John 12:44-46 44And Jesus cried out and said, “The one who believes in me, believes not in me but in the one who sent me. 45And whoever sees me sees him who sent me. 46I have come into the world as light, in order that whoever believes in me may not remain in darkness.
Verses 44-50 serve as a grand summary of Jesus’ teachings thus far in John’s Gospel and mark the close of his public ministry. The verses are organized in a thematic chiasm: A = verses 44-46 and focus on Jesus’ relationship to the father; B = verses 47-48 give a warning to those who refuse to see this connection; A’ = verses 49-50 extend the theme of Jesus and the Father. Interestingly, John uses the word cried out, representing the wide broadcasting of the words that follow. Jesus’ words are meant to be widely heard and represent the major appeal of this Book. The following verses give the crucial decision people must make about Jesus.
The first point Jesus makes is the connection between him and God, his Father. If one believes in Jesus, one also believes in God. Jesus said similar things in other passages (Matthew 10:40; Mark 9:37; Luke 9:48; 10:16). Christology is John’s central theme as he records Jesus’ statements to demonstrate the unique relationship between him and God. Believing in Jesus is not simply faith in him as a human preacher from Galilee but is faith in God, who had an eternal plan prophesied through the Old Testament prophets and fulfilled at a specific time and place in the first century.
Jesus is the fullest revelation of God’s character. To look at Jesus is to see God, not physically, as a Jewish male, but spiritually as the loving, compassionate, holy, and righteous one revealed first in the Old Testament. Everything Jesus did and said was according to the Father’s will. Jesus is the human reflection of the only God (Hebrews 1:1-4). Jesus repeats the idea of verse 45 in 14:9.
Verse 46 continues the idea of seeing and returns to the theme of light from verse 36. Light reveals and makes it possible to see something in the dark. Jesus came as the light of God, revealing God in a way people could feel, see, touch, and hear (1:18; 1 John 1:1-3). Jesus already declared he was the light of the world (8:12), and now he connects this light to God the Father. The light of the Father shines through Jesus into the darkness of the world. Darkness represents ignorance, sin, rebellion, and hopelessness. One of the keywords of Jesus’ teaching is remain (meinē). This word gives the human predicament and problem represented in the crowds and Pharisees of verse 42. The light shone in the darkness, but people refused to accept it, and so they remained in their darkness. Their condemnation was their own fault. When the light of the gospel comes to people, they are given the choice of whether to believe in Jesus or not. Sadly, many choose to wander in the darkness that has captivated and eventually, controlled them.
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