‘Jesus therefore cried in the Temple, teaching, and saying, “You both know me, and know from where I am. But I am not come of myself, and he who sent me is true, whom you do not know. I know him because I am from him and he sent me”.'
Jesus now took them up on their certainty about His origins. He declared that, although the people claimed to know His origin, and in a sense did know it, they did not really do so. They knew Him as a well known Galilean. Well and good. But what they were unaware of was that He had been sent by the Father, and He was One Whom they did not really know. That is why they knew nothing about Jesus' divine origin. But had they known the Father truly they would have seen things very differently. However, as they did not truly know Him, how then could they expect to know where Jesus was from, for His Father would not have revealed it to them? Here was the crux of the problem. They thought that they knew God and His ways, but they did not. Thus they were not able to come to know the truth about His being sent by the Father. He on the other hand did know Him, because He had come from Him and had been sent by Him He thus knew His own origin.
He spoke these words openly to all the people, not just to the questioners, for the questions had been going the rounds. They may have thought that they knew His origin, He says, but they did not. For if they had known it they would have known that He had not come at His own devising. They would have known that He was sent by God.
‘The One who sent me is true and you do not know him. I know him, for I come from him and he sent me'. He has in truth come from One Who is true but Whom they actually do not know (even though they thought that they did), so in that case, how can they claim to know His origins? On the other hand He Himself knows Him for He has come from Him. The ‘I' is stressed. ‘ I know Him.' His knowledge of the Father, He says, is unique.
Of course they would have claimed to know God, but Jesus was stressing that by failing to recognise the truth, they were in fact demonstrating that they were strangers to the One Who is true. For if they had really known the truth they would now recognise that He knew God and that God had sent Him. Then they would really have known where He came from and would have acknowledged Him. It is a reminder that genuine truth rings true in the hearts of good men who are in touch with God. This claim to unique and intimate knowledge of the Father is mentioned elsewhere in the Gospel in John 1:18; John 6:46; John 8:25 and John 17:25.
So the whole basis of His argument is that they have a settled body of teaching that they believe in, and that it is that very body of teaching that is keeping them from the truth. It is keeping them from knowing the Father, and from knowing Him.