5LB24.   Jeremiah 31:31-34.   “The days are coming, says the Lord,” “I will place my law within them and write it upon their hearts; I will be their God and they shall be my people. No longer will they have need to teach their friends and relatives how to know the Lord.” The law that God will place within them is his very presence within them.  The law is God within us making known to us his Will.  Holiness is our love of God and his Will and being obedient to his Will.  Sinfulness is the reverse.

John 12:20-33.  The scene just before is the glorious but humble entry of Jesus into Jerusalem. (Palm Sunday – John 12:12-19) Instead of going to meet the Greek Jews, Jesus chooses the occasion to announce to the world, both Greek and Jewish, his willingness to be sacrificed for the redemption of all humanity.  He chooses to be the grain of wheat that dies and “produces much fruit.”  Jesus serves as a witness and example that willingness to hand over one’s life to God the Father “will preserve it for eternal life.”  To follow Jesus means to offer up one’s life to God as Jesus did.  God’s voice that came from heaven was God’s testimony that God was giving glory to Jesus’ sacrifice on the cross.  God’s presence gloriously shone through in Jesus’s death and resurrection.

Hebrews 5:7-9.  Jesus, “in the reality of the Cross,” “showed himself the Priest, the Altar, and the Lamb of sacrifice.” (Preface V of Easter) “Son though he was, he learned obedience from what he suffered; and when he was made perfect, (in his humanity by being obedient to his Father’s Will) he became the source of eternal salvation for all who obey him.”  “Who, though he was in the form of God, did not regard equality with God something to be grasped. Rather, he emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, coming in human likeness; and found human in appearance, he humbled himself, becoming obedient to death, even death on a cross.  Because of this, God greatly exalted him” that “every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.”  (Philippians 2:6-9, 11)