After Jesus said this, he looked toward heaven and prayed: “Father, the hour has come. Glorify your Son, that your Son may glorify you. [John 17:1 NIV] [Other translations say 'the time has come.'
[Photo by Timo C. Dinger on Unsplash]
When Jesus used the term 'hour,' he was not using the word in the sense that we tend to use it meaning a period of 60 minutes. It refers to the time of his crucifixion when Jesus would die for the sins of a guilty world. John's Gospel clearly demonstrates that the events of Jesus' life were following the divinely ordained calendar. The death of Jesus was the apex of this divine plan. We often emphasise the importance of his death from the human perspective - man's future destiny depends entirely on the atoning death of God's own Son. In other words, we humans needed someone to take our place and bear God's punishment on sins, if we are going to avoid eternal punishment. But, from the divine perspective, the cross was absolutely essential. This was the only way that sinful human beings could have sins forgiven and be reconciled to God. God is holy and cannot ignore sin. It was impossible for God to forgive any sinners without lowering his standard of holiness - apart from the sinless Son of God taking the place of the sinner and taking the punishment which we deserved.
The death of Christ on a Roman cross was not an accident or a chance event. The whole plan of salvation for the human race involved the Son of God being born as a human being so that he would die at the appointed time. It may have seemed to those who were alive at the time that this man from Galilee by the name of Jesus of Nazareth had fallen foul of his enemies and that this had resulted in his violent death. This was an age when capital punishment was carried out swiftly and mercilessly. There were many Jews who found themselves on the wrong side of the occupying Roman army who were brutal in their suppression of protests and discontent. So the death of a rabbi from Galilee who offended the religious authorities was seen in that context. But from heaven's perspective, this death was the key element in the divine plan of salvation for the human race. This was to redeem the human race from the effects of sin.
John, the writer of the fourth Gospel, places a considerable emphasis on this important timing of events in the earthly life of Jesus. At the wedding in Cana of Galilee when Mary, the mother of Jesus told him that they had run out of wine, he replied to her that 'his hour had not yet come.' This is a difficult verse to interpret but it shows that Jesus was aware that all the events of his earthly life were directed according to the divine plan. Even though John records the increasing opposition to Jesus, he makes it clear that they were helpless to arrest him because it was not the appointed time in the divine calendar.
At this they tried to seize him, but no one laid a hand on him, because his hour had not yet come. [John 7:30 NIV]
There is an important milestone recorded at the beginning of chapter 13 when Jesus knew that this appointed time was imminent. John links this to the Jewish Passover Feast when Jesus would become the Passover Lamb - the Lamb of God that takes away the sin of the world
It was just before the Passover Festival. Jesus knew that the hour had come for him to leave this world and go to the Father. Having loved his own who were in the world, he loved them to the end. [John 13:1 NIV]
The Son of God lived every day according to the plan which had been devised in eternity long before sin had come into the world. He was not following his own plan for his life nor being influenced by his own desires or needs. The incident in the Garden of Gethsemane clearly demonstrates the willingness of the Son of God to submit to the will of the Father even though it meant suffering and anguish. (see Luke 22: 39-46 - especially verse 42)
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