John 13:31

Therefore, when he was gone out, Jesus said, Now is the Son of man glorified, and God is glorified in him.

EXPOSITORY (ENGLISH BIBLE)

Ellicott's Commentary for English Readers

(31) Now is the Son of man glorified.—Comp. Notes on John 11:4; John 12:28. The going out of Judas is the sign that the betrayal and death of the Son of Man was at hand. In that was the glory of His accomplished work, and He speaks of this glory as present. It lies so immediately before Him that it is at once realised; and the brightness of the vision over-powers all thought of the darkness of the path which leads to it.

God is glorified in him.—This is a re-statement of the thought which has met us whenever the work of the Son has been dwelt upon. It was the Father’s work too. The glory of the Son of Man in the redemption of the world was the glory of God, who gave His only-begotten Son, that by Him the world might be saved. There is a contrast drawn here between the humanity and the divinity united in the person of our Lord. In Him, i.e., in His person, in the person of the Son of Man suffering and crucified, there were manifested the attributes of the majesty and glory of God. It was an utterance to the world, in a fulness never heard before, of the Justice, Holiness, and Love which are the nature of God.

MacLaren's Expositions

John

THE GLORY OF THE CROSS

John 13:31 - John 13:32.

There is something very weird and awful in the brief note of time with which the Evangelist sends Judas on his dark errand. ‘He . . . went immediately out, and it was night.’ Into the darkness that dark soul went. That hour was ‘the power of darkness,’ the very keystone of the black arch of man’s sin, and some shadow of it fell upon the soul of Christ Himself.

In immediate connection with the departure of the traitor comes this singular burst of triumph in our text. The Evangelist emphasises the connection by that: ‘Therefore, when he was gone out, Jesus said.’ There is a wonderful touch of truth and naturalness in that connection. The traitor was gone. His presence had been a restraint; and now that that ‘spot in their feast of charity’ had disappeared, the Master felt at ease; and like some stream, out of the bed of which a black rock has been taken, His words flow more freely. How intensely real and human the narrative becomes when we see that Christ, too, felt the oppression of an uncongenial presence, and was relieved and glad at its removal! The departure of the traitor evoked these words of triumph in another way, too. At his going away, we may say, the match was lit that was to be applied to the train. He had gone out on his dark errand, and that brought the Cross within measurable distance of our Lord. Out of a new sense of its nearness He speaks here. So the note of time not only explains to us why our Lord spoke, but puts us on the right track for understanding His words, and makes any other interpretation of them than one impossible. What Judas went to do was the beginning of Christ’s glorifying. We have here, then, a triple glorification-the Son of Man glorified in His Cross; God glorified in the Son of Man; and the Son of Man glorified in God. Let us look at these three thoughts for a few moments now.

I. First, we have here the Son of Man glorified in His Cross.

The words are a paradox. Strange, that at such a moment, when there rose up before Christ all the vision of the shame and the suffering, the pain and the death, and the mysterious sense of abandonment, which was worse than them all, He should seem to stretch out His hands to bring the Cross nearer to Himself, and that His soul should fill with triumph!

There is a double aspect under which our Lord regarded His sufferings. On the one hand we mark in Him an unmistakable shrinking from the Cross, the innocent shrinking of His manhood expressed in such words as ‘I have a baptism to be baptized with, and how am I straitened till it be accomplished’; and in such incidents as the agony in Gethsemane. And yet, side by side with that, not overcome by it, but not overcoming it, there is the opposite feeling, the reaching out almost with eagerness to bring the Cross nearer to Himself. These two lie close by each other in His heart. Like the pellucid waters of the Rhine and the turbid stream of the Moselle, that flow side by side over a long space, neither of them blending discernibly with the other, so the shrinking and the desire were contemporaneous in Christ’s mind. Here we have the triumphant anticipation rising to the surface, and conquering for a time the shrinking.

Why did Christ think of His Cross as a glorifying? The New Testament generally represents it as the very lowest point of His degradation; John’s Gospel always represents it as the very highest point of His glory. And the two things are both true; just as the zenith of our sky is the nadir of the sky for those on the other side of the world. The same fact which in one aspect sounds the very lowest depth of Christ’s humiliation, in another aspect is the very highest culminating point of His glory.

