John 7:27 is a continuation of the comments of the people of Jerusalem about Jesus. They had wondered, “The rulers do not really know that this is the Christ, do they?” In a sense, they were asking, “Do the rulers know something we don’t know?” Then they reasoned that He can’t be the Christ. “However, we know where this man is from; but whenever the Christ may come, no one knows where He is from.”
Apparently it was common knowledge that Jesus was from Nazareth, and so in their minds He couldn’t be the Christ. But Jesus didn’t say that He came from Nazareth. He had proclaimed to the crowd in Capernaum that He came down from heaven. John 6:38 “For I have come down from heaven, not to do My own will, but the will of Him who sent Me.” The people of Jerusalem weren’t there when Jesus said that, but it is probable that the word had gotten back to the rulers in Jerusalem. That’s why they wanted to kill Him.
The point is that a man from the earth is a normal man, but a man who is from heaven is not. Jesus is not a normal man. He is a man, but He was sent from God, which Jesus will assert once again in the following verses. For today, I ask us this question. Do we know where Jesus is from? Do we live like Jesus is the Christ, the one sent from God?
The Scriptures teach that the Christ was to be born in Bethlehem. Micah 5:2 “But as for you, Bethlehem Ephrathah, too little to be among the clans of Judah, from you One will go forth for Me to be ruler in Israel. His goings forth are from long ago, from the days of eternity.” Jesus is the king of Israel come to rule in the midst of His people.
We are His people, and He is our lord and king.
We live in God’s kingdom, with Jesus as our ruler. It is a kingdom of love and peace. May we be filled with His love and peace as we go through our day, trusting in Him to give us everything we need to glorify His name and advance His kingdom in this world. We know that Jesus is from heaven, and our citizenship is in heaven, from which we await His coming in glory according to Philippians 3:20. When He comes, “He will transform the body of our humble state into conformity with the body of His glory, by the exertion of the power that He has even to subject all things to Himself” (verse 21). What a hope we have in Jesus!
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