Then comes Jesus’ faithful open offer of Himself in kingly fashion to the nation, with the tremendous enthusiasm of the multitudes, and the hardening of the official purpose to do the one thing that will offset this wild-fire enthusiasm.[44]

And then comes the apparently simple, but in meaning tremendous, incident of the inquiring Greeks.  The Jew door is slamming shut, but the outside door is opening.  Here the whole world opens its door, its front door, in these Greek representatives of the best culture the earth knew.  But Jesus’ vision never blurs.  He understands; He alone.  The only route to Greece and the whole outer world is the underground route, the way through Joseph’s tomb.

And as the intense spirit-struggle passes, Jesus quietly goes on with His searching appealing talk to the crowd, and then slips away into hiding till His hour had full come.[45] And with breaking heart John sadly recalls Isaiah’s wondrous foresight of just these days and events.[46] These are the four incidents in this third chief group.

And so the door shuts.  The wooing ceases.  This bit of John’s story is done.  The evidence is all in.  The case is made up.  The nation’s door to its King shuts.  The Lover’s wooing of the nation ceases.  John turns to a new chapter.  No further evidence is brought forward.  The case rests with the jury.  The door had been shutting for a good while.  The inside door-keepers had been pulling it hard.  But the great Man outside had His hand on the knob delaying the shutting process, in the earnest hope that it yet might be quite stopped.  Now His hand reluctantly loosens its hold.  The knob is free.  The inside pull does its work.  The door goes to with a vigorous slam.

The wooing is not wholly done.  There is still the indirect, the tacit wooing.  There’s still opportunity.  All through that fateful night from Gethsemane’s gate, to the last word at Pilate’s seat the Lover is wooing.  But it is wooing by action, by presence, by yielding.  No pleading word is spoken.  The direct wooing is done.  Tender, earnest, insistent, patient, tremendous, irresistible in itself save to those who willed to resist anything and everything no matter what or whom,—­wondrous wooing it has been.  Now it’s over.  That chapter is done.

Way-marks in John’s Narrative.

Out of this simple running account several things sift themselves, and stand out to our eyes.  The action of the story swings chiefly about Jerusalem.  The other parts seem but background to make Jerusalem stand out big.  In this John’s Gospel differs radically from the other three.  They are absorbed chiefly with the tireless gracious Galilean ministry of Jesus, till the last great events force them to Jerusalem.