How did the Cross glorify Christ? In two ways. It was the revelation of His heart; it was the throne of His sovereign power.

It was the revelation of His heart. All his life long He had been trying to tell the world how much He loved it. His love had been, as it were, filtered by drops through His words, through His deeds, through His whole demeanour and bearing; but in His death it comes in a flood, and pours itself upon the world. All His life long he had been revealing His heart, through the narrow rifts of His deeds, like some slender lancet windows; but in His death all the barriers are thrown down, and the brightness blazes out upon men. All through His life He had been trying to communicate His love to the world, and the fragrance came from the box of ointment exceeding precious, but when the box was broken the house was filled with the odour.

For Him to be known was to be glorified. So pure and perfect was He, that revelation of His character and glorification of Himself were one and the same thing. Because His Cross reveals to the world for all time, and for eternity, too, a love which shrinks from no sacrifice, a love which is capable of the most entire abandonment, a love which is diffused over the whole surface of humanity and through all the ages, a love which comes laden with the richest and the highest gifts, even the turning of selfish and sinful hearts into its own pure and perfect likeness, therefore does He say, in contemplation of that Cross which was to reveal Him for what He was to the world, and to bring His love to every one of us, ‘Now is the Son of Man glorified.’

We can fancy a mother, for instance, in the anticipation of shame, and ignominy, and suffering, and sorrow, and death which she encounters for the sake of some prodigal child, forgetting all the ignominy, and the shame, and the suffering, and the sorrow, and the death, because all these are absorbed in the one thought: ‘If I bear them, my poor, wandering, rebellious child will know at last how much I loved him.’ So Christ yearns to impart the knowledge of Himself to us, because by that knowledge we may be won to His love and service; and hence when He looks forward to the agony, and contumely, and sorrow of the close, every other thought is swallowed up in this one: ‘They will be the means by which the whole world will find out how deep my heart of love to it was.’ Therefore does He triumph and say, ‘Now is the Son of Man glorified.’

Still further, He regards His Cross as the means of His glorifying, because it is His throne of saving power. The paradoxical words of our text rest upon His profound conviction that in His death He was about to put forth a mightier and diviner power than ever He had manifested in His life. They are the same in effect and in tone as the great words: ‘I, if I be lifted up, will draw all men unto Me.’ Now I want you to ask yourselves one question: In what sense is Christ’s Cross Christ’s glorifying, unless His Cross bears an altogether different relation to His life from what the death of a great teacher or benefactor ordinarily bears to his? It is impossible that Christ could have spoken such words as these of my text if He had simply thought of His death as a Plato or a John Howard might have thought of his, as being the close of his activity for the welfare of his fellows. Unless Christ’s death has in it some substantive value, unless it is something more than the mere termination of His work for the world, I see not how the words before us can be interpreted. If His death is His glorifying, it must be because in that death something is done which was not completed by the life, however fair; by the words, however wise and tender; by the works of power, however restorative and healing. Here is something more than these present. What more? This more, that His Cross is the ‘propitiation for the sins of the whole world.’ He is glorified therein, not as a Socrates might be glorified by his calm and noble death; not because nothing in His life became Him better than the leaving of it; not because the page that tells the story of His passion is turned to by us as the tenderest and most sacred in the world’s records; but because in that death He wrestled with and overcame our foes, and because, like the Jewish hero of old, dying, He pulled down the house which our tyrants had built, and overwhelmed them in its ruins. ‘Now is the Son of Man glorified.’

And so, brethren, there blend, in that last act of our Lord’s-for His death was His act-in strange fashion, the two contradictory ideas of glory and shame; like some sky, all full of dark thunderclouds, and yet between them the brightest blue and the blazing sunshine. In the Cross, Death crowns Him the Prince of Life, and His Cross is His throne. All His life long He was the Light of the World, but the very noontide hour of His glory was that hour when the shadow of eclipse lay over all the land, and He hung on the Cross dying in the dark. At His ‘eventide it was light.’ ‘He endured the Cross, despising the shame’; and lo! the shame flashed up into the very brightness of glory, and the ignominy and the suffering became the jewels of His crown. ‘Now is the Son of Man glorified.’

