The religious leaders are disturbed at any impression made on the multitude and show their fear as well as their enmity. They dislike the truth they did not themselves possess and would gladly get rid of Him who told it out. “The Pharisees heard the crowd murmuring these things about him, and the high priests and the Pharisees sent officers to seize him. Then said Jesus, Yet a little while am I with you, and I go unto him that sent me. Ye shall seek me, and not find; and where I am, ye cannot come.” (Vers. 32- 34.) The Lord speaks with a solemn calmness. All efforts to apprehend Him would be vain till the appointed moment; nor need they hurry. It was but a little while for Him to be with them: then He is going to His Father. So it is ever in this Gospel. It is no question of the rejection of men nor of the Jews despising Him, though both were true and fully set out by the synoptic evangelists; but here the Spirit shows us One fully conscious of where He was going, and so speaking to all, if any by grace might believe and see God's glory in Him. Soon unbelief would seek and not find Him. What does the world know of the Father? Heaven is to it more dreary than the earth. “Where I am, ye cannot come;” nor would they if they could. Nothing is so repulsive to a sinner as the light, presence, and glory of God.
“The Jews therefore said unto each other, Where is this [man] about to go that we shall not find him? Is he about to go unto the dispersion among the Greeks and teach the Greeks? What is this word which he said, Ye shall seek me and not find; and where I am, ye cannot come?” (Vers. 35, 36.) It was blindness indeed; nor is any darkness so dense as that of unbelief. But it is striking that what the unbelieving pride of the Jew deemed incredible is what God has made true of Christ exalted to His right hand. It is not more certain that He went on high than that He came and preached peace to the Gentiles that were far off and peace to them that were nigh (Jews), giving both access by one Spirit to the Father. The dispersed among the Greeks, are those that Peter shows to have found in Him the object of their faith, believing on Jesus in the Father's house as they believed on God; and Paul no less clearly shows that He is teaching the Greeks. To those that are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ is God's power and God's wisdom—Christ crucified, let others count it an offense or foolishness. But He is none the less the Lord of glory, which none of the princes of this age knew: had they known, they would not have crucified Him. And so it was that scripture was verified, man humbled, and God glorified; even as those that dwelt in Jerusalem and their rulers, not knowing Him nor yet the voices of the prophets which are read every sabbath, fulfilled them by their judgment of Him. And now is God pleased to make known the riches of the glory of this mystery among the Gentiles, “which is Christ among you the hope of glory.” He is lost meanwhile to the Jew, who seeking Him not in faith cannot find Him nor come where He is, for He is in heaven and they given up more and more to an earthly mind, groveling after filthy lucre.
But the Faithful Witness speaks. “Now in the last, the great, day of the feast Jesus stood and cried, If any one thirst, let him come unto me and drink. He that believeth on me, even as the scripture said, Out of his belly shall flow rivers of living water. But this said he of the Spirit, which they that believed on him were about to receive, for [the] Spirit was not yet, because Jesus was not yet glorified.” (Vers. 37-39.)
It is not the new birth, but the Holy Ghost in power of testimony, rather than of worship. Thus is it distinguished not merely from John 3 but also from chapter 4, even though He be given at the same time to be a fountain of living water springing up to eternal life within the believer and rivers of living water flowing out, which suppose the soul already born afresh. It is not here however communion with the Father and the Son in the energy of the Spirit which goes upward in adoration, but the same Spirit going outward to refresh largely the weary and parched in the wilderness from the inmost affections of the believer. Both figures are strikingly true, but they are different though enjoyed by the same individual. They are the characteristic power and privilege of the Christian, not only the divine life but this in the power of the Spirit going up to its source in praise or flowing out actually in testimony to Christ in a dry and thirsty land. Here it is the glorified man who is the object, as in chapter 4 the Son of God is the giver.
