Charles Spurgeon Commentary John 12:30-31

"Jesus answered and said, This voice hath not come for my sake, but for your sakes. Now is the judgment of this world: now shall the prince of this world be cast out." — John 12:30-31 (ASV)

Jesus answered and said, This voice came not because of me, but for your sakes. Now is the judgment of this world: now shall the prince of this world be cast out.

Satan may have thought that he had triumphed when Christ was crucified, but that death upon the cross was the death-blow to the devil's usurpation.

Jesus answered and said, This voice came not because of me, but for your sakes. Now is the judgment of this world; now shall the prince of this world be cast out.

See how the eye of faith reads things differently from the eye of sense. You and I would have said, "Now is Christ coming to his lowest point. Now is his name to be cast out from among men, and his cause to be crushed as the result of his death." But Christ reads the signs of the times very differently. "Now," he says, "in the hour of my shame, and suffering, and death, is the judgment of this world: now shall the prince of this world be cast out." It was only by Christ being apparently conquered that Satan could be really vanquished, and there is often no way of victory for a saint except through defeat. When self is slain, then do we truly live.

Jesus answered and said, This voice came not because of me but for your sakes. Now is the judgment of this world: now shall the prince of this world be cast out.

The old Roman empire seemed to stand as firm as the eternal hills, but God had come to judge the whole state of affairs as it was then in the world. And since Christ, the pure and perfect Son of God, was condemned to die, that action condemned the society of that period. Indeed, the whole of the ungodly world, by taking its part in crucifying Christ, bore evidence against itself, and pronounced sentence upon itself as being guilty of the death of the Christ of God.

Now shall the prince of this world be cast out. The overthrow of the usurper began from that time, and that overthrow of the devil is still going on. And, blessed be God, it will reach its completion someday, and we will yet rejoice in a new heaven, and a new earth, on which the trail of the serpent will never be traced.