II. Now let us turn for a moment to the second of the threefold glorifications that are set forth here: God glorified in the Son of Man.

The mystery deepens as we advance. That God should be glorified in a man is not strange, but that He should be so glorified in the eminent and special fashion which Jesus contemplates here, is strange; and stranger still when we think that the act in which He was to be glorified was the death of an innocent Man. If God, in any special and eminent manner, is glorified in the Cross of Jesus Christ, that implies, as it seems to me, two things at all events-many more which I have not time to touch upon, but two things very plainly. One is that ‘God was in Christ,’ in some singular and eminent manner. If all His life was a continual manifestation of the divine character, if Christ’s words were the divine wisdom, if Christ’s compassion was the divine pity, if Christ’s lowliness was the divine gentleness, if His whole human life and nature were the brightest and clearest manifestation to the world of what God is, we can understand that the Cross was the highest point of the revelation of the divine nature to the world, and so was the glorifying of God in Him. But if we take any lower view of the relation between God and Christ, I know not how we can acquit these words of our Master of the charge of being a world too wide for the facts of the case.

The words involve, as it seems to me, not only that idea of a close, unique union and indwelling of God in Christ, but they involve also this other: that these sufferings bore no relation to the deserts of the person who endured them. If Christ, with His pure and perfect character-the innocency and nobleness of which all that read the Gospels admit-if Christ suffered so; if the highest virtue that was ever seen in this world brought no better wages than shame and spitting and the Cross; if Christ’s life and Christ’s death are simply a typical example of the world’s treatment of its greatest benefactors; then, if they have any bearing at all on the character of God, they cast a shadow rather than a light upon the divine government, and become not the least formidable of the difficulties and knots that will have to be untied hereafter before it shall be clear that God did everything well. But if we can say, ‘He hath borne our griefs and carried our sorrows’; if we can say, ‘God was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself’; if we can say, that His death was the death of Him whom God had appointed to live and die for us, and ‘to bear our sins in His own body on the tree,’ then, though deep mysteries come with the thought, still we can see that, in a very unique manner, God is glorified and exalted in His death.

For if the dying Christ be the Son of God dying for us, then the Cross glorifies God, because it teaches us that the glory of the divine character is the divine love. Of wisdom, or of power, or of any of the more ‘majestic’ attributes of the divine nature, that weak Man, hanging dying on the Cross, was a strange embodiment; but if the very heart of the divine brightness be the pure white fire of love; if there be nothing diviner in God than His giving of Himself to His creatures; if the highest glory of the divine nature be to pity and to bestow, then the Cross upon which Christ died towers above all other revelations as the most awful, the most sacred, the most tender, the most complete, the most heart-touching, the most soul-subduing manifestation of the divine nature; and stars and worlds, and angels and mighty creatures, and things in the heights and things in the depths, to each of which have been entrusted some broken syllables of the divine character to make known to the world, dwindle and fade before the brightness, the lambent, gentle brightness that beams out from the Cross of Christ, which proclaims-God is love, is pity, is pardon.

And is it not so-is it not so? Is not the thought that has flowed from Christ’s Cross through Christendom of what our Father in Heaven is, the highest and the most blessed that the world has ever had? Has it not scattered doubts that lay like mountains of ice upon man’s heart? Has it not swept the heavens clear of clouds that wrapped it in darkness? Has it not delivered men from the dreams of gods angry, gods capricious, gods vengeful, gods indifferent, gods simply mighty and vast and awful and unspeakable? Has it not taught us that love is God, and God is love; and so brought to the whole world the true Gospel, the Gospel of the grace of God? In that Cross the Father is glorified.

