Jesus Came to Save
John 12:35–50,
So Jesus said to them, “The light is among you for a little while longer. Walk while you have the light, lest darkness overtake you. The one who walks in the darkness does not know where he is going. 36 While you have the light, believe in the light, that you may become sons of light.”
When Jesus had said these things, he departed and hid himself from them. 37 Though he had done so many signs before them, they still did not believe in him, 38 so that the word spoken by the prophet Isaiah might be fulfilled:
“Lord, who has believed what he heard from us,
and to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed?”
39 Therefore they could not believe. For again Isaiah said,
40 “He has blinded their eyes and hardened their heart, lest they see with their eyes, and understand with their heart, and turn, and I would heal them.”
41 Isaiah said these things because he saw his glory and spoke of him. 42 Nevertheless, many even of the authorities believed in him, but for fear of the Pharisees they did not confess it, so that they would not be put out of the synagogue; 43 for they loved the glory that comes from man more than the glory that comes from God.
44 And Jesus cried out and said, “Whoever believes in me, believes not in me but in him who sent me. 45 And whoever sees me sees him who sent me. 46 I have come into the world as light, so that whoever believes in me may not remain in darkness. 47 If anyone hears my words and does not keep them, I do not judge him; for I did not come to judge the world but to save the world. 48 The one who rejects me and does not receive my words has a judge; the word that I have spoken will judge him on the last day. 49 For I have not spoken on my own authority, but the Father who sent me has himself given me a commandment—what to say and what to speak. 50 And I know that his commandment is eternal life. What I say, therefore, I say as the Father has told me.”
One reason this season is the most wonderful time of the year is because it’s the end of the year — and that means it’s an opportunity to look back and reflect on what the year was like — What are some favorite memories of the year? What are some key themes of the year that stand out? What kind of music did I listen to the most? (I didn’t ask that question, but my phone told me anyway).
This is the time of year when we’re in a review mindset, and that fits very nicely with where we are in the Gospel of John. Because here at the end of Chapter 12, it marks the end of Jesus’s public ministry — and John, the Gospel writer, has a review mindset.
Just to get our bearings again on this Gospel as a whole, there are two main parts:
Part One is Chapters 1-12, which is Jesus’s public ministry.
Part Two is Chapters 13-20, which is Jesus’s private ministry focused on his disciples.
Part One has been called the Book of Signs, Part Two has been called the Book of Glory. And it’s worked out for us that Part One has been our sermon series in 2025 (and Part Two, God willing, will be 2026).
And so here at the end of Part One, it would make sense to look back and reflect on what we’ve seen this year — and John actually does that for us.
In today’s passage, John highlights three themes we’ve seen so far in this Gospel, and the plan for the sermon is to unpack each one and then ask What does it mean for us?
It’s one thing to understand what John is saying — we start there — but then we need to know what difference it makes in our lives. That’s where we’re headed.
Here’s the first theme. It is …
1. The Problem of Unbelief (verses 37–41)
We see this right away in verse 37. John says,
“Though he [Jesus] had done so many signs before them, they still did not believe in him …”
You can hear the summary tone in how John says it. Even after all this time, after all these miracles, after all his teaching, still the people did not believe Jesus.
That (unfortunately) is consistent with what we’ve seen since the beginning of this Gospel. Remember how John started back in Chapter 1, verse 10:
[Jesus] was in the world, and the world was made through him, yet the world did not know him. He came to his own, and his own people did not receive him.
And that idea just gets repeated:
3:19, “the light has come into the world, and people loved the darkness rather than the light …”
6:36, Jesus says, “you have seen me and yet do not believe.”
7:5, “not even his brothers believed in him.”
10:25, the Jews said to him, “If you are the Christ, tell us plainly.” Jesus answered them, “I told you, and you do not believe…”
So yeah, this unbelief is a big deal. It’s been a problem from the start, and even after 12 chapters (after this whole year!), the people still don’t believe.
But now John is going to explain why: He takes us behind the scenes theologically and he tells us that the people’s unbelief is in fulfillment of Old Testament prophecy.
