So his brothers said to him, “Leave here and go to Judea, so that your disciples also may see the works you are doing. No one works in secret if he wants to be known publicly. If you do these things, manifest yourself to the world.” For his brothers did not believe in him (see John 7:3-5).
The brothers of Jesus wanted him to move in public and to manifest his works openly. They said this was for Jesus' sake. But really it was because "his brothers did not believe in him". It wasn't so much that they thought he would give a sign sufficient to compel their faith. Rather, they hoped he would expose himself and abandon what they considered to be delusions of grandeur.
But when his brothers had gone up to the feast,
he himself also went up, not openly but as it were in secret.
Jesus did not need to prove himself. He already explained that human praise meant nothing to him. He was free, not able to be controlled by the crowd's or even his family's opinion of him. And it was not yet his plan to set into motion the hour of his Passion.
And look, he is speaking openly and they say nothing to him.
Could the authorities have realized that he is the Christ?
Jesus did go to Jerusalem to celebrate the feast. But he did not go in the manner that he would later, at the beginning of Holy Week. There weren't crowds at the gates shouting hosanna to the son of David, the promised Messiah, and the true king. It was not yet the right time for that. But even though he went up in secret he was not inhibited is his teaching. He knew it would result in his attempted arrest. But he also knew that by not pushing too hard too soon he remained under the protection of his Father. He did just what he was meant to do, not more, and certainly not less. Therefore, just as Wisdom said, "God will take care of him". Here that deliverance meant that "no one laid a hand upon him, because his hour had not yet come". Later deliverance would not imply that he was protected even from death, but rather, and still greater, that he was raised and death was conquered.
But we know where he is from.
When the Christ comes, no one will know where he is from."
So Jesus cried out in the temple area as he was teaching and said,
"You know me and also know where I am from.
Yet I did not come on my own,
but the one who sent me, whom you do not know, is true.
I know him, because I am from him, and he sent me."
What was the message Jesus preached during the feast of Tabernacles that was worth the trouble and the risk? What were the words his Father desired him to speak? They were words that must have been surprising and perhaps inscrutable to those who heard, especially his brothers who definitely believed that they knew him and where he was from. He said that what they knew about him was so partial is to be functionally incorrect. Certainly he came from Nazareth and was the son of Mary. But his true origin went back before his birth. He was sent into the world by the Father through the incarnation. His message was therefore about himself. But it pointed beyond himself. This was not the self-directed whim of an eccentric preacher. It was not something Jesus decided to do on his own. Rather, it was a mission from the Father. Therefore, in trying to clear up the limited preconceptions of who he was, Jesus pointed to his Father. In doing so he also said that the people's view of the Father was so incomplete as to be missing entirely. They thought they knew the Father, but only the one who was from the Father truly knew him. Only the Son of the Father could truly make him known. By rejecting the Son they proved Jesus' words that they did not know the Father.
We have some idea of from where Christ came and to what end. We are subject to less confusion about his relationship to his Father than were the people of Jerusalem. But have we really allowed Jesus to lead us into a full relationship with the Father? Have we ourselves paid attention as he tried to make the Father known? He did this by the gift of his Spirit, making us daughters and sons of God, and enabling us to cry out,"Abba!" (see Romans 8:15). But do we have the sort of relationship with God where we do cry out to him in this way? Are such passages real to us? Or are they more in the way of saccharine sentimentality for us?
He judges us debased;
he holds aloof from our paths as from things impure.
He calls blest the destiny of the just
and boasts that God is his Father.
It was about Jesus that Solomon wrote in the book of Wisdom. But insofar as we are in Jesus, he is now the source of our life, it should describe us as well. Sometimes we do still err in our thoughts and are blinded by wickedness. But all Jesus asks is that we realize it and repent. He wants all of that out of his way, so that he can reveal his Father to us as he desires.