Publicity

Therefore His brothers said to Him, "Leave here and go into Judea, so that Your disciples also may see Your works which You are doing. For no one does anything in secret when he himself seeks to be known publicly. If You do these things, show Yourself to the world." (John 7:3-4)

What are some more implications found in these words of Jesus' brothers?

Go to Judea so that Your disciples may see Your works. That implies several things.

• Your disciples can't see Your works in Galilee, only in Judea.
• You don't really have disciples in Galilee; they must all be in Judea.
• The things You do here don't count. Only if You perform Your works in Judea are the things You do effective proof of Your claims.
• The real reason You perform signs is just to gain publicity.
• You are confused and are trying to live in secret when You should be more open. Because it only makes sense that You must have publicity to be successful, You should take our advice on how to get real publicity.
• Since we insist that You should be known publicly, why are You not showing Your self to the world in the places where the world pays attention to people?
• You need publicity, and the only place to get valid publicity is in Judea where all the important people live. Remaining in Galilee where the people are mostly poor or politically powerless is a cop-out and an act of cowardice.
• You teach others to not be afraid and to trust God but You Yourself are afraid and You are hiding from the very leaders who only can give You the publicity You need. Why do You insist on remaining at odds with them and defy their authority? Shame on You.

The main issue within their comments was more about publicity, not validity. They based their opinions about their brother on their own assumptions that were both tainted with years of resentment and were strongly influenced by their own desires for legitimacy, acceptance and popularity with those in power. Jesus was hurting their reputation and they were very irritated about that.

There are very many subtle lies embedded into these comments that are so common with most of us that they are often quite hard for us to detect. The many assumptions built into their comments are so common that they are accepted wisdom – the wisdom of the world. Some of these lies are obvious in contrast with Jesus' life and teachings and are easier to spot, but many of them are so 'normal' that we struggle to believe they are really false. We need the Holy Spirit to give us discernment and humility and a willingness to challenge these same assumptions that influence our own relationships with those around us.

What role does publicity play in the life of a true disciple, a follower of Jesus? What does Jesus' example teach us about this factor in society? Is publicity bad, good or something neutral that must be very carefully dealt with to avoid becoming distracted from the true purpose of life?

Clearly, Jesus at times performed certain miracles apparently to draw attention to Himself – publicity – in order to challenge deeply entrenched paradigms of society and religion that had to be exposed. But just as clearly at other times He also turned circumstances away from drawing attention to Himself and even commanded His disciples to disperse when they got caught up in emotions of intending to exalt Jesus in the world's way. Jesus repeatedly refused to participate in the 'normal' means of getting publicity while other times He seemed to intentionally attract it. What can we learn from His example?

And what about some of the other assumptions woven into these comments of Jesus' brothers? The insinuations they were making were certainly not very complimentary, but then feelings of bitterness usually produce sarcastic statements. I know, I have had that weakness much of my life. But these symptoms are revealed to me to allow me to acknowledge these underlying problems deep in my heart and let God into those areas of pain and false beliefs to repair the damage while He works to restore His image in my soul. God uses the stories of others to bring light to the issues within our own hearts so we can have opportunity to come to Him for healing and be restored to wholeness in Him.

In Jesus' answer to these assertions by His brothers there is even more hints about the issues of publicity that we need to learn. Most of His life Jesus avoided publicity and even during His years of ministry He carefully managed how much publicity was allowed to develop around Him. In telling His brothers that His time was not yet come, He was directly addressing this issue of publicity. It was not yet time for His publicity to fully blossom, for He already knew that when He opened up all the stops and allowed His publicity to go unchecked, it would very quickly bring about His death. But the timing of His very public exhibition through His death had to be in God's time, not something Jesus was to chose for Himself.

The context for all of this is vitally important to understand. Jesus' purpose in coming to this earth was for one thing primarily – to reveal to all intelligent beings in all the universe the real truth about God and especially what God meant when He informed His created beings that the natural consequences of sin was death. (Romans 6:23) Because God had never yet allowed anyone to die that kind of death, the question about God's honesty in this had remained open for millennia and doubts about God's truthfulness and trustworthiness had swirled around His created beings with many tragic results. Satan up to the time of Jesus had believed that since he had avoided death this long that he could live for eternity. He actually believed that he had found a loophole by which he could defeat the claim of God that sin results in death; for as long as there was doubt in anyone's mind about the real cause of this sin-death, then if God allowed anyone to suffer it that death it would only serve to plant seeds of rebellion in the hearts and minds of those who would assume that this death was caused by God.

Satan assumed that it would be an easy thing to keep doubts about God's character and truthfulness alive in at least some minds and this had thus far served as his insurance against suffering this death. But God had set up a secret plan that would actually cause the devil to destroy his own protection he had invented and had depended on to avoid death while he used fear of death to keep so many others under his control.

The Godhead had decided long before to allow Jesus – God Himself – to demonstrate what the second death, the consequence of separating from God, i.e. sin, really looks like. God chose to demonstrate to the entire universe through His own human body the truth about this 'second death' rather than allow anyone else to demonstrate it, so that He could finally remove all doubts in the minds of His created beings about the true cause of this death. And by removing these doubts it would also allow those who had chosen the path of rebellion to remove themselves from existence through the second death while allowing those who had chosen to be loyal to God to be free of all suspicion that this death had been imposed by God on rebellious sinners.

Since the children have flesh and blood, he too shared in their humanity so that by his death he might destroy him who holds the power of death – that is, the devil – and free those who all their lives were held in slavery by their fear of death. (Hebrews 2:14-15 NIV)

When I saw Him, I fell at His feet like a dead man. And He placed His right hand on me, saying, "Do not be afraid; I am the first and the last, and the living One; and I was dead, and behold, I am alive forevermore, and I have the keys of death and of Hades." (Revelation 1:17-18)

The timing of Jesus' life and death was very important to the working out of this secret plan to extricate the universe from the fear of death and the subtle lies about God that had been so effective in protecting Satan from the natural consequence of sin. It was from this much larger context that Jesus informed his brothers that His time was not yet ripe. It was vitally necessary that He have the full time He needed on this earth to demonstrate as far as possible the truth about how God feels towards sinners and what His character of righteousness really looks like before He would then demonstrate what real death looks like. That is why Jesus refused to allow His publicity to advance too quickly before His Father indicated that it was time to die. To suffer a premature death before this demonstration was complete would be to short-circuit the very plan put in place to end the whole problem of sin once and for all in the day of final judgment and revelation.