John 12:36-50

Read John 12:36b-50 A summary or recapitulation of Jesus’s claims

Verse 38 is taken from Isaiah 53:1, which is the beginning of the Suffering Servant passage that says that “he” (who Christians interpret as Jesus) was pierced for our sins and bore our guilt, was struck for the sins of the people, fulfilled God’s will by making his life an offering for sin, and bore the sins of many.  How does it benefit us to see how what happened to Jesus is a fulfillment of Old Testament prophecy?

The people in Jesus’s time did not know that Isaiah 53 was speaking about Jesus.  Later, people who believed in Jesus looked back and saw the connection.

Prophecies don’t dictate the future; they merely report in advance what will happen.  It is as though the prophet is seeing into a future time through a cosmic window, without directly affecting or controlling what people do in those future times.  What gives the prophet the ability to foresee things that will happen in the future, even though the prophet does not dictate the future?

Verse 40 needs to be examined closely.  Some Christians interpret it literally and simplistically to mean that God actively hardened people’s hearts and forced them to reject Jesus.  But that interpretation contradicts what the Bible tells us about God: that God loves all people (John 3:16; Psalm 145:9; 1 John 2:2); that God desires all people to be saved (1 Tim. 2:3-6; 2 Pet. 3:9; Matt. 23:37; John 12:32); that God does not tempt anyone to sin and therefore certainly does not force anyone to sin (James 1:13-14; 1 Cor. 10:13); and that God gives humans free will with which to choose to follow him or reject him (Deut. 30:19-20; Josh. 24:15; Ex. 35:29; Sirach 15:11-20; Matt. 23:37; John 7:17; 1 Cor. 7:36).  We can find a way of interpreting this verse that does not contradict the Bible and core Christian teachings about God and free will.

John, like other Jews of his time, believes that God’s hand is in everything, but he also believes that humans make free choices.  That is why he tells us in verse 40 that hearts are being hardened even as he tells us in verse 42 that many of the leaders are coming to believe in Jesus.  Jesus’s death is Jesus’s choice and is not dictated by humans (John 10:17-18) or by Satan (John 12:31).  But humans have a choice and are called to make the choice to believe in him (John 7:17; 7:37-38; 6:66-71; 8:31-32; 3:14-18).

We can understand how human free will coexists with God’s sovereignty, and avoid extreme and contradictory conclusions, if we understand that there is a difference between God’s perfect will (what he desires to happen), his permissive will (what he allows to happen), and his decreed will (what he orders or directs or forces to happen).

There are laws of nature that your free will cannot override (for example, the laws physics apply to your driving whether you like it or not).  There are also laws of the spiritual world that you cannot suspend.  If you resist God, you will end up with a hard heart.  If you avoid the light, you will be in the dark and, for all practical purposes, be blind (see verse 48).  This will be true not because God forced you to reject him or hardened your heart or made you blind, but solely because you chose a path that led to your having a hard heart and being blind.

This is the way to understand John’s statement. God “hardened” their hearts in the sense that he created a universe with spiritual laws of accountability that require people to make choices, and those who choose to reject God and refuse to be converted will end up with hard hearts.  God does not want anyone to have a hard heart or to be spiritually blind, but he allows it to happen.

There are additional reasons not to interpret John 12:40 in a simplistically literal way.  First, the actual words in Isaiah 6:9-10, which John is quoting from, do not say that God forced the people to have a hard heart.  In both the original Hebrew and the Greek Septuagint, God merely observes that they do have a hard heart.  Second, when Matthew quotes the Old Testament passage more accurately in Matthew 13:14-15, it is clear that God is observing that they have a hard heart, not commanding that it be so.  The Hebrew version of Isaiah, the Greek Septuagint, and Matthew – none of them say that God made the people have a hard heart.  God allowed them to reject him, which led to their hearts being hardened.  That is what Isaiah prophesied, and that is how we should interpret John 12:40.

A deep dive into the translations of Isaiah (feel free to skip this)

• In the original Hebrew version of Isaiah 6:9-10, God tells Isaiah to say to the people: “You hear [or, Hear ye] but do not understand, and see and do not perceive, the heart of this people [no verb] sluggish and the ears heavy and the eyes shut, lest they see . . . and hear . . . and understand . . . and turn . . . and be healed.”  God is not commanding them to have a hard heart; he is observing that they have chosen to have a hard heart.

• Most modern translations of Isaiah 6:10 say: “Make the heart of this people sluggish [or dull].”  However, the word “Make” does not appear in the Hebrew – there is no verb in that portion of the verse.  A better translation would be: “The heart of this people is sluggish.”  This makes it clear that God, through Isaiah, is describing what is actually happening, not commanding it to happen.

