Jesus’ Hour in John

In a recent sermon out of John 2:1-12, one of the striking phrases Jesus uses is that “My hour is not yet come.” (John 2:4, NASB). One of the powerful features of Logos is to do a Bible Word Study on any word within the text and narrow it down to a genre, range of books or even a singular book within the Bible. When I ran a search on ὥρα in John’s gospel I discovered John using this word in 25 verses and a a theme began to emerge with a sharp division in chapter 12. 

From John 1-11, John’s usage of the word hour is in the context of Jesus’ time not coming yet. There’s “an hour coming” or “my hour has not yet come.” However, in John 12:23 Jesus says, “The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified.” With a powerful search like this, I discovered how John might want his gospel to be read. 1-11 is leading to the cross, with miracles along the way. 12-19 could be His passion narrative and 20-21 takes readers to his ascension.

In sermon prep, I get a better idea of how John wants me to understand his metanarrative.

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