Ascending and Descending (Part 1)

In three previous blogs (here, here and here) on the pre-existence of Christ in the narrative of John’s Gospel, we focused on three separate lines of argument. Firstly, we focused on a plain assertion from the mouth of John the Baptist that Jesus had existed before him. Secondly, we looked at statements in which John the Baptist contrasted himself (a fundamentally earthly being) with Jesus (a fundamentally heavenly being). Thirdly, we looked at statements Jesus made which express an awareness of a prior existence in God’s presence in heaven. On this collective evidence a strong case can be built that Christ existed in heaven prior to his human birth.

However, the evidence doesn’t stop there! In this blog we are going to begin looking at passages that reveal another fascinating line of evidence from John’s Gospel – the language of Christ ascending and descending between heaven and earth.

The first such passage is John 1:51, where Jesus spoke to Nathanael (who had just professed faith in him as the Son of God because of Jesus’ powers of perception): “And he said to him, ‘Truly, truly, I say to you, you will see heaven opened, and the angels of God ascending and descending on the Son of Man.’” This is a puzzling statement, and it is also the first occurrence of Jesus’ equally puzzling self-referent, ‘the Son of Man’ (which is a study in its own right). It is also the first use of his signature phrase, “Amen, Amen I say unto you” in this Gospel. Indeed, it was the first of many profound statements about himself that Jesus would make in this Gospel. But what does it mean?

The key to interpreting this saying is to recognize it as an allusion to a dream had by Jacob recorded in Genesis 28:11-13, in which there was a ladder reaching from earth up to heaven with the angels of God ascending and descending on it. Here in John, the angels are portrayed as ascending and descending on the Son of Man – Christ himself! Thus Christ is describing himself as a ladder reaching from earth to heaven. John Phillips describes the point Jesus was making in his commentary on John’s Gospel:

“I am that ladder.  I link God and man, heaven and earth.  I am the one and only mediator between God and man, the only link between heaven and earth.  The angels ascend and descend because of me” (Phillips, John. Exploring the Gospel of John: an expository commentary, p. 50)

This begs the question of how angels travelled between heaven and earth prior to Jesus’ existence, if he did not personally pre-exist. But more importantly, it establishes that in the context of this Gospel, language about ascent and descent between heaven and earth is literal. When angels travel between heaven and earth, they actually travel (not spatially in a physical sense, but nonetheless in terms of actual relocation). This sets a precedent for how to interpret language about Christ ascending and descending between heaven and earth in this Gospel.

We have a similar contextual clue at the end of John’s Gospel when Christ spoke of ascending to his Father after his resurrection (John 20:17). We know that he literally ascended to heaven (Acts 1:9-11 is unmistakably clear), so the language of ascension in John 20:17 must also be taken literally. Thus in John 1:51 and 20:17 we have two ‘bookends’ of literal ascent/descent language in the Gospel of John. In between these two bookends are two remarkable passages about the ascent and descent of the Son of Man. We’ll take a closer look at these two passages in the next blog.

Jesus and Women

The society that Jesus lived in was thoroughly male-dominated. Women in First Century Palestine had few rights and were seen as inferior to men. In this blog we will look at some of the ways Jesus promoted the rights of women and protected them from exploitation. My main reference is a book called Women in the Ministry of Jesus, by Ben Witherington III.

Firstly, women in this society were not allowed to testify in court, because they were seen as too emotionally frail to serve as reliable witnesses. By contrast, Jesus prophesied about a woman who would testify on the Day of Judgment (Matthew 12:42). Remarkably, God also chose women to be the first witnesses of the most important event in history: the resurrection of his Son. This was certainly a great surprise to the twelve disciples (Luke 24:10-11).

Secondly, men did not speak to women in public. By contrast, Jesus had a long conversation with a woman (a woman from a hostile ethnic group, the Samaritans, no less!) in public, which again surprised his closest followers (John 4:27).

Thirdly, the legal system of the time allowed a man to divorce his wife for any reason, even for burning his dinner and could simply send her away with no financial support; his wife had no right to protest. But Jesus taught that divorce is wrong (Mark 10:2-12), and that a man who divorces his wife is causing her to commit adultery (Matthew 5:31-32). This was because women who were divorced could be driven to transactional sex or prostitution as a means to support themselves.

Fourthly, rabbis (religious teachers) of this time never had woman disciples. Jesus had no women in his inner circle of disciples (this would have been seen as highly inappropriate given that they slept together during travels), but he did have woman disciples (Luke 8:1-3).

