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Commentaries
English
John
  
21Again he said to them, "I go away, and you will seek Me and die in your sin. Where I am going you cannot come."22Then said the Jews, "Will he kill himself, since he says, ‘Where I am going, you cannot come’?"


Jesus knew he was surrounded on all sides by the servants of the temple. He pointed in cryptic terms the deep meaning of the future, "The hour of my death is near. Then I shall leave this world and you will not be able to pursue me. You are not my killers according to your own plans. I decide the time of my departure."
"But I shall arise from my tomb passing through rocks and locked doors. You will seek me in vain and not find me. I shall ascend to my Father and you will not be aware of it. You have rejected me, the Lamb of God, and did not trust me, the Redeemer of mankind. You will perish in the prison of your sin." Jesus did not say, "You will die in your sins." Our manifold social sins do not constitute our original guilt, rather it is our attitude to God, and our unbelief that is our sin.
The Jews realized that Jesus was speaking of his final departure, but did not grasp his testimony that he would return to his Father. But they assumed that in his conflict with the Pharisees and priests he had arrived at the limits of his energies. Nothing was left for him but suicide. Will hell or perdition swallow him up as a suicide? The Jews thought or speculated that they would not share that fate on account of their righteousness. But when Rome besieged Jerusalem in 70 AD, thousands of Jews committed suicide from famine and despair.