"20 Now among those who went up to worship at the feast were some Greeks. 21 So these came to Philip, who was from Bethsaida in Galilee, and asked him, “Sir, we wish to see Jesus.” 22 Philip went and told Andrew; Andrew and Philip went and told Jesus. 23 And Jesus answered them, “The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified. 24 Truly, truly, I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit. 25 Whoever loves his life loses it, and whoever hates his life in this world will keep it for eternal life. 26 If anyone serves me, he must follow me; and where I am, there will my servant be also. If anyone serves me, the Father will honour him."
John 12:20-26
It is interesting to see what leads into this reference to the Greeks. In 19, the Pharisees had said, 'Behold the world is gone after Him'. And John sees a deeper fulfilment of these words than they themselves could have realised, in the coming of the Greeks - the Gentiles - to Jesus. But more. If we compare the parallel passages in the other gospels, we see that immediately following the Entry there is recorded the incident of the cleansing of the Temple, and Jesus' quotation from the Old Testament, 'a house of prayer for all nations'. Here, in John, the 'all nations' view of the Temple is beginning to materialise in the coming of the Greeks to Jesus. John is indicating that even in the midst of the crumbling of the old order, the new order is about to emerge, and even then was emerging. Jesus, then, sees in them a symbol of what was to be. The Greeks were of the 'other sheep' which He had (10:16); they were of the 'much fruit' He speaks of in 34. By the words 'the hour is come' (23), Jesus means that the enquiry of the Greeks heralded the proclamation of the gospel to the Gentiles. He sees in their coming the first blade of the coming harvest. But for this, He recognizes that the seed must first be planted in the ground. The death must be gone through before the world-wide ministry can be established. The condition of fruitfulness is death. This is the principle that is enshrined in the well-known words in 24, which we shall look at in detail in tomorrow's Note.