Fifthly, women were seen as sources of temptation to be blamed for men’s sins. John 8:3-11 illustrates the double standard, because a woman caught in the act of adultery was to be stoned but the man had presumably been allowed to get away. Jesus acknowledged her guilt but showed her mercy. He also disdained the idea that women are at fault when men yield to sexual temptation; rather, a man has only himself to blame for his lack of self control (Matthew 5:27-28).

Sixthly, women were not educated: “Apart from the role of the woman in the home in giving her children some basic religious instruction (and even this was disputed), a woman had no educational functions except in very rare cases” (Witherington III, p. 9). By contrast, when a woman was criticized for listening to Jesus teach when she could be working in the kitchen, Jesus praised her passion for learning (Luke 10:38-42).

Seventhly, women were seen as unimportant and unworthy of praise and recognition. By contrast, Jesus praised certain women for their righteousness (Mark 12:40-44; Mark 14:3-9), told parables that were relevant especially to women (Luke 13:20-21; Luke 15:8-10; Luke 18:1-5), and showed special concern for women when prophesying about the destruction of Jerusalem (Luke 23:27-28).

In summary, it would be inaccurate, not to mention anachronistic, to portray Jesus as an advocate of modern Western gender norms. He did not promote the confounding of male and female roles in society, church or family. However, it would be correct to say that Jesus promoted the idea that women and men are of equal value, despite living in a society which believed otherwise.

Jesus' special care and concern for the so-called weaker sex were not without result. It would probably be fair to say that in most church congregations throughout Christian history, women have significantly outnumbered men.

What I have seen with my Father

In a previous blog we looked at John 3:31-32, which says that “He who comes from heaven…bears witness to what he has seen and heard.” We claimed that this implies Christ saw and heard things in heaven prior to his ministry on earth, and that this is best explained by the idea that he personally pre-existed in heaven. In this blog we are going to look at four other ‘experience of heaven’ sayings in John: passages where Christ alluded to previous experience of God’s presence in heaven.

The first is earlier in the same chapter, in John 3:11-13, when Jesus was speaking to Nicodemus:

“11 Truly, truly, I say to you, we speak of what we know, and bear witness to what we have seen, but you do not receive our testimony. 12 If I have told you earthly things and you do not believe, how can you believe if I tell you heavenly things? 13 No one has ascended into heaven except he who descended from heaven, the Son of Man.”

Jesus is saying, “We [i.e. the Father and I] speak from personal experience about heavenly things, because we have been there.” He goes on to point out that he alone among human beings has been to heaven (we will look at verse 13 in more detail in a future blog).

The second experience of heaven passage is John 5:37. The context is picking up on the same familiar themes: the authority and witness to Jesus’ teachings, and his superiority over John the Baptist. The verse reads, “And the Father who sent me has himself borne witness about me. His voice you have never heard, his form you have never seen”.

The other passages spoke about Christ having seen and heard things in heaven, but this passage refers more directly to having seen and heard the Father. As Jesus did so often, he is contrasting his opponents with himself. In stating the obvious fact that his detractors had not seen the Father’s form or heard his voice, Jesus was implying that he himself had done so.

The third passage we will consider is John 8:38, 41-42:

“38 ‘I speak of what I have seen with my Father, and you do what you have heard from your father’…‘You are doing the works your father did.’ 41 They said to him, ‘We were not born of sexual immorality. We have one Father--even God.’ 42 Jesus said to them, ‘If God were your Father, you would love me, for I came from God and I am here. I came not of my own accord, but he sent me.’”

Here, Jesus claims to speak about what he has seen with his Father. “With his Father” means in his Father’s presence in heaven. This interpretation is supported by the statements Jesus made in v. 42. First, he said, “I came from God and I am here.” To say ‘I am here’ as a result of coming from God implies that the coming from God was a literal relocation of his personal presence. That is, before he was ‘here’ (on earth), he was somewhere else (with God in heaven).

Secondly, he emphasized, “I came not of my own accord, but he sent me.” If Jesus meant he came from God in the sense of being born by divine intervention, then this was a completely unnecessary statement to make. No one comes into existence of their own accord!

The final ‘experience of heaven’ passage we’ll consider is John 17:5, where Jesus prayed, “And now, Father, glorify me in your own presence with the glory that I had with you before the world existed.” Jesus was speaking about his imminent departure from the world to be with God in heaven (v. 11). It is hard to miss the parallel between “…I had with you before the world existed” and John 1:1 (“In the beginning…the Word was with God”). In both cases the key verb is in the imperfect tense, denoting continuous action over a period of time. The words “the glory that I had with you” require nothing less than a personal relationship between the Father and Son in each other’s presence. Jesus “had” glory – he himself possessed it, which he could not have done if he did not yet actually exist!