Bringing in Isaiah
John shows us this by quoting two different passages from the Book of Isaiah — and we could spend so much time on this because it’s so good — but I just wanna show you two things:
The first is in verse 38. Everybody find verse 38. And help me out: when you find verse 38, look at the indented quote that starts with the word “Lord.” So everybody: verse 38, the word “Lord” — if you see it, say got it.
The quote says:
“Lord, who has believed what he heard from us,
and to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed?”
This is Isaiah 53, verse 1, and it’s from the famous passage about the Suffering Servant. The context of that passage is that God has exalted his Suffering Servant and the nations are astonished by him, but the people of Israel reject him.
Isaiah is saying the message has been announced, the signs have been seen, but still, Israel does not believe.
In other words, Isaiah is saying the same thing John is trying to say! — and so John connects the dots: The unbelief we see in response to Jesus in his public ministry is the unbelief that Isaiah prophesied. That’s the first thing to see here.
Here’s the second … It comes in verse 41, but track with me for a minute …
John says, verse 39, in fulfillment of Isaiah 53:1, “Therefore they could not believe.” And then he quotes Isaiah again, this time from Isaiah Chapter 6 about God blinding the eyes of unbelievers and hardening their hearts.
That’s verse 40.
But now look what John says in verse 41. And this is one you’re gonna wanna see. Everybody find verse 41. Chapter 12, verse 41 — if you see it, say Got it.
Isaiah said these things [what things? It’s the things of Isaiah 6 that John just quoted!] because he saw his glory and spoke of him [Isaiah saw whose glory? Who did Isaiah speak of? — John is clear: it’s Jesus].
Seeing the King!
And if you know Isaiah 6, we can never read that passage the same way again! Isaiah 6 is the famous vision Isaiah had in the year King Uzziah died. Isaiah describes it:
I saw the Lord sitting upon a throne high and lifted up and the train of his robe filled the temple.
And right away this vision includes a throne and a temple — which is interesting because the throne is the place of a king, and the temple is the place of a priest. So is this a vision of a priest-king? This is something!
And the seraphim were there — these are wild-looking angelic creatures with six wings — and they called to one another (and maybe you’ve heard this before):
Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts;
the whole earth is full of his glory!
And the foundations shook at their voices when they called, and the whole place was filled with smoke. And Isaiah, seeing all this, was undone! He said:
Woe is me! For I am lost; for I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips; for my eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts!”
And John says here that Isaiah was talking about Jesus.
Isaiah saw Jesus — just like the people in this Gospel for 12 chapters have seen Jesus — but the difference is that Isaiah was changed, the people still refuse to believe just like God said they would.
And what it means for us is this: just like there’s no such thing as generic faith, there is no such thing as generic unbelief.
If you persist in unbelief … if you continue to disbelieve … it means you are rejecting Jesus. It’s personal to him …
You are rejecting the one who has come to save you. You are rejecting the one who has come to show you God. And you have seen him — that’s the point John stresses here.
These unbelievers had seen Jesus — there are many unbelievers in our cities today who have heard the message of Jesus — and their unbelief is a rejection of him. That’s the problem of unbelief.
It’s a theme in the first half of this Gospel.
Here’s the second theme:
2. The Priority of Witness (verses 42–43)
This is verse 42. Not every single person full-out rejected Jesus, because, verse 42:
Nevertheless, many even of the authorities believed in him, but for fear of the Pharisees they did not confess it, so that they would not be put out of the synagogue …
This is fascinating: these are people who ‘believed’ in Jesus but did not confess him. Which means these people must’ve had some kind of mental agreement — the claims of Jesus were compelling to them, Jesus made sense to them, but they kept their stance on Jesus private.
They didn’t want others to know that they thought positively about Jesus, and the verdict of this kind of ‘faith’ is that ultimately it’s not real. It’s not true faith.
And that brings up something really important on the topic of faith: it’s that true saving faith is always personal, but never private.
