Discuss: Here are some examples of things which most people in our society would say are undeniable, yet some people, even a substantial minority, do not believe.
The earth is round, not flat.
The sun is at the centre of the ‘solar’ system, and the earth revolves around it.
Vaccination is not dangerous for children and should be mandatory.
Evolution from animals over millions of years is the way that human beings came about.
Smoking is dangerous for a person’s health.
People should be able to marry a person of the same sex.
A man can become a woman, and a woman a man.
You may have other examples of things that most people believe are undeniable. On what basis do those in the minority hold their position against the majority?
In this study, we are thinking about the basis of a person’s commitment to Jesus.
1. According to John, had Jesus given adequate evidence for the people to believe his claims? (vv. 37-38)
2. What was that evidence?
3. Did most people accept his claims? Why or why not? (vv. 38-40)
John renders two Old Testament passages, Isaiah 53:1 and 6:10, for his readers. Read those chapters from the Old Testament and answer the following questions from John 12:37-41:
4. What is the reason John gives for the response of the majority to Jesus’ signs? (vv. 38-41)
5. How does Isaiah 53:1, in context, illuminate what the “report” and “the arm of the Lord might be”, if at all?
6. What might have been the ‘glory’ which Isaiah saw ? (v. 41, cf. Isaiah 6, 53, 7:39, 12:16, 23)
7. What explains the response of “many of the rulers” to Jesus? (v. 42-43) Where have we seen this previously in John’s Gospel?
8. What do we need to learn from “many of the rulers” response to Jesus? How do you need to apply that lesson in your life?
9. John gives us a record of a last piece of public teaching given by Jesus (vv. 44-50). What do you notice about John's description of the way Jesus delivers this teaching? (v. 44)
10. Do you think there is anything new in this teaching, when compared to what we have seen in John 1-12? Why or why not?
11. Does Jesus in any way bring judgement in his first coming? Why or why not? (vv. 47-49, cf. John 3:17-19, 8:15, 26, 9:39)
12. What is the basis of your commitment to Jesus?
Seeing is believing, we are told. If we could only see for ourselves, we would have faith and believe. If only I had seen Jesus and his miracles, if only I had been one of those at the wedding of Cana, or the feeding of the 5000, I would believe for sure, then. I would have such stronger faith than I have now. I wouldn’t have the doubts that I have now. My faith would be so much stronger if I could see miracles. Just a few signs would be great. I wouldn’t have to see Jesus. I just want to see some signs.
But now that we think of it, I’m sure my faith would be stronger if I could have seen Jesus. There was no preacher like Jesus. No one was clearer, no one had greater insight, or greater ability to make himself known. No one knew God better. If only I had seen Jesus. Then faith would be so much easier for me.
But that is not the way it worked. It is not what happened when the real Jesus, the Jesus of history, actually came and taught real people in a real place.
In these 14 verses, John 12:37-50, John is concluding his so called ‘book of signs’, a record of seven signs and several discourses over John chapters 1 to 12. By means of these signs and sayings, Jesus reveals his glory, both his identity and his mission. And as John draws to a close his account of the public signs and words of Jesus’ ministry, John makes an evaluation. He assesses whether, as a whole, the signs and discourses of Jesus have succeeded in enabling the Jews to believe.
Now, John has already given us his evaluation of the Jewish people as a whole, and the religious leaders in particular, in his very first chapter. John chapter 1 verse 11:
He [Jesus] came to his own country, and even his own people did not receive him.
Like most historians, John writes after the whole event that he wants to record is complete. When John first puts pen to paper, Jesus’ work on earth—at least in terms of what he personally and physically was to do—is done. His mission is completed. John is not writing a diary or a journal of the events as they unfold. He is writing a history, a retrospective with the benefit of hindsight. John knows the ending at the beginning of his writing. That's why John's prologue contains the answer to ‘Who is Jesus?’ and ‘What Did Jesus Come to Do?’, at least in germ. There are no surprises for John as he writes this story, and really there aren’t that many surprises for us as readers, either.
