Fruitfulness through Death.
Verily, verily, I say unto you, Except a grain of wheat fall into the earth and die, it abideth by itself alone ; but if it die, it beareth much fruit.— John xii. 24.
1. Jesus was always alive to the beautiful and instructive analogies between the natural and the moral world; but this occasion, when He illustrated heavenly truth by the striking comparison of the grain of wheat, was one of more than ordinary interest. The Apostles Andrew and Philip had approached Him on the part of certain Greeks, with the request that they might be introduced to Him of whom, no doubt, they had heard much. It is probable, since Greek Jews are called Hellenists and not Greeks in the New Testament, that these persons were proselytes of the gate from among the nations where the Greek tongue was then spoken. As they had been won over from heathenism into acceptance of the Mosaic religion, they seem to have awakened in the prophetic soul of Christ the conception of a time when the heathen would flock to His spiritual standard, and the prince of this world would be cast out from his kingdom. The next associ- ated thought was the means for such a great and fruitful result, which was no other than His death. He who was thus waited on by men from strange lands would, in a very few days, be hanging on a cross, under condemnation as a malefactor. But His death and burial, so far from destroying His cause, were to become the life of the world. And the same in substance holds good of those who will follow Him. Just as the seed committed to the earth suiiers a separation of its parts and is buried before it can germinate, so man must, in a spiritual sense, pass through death before he can truly live and be to others a source of life. If he abideth alone, he is unfruitful ; but if he die, he bringeth forth much fruit.
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498 FRUITFULNESS THROUGH DEATH
2. Jesus is just about to be conclusively rejected by His own people ; just on the point of being crucified by them. Some have shut their eyes, and stopped their ears, and hardened their hearts in the most determined manner against Him and His teaching ; others, not insensible to His merits, have meanly and heartlessly concealed their convictions, fearing the consequences of an open profession. Pharisaism, Sadduceeism, ignorance, indifference, fickleness, cowardice, have confronted Him on every side. How refreshing, amidst abounding contradiction, stupidity, and dull insusceptibility, this intimation brought to Him at the eleventh hour : " Here are certain Greeks who are interested in you, and want to see you." The words fall on His ear like a strain of sweet music ; the news is as reviving to His burdened spirit as the sight of a spring to a weary traveller in a sandy desert ; and in the fulness of His joy He exclaims : " The hour is come that the Son of man should be glorified." Eejected by His own people. He is consoled by the inspiring assurance that He shall be believed on in the world, and accepted by the outlying nations as all their salvation and all their desire.
3. The thoughts of Jesus at this time were as deep as His emotions were intense. Specially remarkable is the first thought to which He gave utterance in these words : " Verily, verily, I say unto you, Except a corn of wheat fall into the earth and die, it abideth by itself alone ; but if it die, it beareth much fruit." He speaks here with the solemnity of one conscious that He is announcing a truth new and strange to His hearers. His object is to make it credible and comprehensible to His disciples that death and increase may go together. He points out to them that the fact is so in the case of grain; and He would have them understand that the law of increase, not only in spite but in virtue of death, will hold equally true in His own case. " A grain of wheat, by dying, becometh fruitful ; so I must die in order to become, on a large scale, an object of faith and source of life. During My lifetime I have had little success. Few have believed, many have disbelieved ; and they are about to crown their unbelief by putting Me to death. But My death, so far from being, as they fancy. My defeat and destruction, will be but the beginning of My glorification. After I have been crucified, I
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shall begin to be believed in extensively as the Lord and Saviour of men."
4. It is not at all difficult to see why Jesus laid special and weighty emphasis on the fact that death, self-surrender, self-renunciation, self-sacrifice, is the condition of all life, or why He called the special and earnest attention of the Greeks to it. For not only is the truth itself a fundamental truth of His Gospel and Kingdom, lying at the very root both of Christian theology and of Christian experience, and finding its supreme expression in the Cross ; not only is it repugnant to man's general bent and inclination — for who cares to impose on himself either a yoke or a cross ? — but it also ran right in the teeth of Greek thought and civilization. Self-culture and self- enjoyment were the master words with the Greeks — the chief good of human life, the supreme aim, the ruling bent of the whole Grecian world, as we may learn from their literature, their art, their political economy, their social and civic institutions ; from which we may also learn how miserably, in pursuing this aim, they fell short of the ends for which man was created and made. So that in calling them to substitute self-renunciation for self-culture, and self-sacrifice for self-gratification, the Lord Jesus was virtually asking them to reverse the whole bent of their thought and conduct, and to set before themselves an ideal the very opposite to that which they had hitherto pursued.