All these themes help to create the general atmosphere surrounding Jesus, attesting that His activities were the cause of intense polemics.
Jesus Christ - His Life and Teaching, Vol. 5: The Lamb of God, by Metropolitan Hilarion Alfeyev
Regarding chapters seven and eight of John, Alfeyev writes:
Despite their strikingly polemical nature, they largely comprise the theological core of this Gospel…
Alfeyev recognizes that this is a complex text, one saturated with overt and hidden meaning. What are these concepts, and why did Jesus use this means to impart this theology? Alfeyev will address these questions.
This section opens with a scene involving Jesus and His brothers. They were almost taunting Him to go to Judea for the Feast of the Tabernacles and do His works openly:
John 7: 5 For even His brothers did not believe in Him.
This conflict was certainly deep seated. They knew His miracles, yet challenged Him for more. Jesus said His time had not fully come, so He would not go with them.
10 But when His brothers had gone up, then He also went up to the feast, not openly, but as it were in secret.
What happened? Did He change His mind, or did He just wish that His relations did not know He was to be there? Most ancient commentators believed it was the latter. At least one commentator believed in this way His brothers could do what was proper to Jews, but He did not wish to perpetually be one in their midst that might constrain their impulses; He did this often, but would not do it continuously.
Jesus, now at the temple to teach:
14 Now about the middle of the feast Jesus went up into the temple and taught. 15 And the Jews marveled, saying, “How does this Man know letters, having never studied?”
How could He teach? He has not studied as we have. This was the issue – a supposed lack of qualification on the part of Jesus.
16 Jesus answered them and said, “My doctrine is not Mine, but His who sent Me.
19(b) Why do you seek to kill Me?”........
Jesus regularly challenged the Law – well, not the Law but how it was understood and taught by the teachers of His time. He respects the Law, but not the way it is currently taught. They love the Law, but they have perverted the Law.
He regularly refers to it as “your Law,” not to distance Himself from the Law, but to distance Himself from their teaching of the Law. It is a law made by men – a law according to appearance, and not leading to righteous judgment.
Jesus would remind His audience:
· His teaching is not His own, but that of Him who sent Him
· He speaks not on His own authority, but from God
· He seeks not His glory, but the glory of the Father
· He came not of Himself, but of the One who sent Him
· He (Jesus) knows Him (the Father), because He was sent by Him
The Pharisees would send officers to take Him. But not so fast; Jesus will be with them for a little while then return to Him who sent Him:
34 You will seek Me and not find Me, and where I am you cannot come.
They wondered, is He going to the dispersion among the Greek pagans (some see this instead referring to Hellenized Jews)? None of this. Clearly Jesus was speaking of His death, resurrection, and ascension.
37 On the last day, that great day of the feast, Jesus stood and cried out, saying, “If anyone thirsts, let him come to Me and drink.
Some were sent to take Him. But they returned empty-handed.
45 Then the officers came to the chief priests and Pharisees, who said to them, “Why have you not brought Him?” 46 The officers answered, “No man ever spoke like this Man!”
Some believed, some didn’t believe. Was He a prophet? The Messiah? Both? Neither? The chief priests and Pharisees refused to buy any of it. They had already known that they would want to kill Him. But others hearing what He said, and how He said it, were convinced: both a prophet and the Messiah.
Conclusion
Throughout the Gospel of John, and certainly in these passages, we see from Jesus a sustained attack on that which traditional Judaism most valued. This temple would be destroyed; God must be worshipped not in Jerusalem, but in spirit and in truth; it is permissible to break the sabbath; He sets Himself higher than Abraham, Jacob, and Moses.
And the manna from heaven He will replace with His own flesh.
Epilogue
Alfeyev regularly writes: “…we see Jesus building a new religion upon the rubble of the old.” I don’t see it this way at all. Jesus is uncovering the old religion that was buried under the rubble of man’s faulty interpretations. Of course, as Jesus describes the religion is precisely how God intended it to be understood – always, and from the beginning. It was buried under the rubble caused by man.
Mark 2: 27 And He said to them, “The Sabbath was made for man, and not man for the Sabbath.
That’s how it was always to be understood. Nothing new.
