that is undertaken every single day in pulpits across this land.

And when you encounter someone, please realize it may be all they've ever heard. And a lot of you can still remember rather clearly when someone started upsetting your world and your traditional interpretations and all you had ever heard before by saying, you sure that's what it means?

Have you thought about this? Have you thought about that?

That's one of the reasons that against the common wisdom, I often raise counter interpretations to what I'm actually presenting. I'll say now some people say this.

And some people say that and I'll respond to them.

Because if you don't do that, if you just go down the comfort line, my experience is that when people then encounter different traditions and different perspectives, they're much more influenced because I've never heard that before.

Why didn't someone tell me that before? Were they hiding something from me? You sometimes wonder why, I'm sure some of you have wondered. Very few people have said it to me, but sometimes you wonder,.

Why did he spend five minutes on that?

Well, that's why. Because I want you to be aware of the fact that these other viewpoints are out there. And I'm not just going to say, I'm going to refute that one,.

I'm going to refute that.

But be aware that they're there because once you're aware of them, then when you encounter them, you're not knocked off your balance by that. Oh yeah, I've heard that before.

Oh, okay.

I've heard something along those lines. And you can see how you can interact with that and actually find out that there are,.

Believe it or not,.

There are actually Christians who are not Reformed Baptists.

Believe it or not.

In fact, I've met a few Presbyterians.

Yep, yep.

And even some of them Southern Baptists. Yep, even some of them. And in fact, every single church I've ever preached in, in Sydney, Australia, was an Anglican church. Yep, believe it or not. Sydney Anglicans, remember, anybody ever read J .C. Ryle's Holy, you know, Holiness?

What was he? He was an Anglican.

That was before the English Anglicans went off into outer space someplace, which is where they are now. But the Sydney Anglicans, they're just like Lightfoot and J .C. Ryle and people like that. Good old conservative, Bible-preaching, Gospel-believing folks.

And they're great folks. And I've got some good friends amongst them as well. So, I'm being somewhat facetious in my, in pointing out that we're not the only ones that are part of what God has accomplished in this world.

Light, Belief, and Becoming Sons of Light

Anyway, so the next verse.

Tells us directly,.

You know, we don't have to, I've heard entire sermons. But if I am lifted up from the earth, then beautiful songs about lifting up Jesus.

And stuff like that,.

It's actually talking about crucifixion there.

But there are some folks,.

No, no, no, it's just,.

We want to lift up Jesus, not really in the way.

That this mentions.

There's that verse that comes after. That's always good to read in context. But he was saying this in the kind of death by which he was to die. The crowd then answered him. Now, the crowd's like, excuse me, but we have a tradition.

We have a tradition. We have heard out of the law that the Messiah, the Mashiach, is to remain forever. He's not going to die. The Messiah, once he comes, he delivers Israel and he becomes the ruler of the nations.

And they were partially correct. Because we certainly believe that. I mean, when Christ returns,.

What's he going to do?

He's going to rule the nations. He's going to subject all things to the Father. And there's no further death or anything like that. So, this was one of the problems that the Jews had is they had this revelation in the Old Covenant.

And yet that revelation contained all that the Messiah was going to do. And looking from their perspective, hopefully, none of us ever stepped back.

And go, I would have been able to,.

I would have been able to tell. I would have seen Isaiah 53 and Psalm 22. And I, yeah, there's a suffering. There's going to be suffering. And there's going to be, you know, these number of generations in between.

And there's a, really? I don't think I would have figured that out. You need some more revelation to be able to, I think, make those proper distinctions. And so, yeah, they've got a tradition and they're looking for a certain kind of Messiah.

We've heard the Christ is to remain. How can you say the Son of Man must be lifted up? Who is this Son of Man?

Now, that's interesting.

Because they are making a direct connection between Son of Man and the Messiah. Now, again, you might be very accustomed to the phraseology Son of Man as simply being a synonym for Son of God. In the sense that Jesus uses both and both are used of Jesus by others, OK, but again, if you were just, if all you had was the Old Testament,.

You've never seen.

Or read a word of the New Testament at all. How would you know who the Son of Man was? Son of Man can simply mean a human being. I mean, if you're a Son of Man, that makes you the same thing as man. So that means you're a human being.

And Ezekiel is called Son of Man. But then you also have this really, really, really important passage in Daniel chapter seven, where you have the Ancient of Days sitting upon the throne and the Son of Man is presented before him.

And the Son of Man, his followers give him Latruo. Latruo is the highest form of worship. It's the worship in the temple. Same type of worship that's given to God in the temple. So when you see those visions in the book of Revelation, where the 24 elders and all the creatures are bowing down and you have the angels.

Surrounding the throne.

And this constant picture of worship, that would be Latruo. That would be that kind of supreme worship and that's given.

To the Son of Man.

And so the crowd has made this connection. The Son of Man must be the Messiah. And yet you're saying the Son of Man must be lifted up. They understand what that means. They had seen enough crucifixions to know what lifted up means.

So since we know the Messiah is going to live forever, who is this Son of Man? Who are you making yourself out to be? Now, that tells us a lot about Jewish expectation. That tells us a lot about the traditions that the Jews had.

It's interesting. Jesus doesn't feel any need to limit his responses to pedantic explanations that would correct any of the eschatological.

Speculations of the Jews.

Instead, he says,.

For a little while longer,.

The light is among you. Walk while you have the light so that darkness will not overtake you. He who walks in the darkness does not know where he goes. While you have the light, believe in the light, so that you may become sons of light.

These things Jesus spoke.

And he went away.

And hid himself from them. From a two-chapter discussion.

Of the relationship.

With the Son of Man and Messiah. But that's not what Jesus gives us. This is the end of Jesus' public ministry. This is how John wraps it all up. And it is an exhortation not to become encased in speculative discussions, but walk in the light.

Believe in the light. While you have the light, believe in it, so you may become sons of light. And when you think about the Gospel of John as a whole, the explanation given at the end of the Gospel of John.

Is what?

These things are written that you might believe in the name of the only begotten Son of God and by believing in his name you might have life. So, here in the middle at the summing up of Jesus' public ministry, you have the exhortation from Jesus himself.

If you don't want to be stumbling in the darkness, if you want to be left without guidance,.