These passages together provide us with a picture of the pre-existent Christ. They tell us the what (a glorious existence in God’s presence), the where (in heaven), and the when (from before creation until the time he came down to earth).

Why walk on water?

One of Jesus’ most famous miracles was the time when he walked on water. This incident is recorded in Matthew 14, Mark 6 and John 6. Mark’s account reads as follows:

“45 Immediately he made his disciples get into the boat and go before him to the other side, to Bethsaida, while he dismissed the crowd. 46 And after he had taken leave of them, he went up on the mountain to pray. 47 And when evening came, the boat was out on the sea, and he was alone on the land. 48 And he saw that they were making headway painfully, for the wind was against them. And about the fourth watch of the night he came to them, walking on the sea. He meant to pass by them, 49 but when they saw him walking on the sea they thought it was a ghost, and cried out, 50 for they all saw him and were terrified. But immediately he spoke to them and said, "Take heart; it is I. Do not be afraid." 51 And he got into the boat with them, and the wind ceased. And they were utterly astounded” (Mark 6:45-51)

This was a pretty cool miracle. But what does it mean? Was Jesus just showing off, or was he trying to teach something? Two rules of thumb when it comes to Jesus are: #1, pretty much everything he did was meant to teach something. #2, the Old Testament is our most important source for understanding the symbolism of his actions.

The Old Testament background that puts this incident in context is Yahweh’s power over the sea. The most famous example of this was the parting of the Red Sea (Exodus 14). Several other passages, some of them referring to this event, refer to Yahweh as making a path or even walking on the sea:

“[God] alone stretched out the heavens and trampled the waves of the sea” (Job 9:8)

“Have you entered into the springs of the sea, or walked in the recesses of the deep?” (Job 38:16)

“Your way was through the sea, your path through the great waters; yet your footprints were unseen.” (Psalm 77:19)

“Thus says the LORD, who makes a way in the sea, a path in the mighty waters” (Isaiah 43:16)

“You trampled the sea with your horses, the surging of mighty waters.” (Habakkuk 3:15)

A closer examination of two of the above passages reveals that they have remarkable textual parallels to the Gospel accounts of this miracle.

The first is Job 9:8. The Septuagint (LXX) is an ancient Greek translation of the Old Testament which was the main Bible read by first century believers like Mark. Job 9:8 LXX reads, “Who alone stretched out the sky and walks on the sea as on dry ground” (New English Translation of the Septuagint). In Greek, the phrase translated ‘walks on the sea’ (peripaton...epi thalassei) is nearly identical to the phrase translated ‘walking on the sea’ in Mark 6:48 (peripaton epi tes thalasses). This has led commentators to believe that Mark saw Jesus’ miracle as a realization of Job 9:8 LXX.

The second is Isaiah 43:10-16. We’ve already read v. 16, which referred to God making a way in the sea (an allusion to the parting of the Red Sea). Now let’s consider v. 10-13:

“10 ‘You are my witnesses,’ declares the LORD, ‘and my servant whom I have chosen, that you may know and believe me and understand that I am he. Before me no god was formed, nor shall there be any after me. 11 I, I am the LORD, and besides me there is no savior. 12 I declared and saved and proclaimed, when there was no strange god among you; and you are my witnesses,’ declares the LORD, ‘and I am God. 13 Also henceforth I am he; there is none who can deliver from my hand; I work, and who can turn it back?’”

The parallel between this passage and the account of Jesus walking on the water is not obvious in English – we again have to compare the Greek Septuagint of Isaiah to the Greek of Mark. A small but important phrase is used in both places: ego eimi. It is used by God in Isaiah 43:10 (where it is translated ‘I am he’), and by Jesus in Mark 6:50 (where it is translated ‘it is I’).