• The Septuagint, which was a translation of the Hebrew scriptures into Greek, was completed before Jesus was born.  A majority of the Old Testament quotations in the New Testament are drawn from the Septuagint, not directly from the Hebrew or “Masoretic” text.  In John 12:40, John’s words diverge significantly from the Septuagint; but Matthew closely follows the Septuagint’s language, writing: “For this people’s heart has grown dull, and their ears are hard of hearing, and they have shut their eyes; lest they see with their eyes and hear with their ears and understand with their heart and turn around [or, be converted], and I should heal them.”  God does not make the people have a hard heart; he merely observes that they do.

John talks about blindness in verse 40 right after Jesus tells the people, in verses 35-36, to walk in the light.  Either you walk in the light, or you end up walking blindly in the darkness.  It’s a matter of spiritual cause and effect.  If you choose to walk in the dark, you will be effectively “blind.”  If you choose to close your heart to Jesus, you will develop a hard heart, because that’s the way God’s spiritual laws work.  How do you see this spiritual principle of cause and effect at work in our world today?

Our physical hearts can become weakened by sclerosis, which is a hardening of the coronary arteries and heart tissues that can debilitate us and even result in death.  Sclerosis can be caused by smoking, a high fat diet, high blood sugar, excess weight, lack of physical activity, stress that leads to high blood pressure, and other factors.  What does spiritual sclerosis look like in our spiritual hearts?  What do you think people do wrong, that slowly leads them to having a hard heart?

In verse 42, John tells us that many people, even among the authorities, came to faith in Jesus.  How does that illustrate the fact that faith is a matter of free will?

How do you think the leaders who believed in Jesus avoided developing the hard hearts that those who rejected Jesus developed?

What is the condition of your heart?  In what ways is it soft and open to Jesus, and in what ways have you become hardened and set in your ways?

How can we keep our heart soft and open to Jesus?

Verse 43 notes that some of the leaders who came to belief in Jesus did not make it known publicly.  Why?  And how is this a caution to us?

Some Bibles label verses 44-50 a “recapitulation,” which means a restatement of the main points of a presentation that has already been made.  How are verses 44-50 a restatement of what Jesus has already said?  What do you see there that Jesus has already said previously?

Verse 47 sometimes puzzles people.  Won’t Jesus judge us?  Jesus is saying that, when he came to live among us in the 1st century, he did not come to condemn people.  He also said this in John 8:15: “I do not judge anyone.”  But, as verse 48 indicates, when he returns at the end of time, he will bring judgment: his word will judge us.  When he came to earth 2,000 years ago, he came not to judge us (verse 47) but to save the world (verse 47) and lead us to the light (verse 46).

How do you experience Jesus as the light that keeps you from living in darkness (verse 46)?

How do verses 44-50 do a nice job of summing up what Jesus has been saying for the past several chapters?

Is there anything new in these verses that you haven’t seen previously?  If so, what new insights do you see there?

If this passage was intended to summarize the key points of what Jesus has been saying in the last few chapters, is there anything especially important that you think was left out?  What would you have included in your recapitulation that is not here?

Some scholars call the portion of John’s Gospel from 1:19 through the end of chapter 12 “the Book of Signs,” because it includes the major miracles that John identifies as signs of who Jesus is.  It also includes Jesus’s “I am” statements.  What has stood out to you most or had the most impact on your faith so far in the Gospel of John?

Take a step back and consider this:

Many people are uncomfortable with talk of “judgment.”  We don’t like to think about being judged.  It stirs up feelings of embarrassment and fear.  In his Jubilee Year 2025 document Spes Non Confundit, Pope Francis offered a different perspective, stressing that because God is love (1 John 4:8, 16), we can prepare for judgment “from the standpoint of hope.”  He wrote:

The judgement of God, who is love (cf. 1 Jn 4:8.16), will surely be based on love, and in particular on all that we have done or failed to do with regard to those in need, in whose midst Christ, the Judge himself, is present (cf. Mt 25:31-46).  Clearly, then, we are speaking of a judgement unlike any handed down by human, earthly tribunals; it should be understood as a rapport of truth with the God who is love and with oneself, within the unfathomable mystery of divine mercy....

In the words of Benedict XVI: “At the moment of judgement we experience and we absorb the overwhelming power of his love over all the evil in the world and in ourselves.  The pain of love becomes our salvation and our joy.”

Judgement, then, concerns the salvation in which we hope and which Jesus has won for us by his death and resurrection.  It is meant to bring us to a definitive encounter with the Lord.  The evil we have done cannot remain hidden; it needs to be purified in order to enable this definitive encounter with God’s love. (Francis, Spes Non Confundit, par. 22)

As we consider God’s judgment at the end of our lives, how can focusing on God’s love help us to avoid being afraid?

How can the judgment of God purify us so that we can live in an eternal relationship with God?