John 10:23 Commentary and Bible Study

Christ either presents himself again, having been living quietly or re-enters Jerusalem, and walks in the temple in Solomon’s porch. Jerusalem was a crowded city. He had been preaching in it two months before, when there had been four separately recorded attempts on his life. And yet, each time he walked through the midst of his would-be assailants, or those who would have seized him, or those who by way of tokenism had taken up stones from where there was rebuilding in the temple, so that he could be arrested and bundled out of the city, and they could stone him outside. Each time he had passed through their midst unharmed. By some exertion of his own power, or some mysterious disabling on the part of Almighty God of his opponents, always he was kept safe, because the time for his crucifixion in the plan of God had not yet arrived. And yet he returned, and you find him here walking in the temple, in Solomon’s porch which was just on the east side, a long colonnade on the east side of the court of women. He took advantage of the great crowd in Jerusalem, and that is why he now reveals himself to preach and to speak. This would be the last feast of dedication before the crucifixion of Christ and, at such a time, Christ appears with a solemn message, with a warning. He cannot let the city bubble over in frivolous and superficial rejoicing when it is in such a serious predicament. In just a few decades in AD 70 the judgement of God will fall, and the Roman forces will surround Jerusalem, and the city and the temple will be sacked and destroyed, and its ministry terminated, and its privileges and blessing withdrawn. Christ therefore goes in the midst of a place of gaiety and celebration to bring realism and some seriousness.