John 12:32

32. If I be lifted up This lifted up is beautifully ambiguous. It is at once the humiliation and the exaltation. It is the shame and the glory. For, lifted on the cross, he is the central object, the divine magnet, attracting by its secret power the spirits of all men unto him. He draws, not drags. He exhibits an element of affinity for all his brethren of the human race. To him they all experience a secret gravitation, which, would they but obey, would make them one with him. Yet they are not pieces of iron but living agents. The magnetic attraction is divinely natural, but not physically necessitating. Its strongest attractions may be rejected; its gentlest drawings may be obeyed. All, of every age and every land, have sufficient to enable them to come, and to render them responsible for the great rejection. “I will draw them unto me; and this means ultimately, away from the earth into heavenly places; yet only through the cross, and, therefore, first of all, to Me on the cross. This is the sense of where I am, John 12:26.” Stier.