John doesn’t really care if he spoils his ending along the way. In fact, John has been dropping spoilers of the ending of his Gospel all the way through his first twelve chapters. There are things more important for John than having interesting twists and turns in his story, or surprising plot developments to impress the literary critic. John in his Gospel is interested in emphasizing who Jesus is and what he came to do. He wants us to respond to Jesus with faith, and is not really interested in impressing and entertaining us with his scriptwriting abilities.
As John records both Jesus' words and works, along the way John adds to Jesus’ reported speech his own narrative commentary. In fact, sometimes it is not that easy to tell the difference between John’s voice as narrator and Jesus’ voice as subject (e.g. John 3:16-21, 3:31-36). And in those narrations, John comments with the benefit of hindsight about the meaning of Jesus' sayings and signs.
Yet John takes his ‘I-don’t-care-about-spoiling-the-ending’ approach from Jesus himself. Jesus himself kept spoiling the ending of his own ministry by dropping hints along the way (John 2:19-22, 3:14-15, 6:51-58, 7:33-34, 10:11 15, 17-18, 12:7-8, 32, 35). As Jesus taught about himself and his mission for his three years of Palestinian ministry, Jesus spoke with his disciples about the task the Father had given him to do, as much as they could bear.
The disciples didn't understand many of Jesus’ words at the time he said them. They only made sense to them after Jesus rose from the dead. But this fact does not disprove the fact that Jesus gave real clues and 'spoilers' along the way (e.g. John 2:22, 7:39).
The job Jesus came to do was inconceivable to human thinking. This remains the case even though the Old Testament, John the Baptist, and Jesus himself testified to it (e.g. John 3:4, 9-12). It was only after Jesus achieved his ‘glorification’—after it could be looked back on as achieved and accomplished and finished—that it made sense to Jesus’ disciples. Mind you, the coming of the Spirit also helped. But all this means that our understanding of Jesus’ words and works has the benefit of hindsight that the apostles had gained, and were enabled to understand by the Holy Spirit.
And John has just related that God sent a supernatural voice from heaven, which the hearers could not understand. They could neither understand what it was, if it was a voice, who spoke it, or what it said (John 12:27-30). Even in chapter 12, no one understands God's words properly.
But at the time, with Jesus with them, the majority of Jesus’ hearers, the Jews for whom he came, did not believe in him, receive him, or even understand him. John’s executive summary and conclusion of the Jewish response to Jesus’ signs and words is in keeping with what he said in chapter 1 verse 11. So we read in chapter 12 verses 37 to 38:
12:37Now after he had done so many signs in their sight, they did not believe in him, 12:38so that the word of Isaiah the prophet would be fulfilled […]
John has given an account of seven signs in chapters 2 to 11. If we were to count the bringing of the boat back to safety as a separate sign (John 6:21), it would be eight. And John has reported that many other signs have occurred (John 2:23, 3:2, 6:2, 26, 7:31, 9:16, 11:47). And if we were to include Jesus’ miraculous knowledge or supernatural insight, such as he demonstrated to Nathaniel (John 1:48-50), and the Samaritan woman (John 4:16-19, 29, 39), the count would continue to rise. John is happy to rest the evidence for the claims of his Gospel on the testimony of these things, even though there were many other things Jesus did that would tell the same story.
But the results of Jesus’ ministry in terms of people actually believing in Jesus were disappointing. If Jesus’ intention was to achieve universal or even majority believers amongst his own people, the Jews, his three year ministry was a failure. Verse 37 says, “they did not believe in him”. So here is the worker of signs par excellence, Jesus Christ, God himself, come to his own, and the majority, perhaps even the overwhelming majority, did not believe in him.
Now, Jesus himself did not accept every sort of believing response that humans offered him. He did not accept the belief of Nicodemus (John 2:23-25, 3:12), nor that of the Jews of Jerusalem after he healed the crippled man (5:38, 44, 46-7), nor the belief of those in the crowd who chased him to Capernaum after the feeding miracle (John 6:36). Some of his followers, the disciples, fell into that category also (John 6:64), but more frequently he criticizes the Jews to whom he speaks for not believing in him (John 8:45-6, 10:25-26, 38).
