We are next given to learn who it is that could speak with competent knowledge and authority of heavenly things. It is the Son of man, the same person doubtless who deigned to be born of the virgin, the Son of David, the Messiah. But as Messiah He is to judge Jehovah's people in righteousness, and to reign with a power which cannot be disputed, save to the ruin of every rebel. For the Spirit of Jehovah shall rest upon Him, the spirit of wisdom and understanding, the spirit of counsel and might, the spirit of knowledge and of the fear of Jehovah, and shall make Him of quick understanding in the fear of Jehovah; and He shall not judge after the sight of His eyes, neither reprove after the hearing of His ears, but with righteousness shall He judge the poor, and reprove with equity for the meek of the earth. As such He presented Himself to Israel, but was rejected, and, as we know, they reject Him to this day; for man, being lost, proves himself wholly blind, and of men none more so than Israel to their truest glory and best treasure, Christ the Lord. And thus we have seen it from the first in the Gospel of John, who was given to treat things as they are, and as they are in presence of grace and truth in His person who reveals the Father.
Here, accordingly, it is not a prophet revealing the future of the kingdom of Jehovah over the earth, or of the judgments which will introduce it, or of the evils which must be judged before the establishment of blessing in that day. It is more than a prophet who gives out what he receives responsibly to communicate from God to man. Jesus knows not merely what is in man on earth as none ever knew, as the “Word made flesh” alone did know, but what is in God above as only a divine person could, yet now as man also. No prophet ever did, ever could, so speak as He; none but He so knew and so testified. He, therefore, could speak of things heavenly, as well as of the earthly, not as one inspired to tell of what was before unknown, but of that which He knew and saw in the communion of the Godhead! His becoming man in no way detracted from His divine capacity or rights; it was unspeakable grace! to those for whose sakes He was come from God, and went to God, not only the truth and witness of it, as He alone could be, but about to die atoningly, as we shall see shortly in this very context, that the believer might live eternally and righteously.
“What could man, angel, or any other creature avail? It was His glory, His work. The man, Adam, whom Jehovah Elohim formed, He put in Eden, chief of all creatures around him which God had pronounced very good. But the heaven is Jehovah's throne, though neither it nor the heaven of heavens can contain Him. “And no one hath gone up to heaven but he that came down from heaven, the Son of man that is in heaven.” Men have been, and will be, caught up to heaven; angels have been sent down from heaven. To Jesus only it belonged to go up, as He only came down. For He was a divine Î person, and He came in love; and love is ever free as well as holy. “Lo! I come to do thy will, O God.” In the volume of the book it was written of Him alone. And He who was thus pleased to be found in fashion as a man, taking the body God prepared Him, rejoiced ever to speak of Himself as the Sent One, the man Christ Jesus, who came down from heaven, to do not His own will but the will of Him that sent Him. He became servant, but did not, could not, cease to be God. But He is man withal, as truly as Adam; yea, He is what Adam was not—Son of man, come of woman.
And so it is that in the form of the expression used He is stamped as having ascended to heaven, He only that descended from heaven: ἀναβέβηκεν... ὁ ἐκ τοῦ οὐρανοῦ καταβάς. For as the apostle asks, That He ascended, what is it but that He also descended into the lower parts of the earth? He that descended is the same also that ascended up above all the heavens, that He ]might fill all things. Only, as the apostle Paul tells us it in connection with His work and the counsels of God, so John presents it in our Lord's words as connected with the truth of His person— “the Son of man that is in heaven.” And an astonishing truth it is. To have said the Son of God that was in heaven would have been true; but what an infinite truth is that which is said, “the Son of man that is in heaven!” Impossible to be said if He had not been God, the Son of the Father, yet, what was of the deepest moment, said of Him as man, the rejected Messiah, the Son of man that is in heaven. The incarnation was no mere emanation of divinity; neither was it a person once divine who ceased to be so by becoming man (in itself an impossible absurdity), but One who, to glorify the Father, and in accomplishment of the purposes of grace to the glory of God, took humanity into union with Godhead in His person. Therefore it is that He could say, and of Him alone could it be said, “the Son of man that is in heaven,” even as He is the only-begotten Son that is [not merely that was] In the bosom of the Father. He it is who met, and more than met, the challenge of Agur (Prov. 30) speaking prophetically to Ithiel and Heal. “Who hath ascended up into heaven or descended? Who hath gathered the wind in his fists? Who hath bound the waters in his garment? Who hath established all the ends of the earth? What is his name, and what is his son's nature, if thou canst tell?” It is God, not man, who can take up the challenge; but it is God become man, yea, the Son of man. How suited as well as competent is He to unfold all things, heavenly, earthly, human; and divine! He is indeed the Truth.