True saving faith is personal as in you have to believe as an individual — your parents’ faith doesn’t count as yours, your spouses’ faith doesn’t count; you, each of you, have to believe) — true saving faith is personal.
But true saving faith is never private. If it’s real faith, you don’t keep it to yourself. That’s why the apostle Paul says, Romans 10, verse 9,
if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.
See, faith in Jesus includes allegiance to Jesus, and allegiance doesn’t remain hidden. This is one of the reasons Jesus gave us baptism!
Baptism is a public witness to our faith in Jesus. It’s a way for us to stake our flag in the ground and say, I’m with Jesus, whatever the social cost might be. And, historically, faith in Jesus has always included some kind of social cost.
In the days of Jesus — and at the time that John wrote this Gospel — verse 42 says the threat was expulsion from synagogue. That was a cost for Jewish believers: If you were in with Jesus, you were kicked out of Jewish community. That was a real issue for Jewish converts in the early church.
And there was a similar issue with Gentiles, because to say “Jesus is Lord” is to say that Caesar is not Lord — and that was a head-turning statement to make as a subject of the Roman Empire!
So no matter how you shook it back in the day — it didn’t matter who you were or where you were from — there was no way to truly believe in Jesus that did not involve a social cost, or at least risk.
Now that’s history, but it’s also still the case today …
In fact, true story …
Social Pressure Today
I heard last week from a credible source that there has been an underground Bible study going on with a group of Somali Muslims and 12 of them have embraced the claims of Christ — which is amazing — however, currently, none of them are willing to make it public.
Because could you imagine the cost?
(This is real. And we should pray for these 12 individuals — that their faith would go all the way, not partial faith, but true saving faith in Jesus Christ.)
True saving faith is not private, and it says Jesus is worth the cost.
And we have to be careful here, because we can think that this cost is just out there and it doesn’t really affect us. But that’s not true. It doesn’t matter if your context is Islam or Progressivism or Alt-Right politics, there is social pressure everywhere to not be all-in with Jesus.
And it’s in different ways and in different degrees, but you know it’s there … in your workplace … at your school … on your team — And what’s dangerous for us is that in many of our circles it’s respectable to be okay with Jesus as long as we’re not over the top. Like: being spiritual is good. Talking about your ‘faith’ is fine. But don’t be all about Jesus. Don’t love him that much.
That kind of pressure might be more subtle than the pressure of Islam, but the irony is that the dynamic is the same: it’s allowing social pressure to dictate what we do with Jesus.
And John tells us in verse 43 what the real issue is — it has to do with what you love the most. John says the reason these partial believers did not go all-in with Jesus is because, verse 43:
“they loved the glory that comes from man more than the glory that comes from God.”
And look, I don’t know about you, but this gets my attention.
I never want to do this. Never.
But it makes me wonder if this disordered love that John is talking about is always part of failed witness. Like in those moments when we have opportunity to be public about our faith and we choose not to, do we choose not to because we love the glory of man more than the glory of God?
What John is talking about is part of a universal human weakness — we care so much about what other people think.
And that’s one reason public witness is so important. Because it puts feet to our faith. It shows that we’re not just here because our stomachs are full or because we’re enamored by miracles, like the way we’ve seen people be in this Gospel.
But we are truly all in with Jesus. We believe in Jesus, and we want people to know, whatever the cost. That’s the priority of witness.
Here’s the third theme:
3. The Purpose of Advent (verses 44–50)
Now I’m not just saying this because it’s Advent. Look at verse 44:
And Jesus cried out and said, “Whoever believes in me, believes not in me but in him who sent me. And whoever sees me sees him who sent me.
Jesus repeats that he has been sent — and of course, he is referring to his first Advent. He’s talking about Christmas! That he came here — and what was its purpose? Why did Jesus come? He’s very clear about it, verse 46:
I have come into the world as light, so that whoever believes in me may not remain in darkness.
That’s clear enough, but Jesus really wants us to get this.
So he tells us again, verse 47:
If anyone hears my words and does not keep them, I do not judge him; for I did not come to judge the world but to save the world.
