THE SON OF MAN IN JOHN'S GOSPEL
THE SON OF MAN IN JOHN’S GOSPEL
John 1:50,51; John 3:13-15; John 6:27; John 6:61-63; John 12:23-33; John 13:31,32
I desire to speak of the Son of man as He is presented in these scriptures in John’s gospel. They are not the only passages in the gospel in which He is thus presented. There is, for instance, one in chapter 5 where we are told that the Father “has given him authority to execute judgment also, because he is Son of man,” verse 27, a remarkable statement showing that God is infinitely fair and intends that His judgment should be seen to be so. So that men will be judged by a Man whose glory it is that He gave Himself a ransom for all, as the Lord says, “The Son of man did not come to be ministered to, but to minister, and give his life a ransom for many,” Mark 10: 45. So that as men are judged, as it says in Revelation, according to their works, they will be judged by One who at all cost to Himself provided a means by which they might have been released from the guilt attaching to them and from the sinful condition in which they were, and hence the judgment will be manifested to be absolutely fair; not a single word will be able to be said against it, but I do not dwell on that, I wish to concentrate on these passages.
The Son of man is a subject with which Nathanael, who is introduced to us in the first passage I have read, would be familiar, for we have in Psalm 8, the well known reference to the Son of man. The Psalm starts with “Jehovah our Lord, how excellent is thy name in all the earth! who has set thy majesty above the heavens.” It was anticipatively directing the attention of faith to Him who has gone up far above all heavens; God has established His glory above the heavens, and the Psalm goes on to speak of the Son of man, saying, “What is man,” (i.e. Enosh,
mortal man) “that thou art mindful of him? and the son of man,” (i.e. the son of Adam, a more distinguished presentation) “that thou visitest him?” and then it proceeds to say, “Thou hast made him a little lower than the angels, and has crowned him with glory and splendour. Thou hast made him to rule over the works of thy hands.” That is the position that now obtains. Hebrews 2 brings it in, adding that we do not yet see all things put under Him, “but we see Jesus, who was made some little inferior to angels on account of the suffering of death, crowned with glory and honour.” So the position is already established, although not yet in public display. Indeed Ephesians 1 also refers to the Son of man though the term is not used, but the end of that chapter quotes from Psalm 8, “and has put all things under his feet, and gave him to be head over all things to the assembly, which is his body, the fulness of him who fills all in all.”
That brings in what is of greatest interest to us, dear brethren. The Son of man, as intended to have an exalted place over all the works of God’s hands, was known in Old Testament times. Daniel 7: 13 says, “I saw in the night visions, and behold, there came with the clouds of heaven one like a son of man, and he came up even to the Ancient of days, ...and there was given him dominion, and glory, and a kingdom...” But in those days, it was hidden that the One who was to fill that glorious place was to have His body, the assembly, a heavenly vessel capable of expressing all that He is, to be His fulness in the day in which He fills all things for the pleasure of God and for His own pleasure. That brings in ourselves, and that is why we should be so interested in all these matters connected with the Son of man, because the day of His glory is near, and all that is waited for is the completion of the vessel “which is his body, the fulness of him who fills all in all.”
So the Lord in speaking to Nathanael, who had confessed Him as the Son of God, the King of Israel, basing his thoughts on Psalm 2, as much as says, Yes, but there is Psalm 8, which goes further than Psalm 2. “Thou shalt see greater things than these... henceforth ye shall see the heaven opened, and the angels of God ascending and descending on the Son of man,” John 1:50,51. The Lord was saying there are to be greater things than millennial glories and they are to come in now, “Henceforth”; that is, from this time, better things, greater things, heavenly things were to he opened up. So the Lord was intimating to Nathanael, while not yet introducing the thought of the assembly, which awaited Paul’s ministry, that the present time was a time in which heavenly things, greater and better than millennial things, were to be introduced, and they were to be introduced in connection with One who was to be apprehended as supreme, One upon whom the angels of God ascended and descended.
