John 7

1After this Jesus went from place to place in Galilee. He did not want to travel around Judea, because the Jewish leaders there were looking for a way to kill him. 2Now the Jewish Festival of Tabernacles was near. 3So his brothers said to him, “Leave this place and go to Judea, so that your disciples there can also see the works you are doing. 4No one who wants to be known openly does things in secret. If you are doing these things, show yourself to the world.” 5For even his own brothers did not believe in him. 6So Jesus told them, “My time has not yet arrived, but for you the time is always right. 7The world cannot hate you, but it hates me, because I testify that its works are evil. 8You go up to the festival. I am not going up to this festival, because my time has not yet fully come.” 9After saying this, he stayed on in Galilee.

10But after his brothers had gone up to the festival, he went up too, not publicly but in secret, as it were. 11So the Jewish leaders were looking for him at the festival, asking, “Where is that man?” 12Among the crowds there was a great deal of muttering about him. Some said, “He is a good man.” Others said, “No, he is leading the people astray.” 13Yet no one would speak openly about him, because they were afraid of the Jewish leaders.

14When the festival was already half over, Jesus went up to the temple courts and began to teach. 15The Jewish leaders were amazed and asked, “How does this man know the Scriptures when he has never studied under a teacher?” 16Jesus answered them, “The teaching I give is not my own. It comes from the one who sent me. 17If anyone is resolved to do his will, they will know whether this teaching comes from God or whether I am speaking on my own authority. 18Whoever speaks on their own authority is after their own glory. But the one who seeks the glory of the one who sent him is true, and there is nothing false in him.

19Did not Moses give you the law? Yet not one of you keeps the law. Why are you trying to kill me?” 20The crowd answered, “You must have a demon! Who is trying to kill you?” 21Jesus answered them, “I did one work, and you are all amazed. 22So consider this: Moses gave you circumcision (though it did not begin with Moses but with the patriarchs), and you circumcise a boy even on the Sabbath. 23If a boy is circumcised on the Sabbath so that the law of Moses is not broken, why are you angry with me for making a man entirely well on the Sabbath? 24Stop judging by what things look like on the surface; make a judgment that is just.”

25So some who lived in Jerusalem were saying, “Is this not the one they are out to kill? 26Look, he is speaking in the open, and they say nothing to him! Can it be that our leaders really know that this man is the Christ? 27But we know where this man comes from. When the Christ comes, though, no one will know his origin.” 28So Jesus, as he was teaching in the temple courts, cried out, “You know me, and you know where I come from! Yet I have not come on my own. The one who sent me is true, and you do not know him. 29But I know him, because I come from him, and he is the one who sent me.” 30So they tried to arrest him. Yet no one took hold of him, since his hour had not yet come. 31Many people in the crowd, though, believed in him, and they kept saying, “When the Christ comes, he will not do more signs than this man has done, will he?” 32The Pharisees heard the crowd talking quietly about him in this way, so the chief priests and the Pharisees sent temple police to arrest him. 33So Jesus said, “For a little while more I am with you; then I go away to the one who sent me. 34You will search for me and not find me, and you cannot come where I am.” 35So the Jewish leaders said to one another, “Where is this man going to go, that we will not find him? Surely he does not intend to go to the Jews scattered among the Greeks, and teach the Greeks? 36What is this saying of his, ‘You will search for me and not find me, and you cannot come where I am’?” 37On the last day of the festival, the great day, Jesus stood and called out, “If anyone is thirsty, they should come to me and drink. 38As for the one who believes in me, it is just as the Scripture said: ‘Rivers of living water will pour out from deep within him.’” 39He was speaking about the Spirit, whom those who believed in him were soon to receive. The Spirit was not yet given, because Jesus had not yet been glorified.

40Some in the crowd who heard these words kept saying, “He truly is the Prophet.” 41Others said, “This man is the Christ.” But some objected, “Surely the Christ does not come from Galilee? 42The Scripture says, does it not, that the Christ comes from the family line of David, and from Bethlehem, David’s own village?” 43So the crowd was split over him. 44Some of them wanted to take him into custody, yet nobody laid a hand on him.

45So the temple police returned to the chief priests and Pharisees, and these men asked them, “Why have you not brought him?” 46The temple police answered, “No one has ever spoken like this!” 47The Pharisees retorted, “Surely you have not been taken in as well? 48Is there a single one of the rulers who has believed in him? Or a single Pharisee? 49As for this crowd, which does not know the law, they are under a curse.” 50Then Nicodemus, himself one of them, the same man who had earlier come to Jesus, said to them, 51“Surely our law does not pass judgment on anyone before it has heard from them and found out what they have done?” 52They answered him, “You are not a Galilean too, are you? Search the Scriptures and see for yourself: no prophet arises from Galilee.”

53[Then each of them went home.