The Gateway to Heaven
He then added, “I tell you the truth, you shall see heaven open, and the angels of God ascending and descending on the Son of Man” John 1:51
Jacob was a schemer and a twister. All his early life he lived to better himself, and especially if it meant getting the better of his older twin brother, Esau. Jacob tricked Esau out of his birthright and out of his father’s blessing. The tables were eventually turned on Jacob and Esau tried to kill him. Jacob fled.
But then something unexpected happened. Jacob had a dream. He saw a ladder with its bottom on the ground but its top reaching up to heaven. God’s angels were going up and down it. The Lord Himself appeared and stood before him, promising to bring him back to his land in peace and prosperity.
In our text from John 1:51, Jesus seems to be referring to the Jacob episode when He says to Nathanael and the other disciples (‘you’ is plural) they will see heaven opened with the angels of God going up and down – not a ladder, but the ‘Son of Man.’
The point about God’s ladder was that it showed Jacob that God was there with him in that place. Jacob was called where he was, at ‘Bethel,’ meaning ‘house of God.’ Bethel would much later become one of the great sanctuaries of Israel, one of the places where Israelite worship was carried on. The tradition of Jacob’s dream, of the angels going up and down, would then be connected with the belief that when you worshipped God in His house, He was really present, with His angels coming and going to link heaven and earth.
Much of John’s gospel has to do with the way Jesus fulfils the promises made about the Temple and how the living God wants to be present with His people. This was hinted at in 1:14 where John spoke of how the Word ‘made his dwelling’ in our midst. The term literally means ‘to pitch a tent, to tabernacle.’ This would immediately instil in the minds of Jewish readers the tabernacle in the wilderness at the time of the Exodus, and from there to the temple in Jerusalem where God’s presence was promised.
Jesus was telling His listeners that in His life and ministry they would see heaven and earth come together, that He was the ladder, the gateway to heaven. Because the religious Jews believed the Temple in Jerusalem was the true intersection between heaven and earth, Jesus was claiming from this early part of his ministry that what God had purposed the Temple to be, He would now fulfil.
Jesus said ‘I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me’ (John 14:6). In Jesus’ life, heaven and earth came together and He became our gateway to heaven.
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