III. Now, lastly, we have here the Son of Man glorified in the Father.

The mysteries and the paradoxes seem to deepen as we advance. ‘If God be glorified in Him, God shall also glorify Him in Himself, and shall straightway glorify Him.’ Do these words sound to you as if they expressed no more than the confidence of a good man, who, when he was dying, believed that he would be accepted of a loving Father, and would be at rest from his sufferings? To me they seem to say infinitely more than that. ‘He shall also glorify Him in Himself.’ Mark that ‘in Himself.’ That is the obvious antithesis to what has been spoken about in the previous clause, a glorifying which consisted in a manifestation to the external universe, whereas this is a glorifying within the depths of the divine nature. And the best commentary upon it is our Lord’s own words: ‘Father! glorify Thou Me with the glory which I had with Thee before the world was.’ We get a glimpse, as it were, into the very centre of the brightness of God; and there, walking in that beneficent furnace, we see ‘One like unto the Son of Man.’ Christ anticipates that, in some profound and unspeakable sense, He shall, as it were, be caught up into the divinity, and shall dwell, as indeed He did dwell from the beginning, ‘in the bosom of the Father.’ ‘He shall glorify Him in Himself.’

But then mark, still further, that this reception into the bosom of the Father is given to the Son of Man. That is to say, the Man Christ Jesus, the Son of Mary, the Brother of us all, ‘bone of our bone and flesh of our flesh,’ the very Person that walked upon earth and dwelt amongst us is taken up into the heart of God, and in His manhood enters into that same glory, which, from the beginning, the Eternal Word had with God.

And still further, not only have we here set forth, in most wondrous language, the reception and incorporation, if we may use such words, into the very centre of divinity, as granted to the Son of Man, but we have that glorifying set forth as commencing immediately upon the completion of God’s glorifying by Christ upon the Cross. ‘He shall straightway glorify Him.’ At the instant then, that He said, ‘It is finished,’ and all that the Cross could do to glorify God was done, at that instant there began, with not a pin-point of interval between them, God’s glorifying of the Son in Himself. It began in that Paradise into which we know that upon that day He entered. It was manifested to the world when He ‘raised Him from the dead and gave Him glory.’ It reached a still higher point when ‘they brought Him near unto the Ancient of Days,’ and ascending up on high, a dominion and a throne and a glory were given to Him which last now, whilst the Son of Man sits in the heavens on the throne of His glory, wielding the attributes of divinity, and administering the laws of the universe and the mysteries of providence. It shall rise to its highest manifestation before an assembled world, when He ‘shall come in His glory, and before Him shall be gathered all nations.’

This, then, was the vision that lay before the Christ in that upper room, the vision of Himself glorified in His extreme shame, because His Cross manifested His love and His saving power; of God glorified in Him above all other of His acts of manifestation when He died on the Cross, and revealed the very heart of God; and of Himself glorified in the Father when, exalted high above all creatures, He sitteth upon the Father’s throne and rules the Father’s realm.

And yet from that high, and, to us, inaccessible and all but inconceivable summit of His elevation, He looks down ready to bless each poor creature here, toiling and moiling amidst sufferings, and meannesses, and commonplaces, and monotony, if we will only put our trust in Him, and love Him, and see the brightness of the Father’s face in Him. He cares for us all; and if we will but take Him as our Saviour, His all-prevalent prayer, presented within the veil for us, will certainly be fulfilled at last: ‘Father, I will that they also whom Thou hast given Me may be with Me where I am, that they may behold My glory.’

Benson Commentary

John 13:31-32. When he was gone out — Having quitted the place in a mixture of rage and confusion, as being marked out both by Christ’s actions and words; Jesus said — To the rest of the disciples, as they sat at the table with him; Now — While I speak this; is the Son of man glorified — Or, is just on the point of being glorified; and God is glorified in him — Or, is about to be immediately glorified by the signal and extraordinary circumstances of his abasement and exaltation. And if God be glorified, &c. — Or, as ει ο θεος εδοξασθη may be rendered, seeing God is glorified in him; God shall also glorify him, &c. — That is, Seeing that he has already done great honour to God by the past actions of his life, and is about to honour him yet further by his sufferings and death, which will display the divine perfections, particularly God’s infinite love to men, in the most astonishing and amiable light; he is, in his turn, to receive glory from God; meaning, that in his human nature he was to be exalted to the highest dignity and power, or, as he himself expresses it, (Matthew 28:18,) to all power, or authority, in heaven and in earth; and that his mission from God was immediately to be supported by irrefragable attestations.

