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Death is Necessary - Part 1

John 12v20-24

10th January 2015

John 12v20-22
Now there were some Greeks among those who went up to worship at the Feast. They came to Philip, who was from Bethsaida in Galilee, with a request. "Sir," they said, "we would like to see Jesus."
Philip went to tell Andrew; Andrew and Philip in turn told Jesus.

It was the last week of Jesus's life. In no more than a few days, the Feast of the Passover would begin and Jesus, the definitive Passover lamb, would be sacrificed to pay the price for our sins, to enable us who believe to avoid God's just punishment.

Some God-fearing Greeks - people who believed in God but had not gone through the rituals associated with formally converting to Judaism - came to Philip and asked to see Jesus. Perhaps they spoke to Philip first because he had a Greek name, unlike most of the other disciples, and they were more comfortable speaking to him. Philip knew that Jesus had said before that His mission at that time was almost exclusively to the Jews, so he wasn't sure what to do. He asked Andrew, the other disciple with a Greek name. Andrew knew what to do - ask Jesus.

Jesus's answer may have surprised them.

John 12v23
Jesus replied, "The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified.

Jesus was predicting that His death would be very soon, "The hour has come" and that his death would also be His glory. Perhaps the greatest mistake that some non-Christians make is to imagine that Jesus's death was a failure. On the contrary, it was His magnificent triumph. At the cross, Jesus defeated sin and death. And because Jesus died, the whole world came to know about him.

The Greeks at the Passover feast may have come to see Jesus the great teacher, or Jesus the prophet, or Jesus the revolutionary. If they waited just a few days, they would actually see Jesus the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. They'd see the crucified Jesus - the glorified Jesus.

Paul wrote to the church in Corinth, "I resolved to know nothing while I was with you except Jesus Christ and him crucified" (1 Corinthians 2:2). You haven't really seen Jesus until you've seen Him crucified. His crucifixion is why he came. It's why we can be forgiven and it's why we can live for ever.

John 12v24
I tell you the truth, unless a grain of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains only a single seed. But if it dies, it produces many seeds.

We're all familiar with the idea of sowing a seed into the ground. The seed dies, but it produces a plant that in turn produces many seeds. Jesus was saying that he could not produce a church unless He died. There would be no Christians unless He died.

We can be born again, become Christians, give our lives to Jesus, if and only if we repent of our sins and accept that Jesus's death pays the price for those sins. Had Jesus not died, that price would not have been paid and we would still be dead in our sins. Either Jesus dies, or we die eternally.

Death is necessary.

By dying, Jesus made it possible for us to become like Him, seeds of the same kind as the seed which died:

One day, we will be truly like Him. Already we are becoming more like Him. Because He died.