John 7:28 Commentary and Bible Study

Here we find how the chief priests and the scribes and the Pharisees were trapped in a threefold delusion or self-deception. They thought they were joined to God. They thought they had communion with him, that is one delusion. They thought they had power, power to maintain their system, as it was, and to vanquish Christ. And they also thought they had knowledge of the Scriptures and the law, and they did not have any of these three things.Firstly, they thought they were joined to God, through their works, through the ceremonies. These were of course symbols of redemption, they were signs, teaching aids. But no, they thought that by their meticulous adherence to the laws of worship, they actually effected salvation for them. It is the month of October, the occasion of the feast of tabernacles, the last time that the Lord on earth would experience the feast of tabernacles. He has gone to Jerusalem and he is preaching in the temple. ‘Then cried Jesus in the temple’, and that word ‘cried’ is key to understanding what follows. As he taught, out of the run of his teaching, suddenly comes this resounding exclamation. ‘Ye both know me, and ye know whence I am.’ What Christ says is heavy irony. You cannot make any sense of the passage and the logic of what he says unless you understand this. He effectively says, So you know me, do you?, or, You think you know me, do you? John throughout these chapters is at pains to tell us everywhere else that they do not know him. They did not know his divinity, that he was God. They did not know his mission, his purpose, to suffer and to die for sinners who would be redeemed, to bear away their punishment on Calvary’s cross so as to purchase their salvation for them. They did not know his attributes, his power, otherwise they would not have been thinking they could arrest him, and vanquish him, and put him to death, and end the faith, the Christian faith so easily.However, he then says to them, ‘I am not come of myself’ – I have not come on my own initiative; I have come on the initiative of the Father – ‘but he that sent me is true.’ It is as if he is saying, he that sent me will testify of me. He already has, through the works that I do and the mighty miracles. He will testify of me after I suffer and die on Calvary’s cross. At the resurrection I will be publicly attested and endorsed by the Father. He will be attested by his ascension, he will be attested by the mighty acts he will do through the apostles, imparting to them some of his own healing gifts, and the Holy Spirit, and the salvation of souls. And then of course the Father will attest him in that terrible judgement that will come upon Jerusalem in AD 70 when the Romans will destroy it. And the Father will attest him again when he returns in the general judgement.‘Whom ye know not.’ They did not know the Father. They were not accepted by God. They were not justified and cleansed. They had no notion of sin. The chief priests, the Pharisees and those scribes, they did not understand the exceeding sinfulness of sin, and the depravity of the human heart, and the awfulness of our state, and the impossibility of earning our way into the favour of God by our own works. They did not understand how much and how desperately we need the cleansing and the forgiveness of God, and that Christ must take our punishment for us and suffer in our stead.