Matthew Henry's Concise Commentary

13:31-35 Christ had been glorified in many miracles he wrought, yet he speaks of his being glorified now in his sufferings, as if that were more than all his other glories in his humbled state. Satisfaction was thereby made for the wrong done to God by the sin of man. We cannot now follow our Lord to his heavenly happiness, but if we truly believe in him, we shall follow him hereafter; meanwhile we must wait his time, and do his work. Before Christ left the disciples, he would give them a new commandment. They were to love each other for Christ's sake, and according to his example, seeking what might benefit others, and promoting the cause of the gospel, as one body, animated by one soul. But this commandment still appears new to many professors. Men in general notice any of Christ's words rather than these. By this it appears, that if the followers of Christ do not show love one to another, they give cause to suspect their sincerity.

Barnes' Notes on the Bible

Now is the Son of man glorified - The last deed is done that was necessary to secure the death of the Son of man, the glory that shall result to him from that death, the wonderful success of the gospel, the exaltation of the Messiah, and the public and striking attestation of God to him in the view of the universe. See the notes at John 12:32.

Jamieson-Fausset-Brown Bible Commentary

Joh 13:31-38. Discourse after the Traitor's Departure—Peter's Self-Confidence—His Fall Predicted.

31. when he was gone out, Jesus said, Now is the Son of man glorified—These remarkable words plainly imply that up to this moment our Lord had spoken under a painful restraint, the presence of a traitor within the little circle of His holiest fellowship on earth preventing the free and full outpouring of His heart; as is evident, indeed, from those oft-recurring clauses, "Ye are not all clean," "I speak not of you all," &c. "Now" the restraint is removed, and the embankment which kept in the mighty volume of living waters having broken down, they burst forth in a torrent which only ceases on His leaving the supper room and entering on the next stage of His great work—the scene in the Garden. But with what words is the silence first broken on the departure of Judas? By no reflections on the traitor, and, what is still more wonderful, by no reference to the dread character of His own approaching sufferings. He does not even name them, save by announcing, as with a burst of triumph, that the hour of His glory has arrived! And what is very remarkable, in five brief clauses He repeats this word "glorify" five times, as if to His view a coruscation of glories played at that moment about the Cross. (See on [1848]Joh 12:23).

God is glorified in him—the glory of Each reaching its zenith in the Death of the Cross!

Matthew Poole's Commentary

He speaketh of that which was presently to be, as if it were already done; the meaning is, Now the time cometh when the Son of man shall immediately be glorified, by finishing the work which God hath given him to do; by rising again from the dead, and declaring himself to be the Son of God with power; by ascending up into heaven, to be glorified with the same glory which he had with the Father before the world began: and God will appear to be glorified in him, by his finishing the work which God hath given him to do, manifesting his name to the sons of men; and by the many signs and wonders which God will yet further show at the time of his death and resurrection, and by the coming down of the Holy Ghost.

Gill's Exposition of the Entire Bible

Therefore, when he was gone out, Jesus said,.... Christ and his true disciples being together alone, he used a greater freedom of conversation with them, and entered into some discourse about his sufferings and death; with a view to give them some instructions about their future conduct and behaviour, and in order to support them under the loss of his presence; and tells them in the first place, that

now is the son of man glorified: by "the son of man", he means himself; a phrase he often uses, when speaking of himself; this was a title the Messiah went by in prophecy; was true in fact of Jesus, who was the son of Abraham, and the son of David, and expresses the truth of his humanity; and he the rather chooses to use it now, because he is speaking of a glorification, which he in his divine nature was incapable of, and which regards either time past, present, or to come: the meaning may be, either that he had been already glorified by his doctrines and miracles; or that he was now glorified, by discovering the traitor, before he made one single overt act towards betraying him; or that in a very short time he should be glorified, meaning at his death; see John 17:1. But how was he then glorified, when it was an accursed one, and attended with so much ignominy and reproach? he was then glorified by his Father, who supported him in it, and carried him through it; so as that he conquered all his enemies, and obtained eternal salvation for his people: moreover, the death of Christ was not only his way to glory, but was attended with many wonderful and surprising events; as the darkness, the earthquake, the rending of the rocks, and vails of the temple, and the like; and it was also glorious in the eyes of his Father, because hereby his purposes were accomplished, his covenant transactions brought about, his law and justice were satisfied, and the salvation of his people finished:

