Nielsen’s Nook

Goto Part I

It is no coincidence that John informs us that Philip, whom Jesus had found, was from “Bethsaida, the city of Andrew and Peter.” Bethsaida was a fishing town just down the western shore of the Sea of Galilee from Capernaum, where Peter had built his home. “It is not unlikely that as fishermen in a fishing cooperative with James and John (Mk 1:19) they took their boats back and forth between Capernaum and Bethsaida.” ¹ The connection of Andrew and the unnamed disciple (John 1:35-39) was the means that Jesus seems to have used to find Philip.

Philip in turn went and found Nathanael. When Nathanael questioned the worthiness of Philip’s claim that he had found the fulfillment of the entire Old Testament (c.f., Deuteronomy 18:15-22), Philip replies simply, “Come and see.” It is quite a claim that Philip has made; however, what we find is that even that claim is an understatement. Our expectations of what we will see when we come to Jesus continue to be shaped and challenged.

When Nathanael comes to Jesus, he thinks he is amazed. Jesus saw him under the fig tree. This evokes from Nathanael, “Son of God! … King of Israel!”. However, what we find in this passage is that Jesus, the Incarnate Word, brings an amazement that is more than the maximum. Jesus responds with his first testimony of himself recorded in John’s Gospel, “You will see greater things that these. Truly, truly I say to you, you will see heaven opened, and the angels of God ascending and descending on the Son of Man” (John 1:50-51).

This is an allusion to Jacob’s dream (Genesis 28:10-22), in which he saw a ladder or stairway leading to heaven. In Jacob’s dream, God stood distant at the top of the stairs, mediating his affairs on earth through angels and dreams. In John 1:51 we find that God has come down the ladder, descended the stairs himself and brought heaven with him in the person of Jesus, the second person of the Trinity. As such Jesus is presenting himself as the only way by which anyone may come to God. He is the mediation also. In the incarnation then, we find that Jesus reveals himself to us as God himself and the way to God. To deny Christ’s mediatorial role is to deny God himself. To insert anything between God and humanity in addition to Jesus alone is to deny both the mediation and God who mediates.

__________

¹ Craig S. Keener and InterVarsity Press, The IVP Bible Background Commentary : New Testament (Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity Press, 1993), Jn 1:44.