8:21
“I am going away, and you will seek me, and you will die in your sin.” What did Jesus mean by this? They, the religious leaders, would not be looking for Jesus! What He meant, according to Carson, is that they would still be looking for the Messiah. The Jews wanted a Messiah, but when the Messiah came they rejected Him, they did not recognise Him. So they would die in their sin. Another part of the problem was that they did not realise that the problem they needed saving from was their own sin. This is something we all need to be aware of. We don’t like to focus on our own sinfulness, it is much easier to blame some other group of people. Until they faced up to the reality of their own sin they could not go where Jesus was going.
8:22,23
“So the Jews said ...” Carson thinks “Jews” here refers to the crowd, but I personally see no reason to think that John is departing from his usual practice of “the Jews” referring to the religious leaders. Whatever the case, they had no idea what Jesus was talking about. They wondered if He was going to kill Himself. Jesus addressed them again, saying “You are from below, I am from above”. He then clarifies what He means by this, “You are of this world; I am not of this world”. “From below” does not mean hell, it means the world. We see throughout John that there is no rowing back by Jesus, rather He makes the point even stronger, or add even more to what He has already said. If we look at Jesus from a worldly perspective we will understand nothing. Jesus was sent by the Father from heaven, He came to tell us the truth.
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