At the level of winning the hearts and minds of the majority of the Jewish population during his three-year ministry in Palestine, Jesus’ ministry was unsuccessful. The reason that John gives for the overwhelming rejection of him by his own country and people is that this was to fulfill the Old Testament Scripture. John quotes two passages from Isaiah, chapter 53:1 and chapter 6:10. Both of these passages teach that the hearers of God’s words do not believe the words that they hear from the God appointed human messenger.
The first one, Isaiah 53:1, for John accents the failure of the hearers to believe. John 12:38:
12:38so that the word of Isaiah the prophet would be fulfilled, which said, “Lord who believed our report? And to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed?”
John’s favourite way of describing the positive human response to Jesus in his Gospel is to use the verb ‘to believe’. John uses this verb in his Gospel more than Paul does in all his 13 letters. John never uses the noun, ‘belief’ or ‘faith’. And so Isaiah 53:1 is fitting for John to quote, because it too uses the verb: “Lord who believed our report?” The report in Isaiah 53 is probably the gospel facts predicted in the whole chapter of Isaiah 53.
The second quote, Isaiah 6:10, John uses to explain the first, Isaiah 53:1. Why is it that nobody believes the message of Isaiah 53, which John the Baptist and Jesus himself had been speaking about? Why does no one respond properly to the signs? Why is no one looking for the suffering righteous servant of Isaiah 53? Verses 39 and 40 provides the explanation:
12:39For this reason, they couldn’t believe, because Isaiah also said, 12:40“He has blinded their eyes and hardened their hearts, so that they do not see with their eyes nor understand with their hearts, and be converted, and I will heal them”.
In verse 39, John says that Isaiah 6:10 explains why so few have believed “the report”, which is probably equivalent to the signs and sayings of Christ, and which includes the death and resurrection of the suffering servant. Generally speaking, the Jewish people have not seen that Jesus is the Messiah from the signs that he has done. They have rejected the testimony of the signs.
Moreover, neither has anyone responded properly to Jesus when he teaches that he must suffer just like the suffering servant of Isaiah 53 suffers. Even the disciples could not believe that Jesus the Messiah had to suffer, die, and rise again. They only understood it after Jesus rose again. No one has believed Christ’s own report about his coming glorification. In that sense, no one then was able to believe, not even those who did believe he was the Christ. But many could not even believe that Jesus was the Christ. At least the disciples were able to believe that much.
But the prevailing hard-heartedness and failure to trust is because “he” has blinded their eyes and hardened their hearts (v. 40, loosely translating Isaiah 6:10).
Who is the “he” who hardens the hearts and blinds the eyes?
Is it Jesus himself? I don't think so, at least in the first instance. Jesus is doing the teaching. It is unlikely a teacher as honest as Jesus, would want to frustrate or impede the communication process. Jesus frequently clarifies what he says so that people can indeed understand him. He says in frustration and disappointment to the Jews, “Why don’t you understand my words?” (John 8:43). So Jesus is not in the first instance the “he” who blinds the eyes.
Is it the devil? In 2 Corinthians 4:4, the devil, “the god of this age”, is said to blind the minds of unbelievers. And that is certainly true, as a secondary cause for unbelief. But context is against this proposal, for the devil is the subject of neither this passage of John nor of Isaiah 6, which John cites.
All this makes it much more likely that it was God the Father who hardened the hearts of Jesus' hearers. In Isaiah 6, it is God who speaks, God whose word through Isaiah harden the hearts of the recipients. So since Jesus speaks the word of his Father (and only his word), and does his will (and only the Father's will), then it is safe to infer that it is God who blinds the eyes and hardens the hearts of the Jewish hearers of Jesus. God does this in his sovereignty, where nothing that occurs in his world is contrary to his secret will, his will of decree.
I'll say that again: God has hardened the hearts of the hearers so that they do not properly understand, or even understand at all. They do not believe the truth that they hear, because that is the way God wants it to be.
The question, then, is, “Why?” Why does God harden hearts and blind eyes when he, at another level, truly wants people to believe in his Son?
And the first part of my answer to that question is this: in the context of John’s Gospel, the fact that the Jews as a whole don’t believe that Jesus is the Messiah is the means by which Jesus achieved his goal. That is, it was key to Jesus’ mission that the Jews as a whole would not believe in him. Otherwise, if they believed in him, why would the rulers seek to put him to death on the cross? But it was Jesus’ mission to be put to death, as the Isaiah 53 suffering servant, and then rise again.