In Isaiah, the phrase ego eimi functions as an expression of God’s absolute, unique existence (see also Isaiah 41:4; 43:25; 45:18; 46:4; 51:12). God has always existed and always will, and there is no other! In Mark, the phrase ego eimi primarily serves simply to identify Jesus (“It’s me Jesus, not a ghost!”) However, given the extraordinary event and this Old Testament background, scholars have suggested that Jesus was also using the phrase to express something else:

“In the original setting of the story, ‘it is I’ probably served as an identification formula…However, Mark may intend his readers to see a more pregnant meaning in these words. In numerous places in the OT, God identifies himself with the words ‘I am’…This, along with the fact that in the OT, God is portrayed as walking on the waters, would further give to ‘it is I’ a theophanic sense.” (Robert H. Stein, Mark, p. 326)

A theophany is when God appears to men. So the point is, when Jesus walked to his disciples on the water and then said “It is I,” he was not only saying, “It is I, your teacher, Jesus of Nazareth.” He was saying, “It is I, the One who has power to make a path in the sea.” But as learned Jews would know from the Old Testament, it is Yahweh and Yahweh alone who rules the sea and traverses it freely. If we read between the lines, what is Jesus really saying about himself?

He who comes from heaven

In last week’s blog we looked at something John the Baptist said about Jesus (John 1:29-30) and we claimed that it required Jesus to have existed before his human birth. In this week’s blog we will look another statement John the Baptist made comparing himself with Jesus, this time taken from John 3:27-32:

“27 John answered, ‘A person cannot receive even one thing unless it is given him from heaven. 28 You yourselves bear me witness, that I said, 'I am not the Christ, but I have been sent before him.' 29 The one 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 complete. 30 He must increase, but I must decrease.’ 31 He who comes from above is above all.  He who is of the earth belongs to the earth and speaks in an earthly way.  He who comes from heaven is above all.  32 He bears witness to what he has seen and heard, yet no one receives his testimony.”

It is plain from the immediate context ( verse 35) and the wider context of John’s Gospel (John 8:23) that ‘he who comes from heaven’ is Jesus Christ.

It appears that ‘he who is of the earth’ refers to John the Baptist (or perhaps more generally to all prophets other than the Christ). Thus we have here another contrast between John the Baptist, who ‘is of the earth, belongs to the earth and speaks in an earthly way,’ and Christ, who ‘comes from heaven,’ ‘is above all,’ and ‘bears witness to what he has seen and heard.’

In what sense did Christ come from heaven? Did he pre-exist in heaven and then actually descend to earth? This is the literal interpretation of the passage. But others claim it has a figurative meaning. Some say it refers to the fact that Jesus was born as a result of miraculous, heavenly intervention. Others say Christ came from heaven in the sense that the heavenly God had been planning his life long before he was born. Still others say that Christ came from heaven in the sense that the heavenly God sent him on a mission. So which meaning is correct?

A basic rule of biblical interpretation is to take words at their plain, literal meaning unless there is good reason to prefer a figurative meaning. In this case, there is no good reason to prefer a figurative meaning, and in fact the figurative interpretations mentioned above have serious flaws.

One thing everyone can agree on is that the main point of this passage is the distinction between Christ (who came from heaven) and John the Baptist (who is of the earth). Interpreted literally, the distinction is significant indeed. But interpreted figuratively, the distinction is almost trivial. It is true that Christ’s birth was a result of heavenly intervention; but so was John the Baptist’s (Luke 1:7-20). It is true that Christ’s life was planned ahead by God, but so was John the Baptist’s (John 1:23), and so too are all the saints’ (Ephesians 1:5). It is true that Christ was sent on a mission by God, but so was John the Baptist (John 1:6). So under these interpretations, John the Baptist came from heaven almost as truly as Jesus Christ did. It is only the literal meaning that accounts for the ‘heaven and earth’ distinction drawn here between Christ and John the Baptist.

There are other reasons to take the words “He who comes from heaven” literally. John 3:31-32 implies that Christ testified to what he had seen and heard in heaven (we will look at other passages in this vein in the next blog). Christ could not have seen and heard things in heaven unless he had actually been there.

Note also the difference in verbs between “he who comes from heaven” and “he who is of the earth.” The writer doesn’t say “he who comes from the earth,” because John the Baptist didn’t literally come out of the ground. But he does emphatically refer to Christ as “he who comes from heaven.”

The Socinians (a group of Polish unitarian Christians in the 16^th century) believed that Christ made a special trip to heaven after his baptism where he met the Father, was instructed by him, and then returned to earth (see Section V of the Racovian Catechism, ‘Of the prophetic office of Christ’). They knew that this verse and others clearly taught that Christ actually descended from heaven, but they were not prepared to accept the pre-existence of Christ.

Rather than inventing a story to avoid the plain meaning of the passage, let us hear the Scriptural testimony that Christ personally pre-existed in heaven before coming down to earth. He ranked before John the Baptist because he existed before him. He is above all because he comes from above.