and God is glorified in him. The glory of God was great, in the salvation of his elect by the death of Christ; for hereby his wisdom and power, his truth and faithfulness, his justice and holiness, as well as his love, grace, and mercy, were glorified.

Geneva Study Bible

{3} Therefore, when he was gone out, Jesus said, {g} Now is the Son of man glorified, and God is glorified in him.

(3) We have to see the glorifying of Christ in his dishonour.

(g) This verse and the one following are a most plain and evident testimony to the divinity of Christ.

EXEGETICAL (ORIGINAL LANGUAGES)

Meyer's NT Commentary

John 13:31-32. Νῦν ἐδοξάσθη, κ.τ.λ.] The traitor is gone, and thereupon the heart of the Lord, which has become freer and more at ease, outflows first as in an anticipation of triumph. In view, namely, of the near and certain end, He sees in His death, as though He had already undergone it, His life-work as accomplished, and Himself thereby glorified, and in this His glorification the glory of God, who completes His work in the work of the Son. The δόξα intended by Jesus is accordingly not that which is contained for Him in the feet-washing and in the departure of Judas, which would not correspond to the sublime and victorious nature of this moment (against Godet). But neither, again, is it the heavenly glory (Luthardt); for to this the future δοξάσει, John 13:32, first refers, and this change of tense possesses a determinative force. Rather does the ἐδοξάσθη denote the actual δόξα, which lies in the fact, and of which the manifestation has begun, that now at length His earthly work of salvation is brought to a state of completion, the task appointed to the Son by the Father is discharged. It is the glory of His death, the splendour of His τετέλεσται, which He contemplates, feels, declares as already begun.

ἐν αὐτῷ] in Him, in His person, so far as it has been glorified.

John 13:32 has a climactic relation to John 13:31, passing from the δόξα, which He has on the threshold of death, to the heavenly glory, which from this time God will secure to Him (hence the future δοξάσει).

εἰ ὁ θεὸς ἐδοξ. ἐν ἑαυτῷ] Solemn repetition, in order to subjoin a further thought.

ἐν ἑαυτῷ] To be referred to the subject, not, with Ewald, to Christ: in Himself, corresponding, as recompense, to the ἐν αὐτῷ. He will be so glorified by God, that His heavenly glory will be contained in God’s own peculiar δόξα; His glory will be none other than the divine glory itself, completed in God Himself (comp. Colossians 3:3) through the return into the fellowship of God out of which He had come forth, and had been made man. Comp. John 17:4-5.

The first καί, John 13:32, is the also of the corresponding relation (on the other hand, again); and the second: and that (Hartung, Partikell. I. p. 145). On the idea of the recompense, comp. John 17:4-5; Php 2:9.

εὐθύς] straightway; for how immediately near is this blessed goal towards which my death is the departure!

Expositor's Greek Testament

John 13:31. Ὄτε οὖν ἐξῆλθεν. As soon as Judas had gone out, the spirit of Jesus rose, and with a note of triumph He explains the situation to the disciples. Two points He emphasises: His work is done, and He must leave them. The former He announces in the words Νῦν ἐδοξάσθη … αὐτῷ. “This ‘now’ with which the Lord turns to the faithful eleven, expresses at once the feeling of deliverance from the traitor’s presence and His free acceptance of the issues of the traitor’s work.” Westcott. ἐδοξάσθη the aorist is used because the traitor is considered to have “as it were already completed his deed”. Winer, p. 346. The Son of Man is “glorified” by accomplishing the work of His life by being accepted as the manifestation of God, and by being acknowledged by the Father as having revealed Him; see John 17:1; John 17:4-5, John 12:23, John 11:4. Cf. Milligan’s Ascension of our Lord, p. 79.

