Thoughts from John 7

In Chapter 6, John reported Jesus had been teaching in Galilee. As his custom was, though, whenever a high feast day arose Jesus would end up in Jerusalem, and so it is now. Despite the fact that the authorities in Jerusalem have decided to kill Jesus (5:18), the feast of Tabernacles has come and Jesus goes to Jerusalem, but privately (v.10). About the middle of the feast Jesus begins teaching openly in the temple.

The question arises: “How is it that this man has learning, when he has never studied?” (v. 15). The question does not imply that Jesus never went to school. Every boy (and a few of the girls) in ancient Israel knew his grammar and studied the scrolls. Instead, the implication is that he has not been through the recognized higher levels of education as was common among the rabbis of the time. The teachers and scholars of that age did not see, however, that lower levels of schooling prepared one for true knowledge. Indeed, we see their scorn of the common crowds precisely because of ignorance of the law (v. 49) “But this crowd, who do not know the law, are accursed”.

In answer to the question of his teaching authority, and as he has previously, Jesus insists that his learning comes directly from the one who sent him. Two dozen times or so in this gospel we hear Jesus speaking of the one “who sent” him. Jesus presents himself as one who comes not by his own initiative, but as an obedient servant of God, on a mission appointed by God. Indeed, he speaks of someone unknown to his hearers as the one who “apostled” him (vv. 28-29), that is, who sent Jesus as his personal emissary. Jesus has not come here for his pleasure, but he is come for the Father’s pleasure. His whole life is wrapped up in the desires of the Father, not his own.

In the close identification between him and God, his Father, Jesus wants it to be no question in anyone’s mind that he views himself as subordinate to the Father, yes, but to the Father alone.

When his mother (2:4) or even his brothers (7:3) present their plans for him, he points out that he operates not on anyone else’s time schedule, not even his own, but on the schedule of the Father. Their time is now, but his time is not yet come (7:6-7). When religious authorities confront him with his breaking of the Sabbath law, his answer points to the Father who “is working still” (implied: is working on the Sabbath), and so Jesus, too, is working – on the Sabbath (5:17). Throughout the gospel we hear Jesus saying in so many different ways and even in more of the same ways, that he operates by the power, by the initiative, by the authority, by the example, by the words, by the vision of God, his Father.

And so it is in this case. “My teaching is not mine, but his who sent me.” (v. 16). Not only does he operate under the will of the Father, nothing he does is by his own personal initiative or authority. What Jesus sets up in these discussions is that to receive Jesus is to receive God, and to reject Jesus is to reject God.

The issue is not that Jesus means, here, to insist on his own deity and that people should bow before him on account of his own status. Quite the contrary: His point goes well beyond personal claims to godhead to emphasize that inasmuch as his will is to do the will of God, when one either believes in or rejects him, that one believes in or rejects God himself.

This is not mere propositional believing in or rejecting of the “second person of the Trinity.” Rather, the concept is entirely in keeping with Paul’s later assessment of the matter, that Jesus “did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself taking on the form of a servant.” Phlp. 4:6-7. Or again, as the Hebrew writer said, “It was fitting that he, for whom and by whom all things exist, in bringing many sons to glory, should make the pioneer of their salvation perfect through suffering.” (2:10).

Still, it is one thing to make claims about one’s authority and another to have the necessary documentation or evidentiary proof for those claims. Jesus has already addressed the evidence in the latter part of chapter 5 when he presents his five witnesses who testify to his authority. He will return to the question again in chapter 8. But now in answer to the question: How can a person know that Jesus does act indeed by direction of the Father? he offers this answer. “If any man’s will is to do the will of the Father, he will know.” (v. 17).

Note: It says not, “Anyone who desires to know God’s will” comes to the solution. He says, rather, anyone who desires “to do God’s will“ comes to know whether Jesus’ teaching and life is from himself or from God. Subtly and surely Jesus makes a powerful distinction between having a lot of information about God (knowledge) and the practice, the doing of God’s will.

Biblical faith, believing, is not altogether an intellectual event, but leads a believer to practice. It is in the practice of God’s will that one comes to maturity, that one’s faculties may be trained distinguish between good from evil (Heb. 5:14). Training does not only take place in the head, in the mind, but training finds its resolution in the experience of the practice.

Science. It is not uncommon to think that knowing a lot of facts about the physical universe makes a person wise in the ways of science. Unquestionably, there are more scientific facts than any human being should ever have to know. But knowing even all those facts makes no one a scientist. It just makes one an encyclopedia. And the main thing encyclopedias do is to sit on a shelf. In distinction to this, science is the practice of the principles of science, however humble that person’s bank of knowledge may be. Science is no mere reading and accepting that the earth is round. Science is to get out there in the real world and to experience, to practice the events that give evidence of the roundness of the earth.

