Bible Study series: John 7:25-31. He puzzled the people of Jerusalem. Some wanted to seize him; others believed him him.
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For the Greek text, click here:
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In this post, links are provided for further study.
Let’s begin.
Scriptures: John 7:25-31
25 So some of the Jerusalemites were saying, “Isn’t this the man whom they are seeking to kill? 26 Look! He is speaking publicly and they say nothing to him. Could it be that the rulers truly learned that this man is the Christ? 27 But we know this man and where he is from. Yet when the Christ comes, no one know where he is from.” 28 Then Jesus cried out in the temple and was teaching, saying, “You know me, and you know where I am from! I have not come on my own, but the one who sent me is true, whom you do not know! 29 I know him, because I am from him, and he sent me!”
30 So they were seeking to seize him, yet no one put their hands on them because his hour had not yet come. 31 But many in the crowds believed in him and were saying, “Whenever the Christ may come, he will do no more signs than this one does, will he?” (John 7:25-31)
Comments:
25-26:
The discussion shifts from Sabbath keeping and legalism to the identity of who Jesus is. The rulers of Jerusalem were allowing him to teach publicly in the temple. Maybe the rulers have learned that this man is the Messiah! Maybe new information has come to the Jerusalem establishment that confirmed he is the Messiah, after all, and the establishment truly knows this. If they did not believe this, why would they allow him to speak so openly? They allowed him to speak openly, in the temple, no less; therefore, they must believe that he is the Messiah!
What does the term Christ or Messiah mean? The term means the Anointed One. In Hebrew it is Messiah, and in Greek it is Christ. It means that the Father through the Spirit equipped Jesus with his special calling and the fulness of power to preach and minister to people, healing their diseases and expelling demons (though demon expulsion is not mentioned in John’s Gospel). The Messiah / Christ ushered in the kingdom of God by kingdom preaching and kingdom works.
3. Titles of Jesus: The Son of David and the Messiah
The rulers were probably members of the Sanhedrin, the highest court and council in Judaism.
Quick Reference to Jewish Groups in Gospels and Acts
27:
Popular belief said that the Messiah would remain hidden, and one belief said that the Messiah himself would not even know whether he was the Messiah (Bruce, comment on vv. 25-27). John is using irony here. Irony means people believe that they know something, but in reality they do not know as much as they thought they did. Comical example: Col. Klink, in the 1960’s and 1970’s sitcom Hogan’s Heroes, boasted all the time that there had never been a successful escape from his Stalag, but the prisoners had tunnels going all over the place and left and came almost at will. He thought he knew more than he actually did.
Biblical example: Job and his friends thought they knew more about God and his ways than they actually did. God had to show up and instruct them that they did not know as much as they had thought.
In this verse, the people thought that he came from Nazareth and Galilee, and this is true, but Jesus is about to proclaim that he comes from the Father. Their perspective was limited, so they thought they knew more than they really did. They were largely ignorant—they were confident in their ignorance. Ignorance + arrogance = irony of the worst kind. Ignorance + arrogance + political power = lethal irony.
There is no need to try to explicate the messianic assumptions of the Jerusalemites or first-century Jews in general, for the point of contrast is not between one expectation versus another but between heaven and earth itself. The reverberations of the prologue [John 1:1-18] are crying out to the reader, who is well aware that Jesus is the Word-become-flesh, the light of humanity, the ‘one from above,’ who was ‘in the beginning’ with God. The cosmological identity of Jesus, so visible to the reader, remains completely veiled to the Jerusalemites. (Klink, comment on v. 27)
Wow. Excellent.
“Christ”: see v. 26 for more comments.
28-29:
Now Jesus corrects them, so some translations put a question mark at the end of v. 28. “Do you both know me and where I am from?” Then we can expand the translation: “You think so? Maybe you don’t know as much as you think!” He comes from the one who sent him, and the one who sent him is the Father. Jesus knows him, but they do not know him. They think they know God by the intermediary of the law, the law itself, but they are shortsighted. Jesus himself comes from God and knows him to the fullest extent.
“The same decision faced by the Jews meets today’s reader as well. Wherever the gospel is proclaimed, people must decide whether to believe that Jesus is who he says he is or to reject his claim as sheer nonsense. There is no middle ground” (Mounce, comment on v. 29).
30:
It was not the right time for him to be arrested or put their hands on him and then to crucify him. It was more than just his trial and crucifixion, but also his departure from the world and return to the Father (John 13:1). God will not allow people to take you down too soon. Jesus was following the Father perfectly. The timing belongs to God.
As I noted in my comment on John 6:15, Jesus was not fearful about their plans because he trusted in God. This idea parallels a scene in Luke’s Gospel:
29 They got up and drove him out of the town and led him up to the edge of the hill on which their town had been built, to throw him off. 30 But he passed through the middle of them and left. (Luke 4:29-30)
In those two verses in Luke, they intended to seize him by force to throw him off a high point. But he miraculously walked through them, as if he had a divine hedge of protection surrounding him and keeping them away. The Father was not going to allow his Son to be subjected to the people’s will and plans.
“Jesus has just made clear that the people do not know God; the narrator [John the writer] makes clear that the people cannot stop God” (Klink, comment on v. 30).
31:
Many in the crowd believed that in him. True acronym spelling out F A I T H
Forsaking All, I Trust Him.
Their faith seemed to be deeper than a shallow intellectual belief. However, the crowds are unstable. In vv. 3-5, I listed the signs of the Messiah, and Jesus was accomplishing them. So many of the crowds drew the right conclusion: how could the Messiah do many other powerful signs or miracles than Jesus is doing? No one could. Therefore, he is the Messiah, and therefore I believe in him.
GrowApp for John 7:25-31
1. What convinced you that Jesus could become your personal Messiah?
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12. Eyewitness Testimony in John’s Gospel
4. Church Fathers and John’s Gospel
3. Archaeology and John’s Gospel
SOURCES
For the bibliography, click on this link and scroll down to the very bottom:
Dr. Jim's Essential Bible Teaching 