Six days before the Passover that will kill Him, Jesus is back in Bethany, at a table with the very man He raised from the dead. A woman breaks open a jar of perfume worth a year’s wages and pours the whole thing over His feet. The next day a crowd that has heard about Lazarus turns His entrance into Jerusalem into a coronation. And when a handful of Greek pilgrims ask simply to see Him, Jesus answers with the strangest, most important sentence He has said all week: unless a grain of wheat falls into the ground and dies, it stays just one grain, alone.
A study in John 12 · Arthur Baldwin · StandUp4Jesus.Org · 27 min read
She Hath Done It For My Burial
“Then Jesus six days before the passover came to Bethany, where Lazarus was which had been dead, whom he raised from the dead. There they made him a supper; and Martha served: but Lazarus was one of them that sat at the table with him. Then took Mary a pound of ointment of spikenard, very costly, and anointed the feet of Jesus, and wiped his feet with her hair: and the house was filled with the odour of the ointment.”
John 12:1-3
The last time this room saw Mary and this Guest together, her brother was four days dead in a tomb. Now he is reclining at the same table, and her gift is not gratitude paid off and finished — it keeps going, poured out without measuring the cost.
“Then saith one of his disciples, Judas Iscariot, Simon’s son, which should betray him, Why was not this ointment sold for three hundred pence, and given to the poor? This he said, not that he cared for the poor; but because he was a thief, and had the bag, and bare what was put therein.”
John 12:4-6
John is the one Gospel writer who tells his readers plainly, without waiting for the story to reveal it later, exactly what is wrong with the man asking the question.
“Judas was treasurer for the disciples, and from their little store he had secretly drawn for his own use, thus narrowing down their resources to a meager pittance. He was eager to put into the bag all that he could obtain.”
Ellen G. White · The Desire of Ages, p. 559
“Then said Jesus, Let her alone: against the day of my burying hath she kept this. For the poor always ye have with you; but me ye have not always.”
John 12:7-8
“Christ told Mary the meaning of her act, and in this He gave her more than He had received. ‘In that she hath poured this ointment on My body,’ He said, ‘she did it for My burial.’”
Ellen G. White · The Desire of Ages, p. 560
Mary likely does not know she is embalming Him a week early. She only knows she loves Him and that something in the air of that house says this will not last.
“Much people of the Jews therefore knew that he was there: and they came not for Jesus’ sake only, but that they might see Lazarus also, whom he had raised from the dead. But the chief priests consulted that they might put Lazarus also to death; Because that by reason of him many of the Jews went away, and believed on Jesus.”
John 12:9-11
Only John records this detail, and it is a strange one to invent: the religious authorities discussing a second execution, this time of a man whose only crime is still being visibly, walking-around alive.
Behold, Thy King Cometh
“On the next day much people that were come to the feast, when they heard that Jesus was coming to Jerusalem, Took branches of palm trees, and went forth to meet him, and cried, Hosanna: Blessed is the King of Israel that cometh in the name of the Lord. And Jesus, when he had found a young ass, sat thereon; as it is written, Fear not, daughter of Sion: behold, thy King cometh, sitting on an ass’s colt.”
John 12:12-15
This is the same procession this site’s own Matthew and Mark studies have already walked through in full, so it is not repeated here. What John adds is a detail neither of them gives — the actual reason the crowd was so large that particular day.
“The people therefore that was with him when he called Lazarus out of his grave, and raised him from the dead, bare record. For this cause the people also met him, for that they heard that he had done this miracle. The Pharisees therefore said among themselves, Perceive ye how ye prevail nothing? behold, the world is gone after him.”
John 12:17-19
The synoptic Gospels describe the crowd. Only John tells us where the crowd came from — eyewitnesses to a resurrection, still telling everyone they met.
Except A Corn Of Wheat Fall Into The Ground And Die
“And there were certain Greeks among them that came up to worship at the feast: The same came therefore to Philip, which was of Bethsaida of Galilee, and desired him, saying, Sir, we would see Jesus. Philip cometh and telleth Andrew: and again Andrew and Philip tell Jesus. And Jesus answered them, saying, The hour is come, that the Son of man should be glorified.”
John 12:20-23
“When Christ heard the eager request, ‘We would see Jesus,’ echoing the hungering cry of the world, His countenance lighted up, and He said, ‘The hour is come, that the Son of man should be glorified.’ … So these Greeks, representing the nations, tribes, and peoples of the world, came to see Jesus.”