In John 3 the Lord speaks of heavenly things, saying, “If I have said the earthly things to you, and ye believe not, how, if I say the heavenly things to you, will ye believe?” Then He proceeds to speak of Himself as One who has come down from heaven to bring the light of heavenly things, but He speaks of Himself as “the Son of man who is in heaven.” That is a statement that must arouse our attention, for the Lord was speaking to Nicodemus as a Man who was actually there on earth and yet He says, “the Son of man who is in heaven.” He does not say, who was in heaven, or who will be in heaven, but there He was as a Man on earth, speaking of Himself as the Son of man who is in heaven. I have no doubt that it is an expression that is indicative of the truth of His Person; a divine Person was there in the Person of our Lord Jesus, a divine Person became Man, the second Person in the Godhead was there. These are truly heavenly things coming into evidence, wonderful things that a Man should appear under God’s eye and before men, who could speak of Himself as “the Son of man who is in heaven.” The very title, Son of man, refers to God’s thoughts in relation to men which were to be taken up and made good in the Son of man. So we can see, dear brethren, that manhood of a supremely excellent order has now come into being in the Person of our Lord Jesus Christ. One who is in heaven, over all God blessed for ever, has taken up manhood condition, bringing into manhood the moral excellence of God as made known through Christ. It is a marvellous conception, that God should have in mind to have man before Him abidingly for His pleasure, not simply the Lord Jesus alone, but that others through redemption and the gift of the Spirit should have part in that heavenly order of manhood, and thus be suitable to be united to Christ, and to serve God eternally for His pleasure. This is the conception, and I am seeking to bring these things before us in order that we may dwell upon them, think about them and see the greatness of the things to which God has called us, in view of which indeed He has wrought in us, as those who have been born of God. These are some of the things which belong to us and which it is possible for us to enter into now in the power of the Holy Spirit whom we have received.
There is another thing and that is, that the Son of man must be lifted up. It was a divine necessity; without it, divine thoughts could not be effectuated. “As Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, thus must the Son of man be lifted up.” You remember that in the incident to which He refers, the people of God had murmured. They had even despised the manna and loathed it, saying, “Our soul loathes this light bread.” That is what flesh is capable of. It not only has no appreciation of Christ, but it is capable of loathing Christ. God sent fiery serpents amongst them, and the people were bitten and many died. What was God doing in that? What flesh was had come out, murmuring, entirely rebellious, and now God would bring home to the people what the root of that was. Things had to be traced to their root. Sin in the flesh had its origin in Satan, in the serpent, and they had to learn what the root of it was. The root of sin in ourselves, in the flesh, is nothing less than the serpent himself. We have to arrive at things at their roots, and thank God the Son of man has come in on behalf of man in order that things may be judged at their roots, and that we should be given life in Himself. There is no redemption for the serpent, but these things have been in mind for man, and the Son of man has been lifted up in order that sin might be exposed and judged and, thank God, the Son of man has done it; He has come into the position in which it has been effected, the Son of man has been lifted up. What a glory attaches to our Lord Jesus Christ! Before He could bring in and establish these wonderful thoughts which God has in mind in regard to a heavenly order of manhood, He must first go under the judgment in order that we, as involved in sinful flesh, might be extricated from it and given life in God’s Son; “that whosoever believes on him may not perish, but have life eternal,” Christ as thus lifted up becomes the Object of faith, and as we read in the epistle of John, “It is the Spirit that bears witness,” 1 John 5: 6, “And this is the witness, that God has given to us eternal life: and this life is in his Son,” verse 11. It is there that eternal life is.
I pass on to chapter 6. The Lord said “to those who followed Him, “Ye seek me not because ye have seen signs, but because ye have eaten of the loaves and been filled. Work not for the food which perishes, but for the food which abides unto life eternal, which the Son of man shall give to you; for him has the Father sealed, even God.” God the Father has sealed the Son of man. There is a Man now in the presence of God upon whom God has placed the mark of His approval. The Son of man has been sealed and He is prepared to give food that endures unto eternal life. I need not enlarge upon this chapter. The food which the Son of man gives is Himself. He has come down from heaven for that express purpose that He might become food for the sustainment of spiritual life in His people, and the food He gives is His flesh and His blood. It is a great thing not to think of these things academically; there is a great danger of thinking of divine things in a merely academic way, speaking of the flesh and blood of the Son of man and forgetting that it means that the Son of man had to die. These things are real, they have cost something and have become the expression of the personal love of Christ and of God who gave Him. All these things are the expression of love, love corning into expression in an extensive way, having in mind that men, myriads in God’s purpose, should be secured according to those thoughts, and that as passing through this world where we are to serve God, we should be sustained and not overcome by the influences of the world or of nature, but should find power to move over and find our life in spiritual and heavenly things. How are we to function in any measure of power in the assembly if we do not know individually what it is to find our life in spiritual and heavenly things? We shall be found empty when the time comes. You will remember when Jehovah required that the males should appear before Him three times a year, the word was, “They shall not appear before Jehovah empty,” Deuteronomy 16: 16. God has no pleasure in our appearing before Him empty, and the Lord has no pleasure in having His saints devoid of spiritual intelligence and feelings when we come together in the assembly. If we are to be developed in spiritual substance and in power in order to move over to what is beyond death, which is our privilege on Lord’s day morning when the Lord makes Himself known to us, we must know what it is to feed on this food which is presented to us in John 6. It is the Person of Christ, the Son of man giving His life that He might become our food. Our minds and affections are to enter into this matter. We are to ask ourselves what has been the import of the death of Christ? Why has He come down from heaven? It was for the express purpose of taking up our condition. It was all for us, not for Himself, and therefore these things are to be taken up by us. We are to inquire about them and feed upon them.
