John 1:51

John 1:51. And he saith unto him, Verily, verily, I say unto you. This is the first occasion on which we find the repeated ‘Verily,' so characteristic of the discourses related in this Gospel. The formula is always employed to mark some important step in a discourse, where the words of Jesus either take some new start, or rise to some higher stage. Both these conditions are fulfilled in the verse before us. As to the first, it will be observed that Jesus no longer addresses Nathanael alone: the plural instead of the singular is used, and we must understand that He is speaking to all the disciples. As to the second, again, the words of themselves suggest the higher stage of revelation promised.

Ye shall see heaven open, and the angels of God ascending and descending upon the Son of man. The figure is taken from Jacob's dream (Genesis 28:12). A wanderer from his father's house and country, he is encouraged by a vision which teaches him that earth is united with heaven, and that God's messengers descend to minister to those who are the objects of God's care. If the ascent of the angels is mentioned (in Genesis 28) before the descent, this is because to Jacob is shown an intercourse that already exists, not one that now begins. Some angels are already returning from earth, their ministries accomplished. What Jacob saw in vision is now in the highest sense fulfilled. There is real and unceasing intercourse between earth and heaven. It is to Jesus that the angels descend; it is from Him that they return to heaven; through His presence on earth this union between earth and heaven exists. Even though He is in His state of humiliation, it is His bidding that the angels do. Perhaps it is this thought that accounts for the mention (in this verse) of the ascending angels first. These words have no direct reference to the angelic visits received by Jesus at different points of His earthly ministry; still less can we refer them to miracles to be hereafter performed, greater even than that displayed to Nathanael, miracles of which the next chapter will furnish the first example. We have simply a symbolical representation of the fact that through the Incarnation and sufferings of Jesus heaven is opened, is brought into the closest and most constant communion with earth, so that the latter is itself transfigured with the glory of God's special abode. This interpretation is confirmed by two circumstances mentioned in the verse: (1) Nathanael is to see ‘heaven standing open,' not ‘opened' as if it might again be closed, but opened so as to continue open. It is the complete withdrawal of the inner veil of the Tabernacle, so that all the children of God, now made priests and high priests unto God, even the Father, may pass freely into the innermost sanctuary and out of it again without interruption and without end. (2) Jesus speaks of Himself as the ‘Son of man.' This important designation, often used by Jesus of Himself, once only used of Him by another (Acts 7:56), is not, as some maintain, a simple equivalent of ‘Messiah.' It expresses rather One in whom all that truly belongs to humanity is realised, and by whom it is represented. Jesus is the Son of man, connected with no special race, or class, or condition, equally associated with all, equally near to all, in whom all are equally interested, and may be equally blessed. The designation is not a fourth confession, additional to the three that have been already made, for it comes from the lips of Jesus Himself. It is rather that in which all the confessions meet, the expression of the Personality to which they all belong. Jesus is the Incarnate Word, and as such He is the ‘Messiah,' the One ‘of whom Moses in the law and the prophets did write,' the ‘Son of God and King of Israel.' Every child of humanity, realising his true humanity in Him, has as his own the blessings associated with these three aspects of the Redeemer. He is anointed with the Holy Ghost, lives in that love which is the fulfilling of the law, is a son in the house of the Heavenly Father, himself a king. These are the ‘greater things' which every one who is an ‘Israelite in deed' shall see in the new creation introduced by the ‘Word become flesh,' and enlightened by the full brightness of that Light in whose presence old things pass away, and all things are made new.