Ellen G. White · The Desire of Ages, p. 621
A request from a handful of foreign pilgrims, easy to miss in the noise of a festival week, is the very thing that tells Jesus His hour has finally arrived. Then, out of nowhere, He answers them with a sentence about farming.
“Verily, verily, I say unto you, Except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone: but if it die, it bringeth forth much fruit.”
John 12:24
“Only by yielding up His life could He impart life to humanity. Only by falling into the ground to die could He become the seed of that vast harvest,—the great multitude that out of every nation, and kindred, and tongue, and people, are redeemed to God.”
Ellen G. White · The Desire of Ages, p. 623
He is describing His own death, days before it happens, in the plainest image a farming culture could understand. A single seed kept safe stays a single seed forever; only buried and lost does it multiply.
“He that loveth his life shall lose it; and he that hateth his life in this world shall keep it unto life eternal. If any man serve me, let him follow me; and where I am, there shall also my servant be: if any man serve me, him will my Father honour.”
John 12:25-26
The lesson does not stay confined to Jesus. He draws every one of His followers into the same shape of life — the same willingness to be spent rather than hoarded.
“Now is my soul troubled; and what shall I say? Father, save me from this hour: but for this cause came I unto this hour. Father, glorify thy name. Then came there a voice from heaven, saying, I have both glorified it, and will glorify it again.”
John 12:27-28
“At last the silence was broken by His mournful voice, ‘Now is My soul troubled; and what shall I say? Father, save Me from this hour?’ In anticipation Christ was already drinking the cup of bitterness. His humanity shrank from the hour of abandonment, when to all appearance He would be deserted even by God. … Only through the death of Christ could Satan’s kingdom be overthrown. Only thus could man be redeemed, and God be glorified.”
Ellen G. White · The Desire of Ages, p. 624
This is the third and last time in this Gospel the Father’s own audible voice is heard, and it comes at the exact moment Christ’s human nature is most visibly straining under what is coming. Deity does not spare Him the dread; it answers it.
“Now is the judgment of this world: now shall the prince of this world be cast out. And I, if I be lifted up from the earth, will draw all men unto me. This he said, signifying what death he should die.”
John 12:31-33
“The prince of this world is cast out. The accusations which Satan has brought against God are refuted. The reproach which he has cast upon heaven is forever removed. Angels as well as men are drawn to the Redeemer.”
Ellen G. White · The Desire of Ages, p. 626
A cross designed by His enemies as the worst humiliation the empire could invent becomes, in His own description of it, the single event that draws the whole universe back toward Him.
The Word That I Have Spoken, The Same Shall Judge Him
“But though he had done so many miracles before them, yet they believed not on him: That the saying of Esaias the prophet might be fulfilled … He hath blinded their eyes, and hardened their heart; that they should not see with their eyes, nor understand with their heart, and be converted, and I should heal them.”
John 12:37-40
John steps back here from narrating events to explaining them — the only place in his Gospel where he pauses this long to reflect, as their own historian, on why his own nation would not believe a man who had just raised the dead in front of witnesses.
“Nevertheless among the chief rulers also many believed on him; but because of the Pharisees they did not confess him, lest they should be put out of the synagogue: For they loved the praise of men more than the praise of God.”
John 12:42-43
“They loved the praise of men rather than the approval of God. To save themselves from reproach and shame, they denied Christ, and rejected the offer of eternal life.”
Ellen G. White · The Desire of Ages, p. 626
Belief was never the real obstacle for these men. Cost was. They believed and stayed silent anyway, which John counts as its own kind of unbelief.
“Jesus cried and said, He that believeth on me, believeth not on me, but on him that sent me. And he that seeth me seeth him that sent me. I am come a light into the world, that whosoever believeth on me should not abide in darkness.”
John 12:44-46
“And if any man hear my words, and believe not, I judge him not: for I came not to judge the world, but to save the world. He that rejecteth me, and receiveth not my words, hath one that judgeth him: the word that I have spoken, the same shall judge him in the last day.”
John 12:47-48
These are the last words Jesus speaks in public in this Gospel. Everything from here forward — the upper room, the garden, the cross — happens behind closed doors, among the small circle of people who did come when He called.
