The Gospel in a Grain of Wheat

The next day the large crowd that had come to the feast heard that Jesus was coming to Jerusalem. So they took branches of palm trees and went out to meet Him, crying out, “Hosanna! Blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord, even the King of Israel!” And Jesus found a young donkey and sat on it, just as it is written,

“Fear not, daughter of Zion;  
behold, your King is coming,  
sitting on a donkey’s colt!”  

His disciples did not understand these things at first, but when Jesus was glorified, then they remembered that these things had been written about Him and had been done to Him. The crowd that had been with Him when He called Lazarus out of the tomb and raised him from the dead continued to bear witness. The reason why the crowd went to meet Him was that they heard He had done this sign. So the Pharisees said to one another, “You see that you are gaining nothing. Look, the world has gone after Him.”

Now among those who went up to worship at the feast were some Greeks. So these came to Philip, who was from Bethsaida in Galilee, and asked him, “Sir, we wish to see Jesus.” Philip went and told Andrew; Andrew and Philip went and told Jesus. And Jesus answered them, “The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified. Truly, truly, I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit. Whoever loves his life loses it, and whoever hates his life in this world will keep it for eternal life. If anyone serves Me, he must follow Me; and where I am, there will My servant be also. If anyone serves Me, the Father will honor him.

“Now is My soul troubled. And what shall I say? ‘Father, save Me from this hour’? But for this purpose I have come to this hour. Father, glorify Your name.” Then a voice came from heaven: “I have glorified it, and I will glorify it again.” The crowd that stood there and heard it said that it had thundered. Others said, “An angel has spoken to Him.” Jesus answered, “This voice has come for your sake, not Mine. Now is the judgment of this world; now will the ruler of this world be cast out. And I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all people to Myself.” He said this to show by what kind of death He was going to die.
 

John 12:12-33

“Truly, truly, I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit. Whoever loves his life loses it, and whoever hates his life in this world will keep it for eternal life.”  
John 12:24-25  

These verses present the crux of the gospel. All four Gospel writers include the words of verse 25, and in Matthew and Luke, Jesus spoke those words on two separate occasions (Matthew 10:39, 16:25, Mark 8:35, Luke 9:24, 17:33). In Matthew 16:25, Mark 8:35, and Luke 9:24, the context is the same: Peter confesses that Jesus is the Christ, Jesus tells His disciples that He must suffer and die, and Jesus explains that to be glorified, He must first be humiliated. These three passages also recount the transfiguration immediately afterward.

Though the synoptic Gospels describe a different event, the same pattern overarches this account in the Gospel of John. In John, the crowds acclaim Christ as Messiah in His triumphal entry into Jerusalem, like Peter confessed Him in the synoptic Gospels. Then Jesus turns their ideas on their heads: “If anyone would come after Me, let him deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow Me. For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for My sake will save it” (Luke 9:23-24). “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit. Whoever loves his life loses it, and whoever hates his life in this world will keep it for eternal life” (John 12:24-25). And following this, God the Father speaks from heaven, affirming that He will glorify His name on account of the work of Christ. This directly parallels the transfiguration, the only other time in the New Testament, along with Jesus’ baptism, when God speaks directly from heaven. That God chooses this moment to speak directly and audibly to Jesus, and those who were with Him at the time, emphasizes the significance of the words Jesus spoke. It also emphasizes the overall pattern in each instance: humiliation leads to exaltation. Jesus submitted to the baptism of John the Baptist, and God responded with a statement of pleasure in His Son. He told His disciples that He must die, and God again responded, “This is My Son, My Chosen One; listen to Him!” And again, Jesus spoke the words in the Gospel of John that we’re now examining, and God responds that He will glorify His name.

This is a familiar pattern to us – so familiar that it can lose some of its impact. We rehearse its application to Jesus’ life regularly, but for me, it’s easy to neglect its implications for our own lives. One of the common ways of understanding Jesus’ words is metaphorical. This is the application that may be most familiar to us: the attainment of heavenly glory requires the willingness to sacrifice earthly things. If we focus on earthly things, we will lose the heavenly things, but if we pursue heavenly things first, all the earthly things will take their rightful place. “Seek ye first the Kingdom of God, and His righteousness, and all these things will be added unto you” (Matthew 6:33). Taking the “grain of seed” metaphor – our desire for earthly things must die and be reborn, focused on heavenly things, in order to bear wholesome fruit. Another way of taking this passage is more literal – there are those whom Christ calls to die for the sake of the gospel. Most of us will likely not be called to martyrdom; however, the test of obedience in the big things is faithfulness in the small things. If we cannot lay down things of relative insignificance for the sake of obedience to Christ, how could we expect to lay down our lives?

Finally, there is another literal way of taking this passage. We are all going to die, every one of us. Our mortality rate is one hundred percent. In First Corinthians 15, Paul is writing about the resurrection of the dead (which evidently some of the Corinthians denied). He writes toward the end of the chapter, speaking of what the resurrection body will be like, “What you sow does not come to life unless it dies. And what you sow is not the body that is to be, but a bare kernel, perhaps of wheat or of some other grain” (1 Corinthians 15:36-37). Paul’s point is different than ours, but the principle is the same: to attain the resurrection, we first must die. In light of this, we must live in a way that does not cling to our lives as that which is most precious. If we want to grow a crop of wheat, the last thing we should do is to hoard all of our seed in a barn somewhere. We must cast it down into fertile soil, where it will yield an increase. So with our lives: we must cast them down, give them up, spend them, and yield them. When we have lived like that, we will be ready to die and to receive the fullness of resurrection life.