A New Creation
Son of God
And God said, “Let there be lights in the firmament of the heavens to separate the day from the night; and let them be for signs and for seasons and for days and years, and let them be lights in the firmament of the heavens to give light upon the earth.” And it was so. And God made the two great lights, the greater light to rule the day, and the lesser light to rule the night; he made the stars also. And God set them in the firmament of the heavens to give light upon the earth, to rule over the day and over the night, and to separate the light from the darkness. And God saw that it was good. And there was evening and there was morning, a fourth day. (Book of Genesis)
“Truly, truly, I say to you, you will see heaven opened, and the angels of God ascending and descending upon the Son of man.” (Gospel of Saint John)
The fourth day of John’s gospel is a good day to contemplate the dual nature of Christ, specifically his divinity. Up to now, others have testified Jesus is the Son of God while Jesus refers to himself as the Son of Man (‘Adam’).
Let us recap briefly what has been said about Jesus so far.
On day one, Saint John the Baptist told the people he was there to “make straight the way of the Lord.” On day two, he sees Jesus and proclaims “behold, the lamb of God” and when he baptizes him, he says, “I have seen and have borne witness that this is the Son of God.” On day three, the Baptist once again bears witness about Jesus to his disciples, “Behold, the lamb of God.” His disciples at this point call him rabbi. Very they are convinced, “we have found the Messiah.” So, in three days, Jesus has been referred to as Lord, Lamb of God, Son of God, rabbi, and Messiah, which means Christ.
And on day four, we have even more proclamations about Jesus as the number of disciples grows. Philip goes to Nathanael and tells him, “We have found him of whom Moses in the law and also the prophets wrote. And very quickly, after a brief interchange with Jesus, Nathanael also breaks out in praise of Jesus, “Rabbi, you are the Son of God! You are the King of Israel!”
Jesus responds,
“Because I said to you, I saw you under the fig tree, do you believe? You shall see greater things than these.” And he said to him, “Truly, truly, you will see heaven opened, and the angels of God ascending and descending upon the Son of Man.”
Impressively, people are starting to call him son of God, yet Jesus refers to himself as son of Man. It seems like a contradiction. It is a paradox. For, how can God be man? Or man be God? This is a profound mystery. And yet, once again, this mystery was foretold in the scriptures. In the end, the unraveling of this mystery leads to Christ’s crucifixion and death. To begin to understand the enigma of Christ’s dual nature, we need to be familiar with the prophecies of the exiled Prophet, Daniel.
Daniel (‘God is my judge’) is one of the exiles sent to Babylon. He is a talented youth, part of the royal family and nobility, handsome and skillful in wisdom and endowed with knowledge, understanding, learning, and competent to serve in the Babylonian king’s palace. He was trained in the letters and language of the Chaldeans, much like Moses who was trained in the ways of Pharaoh’s court.
While in exile, Daniel and his friends were committed to the ways of God. They bore witness of God and his wisdom. This is how the sacred scriptures summarize Daniel and his friends,
God gave them learning and skill in all letters and wisdom, and Daniel had understanding in all visions and dreams. At the end of time, when the king had commanded that they should be brought in, the chief of the eunuchs brought them in before Nebuchadnezzar. And the king spoke with them, and among them all none was found like Daniel, Hananiah, Mishael, and Azariah; therefore, they stood before the king. And in every matter of wisdom and understanding concerning which the king inquired of them, he found them ten times better than all the magicians and enchanters that were in all his kingdom.
Now, many things happened to Daniel of great importance. But one of the most interesting is Daniel was given visions of the future, including the coming of Christ. When Daniel set to pray for enlightenment regarding one of the visions, the Angel Gabriel – the same angel who would later visit Zechariah (the Baptist’s father) and Mary (the Savior’s mother) – was sent to inform Daniel of the divine plan of salvation that was going to be taking place in five centuries (or, in Hebrew, ‘seventy weeks of years’).
“Seventy weeks of years are decreed concerning your people and your holy city, to finish the transgression, to put an end to sin, to atone for iniquity, to bring everlasting righteousness, to seal both vision and prophet, and to anoint a most holy place.”
While on trial, Christ himself quotes one of the visions of Daniel, the perplexing vision in chapter 7, and like other passages of sacred scripture, Jesus once again states the prophecy of Daniel is fulfilled in himself. Specifically, Daniel prophesied,
I saw in the night visions,
and behold, with the clouds of heaven
there came one like a son of man,
and he came to the Ancient of Days
and was presented before him.