So of course God would so arrange things such that the Jewish leadership who Jesus spoke to would not believe that Jesus was the Christ. God might have done this at least temporarily, so that the Jews put Jesus to death as predicted and prophesied in Isaiah 53 and elsewhere. Thereafter God might then soften their hearts, so that they do believe that Jesus is the Christ.
In fact, that is the pattern we see in the Acts of the Apostles, when the church in Jerusalem grows as a result of the conversion of first the diaspora Jewish Pentecostal pilgrims, and then as many of the priests come to believe that Jesus was in fact the Christ (Acts 2:41-47, 5:14, 6:1, 7). In that case, after Jesus ascended to heaven, Jewish hearts—including that of the Jewish leadership—are softened by God so that they can believe the gospel, and therefore the hardening and blindness of which John speaks is temporary and for a particular purpose.
Likewise, the disciples' failure to understand the nature of Jesus' glorification prior to its achievement—his suffering, death, and resurrection—shows that salvation was no human plan nor achievement: the divine plan of salvation was God's and God's alone, achieved by God the Father and God the only-begotten Son, in the power of God the Holy Spirit.
Moreover, John regards Isaiah as having seen the glory of Christ. Remember that Isaiah writes 600 years before the coming of Christ. Yet, John says, in verse 41:
Isaiah said these things because he saw his glory, and spoke about him.
What a strange thing to say, from a human perspective! John is saying that Isaiah saw Jesus’ glory, and wrote Isaiah 53:1 and 6:10 because he saw Jesus’ glory. Yet these two passages from Isaiah are all about, according to John, how people didn't believe in Jesus at all.
Humanly speaking, glory is seen when people accept claims and entrust themselves to the person to be glorified. So how is it that God the Father sends his Son to his own country so that his own people might believe in him, and his own people the Jews don’t believe in him, and yet John can say that when Isaiah saw this, he saw Jesus' glory? It is hardly glorifying for Jesus to be disbelieved!
And the answer to this problem is that John regards Jesus’ suffering, death, and subsequent resurrection as his glorification. This was the topic of Isaiah 53. The suffering is caused in an important way by the unbelief of the Jews.
So Isaiah 53, because it speaks of the suffering, death, burial, and resurrection of the Christ, and how this servant bears the sin of many, and Isaiah 6 and 53 together, because they both speak of the Jews' failure to believe God's message and messenger, then speak of Jesus' glorification. For the failure to believe God’s message and messenger leads to and brings about as a consequence, Jesus' death and resurrection.
The problem with a generalisation is that it is a lie if it is universalised. I could say that “Every generalisation is a lie”, but then that generalisation would be a lie, too, and therefore not every generalisation is a lie.
The fact is that human communication uses generalisations, and the Bible is no different. In verse 37, John had summarised and concluded by saying, “Now after he had done so many signs in their sight, they did not believe in him”, which is a generalisation. Then in verse 42, John qualifies his general statement, by then saying, in tension with verse 37, “But still even many of the rulers believed in him […]”.
Now, this qualifying statement serves a few purposes. First, it qualifies the generalisation in verse 37 by making it clear that it was not an absolute statement. Second, it expresses the true situation, that indeed some of the rulers were secret believers. This we have already seen with Nicodemus (John 3:1, 2, 10, 7:50-52), and later we will see it with Joseph of Arimathea. Third, it counters an argument that the rulers themselves have used, that “None of the leaders or the Pharisees has believed in [Jesus], have they?” (John 7:48). The answer to that question is, “yes they have” and was apparent the moment the rulers asked it, as Nicodemus stood there among them and countered their statements (John 7:50-52). Fourth, it shows that it was not only ignorant unlettered Galilean fishermen that accepted Jesus’ claims, but that some of the elites who knew the law and had undergone Rabbinic training also found Jesus’ works and words irrefutable evidence of his divine origin. And fifth, the statement serves the apologetic purpose of giving the reader of John’s Gospel the comfort and assurance of knowing intelligent Jewish leaders believed in Jesus.
