And he saith unto him, Verily, verily, I say unto you. The reduplicated ἀμὴν occurs twenty-five times in John's Gospel, and is in this form peculiar to the Gospel, although in its single form it occurs fifty times in the three synoptists. The word is, strictly speaking, an adjective, meaning "firm," "trustworthy," corresponding with the substantive נםֶ), truth, and הנָמְאָ and הנָמָאֲ, confidence, the covenant (Nehemiah 10:1). The repetition of the word in an adverbial sense is found in Numbers 5:22 and Nehemiah 8:6. In Revelation 3:14 "Amen" is the name given to the Faithful Witness. The repetition of the word involves a powerful asseveration, made to overcome a rising doubt and meet a possible objection. The "I say unto you" takes, on the lips of Jesus, the place which "Thus saith the Lord" occupied on those of the ancient prophets. He speaks in the fulness of conscious authority, with the certain knowledge that he is therein making Divine revelation. He knows that he saith true; his word is truth. Verily, verily, I say unto you, [From £ henceforth] ye shall see the heaven that has been opened, and the angels of God ascending and descending upon the Son of man. Notwithstanding the formidable superficial difficulty in the common reading, which declares that from the moment when the Lord spake, Nathanael should see what there is no other record that he ever literally saw; yet a deeper pondering of the passage shows the sublime spiritual sense in which those disciples who fully realized that they had been brought into blessed relationship with the "Son of man," saw also—that heaven, the abode of blessedness and righteousness, the throne of God, had been opened behind him and around him. The dream of Jacob is manifestly referred to—the union between heaven and earth, between God and man, which dawned like a vision of a better time upon the old patriarchal life. That which was the dream of a troubled night may now be the constant experience of the disciples of the Lord. The ascension of the angelic ministers is here said to precede their descent. This is due to the original form of the dream of Jacob, but must be supplemented by the Lord's own statement (John 3:13), "No one hath ascended into heaven, but he that descended out of heaven." The free access to the heart of the Father, and to the centre of all authority in heaven and earth, is due only to those who have come already thence, who belong to him, "who go and return as the appearance of a flash of lightning." They ascend with the desires of the Son of man; they descend with all the faculty needed for the fulfilment of those desires. He, "the Son of man," is now on earth to commence his ministry of reconciliation, and is thus now equipped with all the powers needed for its realization. The same truth is taught by our Lord, when he said (cf. notes on John 3:13) that "the Son of man is in heaven," even when he walked the earth. The angelic ministry attendant upon our Lord is so inconspicuous that it does not fulfil the notable description of this verse, nor fill out its suggestions. The miraculous energies, the Divine revelations, the consummate heavenliness of his life, the power which his personality supplied to see and believe in heaven—in heaven opened, heaven near, heaven accessible, heaven propitious, heaven lavish of love—answers to the meaning of the mighty words. Thoma ('Die Genesis des Johannes-Evan.') sees the Johannine interpretation of the angels who ministered to Jesus after the conclusion of his temptation. But why does he call himself "the Son of man," in sharp response to, or in comment, on, the ascription by John the Baptist and Nathanael of the greater title "Son of God"?
HOMILETICS
Prologue of the Gospel.
The prologue is in harmony with the design of a biographic history which is to set forth Jesus Christ as the Son of God. The Fourth Gospel is thus a distinct advance, dogmatically, upon the other Gospels, for Matthew exhibits him in his Messianic royalty; Mark, as the Son of man and the Servant of God; Luke, as the Son of man and Saviour of the race of man, without distinction of Jew or Gentile. The Apostle John exhibits him in the glorious activity of his Divine nature.
I. THE SUBJECT OF THE PROLOGUE. "The Word." Jesus Christ is the Word as he is the essential Revealer of the Divine Being. "There is in the Divine Essence a principle by which God reveals himself—the Logos; and a principle by which he communicates himself—the Spirit." Christ is "the express Image of the Father's Person" (Hebrews 1:3), just as a word is an image or picture of a thought. But he is also the Interpreter of the Divine will. "The only begotten Son hath declared the Father" (John 1:18), through Creation, through prophets, through the Incarnation. He was called the Word.
1. Not as man; for as man he was not in the beginning with God, neither was he Creator.
2. He was the Word before he was man; for it was as the Word he became flesh (verse 14).
3. He was the Word as he was the Son of God—"the only begotten Son of the Father."
4. Yet he is called here the Word rather than the Son of God, because the Jews were familiar with this name as applied to the Messiah, and, as has been suggested, the apostle would not at first alienate their hearts by the title "Son of God," which was so offensive to the unbelieving Jews (John 10:30, John 10:33).
II. THE ESSENTIAL NATURE OF THE WORD.
1. He is an absolute Eternal Being. "In the beginning was the Word."
2. He is a distinct Person from God, yet one with him. "And the Word was with God." Coleridge remarks upon the significance of the preposition ( πρὸς) as implying that the Word was "with God," not in the sense of coexistence, or local proximity, or communion, but of mysterious relation with God. The preposition implies that the Word was with God, before he revealed God. The distinct personality of the Son is asserted against the error of the Sabellians, who held that Father, Son, and Holy Ghost are but three Names of one Person. The "life eternal" was not only "manifested to men," but it was "with the Father" (1 John 1:2). Not with God, as if to emphasize the distinction of Persons in the Godhead; not with men or angels, for they were yet to be created; but with the Father in eternal glory. "It was he," says Pearson, "to whom the Father said, 'Let us make man in our image.'" We have no mental capacity to explain the oneness of essence, any more than the distinctness of Persons, in the Godhead. The apostle does not say that "God was with God," but that the "Word was with God." We therefore receive believingly the words of our Lord himself, "I am in the Father, and the Father in me;" "I and the Father are one;" "He that hath seen me hath seen the Father," as different expressions of the same Divine truth.
3. He is God. "And the Word was God." The passage asserts the Divinity of Jesus Christ our Lord in the plainest terms. It places him within the unity of the Godhead. The Son is, therefore, not inferior to the Father. The text refutes the Arians, who say he is a super-angelic Being inferior to God; the Socinians, who say he is only Man; and the Sabellians, who deny any distinction of Persons in the Trinity.
4. The doctrine of the Trinity is a deep mystery, but it is fundamental in Christianity. Therefore the apostle reiterates the eternity, the personality, the oneness of the Word with God. "The same was in the beginning with God." Some person might say there was a time when the Word was not a distinct Person in the Trinity. The statement is made that the same Person, who was eternal and Divine, was from eternity a distinct Person of the Godhead. Well may we say with Bernard, "It is rashness to search too far into it. It is piety to believe it. It is life eternal to know it!"