NOTES for Joh 12:34
Jesus and the people listening to Him understand the Messiah's path differently. And the very image of the Messiah in popular consciousness differs from what the Savior turned out to be in reality. The main difference is that for the vast majority of the people who listened to Jesus, the Messiah's work was entirely external. The Messiah, or, as Jesus usually calls Himself in the third person, the Son of Man, a messianic image taken from the Book of Daniel, in the people's consciousness has no ordinary human path at all.
He is not an ordinary man. He "abides forever." And He comes to earth to accomplish something great, something that must end with the creation of the messianic Kingdom, a strong earthly state headed by this extraordinary King. His earthly path will be mysterious and unlike the path of an ordinary person, although the Jews still do not speak of the Messiah's divinity in the Christian sense. And now it turns out that the Messiah still has some glorification ahead of Him. There was something to think about. Jesus Himself, meanwhile, speaks of His real earthly path. Of a path that presupposes both death on the cross and the subsequent resurrection. And also of the path by which people enter His Kingdom. Of a path that presupposes a change of life. Not the rearrangement of human life according to some special rules, but its change, complete and radical.
Such a change that will make the limited and finite life of fallen humanity part of another life: the life of the Kingdom in all its fullness, which the Savior brought into the world. Without this change it is impossible to enter the Kingdom. It would seem that nothing is complicated. Far simpler than the numerous ingenious methods of restructuring and remaking human nature that countless magicians and occultists have proposed in every age. But precisely this change sometimes proves completely beyond a person's strength. Because here one must unclench the hand. And, what is even harder, the will. Let go.
And letting go of one's own life, that very existence with which one has become used to identifying oneself, is not at all simple. It is easier to remake it in any way one likes, but oneself, under one's own control, than to relinquish such control and allow Another to govern one's life. Here trust is needed, and either it exists or it does not. But if it does not, then hope for the Kingdom will have to be left behind. For in the Kingdom where Christ reigns, one cannot live without trusting the One who rules that Kingdom.