The reason for these rulers’ failure to confess that they actually believed in Jesus was, “so that they would not be excluded from the synagogue” (v. 42). This motive of fear, stemming from seeking to avoid the shame and humiliation of excommunication and being shunned, has already been reported by John. In 9:22, the parents of the man born blind refuse to answer the court's question, but refer them back to their son himself, out of fear of being put out of the synagogue.
John also uncovers and reveals their motives further in verse 43, where he states that “they loved glory from people more than the glory of God.”
The first phrase, “glory from people”, refers to people praising those with whom they agree, or feign agreement. That is, people are the source of this sort of glory (cf. John 5:44). It is glory from people. The flip side is the ‘fear of man’.
The second phrase, the “glory of God”, probably is a phrase of broad meaning, and refers to (1) the glory that God receives in the present time when people tell the truth by confessing Christ (cf. John 9:24, 7:18), (2) the glory that confessing people will receive from God at the end of time, and which also motivates their confession in the present time (cf. John 8:54). Perhaps in a more distant way it alludes to (3) the glorification of Christ in his lifting up in death and resurrection, and the preparedness of believers by confessing him to suffer with the suffering servant. Since the suffering of the Messiah is paradoxically his glory, so too the believers' suffering is also transformed into an entering into and sharing of Christ's glory (John 7:39, 12:16).
But John wants to leave the last word in this account of his signs and saying to Jesus. We don’t know when or where exactly Jesus said these words. John doesn’t tell us. Perhaps it was a speech Jesus gave between his hearing the voice in Jerusalem, and the last supper in the upper room. Perhaps it was John’s summary of the sorts of speeches Jesus would give. Jesus certainly gave his teachings and sermons on more than one occasion, and even John bears witness to that.
Let’s listen to this final example that John gives us of Jesus' public teaching in full, verses 44 to 50:
12:44Now Jesus cried out and said, “The one who believes in me does not believe in me, but in he who sent me, 12:45and the one who sees me sees he who sent me. 12:46I have come as light into the world, so that everyone who believes in me should not remain in the darkness.
12:47“And if anyone hears my words and does not keep them, I do not judge him. For I did not come to judge the world but to save the world. 12:48The one who sets me aside and doesn’t receive my words has a judge: the word which I have spoken will judge that person on the last day. 12:49For I have not spoken from myself, but the one who sent me, the Father himself has given me a command, which is what I say and speak. 12:50And I know that his command is eternal life. So what I speak, I likewise speak just as the Father has spoken to me.”
Jesus has cried out before in his public teaching (John 7:28, 37), but John’s description of Jesus’ mode of public proclamation here shows his desperation as he approaches his glorification and as his time draws near. This is Jesus final public sermon, and is passionately delivered.
Jesus’ statements here echo things that Jesus has said previously in John 1-12, and to that extent do not teach anything new, though they also prefigure things that Jesus will say later in John’s Gospel. So in verse 44, the fact that believers in Jesus actually are believing in the Father who sent him, was taught in John 5:24, when Jesus says, “the one hears my word and believes in the one who sent me”. In a similar way, verse 45, “the one who sees me sees he who sent me”, anticipates John 14:9, “the one who has seen me has seen the Father”. Likewise, in verse 46, Jesus is the light so that believers don’t walk in darkness, just as both Jesus himself (John 8:12, 9:5, 12:35-36) and John the Gospel writer (John 1:4-8, 3:19-21) have said previously. Again, verses 49 and 50 show yet again that Jesus Christ regards himself as speaking from the Father who sent him (cf. John 7:16).
But Jesus here, as his parting salvo of public teaching, warns of the judgement to come as well as showing that a person’s decision now about him will effect the outcome of that judgement (vv. 47-50). Jesus’ final public word is about the judgement. In verse 47, Jesus indicates that he did not come to judge the world but save the world, as he had previously said (John 3:17, 8:15). Jesus’ mission in coming into the world was a mercy mission, a mission of grace upon grace, to bring eternal life. It was not a mission of condemnation and judgement which brought the retribution and punishment of God's end-time wrath to sinful people. That lies in the future, even for us.
