*note the parallel references to Isaiah that tell the fuller story of “faith” in light of the exile and the hoped for messianic expectation. Taken together, verses 37-39 don’t refer to some predetermined election to salvation and damination, belief and unbelief. In both Isaiah and John these words are speaking into a present state of exile to note a percieved resistance to trusting in the work of God to be faithful to the promise. Resistance here doesn’t come from a people wanting to do horrible things, as the Pharisees are often caricatured to be. In the fuller picture of Isaiah unbelief of some percieved reprobate doesn’t become necessary to the belief of some elected remnant, it is simply the present backdrop through which God’s saving work becomes actualized and made known to the world in the whole of creation. Likewise in John, who brings this picture to fruition in Jesus by way of a Gospel that is all about connecting signs to a promised fulfillment.
The saving work here is not the saving work of some “individuals” over and against other “individuals. That misses the larger picture that this passage is tumbling towards with Isaiahs expectant messianic hope in view- Jesus. We are not the culmination of a saving work that becomes hope for the world, Jesus is:
37 Even after Jesus had performed so many signs in their presence, they still would not believe in him. 38 This was to fulfill the word of Isaiah the prophet: “Lord, who has believed our message and to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed?” 39 For this reason they could not believe, because, as Isaiah says elsewhere:
40 “He has blinded their eyes and hardened their hearts, so they can neither see with their eyes, nor understand with their hearts, nor turn—and I would heal them.” 41 Isaiah said this because he saw Jesus’ glory and spoke about him. 42 Yet at the same time many even among the leaders believed in him. But because of the Pharisees they would not openly acknowledge their faith for fear they would be put out of the synagogue; 43 for they loved human praise more than praise from God. Jesus’ Observations about Faith 44 Then Jesus cried out, “Whoever believes in me does not believe in me only, but in the one who sent me. 45 The one who looks at me is seeing the one who sent me. 46 I have come into the world as a light, so that no one who believes in me should stay in darkness.
47 “If anyone hears my words but does not keep them, I do not judge that person. For I did not come to judge the world, but to save the world. 48 There is a judge for the one who rejects me and does not accept my words; the very words I have spoken will condemn them at the last day. 49 For I did not speak on my own, but the Father who sent me commanded me to say all that I have spoken. 50 I know that his command leads to eternal life. So whatever I say is just what the Father has told me to say.”
-John 12:37-50
From Scott McKnight commentary:
John’s Gospel was written so people would believe in Jesus as God’s Son and Messiah (20:30–31)… John begins to explain that lack of faith by working with two passages from Isaiah, the first from 53:1 and the second from 6:10.
Isaiah’s experience of his contemporaries not trusting his prophetic words anticipates how the leaders of Jerusalem respond to Jesus’ mighty signs (John 12:38). Isaiah extolled the glories of the “good news” that “Your God reigns!” (52:7) because God will redeem Israel, but when God’s Messiah enters Jerusalem, the leaders do not embrace the Messiah. They reject him.
Second, John appeals to a correspondence between divine purpose and human response in John 12:39–41 by turning all the way back in his Bible to Isaiah 6. There the prophet Isaiah was given a vision of “the Lord, high and exalted, seated on a throne” surrounded by “seraphim” and, after confessing his own unworthiness to glimpse the throne room of God, he is sent to tell the people of God—notice that—their response would be dull and inadequate until “the cities lie ruined” (because of exile). But he turns at the end of Isaiah 6 to announce there will still be life in the stumps that remain. Their condition of unbelief would end with belief.
“God intends persistent unbelief to lead to decisive judgment, consequent repentance, and ultimate deliverance” (Quast, John, 92). Too many forget the context of Isaiah 6 and see here a brutally unfair god. The Father of Jesus, however, would never hold someone responsible for unbelief if he both determined and caused unbelief. Never. John is here suggesting the unbelief of these leaders will someday be turned into faith…
“many even among the leaders believed in him” (12:42), indicating another dimension of faith: humans remain responsible. Sadly, John continues, these leaders who do believe in Jesus would not declare their allegiance to Jesus because of the social pressure put on them by the “Pharisees”—and John says they “loved human praise more than praise from God” (12:43). Perhaps we need to give some grace by remembering that faith is a journey, and they were just beginning.
The Stories of my Life 