John 13:31 to John 14:31 comprise one continuous conversation, introduced by Jesus’ announcement (John 13:31-35) of His speedy departure.

Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges

31. Therefore, when he was gone out] Indicating that the presence of Judas had acted as a constraint, but also that he had gone of his own will: there was no casting out of the faithless disciple (John 9:34).

Now] With solemn exultation: the beginning of the end has come.

the Son of man] See on John 1:51.

glorified] In finishing the work which the Father gave Him to do (John 17:4); and thus God is glorified in Him.

John 13:31 to John 15:27. Christ’s Love in keeping His own

31–35. Jesus, freed from the oppressive presence of the traitor, bursts out into a declaration that the glorification of the Son of Man has begun. Judas is already beginning that series of events which will end in sending Him away from them to the Father; therefore they must continue on earth the kingdom which He has begun—the reign of Love.

This section forms the first portion of those parting words of heavenly meaning which were spoken to the faithful eleven in the last moments before His Passion. At first the discourse takes the form of dialogue, which lasts almost to the end of chap. 14. Then they rise from the table, and the words of Christ become more sustained, while the disciples remain silent with the exception of John 16:17-18; John 16:29-30. Then follows Christ’s prayer, after which they go forth to the garden of Gethsemane (John 18:1).

Bengel's Gnomen

John 13:31. Λέγει) Jesus saith on the following day, namely, early in the morning of the fifth day of the week (Thursday), with which comp. John 13:1; John 13:38, “Before the feast of the Passover:” whereas the words spoken, John 13:38, were during the Passover, “The cock shall not crow, till thou hast denied Me thrice.” A discourse also beginning abruptly is thus marked: so ch. John 18:26, “One of the servants saith, Did not I see thee,” etc.; with which comp. Luke 22:59.[338] The Lord begins to give utterance to the greatest things which had been revolved in His own heart; and at this place the scene, as it were, is thrown open for the conference, which is continued in the foil. chapters.—νῦν, now) The exact point of time is precisely marked as being in the present. Comp. ch. John 12:27; John 12:31, notes, “Now is My soul troubled.” “Now is the judgment of this world.” This now fixes its own limits: now, saith He, namely, whilst I am speaking these things; although the very time of His speaking is not expressed by the Evangelist, but is left to be gathered from the context. So the word to-morrow is used [the day of speaking being left to be inferred from the context], Exodus 8:10; Exodus 8:20; Exodus 8:29; Exodus 9:5; whereby a reply is given to D. Hauber, Harm. Anm., p. 207. The end of Judas has in itself no connection with this particle. [Although it is an opinion which may with good reason be held, that Judas at that very moment did that which Jesus at John 13:27 had desired him to do quickly, and that the chief priests also then made all their arrangements for seizing on Him.—Harm., p. 497.]—ἐδοξάσθη, is glorified) Jesus regards His passion as a short journey, and rather looks forward to the goal.—ἐν αὐτῷ, in Him) There was passing at the time in the heart of the Lord the thought of something most solid; nor was He merely having regard to the things immediately about to be, but He was having a most inward and vivid realisation and foretaste of them, whilst He was devoting [betaking] Himself wholly to suffering. What Christ gave utterance to at the commencement of the day, is something prior in point of time to that which He afterwards, in the evening, sought from the Father. John 17:1-2, “Glorify Thy Son, that Thy Son also may glorify Thee: as Thou hast given Him power over all flesh, that He should give eternal life to as many as Thou hast given Him.” Let the emphasis of the now be considered, and the difference of the words in [Him], in [Him, in Himself], John 13:31-32, and on [earth], with [Thine own self: with Thee], ch. John 17:4-5.

[338] “About the space of one hour after, another confidently affirmed, saying, Of a truth this fellow also was with Him.” The speech therefore was an abrupt one.—E. and T.