Yet, just as verse 48 indicates, while Jesus came to save not judge (in the sense of final eternal condemnation), he and his words did, do, and will bring to humans, the judgement and even the condemnation of God in another sense. “I have come into this world for judgement” (John 9:39, cf. 8:26) is true in a sense of Jesus’ first coming, just as it will be of his second. The one who fails to believe in Jesus is already judged (John 3:18), because men loved darkness rather than light for their works are evil (John 3:19).
Response to Jesus and his claims is the litmus test for a person enjoying eternal life, and thus Jesus’ first coming brings judgement by dividing people who walk in either the light or darkness (John 5:24-30). The salvation from judgement is future, but is received now. The place of the judgement of the world and the evil one, the devil, is the cross (John 12:31-33).
So we would do well to believe in Jesus Christ. We too need to respond properly to him, by believing in him, which John variously describes as coming to him, looking at him lifted up, remaining in him, and eating his flesh and drinking his blood. All of this we must do to enjoy eternal life
My translation
12:37Now after he had done so many signs in their sight, they did not believe in him, 12:38so that the word of Isaiah the prophet would be fulfilled, which said, “Lord who believed our report? And to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed?” [Isaiah 53:1] 12:39For this reason, they couldn’t believe, because Isaiah also said, 12:40“He has blinded their eyes and hardened their hearts, so that they do not see with their eyes nor understand with their hearts, and be converted, and I will heal them” [Isaiah 6:10]. 12:41Isaiah said these things because he saw his glory, and spoke about him. 12:42But still even many of the rulers believed in him, but they would not confess him because of the Pharisees, so that they would not be excluded from the synagogue. 12:43For they loved human glory more than God’s glory.
12:44Now Jesus cried out and said, “The one who believes in me does not believe in me, but in he who sent me, 12:45and the one who sees me sees he who sent me. 12:46I have come as light into the world, so that everyone who believes in me should not remain in the darkness. 12:47And if anyone hears my words and does not keep them, I do not judge him. For I did not come to judge the world but to save the world.
12:48“The one who sets me aside and doesn’t receive my words has a judge: the word which I have spoken will judge that person on the last day. 12:49For I have not spoken from myself, but the one who sent me, the Father himself has given me a command, which is what I say and speak. 12:50And I know that his command is eternal life. So what I speak, I likewise speak just as the Father has spoken to me.”
In verse 38, John’s citation is identical to Isaiah 53:1 in the LXX. The citation has the verb ἐπίστευσεν, ‘believed’. This verb, to believe, is the primary one John uses to describe the proper human response to Jesus, and it gives accent and emphasis to the human action of believing. John doesn’t use the noun πίστις ‘belief’, or ‘faith’, unlike Paul, the other Gospel writers, or Jesus himself in those other Gospels, but only the verb, ‘believe’ (πιστεύω). In fact, John’s Gospel uses the verb πιστεύω more than any other New Testament book or author (98 instances in John’s Gospel out of 239 in the whole New Testament, the next most frequent use of the verb being 54 across the 13 Pauline letters). Yet John has not one instance of the noun πίστις, compared to 142 instances in Paul (for these statistics, see John Painter, ‘Eschatological Faith in the Gospel of John’, in R Banks (ed), Reconciliation and Hope: New Testament Essays on Atonement and Eschatology (fs. LL Morris: Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1974), 37-38; cf. http://catholic-resources.org/John/Themes-Believe.htm). So this fact makes Isaiah 53:1 and its use of the verb πιστεύω particularly appropriate for John.
It is also possible that the quote highlights the two-fold aspect of Jesus’ ministry as recorded by John: his ‘words’ or ‘teachings’ (“our report”); and his ‘works’ or ‘signs’ (“the arm of the Lord”).
The wider context of Isaiah 53:1 also makes it a particularly pregnant and effective quote for John to select—for the ‘report’ in that context will be of the suffering of the righteous servant, and his seeing light and being justified, and it is this that is not believed (cf. https://sites.google.com/site/mattolliffe/articles/who-justifies-who-isaiah-5310-12).