And to him was given
dominion and glory and kingdom,
that all peoples, nations, and languages
should serve him.
His dominion is an everlasting dominion,
which shall not pass away
and his kingdom one
that shall not be destroyed.
Who could the prophet be speaking of? Someone who comes to God (that is, the Ancient of Days) and receives a kingdom of all peoples, nations, and tongues should serve him. It is Jesus of Nazareth, of course, the one whom the law and the prophets spoke and wrote of, and time testifies to.
For the life of Christ is proclaimed by time itself, for we measure time on earth by the life of Christ. Every date stamp, every email, every post-marked letter testifies to the birth of Christ our king. Whether we see it or not, that’s a different story. But history is told relative to Christ. And his kingdom is the one “which shall not pass away, that shall not be destroyed.” In other words, his kingdom his eternal. It makes sense to tell time in light of the eternal one, the only one outside of space and time. The one who was there “in the beginning.”
Plus, ancient cultures would tell time by their great rulers. And so, all the earth testifies Christ is king by constantly remembering his birth every time we date something, and literally relating every other important moment of life and history to his life. Christ is king, and Daniel had a vision of the king centuries before Christ was born.
In fact, the prophecy of Daniel is so powerful that Jesus is sentenced to death for quoting it before the religious leaders and testifying that the prophecy is about Jesus. Some things never change, and even Jesus was forced to submit to show trials before evil religious and political leaders. The high priest during Jesus’s ministry prophesied that “it was better that one man should die for the people.” They had decided beforehand they wanted Jesus dead, and the show trial was simply the way they were going to make their evil plans seem legitimate. But what the high priest said with evil intentions, God meant for our salvation. To fulfill Joseph the Dreamer’s prophecy of Jesus, he proclaimed to his murderous brothers, “As for you, you mean evil against me; but God meant it for good, to bring it about that many people should be kept alive.”
Saint Matthew provides more details of Jesus’s trial before the religious leaders of the time.
And the high priest said to him, “I adjure you by the living God, tell us if you are the Christ, the Son of God.”
Jesus said to him, “You have said so. But I tell you, hereafter you will see the Son of Man seated at the right hand of Power, and coming on the clouds of heaven.”
Then the high priest tore his robes, and said, “He has uttered blasphemy. Why do we still need witnesses? You have now heard his blasphemy. What is your judgment?”
They answered, “He deserves death.”
We killed God. Creator of heaven and earth, came into his own home, and “we received him not.” And yet, as the high priest prophesied that year, “it is better for one man to die than the people perish.” In God’s divine plan of salvation, he was willing to become the lamb of sacrifice and purchase for us the rewards of eternal salvation. We killed God, and in his death, we are saved. His death is our life.
And so, even though mankind was barred from the tree of life in the garden of paradise, God transformed dead wood in the form of a cross into our tree of life, one that bears the eternal fruit of salvation, the body and blood of our eternal lord, the son of God and son of Man. What Adam lost for humanity through disobedience, Christ redeemed and gained through obedience.
“As one man’s trespass led to condemnation for all men, so one man’s act of righteousness leads to acquittal and life for all men. For as by one man’s disobedience many were made sinners, so by one man’s obedience many will be made righteous.”
And in truly divine irony, the Passion of our Lord began simply because Jesus testified of who he was. Yes, we killed God for testifying to being the son of God. The prophesy of Daniel was so powerful that when Jesus confirmed it was about himself, they sentenced him to death and handed him over to the Romans for crucifixion.
The proper understanding of the biblical term, ‘Son of Man’ is not simply to testify that Jesus is human, but more specifically, to understand he is that unique human with a special relationship with our eternal Father, the Ancient of Days, who would be granted a kingdom forever. The lion of Judah is the lamb of God. The son of Man is the son of God. The biblical term ‘Son of Man’ is, in fact, a trinitarian mystery.
And so, the eternal Word was made flesh and sacrificed for us. As Isaiah foretold,
He was wounded for our transgressions,
he was bruised for our iniquities,
upon him was the chastisement that made us whole,
and with his stripes we are healed.
All we like sheep have gone astray;
we have turned everyone to his own way.
And the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all.
And they made his grave with the wicked
and with a rich man in his death,
although he had done no violence,
and there was no deceit in his mouth.
Yet it was the will of the Lord.