Pulpit Commentary

Verses 31-33. -

(1) The glorification of the Son of man, and of the Father in the Son. With ver. 31 the solemn valedictory discourse of our Lord commences - a veritable evangelium in evangelio, and by the aid of which we come more closely to the heart of Jesus. "Here," as Olshausen says, "we are entering the holy of holies in the Passion-history." We have, indeed, come through the courts of the temple, we have left the courts of the Gentiles, of the women, of the priests behind us, and have been waiting in the holy place of sacrifice and incense and ablution; now we follow our great High Priest to the veil over the holiest of all, and he prepares us to listen to the intercession that he makes before the unveiled majesty of the Father's love. The first section, extending from John 13:31-14:31, reports a series of questions by Peter, Thomas, Philip, Jude, which all turn more or less on the anticipated separation which he teaches them to regard as a veritable glorification of the Son of man, and also as a higher revelation to them of the nature of his own Person and of those relations between "the Son" and "the Father" which are imaged and shadowed forth in those between" the Son of man" and "God," which they could more readily understand. This prepares the way for the discourse and prayer which followed, in which the future spiritual union between the victorious Lord and his own disciples, between a sanctified humanity and the eternal Godhead, is exhibited, distinguished by wonderful blending of intuitive insight and supernatural revelation. The discourse is consistent with the stupendous conception which the evangelist had formed of the Person of Christ. Hilgenfeld and ethers regard this address as utterly incompatible with the valedictory discourses of Matthew 24, 25, and Mark 13. We have already seen that they are but different aspects of the same mysterious and wonderful Personage; that the synoptists are not silent concerning the spiritual presence of Christ in and with his disciples till the end of the world; and, on the other hand, that the fourth evangelist is perfectly alive to the reality of his kingdom in the world and to the true nature of his second coming. (On the historical character of this discourse, see Introduction, pp. 126, 127.) Verses 31, 32. - (The οϋν is not omitted by T.R. or Westcott and Holt. It stands on great authority. The different punctuation of Stephens, νὺξ ὅτε ἐξήλθε, dispensed with the οϋν; but this arrangement is not followed by modern editors.) When therefore he (Judas) was gone out, and the Lord was left with his trembling but faithful eleven, his heart yearned over them without reserve or exception, and he speaks as though his Passion had begun, and even ended too. Jesus saith, Now is the Son of man glorified, and God is glorified in him. The aorist ἐδοξάσθη suggests more than "is glorified." Bengel says, "Jesus passionem ut breve iter spectatet metam potius prospicit." As Son of man, he has secured the highest glory of the most tender, humiliating self sacrifice, has cast out of the covenanted fellowship the hateful, baneful virus of a carnal triumph. To his eye as Son of man the end is secured, just as in John 17:10 he says, "I have been glorified in them." The thought is certainly complete without the clause appended in T.R., which simply reiterates the last clause, in order to make it the basis of a further thought: God will glorify him in (himself), if his suffering and sacrificed humanity has been the scene and material of a glory given to God, because a new manifestation of the Divine fullness in humanity; that is the reason why his very humanity will be lifted up into the Divine glory, itself becoming one with it, exalted far above these heavens, that he might fill all things. Elsewhere we read that "Christ is hidden in God" (Colossians 3:3; Acts 3:21). All his earthly sufferings will now be seen to be a forth-streaming of Divine love, the fullest revelation of the innermost essence of God (cf. Isaiah 42:1). Godet says, "When God has been glorified by a being, he draws him to his bosom and envelops him in his glory." This expression scarcely sustains the sublime uniqueness of the glory of God in the Son of man, and the glory of the Son of man in God. The words, and will straightway glorify him show how imminent was the glorification which is consummated by the new meaning put into death, and into all that leads to it and into the sacrifice involved in it. That "straightway glorify him" is a note of triumph, and this while Judas is completing his bargain (cf. the παρὰ σοί with ἐν ἑαυτῷ of this verse; cf. John 17:5). John 13:31

Vincent's Word Studies

Now

Marking a crisis, at which Jesus is relieved of the presence of the traitor, and accepts the consequences of his treachery.

Is - glorified (ἐδοξάσθη)

Literally, was glorified. The aorist points to the withdrawal of Judas. Jesus was glorified through death, and His fate was sealed (humanly speaking) by Judas' going out. He speaks of the death and consequent glorification as already accomplished.