The Greek of verse 39 reads διὰ τοῦτο οὐκ ἠδύναντο πιστεύειν, ὅτι πάλιν εἶπεν Ἠσαΐας || Lit, ‘because of this, they were not able to believe, because again Isaiah said’. It is likely that διὰ τοῦτο is prospective rather than retrospective, or if we prefer not to dichotomize the choice between prospective and retrospective, διὰ τοῦτο links Isaiah 53:1 to Isaiah 6:10 by asserting that the latter providing the basis or reason for the former. Isaiah 53:1 is explained by the precedent of Isaiah 6:10. This is likewise suggested by the causal ὅτι (ὅτι here cannot be anything but causal, given its position in the sentence).
In verse 40, John teaches that the hearers of Jesus were unable to believe because of what Isaiah 6:10 teaches. Carson is probably right to say that Isaiah 6:10 is not said to be directly fulfilled by Jesus’ ministry (Carson 1991: 449). Rather, in an analogous way to the situation in Isaiah 6, which prefigured and provided a pattern for Jesus’ ministry, God has blinded and hardened the hearts of the hearers so that they didn’t understand. John’s own rendering of Isaiah 6:10 has a heightened predestinarianism when we compare it to that of the LXX.
Isaiah 6:10 MT
הַשְׁמֵן לֵב-הָעָם הַזֶּה
וְאָזְנָיו הַכְבֵּד
:וְעֵינָיו הָשַׁע
פֶּן-יִרְאֶה בְעֵינָיו
וּבְאָזְנָיו יִשְׁמָע
וּלְבָבוֹ יָבִין
וָשָׁב
וְרָפָא לוֹ
Isaiah 6:10 RV
Make the heart of this people fat,
and make their ears heavy,
and shut their eyes,
lest they see with their eyes,
and hear with their ears,
and understand with their heart,
and turn again,
and be healed.
As can be seen, John’s rendering of Isaiah 6:10 here is quite a loose paraphrase. In John 12:40, John first of all re-orders the first three clauses in Isaiah 6:10.
Isaiah 6:10a-c (Brenton)
10a For the heart of this people has become gross,
10b and their ears are dull of hearing,
10c and their eyes have they closed;
John 12:40a-b
40a He has blinded their eyes
40b and hardened their hearts
John omits the idea of Isaiah 6:10b, that is, the idea of hearing, and inverts the order of v. 10a and 10c. That is, the third clause in Isaiah 6:10 LXX becomes the first clause in John's loose paraphrase in John 12:40, and John sees it as adequate to convey the ideas of Isaiah 6:10 by only communicating the ‘seeing’, and ‘understanding’ language, but he excludes the idea of ‘hearing’ from his paraphrase.
In this first clause, John 12:40a, ‘he has blinded their eyes’ (τετύφλωκεν αὐτῶν τοὺς ὀφθαλμοὺς), the subject of the sentence is supplied by the third masculine singular perfect tense form of τυφλόω, ‘I make blind’.
The referent of the inbuilt ‘he’ of the verb is probably ‘God’, that is, the Father.
It is less likely that ‘Jesus’ is to be considered the referent of the inferred pronominal subject, at least in the first instance. This is because Jesus is the one actually doing the teaching. The very nature of the activity suggests that Jesus wants to be understood. Jesus is a truly human teacher in John’s account. He shows in various ways that he is genuinely seeking to say clear words which could and should be understood by the hearers. So Jesus is genuinely surprised and disappointed when his words are misunderstood (e.g. John 3:10, 8:43). He clarifies what he says when his hearers don’t understand to better enable their understanding (e.g. John 8:27, 10:6). All this suggests that it is the Father, not the Son, who should be taken as the referent of the implicit subject.
Theologically and exegetically, it is absolutely correct to make the link that Jesus is God, and that Jesus has both a human and divine nature. It therefore is of course true that Jesus as God the only begotten Son always has a unity of will and purpose with that of his Father. We must also affirm the so-called ‘Calvinist extra’ in Christology, which reminds us that the second person of the Trinity continued to exercise all his divine functions in upholding the world while that same divine incarnate person taught flesh and blood people in Palestine as a flesh and blood person. Nevertheless, we are best to see that John is wanting us to take his ‘he’ as a divine he, and thus in the context of the incarnate Christ doing the teaching, ‘the Father’.
