The Hour

30 Days in John - day 13

John 12

Throughout John’s gospel we hear Jesus using the phrase, “My hour.” The first time we see it used is in chapter two at the wedding feast. There He tells His mother words He would repeat several times over the next three years: “My hour has not yet come.” Until now, “the hour” has always been something deferred – approaching, but never present.

Suddenly, in John 12, the tone and the language change:

“The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified” (v. 23).

“Now is my soul troubled. And what shall I say? ‘Father, save Me from this hour?’ But it is for this purpose I have come to this hour,” (Verse 27).

By John 12, what Jesus meant by “the hour” comes fully into focus. First, He never meant a sixty minute period of time. He meant a designated moment in history where the specific purpose for which He came into the world would be carried out.

Everything in the chapter is pointing toward His death.

When Mary anoints Jesus and Judas protests, Jesus ties her act to His burial. A crowd gathers to see both Jesus and Lazarus, and the chief priests respond by plotting death, not only for Jesus, but for the man He raised. Even the arrival of the Greeks becomes a signal: the hour has come.

And what did He mean by “hour?”

It was both terrifying and glorious to Jesus. His soul, He said, was troubled by the very event that would glorify both Him and His Father. It meant both death and life. For, like the grain of wheat, He must fall into the earth and die if fruit is to spring forth.

Jesus cries out to heaven, and the Father answers – not because Jesus needed to hear it, but because the disciples did. The hour would bring judgment. A ruler would be overthrown. And people from every corner of the earth would be drawn to Him.

Then, Jesus hints at what the hour involved and how His death would come. He tells the disciples and the crowd that He was going to be crucified without using that word. Instead, He says, “When I am lifted up from the earth, I will draw all people to myself.”

Why does He say it like that? Why not just plainly say that He would be crucified? In John’s gospel, to be “lifted up” is never merely physical elevation; it is exaltation through suffering.

This is what Jesus meant by the hour.

Glory does not come by avoiding suffering, but by passing through it in obedience to the Father. And the hour that troubled His soul is the hour that brings us eternal life.

Photo by engin akyurt on Unsplash