Just so Jesus says that it is the practice of God’s will that makes one a believer, indeed. And to highlight the lack of such practice, Jesus speaks to the Law: These authorities who make such a big deal about it, do not keep it (v. 19). Witness the fact that they want to kill Jesus.

At this point in the dialogue, his detractors deride Jesus to say he has a demon. Jesus answers their charge on two levels.

First level: Since the conversation originated with Jesus’ healing a man on a Sabbath day, he returns to that event. He shows that the authorities, while claiming knowledge and wisdom of God in the Scriptures, in fact make a general mess of it. While they claim that no work at all may be done on the Sabbath, they in fact keep circumcision on the Sabbath. Jesus brings up a moral dilemma: when two laws appear to contradict each other, what do you do? Do you keep one to break the other? Rather than answering in the abstract, Jesus simply points out that the practice of the authorities is to keep the custom of circumcision despite the fact that the law says, “Thou shalt not work.” So, Jesus chides, if they can make some cuts, why can he not operate to make an entire person well?

Second level: Then he comes to his point. Do not judge by appearances, but judge with right judgment.

The sense here is that wisdom comes out the context of the Scriptures. Godly wisdom is not limited to a given detail divorced from that context. Rather, it is this detail in particular within the context of all other details, and in proportion to its place in Scripture. In contrast, the Pharisees and their ilk sought to paint all the commands of God, or at any rate far too many of them, in one dimension: flat. Is every command in the Law equally important with every other command?

Jesus clearly states this not to be case, and calls for judging, that is, for making discernments, determinations, and decisions, based not on appearances, but on substance. Substance is the same as what the apostle Paul calls for in Timothy: rightly handling the word of truth (2 Tim. 2:15), distinguished from certain persons “desiring to be teachers of the law, without understanding either what they are saying or the things about which they make assertions.” (1 Tim. 1:7).

Godly wisdom recognizes that some parts of Scripture are more important than other parts of Scripture. While tithing, for example, was indeed to be kept in its smallest detail, tithing itself does not occupy the same place as justice, mercy, and faith. (Mt. 23:23). These are “weightier” matters.

And more to the point, it is the practice of justice, the practice of mercy, the practice of faith that leads one to make right judgment. When knowledge is theoretical and has no experiential doing, when knowledge has not had the test of practice, then discernment finds but shallow, subjective appearance for its weak base.

At the feast of Tabernacles, the custom was that water should be collected at the pool of Siloam and brought up to the temple where it was poured out, symbolizing God’s riches outpoured on the land and its people. On the last day of that feast, Jesus placed himself firmly in the temple and cried out loud, “If any one thirst, come to me and drink! He who believes in me, as the scripture has said, ‘Out of his heart shall flow rivers of living water.’” (v. 37-38).

His hearers' response varies from believing Jesus as a prophet, to Jesus as the Christ, to skepticism, to making outright attempts to arrest him altogether.

Once again we hear Jesus making the claim of marvelous relationship with God: Come to Jesus, and God’s blessings well up from within! As John presents the gospel of Christ Jesus, he affirms that the river welling up to eternal life was a reference to the Spirit which would be received by those believing in Christ.

So why didn’t those who believed then receive the Spirit? because, John says, Jesus had not yet been glorified. That is, Jesus had not yet lifted up on his cross, had not yet died, had not yet been resurrected, and had not yet ascended back to the Father. Until such time, the Spirit would not be received in such a manner.

But what does it mean to drink from Jesus Christ? It means to believe in him as being indeed one with the Father inasmuch as the Father sent him.

The structure of New Testament language does not call for abstract faith: almost always the Scripture says to "believe in" or to "believe into". The text of the Scriptures places highest emphasis on the object of faith, not on the person having faith. The living and abiding Word of God calls men and women to believe in God, and believing in God, to practice one's life in keeping with a faithful God.

Our thinking tends to be somewhat intellectually propositional: The thing to be believed is out there as a proposition and one either accepts or rejects the proposition in one’s own mind. While biblical language does not deny this propositional aspect of faith or belief, biblical language calls for a considerably greater sense of personal commitment to the object of faith. It is one thing to believe that a tightrope walker may carry a person in a wheelbarrow across a waterfall, and quite another to trust that same tightrope walker with one’s own life by getting into the wheelbarrow.

Just so, to believe in Jesus is not merely to believe a fact, or series of facts, about him. It is, rather to trust in him and to commit oneself to the practice of faith in the hands of Jesus.

And Jesus’ claim is that, by drinking from him one would receive his Spirit, a spiritual well of ever flowing spiritual water that would quench spiritual thirst throughout the ages. Coming to Jesus gives life through eternity, because the Father has set his seal on Jesus as his Anointed, his Christ, his Messiah.

Are you thirsty? Come to Jesus and drink! Your thirst will be quenched and spiritual water will well up through eternity. Receive his eternal-life-giving Spirit and live!