John 12:27-29 Now is my soul troubled; and what shall I say? Father, save me from this hour: but for this cause came I to this hour.… I. THE MYSTERY OF THE SAVIOUR'S SORROW. It is usual to explain that the human nature of Jesus shrank from death. But this view lowers Him below the level of the martyrs, and is inconsistent with the haste with which He journeyed to Jerusalem to meet His death; and we cannot think of Him as losing courage. II. SOME LIGHT ON THE MYSTERY. We are apt to take too corporeal a view of Christ's sacrifice. The bodily pain was an essential part of the suffering, but only a part. It was something all His own in dying, from which He shrank, and the shrinking from which He had to conquer. He saw the sin-wrought woes and horrors of all the generations before and after, to the day of judgment, and there was a sense of their being upon Him, and enveloping Him. And so we may hear Him cry, "Spare Me not the scourging, the death agony," etc., but the being made one with the world in its sin. III. THE MEANING OF THE PRAYER. This experience had not been altogether measured beforehand, and now the agony of the incorporation of the sinless with sin is before Him, He prays for deliverance from conscious sin-bearing. IV. THE ANSWER TO THE PRAYER. "There came a voice." Modern unbelief scoffs at voices from heaven. Reverence will not pass hasty judgments. One said, "It thundered;" another, "an angel spoke to Him." Christ alone hears the audible words, and interprets them when He is alone with His people. "I have glorified it and will glorify it." V. PRACTICAL LESSONS. 1. "My soul is troubled." Christ is not alone in that experience; but His troubles were not His own; ours are our own. 2. "Save Me from this hour." Not that He would not suffer for others; but that this going fearfully into the very heart of sin seemed terrible. We may pray this prayer; but let us take care to remember how different is our trouble; and to add, "Glorify Thy name," whatever it may cost us. 3. Can we pray, "Glorify Thy name?" Whatever I suffer for my own sin or for my brother's, only may God be glorified; only may God be seen as He is in His power to save. May this thought take root and grow in us! (Dean Vaughan.) Parallel Verses KJV: 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. |
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