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242 How Are the Christian Scriptures Confirmed by the Peculiar Glory of God?
are doing great works—great miracles. Go up to Jerusalem and show
yourself to the world”—that’s what John called “unbelief.”
Up to this point in John’s Gospel, Jesus had turned water into wine
(2:1–11), healed an official’s son (4:46–54), healed a man paralyzed for
thirty-five years (5:1–12), fed five thousand with five loaves and two
fish (John 6:1–14), and walked on water (6:19–21). Evidently, Jesus’s
brothers were following all this and were very excited about the possibilities
of a great movement of people behind Jesus. So they say, in
effect, “Stop being so low-key. No one works in secret if he seeks to be
known openly. Show yourself to the world.” And John says that the
reason they said this is, “For not even his brothers believed in him.”
So his brothers see the miracles, believe that Jesus is doing them, are
excited about the impact they will have, and do not “believe.” What
are they missing? The clue lies in the fact that they tell Jesus to go to
Jerusalem publicly, but Jesus says no and then goes privately: “After his
brothers had gone up to the feast, then he also went up, not publicly
but in private” (John 7:10). They want him to go and work wonders
and be exalted by the crowds. But Jesus goes up without a splash and
starts teaching. Indeed, the content of his teaching, if anything, is going
to ruin his chances of being exalted by the crowds. He told his brothers
before they left for the feast, “The world cannot hate you, but it hates
me because I testify about it that its works are evil” (John 7:7).
The Peculiar Glory Can Be Seen Only by the Right Heart
What he says in Jerusalem, after refusing to seek a great crowd, shows
us what was wrong with his brothers’ faith. He says to the Jews,
My teaching is not mine, but his who sent me. If anyone’s will is to do
God’s will, he will know whether the teaching is from God or whether
I am speaking on my own authority. The one who speaks on his own
authority seeks his own glory; but the one who seeks the glory of him
who sent him is true, and in him there is no falsehood. (John 7:16–18)
Here’s the key. What is the mark of the man who is true and in whom
is no falsehood? He does not seek his own glory but the glory of the
one who sent him. The mark of authenticity in Jesus’s miracles is not
their raw power but that their power was in the service of God-exalting