Towards the end of chapter 6 the Lord says, “If then ye see the Son of man ascending up where he was before?” He has gone into heaven; He is the heavenly One; He has ascended up where He was before, but we are linked up with Him by the Spirit. “It is the Spirit which quickens, the flesh profits nothing.” We are to understand that flesh profits nothing, but that the power for entrance into all these things is the Spirit. We see the Son of man ascended up where He was before. What a glorious way He has taken in order that God’s will might be effected, and then ascended up where He was before, a heavenly Man in heaven! And we are linked up with Him by the Spirit; that is the position, “It is the Spirit which quickens.” You remember on the morning of His resurrection when those who loved Him went to the sepulchre and found an angel there, the angel said, “He is not here, for he is risen,” Matthew 28: 6. That is in the assembly gospel. That word is to ring in the ears of those who love Christ. “He is not here, for he is risen.” If He is not here, how can we possibly find our life in things here? He has ascended up where He was before, and we are linked up with Him by the Spirit, and the Spirit will give us an entrance into heavenly things, for they are all ours, because they are Christ’s; as it says in Corinthians, “All things are yours; and ye are Christ’s, and Christ is God’s,” 1 Corinthians 3: 22, 23. So the Spirit opens up spiritual and heavenly things to us for the reason that we are bound up with Christ and linked up with Him by the Spirit. So, as the Lord says, speaking of the Spirit, “He shall glorify me, for he shall receive of mine and shall announce it to you. All things that the Father has are mine; on account of this I have said that he receives of mine and shall announce it to you,” John 16: 14, 15. That is to say, first of all we understand that they are Christ’s things and they are ours because of that, but then they are the Father’s things. We become enlarged to understand that the Father has a system of glory and He is the Source of all. As we have learnt our portion in relation to Christ we shall also find our portion in relation to the Father’s things. These are the lines on which we become fitted to enter upon our portion proper to the assembly.
I pass on to chapter 12, because that is a most important chapter as having its bearing on our public position in this world. The occasion of it is when certain Greeks come up to Philip and say, “Sir, we desire to see Jesus,” and Jesus says, “The hour is come that the Son of man should be glorified.” He is referring, I understand, to His actual glorification at the right hand of God. I say that now because in the next chapter where He speaks of the Son of man being glorified, it is a different thought. Here, the Lord is saying, “The hour is come that the Son of man should be glorified.” He is referring to the fact that His death was just about to take place, the time had come for the Son of man to be glorified, for Him to take His place in heaven. Heavenly things which had begun to be opened out were about to come positively into view in the Son of man taking His place in heaven, but as I have been saying the thoughts of God are that a heavenly order of manhood is to appear. Those who partake in that order are to be brought to light, but that could not be apart from His death, so it says, “Verily, verily, I say unto you, Except the grain of wheat falling into the ground die, it abides alone; but if it die, it bears much fruit.” Here, the death of Christ is presented as His own act. His falling into the ground for the express purpose of bringing forth the much fruit according to the mind of God. Those who are of His own order of manhood are to be brought into view as the result of His falling into the ground and dying. It would be impossible apart from that, for redemption must be accomplished and the Spirit given. There could be no heavenly order of manhood apart from the Holy Spirit, that is the life of that Man being communicated, and the life of that Man could not be communicated until redemption was accomplished, and hence the corn of wheat must fall into the ground and die. But later on in this passage He presents His death from the standpoint of it being man’s act. He says, “I, if I be lifted up out of the earth, will draw all to me. But this he said signifying by what death he was about to die,” John 12: 32. It was the death of the cross, and the cross was the expression of man’s estimate of Christ. I know there are other thoughts connected with the cross as well, but it was the expression of man’s estimate of Christ that He was cast out and crucified. It speaks eloquently of the personal attractiveness of Christ, that, notwithstanding He was presented in testimony as One who has been crucified. He becomes such a point of attraction and draws all to Himself; all those in whom God is working are drawn to Christ. In all the early preachings in the Acts, the apostles laboured to stress the fact that the One whom the world had crucified is the One whom God has raised from the dead, and all those who received the testimony and were baptised committed themselves to the One whom the world had crucified. On the day of Pentecost it was fresh in the minds of men, and the three thousand converted ones identified themselves publicly with the One who had been crucified and the One exalted by God’s right hand.
