"21 So he said to them again, “I am going away, and you will seek me, and you will die in your sin. Where I am going, you cannot come.” 22 So the Jews said, “Will he kill himself, since he says, ‘Where I am going, you cannot come’?”23 He said to them, “You are from below; I am from above. You are of this world; I am not of this world. 24 I told you that you would die in your sins, for unless you believe that I am he you will die in your sins.” 25 So they said to him, “Who are you?” Jesus said to them, “Just what I have been telling you from the beginning. 26 I have much to say about you and much to judge, but he who sent me is true, and I declare to the world what I have heard from him.” 27 They did not understand that he had been speaking to them about the Father. 28 So Jesus said to them, “When you have lifted up the Son of Man, then you will know that I am he, and that I do nothing on my own authority, but speak just as the Father taught me. 29 And he who sent me is with me. He has not left me alone, for I always do the things that are pleasing to him.” 30 As he was saying these things, many believed in him."
John 8:21-30
Jesus' words in 21, 'I go my Way', are a veiled reference to His death, not to His departing from the Feast. How true a prophecy it proved to be, for after His death, blindness in part happened to Israel. They would seek Him unsuccessfully and would die in their sins, the sin of having rejected the Son of God and, with Him, their one hope of salvation. Thus, 'whither I go ye cannot come' emphasises the inability of the unbelieving Jews to enter the eternal life offered to believers. The Jews' blindness is further indicated in 22: to think He should have been referring to suicide is evidence of the complete gulf between darkness and light seen so often in the questions asked of Jesus. Yet, His life was not taken when He was crucified, but voluntarily laid down. In 24 we have a further comment on 21, in a graphic and dramatic way that the AV partially conceals. What Jesus said was 'If ye believe not that I am', and 'I am' was the covenant name of Jehovah. This was a clear claim that what Jehovah was to the old covenant people, He was to the new. Even this, however, failed to penetrate, as we see from the Pharisees' question in 25 and the further comment by John in 27. In 28, 29, Jesus makes the prophecy that when He was lifted up on the cross they would know who He was, and this does seem to have got through to some (30), and they believed on Him. But something requires to he said about 30, and will be, in tomorrow's Note.