John 12:22

12:20-26 In attendance upon holy ordinances, particularly the gospel passover, the great desire of our souls should be to see Jesus; to see him as ours, to keep up communion with him, and derive grace from him. The calling of the Gentiles magnified the Redeemer. A corn of wheat yields no increase unless it is cast into the ground. Thus Christ might have possessed his heavenly glory alone, without becoming man. Or, after he had taken man's nature, he might have entered heaven alone, by his own perfect righteousness, without suffering or death; but then no sinner of the human race could have been saved. The salvation of souls hitherto, and henceforward to the end of time, is owing to the dying of this Corn of wheat. Let us search whether Christ be in us the hope of glory; let us beg him to make us indifferent to the trifling concerns of this life, that we may serve the Lord Jesus with a willing mind, and follow his holy example.

22. Philip … telleth Andrew—As follow townsmen of Bethsaida (Joh 1:44), these two seem to have drawn to each other. Andrew and Philip tell Jesus—The minuteness of these details, while they add to the graphic force of the narrative, serves to prepare us for something important to come out of this introduction.

The news of their coming, and their errand, is brought to Christ by Philip and Andrew, who possibly might stumble at it, because they were Gentiles, and Christ had forbidden them to go into the way of the Gentiles; they therefore first acquaint him with the desire of those Greeks, before they bring them to Christ.

22 . telleth Andrew ] Another Apostle with a Greek name. They were both of Bethsaida ( John 1:44 ), and possibly these Greeks may have come from the same district. S. Philip seems to shrink from the responsibility of introducing Gentiles to the Messiah, and applies in his difficulty to the Apostle who had already distinguished himself by bringing others to Christ ( John 1:41 , John 6:8-9 ). and again ] The true reading is Andrew cometh, and Philip, and they tell Jesus .

(22) Philip cometh and telleth Andrew. —It is a striking coincidence, and perhaps more than this, that the Greeks thus came into connection with the only Apostles who bear Greek names; and may themselves have had some special connection by birth, or residence, or culture with Greek civilisation. The names have occurred together before ( John 1:44 ; John 6:7-8 ): they were fellow-townsmen and friends. But Andrew was also brother of Simon Peter, and is one of the first group of four in the apostolic band. (Comp. Mark 13:3 .) The Greeks then naturally come to Philip, and Philip consults his friend Andrew, who is in a position of greater intimacy with the Lord than he himself is, and they come together and tell Jesus.

Telleth Andrew - Why he did not at once tell Jesus is not known. Possibly he was doubtful whether Jesus would wish to converse with Gentiles, and chose to consult with Andrew about it. Tell Jesus - Whether the Greeks were with them cannot be determined. From the following discourse if would seem probable that they were, or at least that Jesus admitted them to his presence and delivered the discourse to them.

Verse 22. - The slight modification of text preferred by the Revised Version gives great vivacity to the picture (see below, note 1). Philip receives the respectful request of the Greeks, "Sir [my lord], we would see Jesus," i.e. "converse with." They probably sought to bring some proposal before him. Surely they must have had, if they wished it, many opportunities of merely seeing Jesus, when he crossed the Mount of Olivet during those three days, or tarried in the court of the Gentiles; now they pressed for an interview. Philip cometh and telleth Andrew. Andrew was the earliest of the disciples, who brought his own brother Simon to Jesus ( John 1:40-42 ). He is mentioned as in close association with Simon, James, and John, as partners with them in the fishing-trade on the lake of Galilee (see Mark 1:16, 29 , and Mark 3:18, compared with Luke 5:10 ). There is some hint that Andrew and John, after the first call to become followers of Christ, clung to him, and went with him to Jerusalem, and then returned with him through Samaria, after which occurred the second call of the brothers Simon and James . The frequent references to Andrew and Philip in this Gospel correspond with the tradition preserved in the Muratorian Fragment on the Canon , touching Andrew's part in the composition of this Gospel. These two disciples are represented as consulting with each other on previous occasions, as though peculiarly related in sympathy.

Philip sees certain difficulties, and Andrew has a practical mind, and proposes a way out of them (see John 6:7, 8 ). There was something now to be said on both sides. Their ancient prophecies anticipated a world-wide aspect of the Messianic kingdom ( Isaiah 55:4, 5 ; Isaiah 56:3, 7 ; as well as Genesis 49:10 ). Now, if this incident occurred after Jesus had claimed the hundred and tenth psalm as an oracle which described his own Divine claims and his universal victory as the Lord and Son of David and royal Warrior-Prest ( Matthew 22:41-46 , and parallel passages), Philip may have felt this moment to be a most critical one in his history; for he may have been perfectly aware of the outbreak of peril which converse with Greek proselytes might at that moment have provoked in the minds of the turbulent populace. Andrew cometh and Philip, and they (together) tell Jesus . Jesus alone could solve the difficulty at that time, and Jesus himself is the just and reasonable Source of all enlightenment. Jesus is at this hour the highest Expression of man and his destiny, and he is also the perfect Manifestation of the Father, the only Mediator between God and man, absolutely one with both. We still go to him to know what God is and what God would have us to think and to be, and to learn what man may become. We take to him the puzzles of our logic, the accusations of our conscience, and the burdens of our heart.