John 7:33-34

“ Jesus said therefore: I am with you yet a little while, and then I go to him that sent me. 34. You shall seek me and shall not find me;and where I am you cannot come. ”

Jesus was not ignorant of this hostile measure; and this is what awakened in Him the presentiment of His approaching death which is so solemnly expressed in the following words (therefore). In this discourse, He invites the Jews to take advantage of the time, soon to pass away, during which He is still to continue with them. There is a correspondence between the expressions: I go away, and: He who sent me. The idea of a sending involves that of a merely temporary sojourn here below. The practical conclusion of John 7:33, which is understood, “Hasten to believe!” is made more pressing by John 7:34.

Of the two clauses of this verse, the first refers to their national future; the second, to their individual fate. In the first, Jesus describes, in a striking way, the state of abandonment in which this people will soon find itself, provided it persists in rejecting Him who alone can lead it to the Father; a continual and ever disappointed expectation; the impotent attempt to find God, after having suffered the visitation of Him to pass by who alone could have united them to God. This sense is that in which Jesus cites this word in John 13:33 (comp. John 14:6). It is also that in which He will repeat it, soon afterwards, in a more emphatic form, John 8:21-22.

There cannot be any difficulty in applying the notion of the pronoun με, me, to the idea of the Messiah in general. To expect the Messiah is, indeed, on the part of the Jewish people, and without their being aware of it, to seek Jesus, the only Messiah who can be given to them. But there is something more terrible than this future of the nation it is that of individuals. The expression: where I am, denotes symbolically the communion with the Father and the state of salvation which one enjoys in that communion. This is the blessed goal which they cannot reach after having rejected Him; for it is He alone who could have led them thither (John 14:3). If then they allow this time to pass by, in which they can yet attach themselves to Him, all will be over for them. The present: where I am, signifies: “where I shall be at that moment;” it can only be rendered in French by the future. This second part of the verse does not allow us to explain the term : you shall seek me, in the first part, either of a seeking inspired by hatred (Origen) comp. John 13:33 or of a sigh of repentance; such a feeling would not have failed to lead them to salvation.