One of my favorite things about the Gospel of John is how it depicts the exalted status and nature of Jesus Christ. John 1 famously begins with a verse that unequivocally declares that Jesus was “with God” from the beginning and himself “God. (John 1:1) Jesus is also depicted as the one through whom “all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made.” (John 1:2) And he is the only one who has seen God, who came into the world to reveal God to us (John 1:18).
But I particularly love the Old Testament imagery that John uses in this chapter to depict who Jesus is.
In Verse 14, John describes how “The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us.” The term used for “dwelling” is the same word used to describe the tabernacle in the wilderness. John is therefore describing Jesus as the true and embodiment of the temple. In Jesus, God came to dwell not indirectly as in the tabernacle, but as a human being who dwelt among us. This is incredible! It fits really well with Jesus’s declaration in the Gospel of Matthew that “in this place there is one greater than the temple” (Matthew 12:6). Jesus is the true temple. All earlier temples were a shadow and a type of him.
A few verses later, John depicts Jesus as the new and greater Moses, a common New Testament motif. While Jesus “the law was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ.” (John 1:17).
Another depiction at the very end of John 1 is a bit easier to miss. When Jesus calls Nathaniel, he compares him to tricky deceptive Jacob/Israel by describing him as an Israelite without guile. Then, when Nathaniel confesses that Jesus is Lord based on Jesus revealing hidden truths to Nathaniel, Jesus declares, “Very truly I tell you, you will see ‘heaven open, and the angels of God ascending and descending on’ the Son of Man.” This is an allusion to one of the most famous stories involving the Patriarch Jacob where Jacob saw a ladder or stairway “resting on the earth, with its top reaching to heaven, and the angels of God were ascending and descending on it.” (Gen 28:12). Jesus is declaring himself to be Jacob’s ladder, the bridge between heaven and earth. The Angels are also described as “descending ON the Son of Man.” Jesus’s own body is therefore being shown to be the thing that connects mankind and heaven. Jesus is pointing here to how his body will be lifted up on the cross to form the way for mankind. I love how this metaphor shows that Jesus did not just come to make A way for us, he in fact IS the way. His body, his blood, his sacrifice ARE the ladder.
Praise Jesus that he came into the world and tabernacled among us not in a temple built with human hands, but in human flesh! Praise Jesus that he brought us not just more rules for us to follow, but grace and truth! Praise Jesus that he didn’t just give us a ladder for us to try to climb into heaven, but that he himself IS the ladder that connects us eternally to heaven!