He poured out his soul to death,
and was numbered with the transgressors;
yet he bore the sin of many,
and made intercession for the transgressors.
Again, the plan of salvation was prepared and prophesied for centuries and millennia before the plan was brought forth by God. And prophecy after prophecy finds their fulfillment in Jesus alone, which the gospel writer continues to make evident in the details of the first week of his gospel, especially day four as we see the gathering of more disciples and more proclamations about Jesus are made.
And the proclamations seem to grow in intensity and stating the mission of Jesus. For example, two end day four of Saint John’s gospel, we have the interchange with Nathanael and Jesus ending with a perplexing image. Jesus testifies,
Truly, truly, you will see heaven opened, and the angels of God ascending and descending upon the Son of Man.
What on earth is Jesus on about? Well, once again, Jesus is quoting an ancient story of Israel and rooting it in himself as fulfilled. In this case, a story from the book of Genesis, the story of Jacob’s escape from home and exile to his mother’s homeland in search of a bride.
Then Isaac called Jacob and blessed him and charged him, “You shall not marry one of the Canaanite women. Arise, go to Paddan-aram to the house of Bethuel your mother’s father; and take as wife from there one of the daughters of Laban your mother’s brother. God Almighty bless you and make you fruitful and multiply you, that you may become a company of peoples. May he give the blessing of Abraham to you and to your descendants with you, that you may take possession of the land of your sojourning which God gave to Abraham!”
And so, Jacob left to find his future bride. On the way, he found a certain place to stay the night as the sun had set.
Taking one of the stones of the place, he put it under his head and lay down in that place to sleep. And he dreamed that there was a ladder set up on the earth, and the top of it reached to heaven; and behold, the angels of God were ascending and descending on it!
And behold, the Lord stood above it and said, “I am the Lord, the God of Abraham your father and the God of Isaac. The land on which you lie I will give to you and to your descendants, and your descendants shall be like the dust of the earth, and you shall spread abroad to the west and to the east and to the north and to the south; and by you and your descendants shall all the families of the earth bless themselves. Behold, I am with you and will keep you wherever you go and will bring you back to this land. For I will not leave you until I have done that of which I have spoken to you.”
Then Jacob awoke from his sleep and said, “Surely the Lord is in this place, and I did not know it.”
And he was afraid, and said, “How awesome is this place! This is none other than the house of God, and this is the gate of heaven.”
Once again, Jesus takes a powerful ancient story from the Israelites and roots it in himself. “This is the gate of heaven,” the rock of which is the son of Man. Yes, the story of Jacob’s ladder to heaven is a powerful origin story about the man who would find his bride and become the father of the twelve tribes of Israel. Israel being the name he would receive from God, which means ‘he who wrestles with God.’
When Jesus applies this story to himself, he’s letting his disciples know their mission – they are to find his bride and establish the kingdom of heaven, made up of the people of God, built on the foundation of the twelve apostles. A new covenant version of the twelve tribes of the old covenant.
More even, he himself would be the cornerstone of the house of God, he is the gate to heaven, the only way to the Father. Later in the Beloved’s gospel, Jesus would further reiterate this theme, when he says things like “I am the door, of the sheep…I am the door; if anyone enters by me, he will be saved.” Or, when he tells the apostles during the evening of the last supper, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life; no one comes to the Father, but by me.” All different ways to reiterate that original word to Nathanael, where he confirms he is the locus point of the ladder to heaven. That ladder rests on the Son of Man, the rock of God, Christ our cornerstone.
Once again, we find the eternal Word makes incredible claims about himself, re-orienting this important moment in Israelite history and centering it on himself. Jesus is not only the house of God, not only the gate of heaven, but incredibly, through this story, scripture, and analogy, he is telling his apostles that they have a mission to accomplish. He’s telling them they are on a quest to find his bride.
Miraculously, the promised Messiah has visited his people, the bridegroom is coming to his bride, and this knowledge sheds light on the deep meaning behind the Baptist’s last words,
You yourselves bear me witness, that I said, I am not the Christ, but I have been sent before him. He who has the bride is the bridegroom; the friend of the bridegroom, who stands and hears him, rejoices greatly at the bridegroom’s voice; therefore, this joy of mine is now full. He must increase, but I must decrease.”
Let us rejoice! The bridegroom is coming to his bride. We have found the bridegroom!
“We have found him of whom Moses in the law and also the prophets wrote, Jesus of Nazareth, the son of Joseph.”
Let us make sure the bride is ready.