Seeing the Glory of Jesus

“And He said to him, ‘Truly, truly, I say to you, you will see the heavens opened and the angels of God ascending and descending on the Son of Man’” (John 1:51).Speaking specifically of those greater things that Nathanael and the other disciples would see, Jesus solemnly assured him, “Truly, truly, I say to you, you will see the heavens opened and the angels of God ascending and descending on the Son of Man.” Jesus was probably alluding to Jacob's dream, in which he saw angels ascending and descending from heaven on a ladder (Gen. 28:12). The point of this statement is that Jesus is the link between heaven and earth, the revealer of heavenly truth to men (1:17; 14:6; Eph. 4:21), the “one mediator . . . between God and men” (1 Tim. 2:5), and the mediator of a new (Heb. 9:14; 12:24) and better (Heb. 8:6) covenant. In John 3:13 He declared to Nicodemus, “No one has ascended into heaven, but He who descended from heaven: the Son of Man” (cf. 6:33, 38, 41–42, 50–51, 58, 62; 13:3; 16:28; 17:8). That truth would become increasingly clear to Nathanael and the rest of the disciples as they observed Jesus' life and ministry. . . .