Even so there is the most careful guard against coming to the Lord merely for teaching as a scholar or for material as a teacher: both in divine things attitudes of peril to the soul. “If any one thirsty let him come unto me and drink” It is the heart met in its own need, not men invited to draw for others, but to drink for themselves; and thus it is they safely and best learn so as to teach others also. “Out of his belly shall flow rivers of living water.” Such is the general testimony of Old Testament scriptures; and so the Lord urges even more distinctly. But this follows not only the coming but the glorification of Jesus founded on His work. Only then could the streams flow thus abundantly from “the inward parts,” truth being there already and God on His part perfectly glorified in the cross. The Holy Spirit could act freely and in power, on the owned ruin of the first, to the glory of Him who is at God's hand and in those who are His for a little while in a dry and thirsty land where otherwise no water is. But now to His praise whom the Spirit is here to glorify water is given, not alone the fountain to refresh within, but rivers to flow out. The Israelites never rose to this, even in figure. They drank of water from the rock, and afterward, when the rod of priestly power had budded, the rock was but to be spoken to in order to yield abundantly. But no Israelite, not even a Moses and Aaron, could be the channel of living water, as every believer now; and this, let it be repeated, no premium on the Christian, but solely in witness of God's delight in Christ and appreciation of His work, wherein as He is, so are we in this world.
The feast, and the day of it so noted, are not without deep significance. It was not Pentecost as might be thought natural in view of the gift of the Spirit, but Tabernacles. Indeed if the feast of weeks was ever the epoch of any acts or discourses of our Lord in the fourth Gospel, it is carefully kept out of sight, and this because it falls within the province of Paul rather than of John whose characteristic truth is the revelation of God and of the Father in the man Christ Jesus on earth, not the Head of the body on high. It is not therefore the Spirit baptizing into one body which is here treated but power of testimony, and this from the most intimate enjoyment of the soul, through that Spirit who comes from Jesus glorified. We are not in heaven yet but passing through the wilderness. The day of glory is not come, but He who died in atonement is in glory, and thence sends down the Spirit on us who are here that we may have a divine association with Him there. What could give such force to testimony? There is more than the brightest hope; for the Spirit is a present link with Him who is on high; yet is there all the power of hope bearing us onward and above surrounding circumstances, for the glory itself does not yet appear, though He who will introduce it is already in it, its center and in its highest sphere. His hour will come to show Himself to the world; meanwhile we are in the secret of His exaltation and waiting for His display, while we have the Holy Ghost sent down by Him from that glory which He gives us to know and so much the more to fee] the dreary desert through which we pass. This is not our rest; it is polluted; and here we have no continuing city, but we seek one to come. But we are awaiting, not righteousness nor the Spirit of glory, but through the Spirit by faith the hope of righteousness (that is, the glory of God). And He who is not only in the glory, the Head and Heir of all things, but will shortly come to bring us like Himself there, gives us the Spirit as rivers of living water to fill us inwardly and to flow abroad, let the wilderness be ever so parched.
I do not know a stronger expression of the intimacy of the Spirit's indwelling in us as contrasted with His working of old even though by saints. But here there is supposed such a deep intermingling with the inner man's affections and thoughts as is eminently characteristic of the Christian's possession of the Spirit, and the more remarkably because it is in view of a rich outflow of testimony to Christ on high. Hence there could be no such privilege till Jesus was glorified consequent on His glorifying of God morally by the death of the cross.
The phraseology of verse 39, though at first it may sound strange, is strictly accurate and suitable. The Spirit is beyond doubt a person, but He is viewed here as the characterizing fact of a state not yet in being. Hence it is πνεῦμα without the article. Again it is ἧν not ἐγένετο. He never began to exist, for His being was divine and eternal. But it was not yet a fact for man on earth. At Pentecost He was sent down from heaven. Compare Acts 19, where the question was, Did ye receive the Holy Spirit when ye believed? and the answer is, We did not even hear if the Holy Spirit was. The meaning is not at all as to His existence but His baptism, of which John the Baptist had testified to his disciples.