An Introduction to the Pre-Existence of Christ

Pre-existence is a strange word. It refers to existence before entering one’s current state of being. To say that a human being pre-existed is to say that they existed in some personal form before their human birth.

The Church has taught for many centuries that Jesus Christ pre-existed. In the past two centuries, however, this teaching has come under heavy criticism on two fronts. Firstly, critics have argued that the idea of pre-existence is unscientific – a biological impossibility – and have called on the church to conform to modern science and abandon such absurdities. Secondly, critics have argued that the idea of pre-existence is unbiblical – a myth invented by the early church – and have called on the church to return to the teachings of Jesus and the apostles.

To the first criticism, we can respond that the idea of pre-existence is just one of many “unscientific” claims the church makes about Jesus. The virgin birth, walking on water, the resurrection, ascending bodily into heaven – none of these events can be reproduced in a laboratory; and yet without them, the Christian faith is an empty shell. If you don’t believe in miracles, can you really call yourself a Christian? If you do believe in miracles, the limitations of science should not prevent you from believing in the pre-existence of Christ. The real question is whether the Bible teaches the pre-existence of Christ.

This brings us to the second criticism. We do not have space in one blog entry to consider the biblical case for and against the pre-existence of Christ in detail. However, I want to discuss one Bible passage which I believe is a good starting point for a larger study.

John the Baptist was a relative of Jesus and a great prophet who prepared the way for Jesus’ ministry. From the birth accounts in Luke 1 we know that he was a few months older than Jesus. Yet in John 1:29-30 we read the following astounding statement:

The next day [John the Baptist] saw Jesus coming toward him, and said, “Behold, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world! This is he of whom I said, 'After me comes a man who ranks before me, because he was before me.'” (English Standard Version)

       The most obvious meaning of these English words is that Jesus existed before John the Baptist. Since Jesus was born after John, this could only be true if he pre-existed.

      Now, this may be the obvious meaning of these English words, but we must ask, is this meaning supported by the context and by the original Greek text? The answer to both questions is a resounding yes! From looking at the context we note the following: 

1. "He was before me” can only refer to precedence in time, not in rank. John the Baptist had already mentioned precedence in rank earlier in the verse!  If he did so twice, his statement would be a tautology: “After me comes a man who ranks before me, because he ranked before me.”  This is redundant, and it fails to make sense of the shift from present tense to past tense. 
2. John the Baptist’s statement opens with, “After me comes a man…” This ‘after me’ plainly refers to time, so the symmetry of the whole thought requires that ‘before me’ also refers to time.
3. The wider context of the chapter strongly supports a pre-existence interpretation. The same statement by John the Baptist is quoted earlier in John 1:15 as part of the prologue to John’s Gospel, which is all about the Word who existed in the beginning. The prologue even contrasts the pre-existent Word with John the Baptist, who was merely “a man sent from God” (John 1:6). John 1:30 should be interpreted within this framework.

       The original Greek also bears out the pre-existence meaning of “He was before me”:

1. The Greek word translated “before” is protos, which can refer to precedence in time or in rank, and takes on both meanings numerous times in the New Testament. However, within the writings of John it always refers to time, and not once to rank (John 1:41; 2:10; 7:51; 8:7; 10:40; 12:16; 15:18; 18:13; 19:32; 19:39; 20:4; 20:8; 1 John 4:19). So John’s stylistic tendencies suggest that protos also refers to precedence in time in John 1:30. 
2. It is worth noting the tense of the Greek verb translated ‘was’: it is the imperfect tense of the verb en (to be), denoting continuous past existence. This is the same verb and tense used to describe the past existence of the Word in John 1:1-2. So the Greek does not actually say that Jesus came into existence; he simply was in existence. By contrast, John the Baptist is introduced in John 1:6 (“There was a man…”) with the aorist tense of the verb ginomai (to become; to come into existence), denoting that he came into existence at a point in time.

So, after looking closely at the grammar and context of the verse, we can confirm that the most obvious meaning of John the Baptist’s words is also the one best supported by context and language. John was explaining that Jesus, despite coming after him, ranked before him. This was an exception to the rule that the younger prophet should submit to the older prophet (see 2 Kings 2), and the reason for the exception was that Jesus had in fact existed before John the Baptist - which is possible only if he pre-existed!

It would be foolish to build a whole doctrine upon one verse. Fortunately, we don’t have to, as there is plenty of other biblical evidence that Jesus pre-existed, some of which we will examine in future blog entries. But my hope is that this one verse will motivate you to open your mind to think more about this subject.