7:30
There are some who argue about whether or not Jesus did claim to be God. However, the people at the time were in no doubt at all. They knew that what Jesus was saying meant He was claiming equality with God, so they tried to seize Him. Note also in Jesus’ claim He always stresses that He is under authority (see verse 28, for instance). If you look at man he always seeks to get authority by claiming his own authority. True authority comes when we submit to God. However, no one was able to lay a hand on Him “because His hour had not yet come”. The sovereignty of God is a theme that shines out of John’s gospel. It was God who was in control of events and things happened according to His timing.
7:31
While there were those who doubted Jesus (see verse 27) there were others who put their faith in Him. So we see a very mixed reaction. If we rely on the “crowd” to determine our view of Jesus then we will be very unstable indeed, tossed here and there, for we will find all sorts of views, most of them totally misinformed. We need to look to the Bible as our primary source of information, and we need to go to Jesus ourselves.
The earlier doubts had been focused on the fact that they “knew where Jesus came from”. Those here who had faith in Jesus based it on what they had seen happen. So the doubters were basing their views on the misguided traditions, the believers were basing their views on what was actually happening. In this case it was the miracles that Jesus was doing. It is amazing how we can so easily let the plain facts of a matter be totally obscured by our traditions.
The crowds here may have been pilgrims who came to Jerusalem for the festival.
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