It is highly unlikely that it is the devil who is the one who blinds the eyes in this passage. That is not the meaning in the original text, Isaiah 6, for it is God who commissions Isaiah to harden hearts through his preaching.
It is true that there is a change in the person of the verb between the beginning and ending of John 12:40, for on my understanding, at the beginning of the verse God is the subject of the third person singular verbs τετύφλωκεν and ἐπώρωσεν, and of the first person singular verb, ἰάσομαι, at the end of the verse. But that is not so unusual nor unexpected when there are two voices—the prophet’s and God’s—and one is speaking for the other as well as also about the other.
When John 12:40a is compared to the parallel clause in Isaiah 6:10c LXX, ‘and they have closed their eyes’ (καὶ τοὺς ὀφθαλμοὺς αὐτῶν ἐκάμμυσαν), we note that the LXX translators have used the 3rd person plural tense form of the verb καμμύω, ‘I close’. The referent of the implicit subject, ‘they’, is the possessors of the eyes. The possessors of the eyes are those who close them. That is, we notice that John 12:40a has actually heightened the role of God in blinding their eyes, by using the singular number of the verb. He, God, has blinded their eyes, rather than that they, those whose eyes they are, closed their own eyes. John thus heightens the predestinarian strain already present in Isaiah 6:9-10 LXX.
In verse 41, John makes a comment about Isaiah's writing. “Isaiah said these things because he saw his glory and spoke concerning him” || ταῦτα εἶπεν Ἠσαΐας ὅτι εἶδεν τὴν δόξαν αὐτοῦ, καὶ ἐλάλησεν περὶ αὐτοῦ.
What is the antecedent to the plural neuter demonstrative ταῦτα? Given it is plural, and John has cited two passages, it seems reasonable to assume that both Isaiah 53:1 and 6:10 are referred to be it. Thus, both passages from Isaiah speak about Christ, and Isaiah spoke them because Isaiah saw the Christ's glory.
What is the antecedent to the masculine pronoun, αὐτοῦ? Since the antecedent to the masculine pronoun in verses 37 and 42 is ‘Jesus’, it is most likely that the pronoun in verse 41 also refers to Jesus. Thus, it is Jesus’ glory, rather than that of the Father‘, that is referred to.
How best should the particle ὅτι be translated? Is it recitative, ‘that’, or causal, ‘because’? If ὅτι is recitative, this would suggest that the ταῦτα is prospective and forward referring, and pointing to the two statements that follow, εἶδεν τὴν δόξαν αὐτοῦ, καὶ ἐλάλησεν περὶ αὐτοῦ, rather than, as I have taken it above, referring to the antecedent being the two passages Isaiah has rendered. And the demonstrative is not normally prospective. Moreover, given that John has rendered two passages from Isaiah, (and it is a very unusual thing for him to quote the Old Testament), this suggests that rather than telling us ‘what’ Isaiah said, John is telling us ‘why’ Isaiah said them. This makes the causal meaning more likely.
The question, then is, did Isaiah foresee the glory of Christ in the sense of predicting him, or see the glory of Christ as a Christophany in Isaiah's vision recorded for us in Isaiah 6? While the verb form is the aorist of ὁράω, εἶδεν, and there are other words that convey foresight or prescience, context would suggest that ‘foreseeing’ is implied.
Certainly, the first option, that Isaiah ‘foresaw’ his glory, allows for both the ‘prediction’ of Isaiah 53 to inform John’s Gospel account, and also John’s ‘typological’ use of the ‘pattern’ of Isaiah 6:10 to explain the unbelief. Thus, if Isaiah 53:1 is a prediction concerning the belief in the Christ’s ‘report’ (his words) and ‘the arm of the Lord’ (his works of power or signs), then we would turn to the whole passage of Isaiah 53 to determine the report and the arm of the Lord, but Isaiah 6:10 simply provides the reason for why people don’t believe the report in chapter 53.
It is then more likely that Isaiah 53:1 is cited as the beginning of a passage, the whole of which is meant to be evoked by John's citation of its introductory sentences. This likewise fits with the ‘glorification’ of the Son being his suffering, death, and resurrection—the very topics of Isaiah 53!