The death of Christ is presented thus to us in different lights. It is His own act in order that the much fruit might be brought to pass, but on the other hand when it is the manner of His death it is presented as man’s act as expressing their contempt for the heavenly Man. One can understand it, because if God introduces a new order of man, it obviously involves the setting aside and displacement of the first man, it involves the displacement of his world, and you can easily understand that that entails rejection and reproach for those in whom God is working. Man does not readily accept the testimony that he is to be displaced or that the world is to be judged, and hence the rejection of Christ has been witnessed to in the manner of death which He died. All that is to enter as a kind of fibre into our spiritual understanding as still here for a moment. That is to say, on the one hand we have to accept death in the power of the Spirit in order to participate in spiritual life and blessings, but we have also to understand that the death of Christ involves the setting aside of the first man and the judging of his world, and those who are faithful to Christ will find themselves going against the current of things in this world. You cannot possibly maintain the two positions, but alas, there are Christians who try to maintain the two positions and try to find a little part in this world and a little part in divine things, but you cannot have the two. “He that loves his life shall lose it, and he that hates his life in this world shall keep it to life eternal,” John 12: 25. This is a most important matter, it is a question of understanding what has come to pass in the death and crucifixion of Christ. If we are to find our life in relation to life eternal, if we are to keep our life unto life eternal, it must be on the principle of hating our life here. The eunuch of whom we read in Acts 8 came to it quickly, he was reading about one who was led “as a sheep to slaughter, and as a lamb is dumb in presence of him that shears him, thus he opens not his mouth,” verse 32. And he said to Philip, “I pray thee, concerning whom does the prophet say this? of himself or of some other?” Philip quickly told him it was about another Man, the other Man whom God had brought into view, “for his life is taken from the earth.” So the eunuch quickly understood the position; he said, “Behold water; what hinders my being baptised?” He was prepared to lose his life here and I have no doubt he kept it unto life eternal.
In John 12, the Lord in His instruction goes further, saying, “If any one serve me, let him follow me; and where I am, there also shall be my servant,” verse 26. It is futile to attempt to serve the Lord unless we are prepared to follow Him in His movements, follow Him as He leads us out of this world, but follow Him also in His movements as recognising the ministry He is giving. The two go together; we must follow Him in His movements out of this world, and we must follow Him in what He is saying at the present time. If we would serve Him, we must be with Him, “where I am, there also shall be my servant.” Thank God it is true as to the future, those who serve Him will be with Him where He is, but we may give it a present application, it is a matter of where the Lord is at the moment, in relation to what He is stressing at the moment. It should be the concern of those who serve the Lord to be with the Lord where He is now. It involves that we are prepared to follow and to take up all the exercises that the truth entails, so that we are ready to move on as the Lord moves on, because as I said, Christianity is a system of movement, there is to be no stagnation in Christianity. There is such a thing as lodging, reaching a point and being detained there for a while in order that the position should be consolidated, but if you lodge, you lodge with a view to moving on further.