And that sounds a lot like what Jesus said in Chapter 3. Remember back in Chapter 3, verse 17, Jesus said plainly:
For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him.
There is no ambiguity in the first half of this Gospel. This is the purpose of Jesus’s first Advent: Jesus came to save.
The Miracle of Conversion
And one of the reasons Jesus stresses so much that he came to save, not condemn, is because a lot of people end up condemned — and Jesus wants to explain why.
Here’s the reason: it’s because they don’t believe in him.
In his first Advent, Jesus came to bring salvation, but judgment happens when people reject his salvation. Judgment is what people bring upon themselves by rejecting Jesus who came to save.
And their unbelief is judgment already — the blinding and hardening that Isaiah talked about is God giving people over to what they want. This is how the theologian D. A. Carson puts it:
God’s judicial hardening is not the capricious manipulation of an arbitrary power that curses morally neutral or even morally pure beings, but it is the holy condemnation of a guilty people who are condemned to do and be what they themselves have chosen ( 448–449, abridged)
Listen: If you don’t want Jesus now, you don’t get Jesus later.
And that would have been every single one of us apart from the grace of God. Everyone of us who believes in Jesus has the same story if you go back far enough — it’s the sovereign grace of God!
He chose us in Christ before the foundations of the world and set his love on us, and in the fullness of time he sent Jesus to save us!
But we’re all born broken and bent away from God, and our only hope is if God does something about that. And he does.
By his Spirit through our hearing the gospel, God brings dead hearts to life — we hear the announcement of who Jesus is and what he’s done, and we believe.
That’s the miracle of conversion:
Long my imprisoned spirit lay
Fast bound in sin and nature’s night;
Thine eye diffused a quick’ning ray,
I woke, the dungeon flamed with light;
My chains fell off, my heart was free;
I rose, went forth and followed Thee.
That is how Christians are made! Yes, God is at work. He’s the one behind it, but what concerns us is what we do with the message of Jesus now.
And that’s what makes this passage so remarkable.
One More Invitation
Verse 44 — notice the first few words. John tells us, verse 44:
“And Jesus cried out and said…”
That might not seem like a big deal, but we need to compare it with how this passage started in verse 36. This is the end of last week’s passage. Verse 36, Jesus said:
“While you have the light, believe in the light, that you may become sons of light.” [Then John comments] When Jesus had said these things, he departed and hid himself from them.
Jesus has been saying, I will not be here much longer, and while I’m here it’s your chance to believe. And then he withdraws. He leaves. It’s an exit. Verse 36 could be the end of Jesus’s public ministry. It seems like it is!
But in verse 44 Jesus comes back out. He shows back up to this crowd that’s kept rejecting him, and he does it to make one more invitation. He cries out to give one more chance: I am here to save! Believe in me!
Hey, I want you to know that I’m so thankful that Jesus is the kind of Savior who gives one more chance — second chances, third, fourth, fifth chances. It took a lot of chances for some of us, and I know it did for me. Look, my whole childhood was chances — chances to believe over and over again, and then one day, I did. I’m so glad Jesus didn’t give up on me.
Isn’t it amazing that the last thing Jesus does to close out his public ministry is give that one more chance? To offer grace one more time. That seems to me like the best way to end the first half of this sermon series. …
Maybe you’re here and you’ve heard about Jesus a thousand times, here’s one more invitation…
Jesus Christ came to this world to save. That was the purpose of Advent. It’s the purpose of Christmas. Jesus came to save, and everyone who believes in him will not perish but have eternal life. Would you believe in him today?
Just tell him:
Jesus, I can’t save myself and I’m tired of trying!
You came to save me and I believe you!
That’s a prayer of faith, and that’s the invitation for everyone, right now.
And that brings us to the Table.
The Table
For those of us who have trusted in Jesus, if you’ve put your faith in Jesus, this Table is a continued public witness each week that we belong to him. When we eat the bread and drink the cup, we are saying: We are united to Jesus Christ by faith, and we give him thanks!