In John’s gospel the Lord is seen in constant movement. He says, “Now is my soul troubled, and what shall I say? Father, save me from this hour. But on account of this have I come to this hour,” chapter 12: 27. It is a most touching word; I suppose this is the nearest approach to Gethsemane that we have in the gospel of John. I was speaking of the danger of our holding the truth academically, but here the Spirit of God records how the Lord says that His soul was troubled, the feelings of the Lord were troubled as He faced what death meant for Him; “Now is my soul troubled.” It was for the Father’s pleasure, but it was also for us, and the Lord as entering into death felt all that death meant for Him. All this is intended to be brought to bear upon us, in order that we should not hold back from accepting death, in the power of the Spirit, to find our life more fully in the things that are, above. “Father, glorify thy name.” This present world is the scene of man’s glory and it all ends in death, indeed its true character as having no glory is already exposed, God is seeing to that. It is being more and more exposed as devoid of all glory, but even if it has had any glory attaching to it, it all ends in death. However great a name man may have it all comes to an end in death, and at that point the Father brings in His glory, the Father operates in resurrection and brings in an order of life and blessing which is eternal. So the voice comes from heaven, “I both have glorified and will glorify it again.” Referring to the resurrection of Lazarus, the Father had already glorified His name by means of the Son, and now He says, “I will glorify it again,” referring to the resurrection of Christ. God gave an answer by raising Christ and glorifying Him, but that involves the judgment of this world. If God raises from the dead the One whom the world has cast out, obviously the world is judged; the execution of the judgment is deferred for a time, but the sentence has been passed. All this is to affect us as to the public position lest we should be captivated by this world. We are to understand how the true character of the world is exposed in the judgment it has passed in putting Christ on the cross. The position is made absolutely clear. “Now is the judgment of this world; now shall the prince of this world be cast out: and I, if I be lifted up out of the earth, will draw all to me.” The crucified One becomes the point of attraction to all those in whom God has wrought. It speaks volumes as to the personal attractiveness of Christ, that He is great enough to attract to Himself, and hold for Himself, all those whom the Father gives to Him.
The final passage read comes in at the point where Judas goes out. “When therefore he was gone out Jesus says, Now is the Son of man glorified, and God is glorified in him,” John 13: 31. Here the glorifying of the Son of man does not refer to His actual glorification at the right hand of God; it refers to His being glorified in a moral sense in His death. What I mean is this; Judas Iscariot and the Son of man stand in contrast. Into Judas Iscariot Satan had entered. There was a man now fully possessed by Satan, and evil was about to be perpetrated by that man. Satan had one in whom he could fully express his own thoughts. Judas Iscariot was about to betray the Son of God into the hands of His enemies with a view to His being crucified; not that Judas had that in mind, I expect he had in mind that the Lord would save Himself, but he was simply moving under the influence of base gain, because he had the bag and was a thief, and was prepared to sell the Lord for thirty pieces of silver, but he was a tool in the hands of Satan. It was the culminating act of opposition to God that the Son of God should be cast out, and Judas was a man available to Satan for that. In contrast to that, in the Son of man God had a Man in whom all that God was should come into expression. The Son of man was to be glorified. It was His glory in contrast to all that was coming out in Judas. It was His glory that all that God was should he brought gloriously into expression in His death; it was the glory of the Son of man that He was prepared to offer Himself in order that that might be effected. So the Lord gave Himself up to death. It was the occasion when God was vindicated in His holiness, and the rights of God were established immutably, the occasion when the love of God shone out in redemption -
“Where sin o’er all seemed to prevail,
Redemption’s glory shed.” (235:4)
It was the Son of man who gave up Himself in order that that might come into display. Let us not have all these things academically. The cost to the Lord was great; His soul was troubled in the light of it, but it was to His glory to go the whole length and make a way in order that God might effectuate all His thoughts of glory and blessing. The Son of man was glorified in yielding Himself up in order that God might be thus glorified, “God is glorified in him.” I love to think of this. It means there are no moral issues remaining unsolved, no loose ends left untied: Everything that has come in through sin has been perfectly met and God is free to open up all that is in His purpose. In the next chapter the Lord speaks of the Father’s house, opening up all that is in God’s purpose. Every moral question raised by the introduction of sin has been settled to God’s glory in the cross of Christ.
I believe if we contemplate the glories of the Son of man, it will increase our appreciation of Christ and our appreciation of the blessed God who has brought Christ in, the Son of man who is out of heaven and who has ascended up where He was before, in order to introduce a heavenly order of life and blessing in which we are to have part, through grace, with Christ.