John 1: Nathanael Meets the Son of God, King of Israel

Introduction

"We have found him, of whom Moses in the law, and the prophets, wrote." With these words, Philip goes to find his friend Nathanael. And Nathanael, who knows the Scriptures well, answers with a question: "Can any good thing come out of Nazareth?" A few minutes later, this same man confesses: "Rabbi, you are the Son of God! You are King of Israel!"

Tom Foord, teaching pastor at Hope Reformed Baptist Church in Australia, continues his series in the Gospel of John with the passage John 1:43-51. He first recalls John 1:12-13: those who receive Jesus and believe in his name are born of God. The Gospel of John will record many rejections, but it opens with glorious testimonies, with a one hundred percent success rate: one witness brings a disciple, who brings another. John has already presented Jesus as the Word, God, the Son, the light, the life, the Creator, the Lamb of God and the Messiah. This passage adds three titles: Son of God, King of Israel and Son of Man.

The message follows Nathanael step by step, with one constant conviction: Jesus is the main character of the Old Testament.

Outline of the message

1. Jesus, the main character of the Old Testament

Jesus calls Philip to follow him. Philip is from Bethsaida, a small fishing town where Andrew and Peter probably knew him, the way people know each other in small towns in the Australian countryside. He immediately goes to find Nathanael.
Nathanael's reaction makes the preacher smile, as he compares Nazareth to a rough neighborhood in his own region. But in his view, this doubt is neither cunning nor arrogance. Nathanael is a student of the Bible: he has read things about Judah, about Bethlehem, about a light that would rise in Galilee, but nothing about Nazareth. He is puzzled, and he decides to go and see: "I'm interested. I'm open to the truth."
When Philip speaks of "the law" and "the prophets," he means the whole of Scripture. The Jews called their Bible the Tanakh: the Torah (the law of Moses), the Nevi'im (the prophets) and the Ketuvim (the writings, including the Psalms). Saying "Moses and the prophets" amounted to saying: all of Scripture speaks of him.
Tom Foord likens these first days to what he calls a Road to Emmaus experience. After his resurrection, Jesus takes the two discouraged disciples in hand and explains to them what was said about himself in all the Scriptures (Luke 24:27), then he reminds them: "This is what I told you, while I was still with you, that all things which are written in the law of Moses, the prophets, and the psalms, concerning me must be fulfilled" (Luke 24:44). So Jesus was already teaching this during his ministry.
The pastor does not claim that the disciples had, as early as John 1, the understanding that came after the resurrection. But he refuses to reserve for Luke 24 this revelation of Jesus from the Old Testament: it applies to John 1 as well.
He shares a memory. At twenty-one, while evangelizing in the city, he talked with a man who held that he and people like him could never be part of the kingdom, for lack of the right blood. This man considered Paul an apostate, placed salvation in circumcision and a whole series of rules, and denied that Jesus is the Son of God. Tom Foord admits he got a little heated himself. The man kept repeating: "Go and read the Old Testament properly, and you'll see." His own conviction is the opposite: the more you read the Old Testament, the more you find Jesus in it, the one who leads the Exodus, the atonement, the king, the prophet, the fulfillment of the promises.

2. An Israelite in whom is no deceit

As Nathanael approaches, Jesus says of him: "Behold, an Israelite indeed, in whom is no deceit!" (John 1:47). According to the preacher, Jesus is not speaking of a genuine Israelite as opposed to someone who had falsified his birth. He is not talking about DNA or ancestry. The rest of the sentence gives the explanation: there is no cunning in him.
Nathanael is honestly seeking the truth: he reads the Scriptures not to justify himself, but to hear the voice of God. It is very likely, the pastor adds, that he had been baptized by John the Baptist, as all Israel was called to be.
The contrast is deliberate with the other readers of Scripture whom Jesus will confront: Pharisees, Sadducees and scribes, in whom cunning is very much present and whom he will call hypocrites.
"No deceit" does not mean perfection or absence of sin. It means sincerity in understanding. The pastor sums it up this way: Nathanael is here to learn.

3. "I saw you under the fig tree"

Nathanael asks: "How do you know me?" (John 1:48). For Tom Foord, the question perhaps comes not from opposition but from a kind of humility. Jesus answers: "Before Philip called you, when you were under the fig tree, I saw you."
Even before the fig tree, why do the words "no deceit" touch Nathanael so deeply? One could see them as no more than a stranger's compliment. The pastor compares it to a line from "Amazing Grace," sung a thousand times, that suddenly strikes you deeply while your neighbor notices nothing. Or a verse, a story told by a preacher, a friend's prayer for you. You never know what God will use to speak to your heart, but he knows how to touch each person in a very personal way.
Tom Foord offers a guess here, making clear that he is only guessing: being without deceit may have been Nathanael's lifelong prayer. Perhaps, as a child, a rabbi, a teacher or his parents had sternly corrected him for his lies, a sin that may have taken root. And now Jesus tells him he sees no deceit in him.
Then Jesus goes further than knowing the heart, with a prophetic word whose meaning commentators debate: the fig tree. It was a symbol of home, sometimes a place of prayer and meditation, although the preacher notes that historians remain cautious. Another guess on his part: perhaps this was where Nathanael took his scrolls to study. Jesus would then be saying in essence: when you were seeking God, I saw you; when you prayed, it was to me that you prayed.
What exactly Jesus is pointing to is not the main point. The essential thing is that he said something so specific, and even so mysterious, that Nathanael concluded that Jesus was unlike anyone else. In John 4, when Jesus speaks to the Samaritan woman about her past relationships, we understand why this was so telling. For Nathanael, we do not know, but the effect is certain.

4. "Rabbi, you are the Son of God"

Nathanael first calls Jesus "Rabbi." It is an honorific title, more than "teacher" or "master." It amounts to saying: "I will spend my life serving you, if only I can learn from you." Nathanael is already ready to learn and to follow, even before being called.
Then he says: "You are the Son of God." The pastor corrects a common idea among Christians, that "Son of God" refers to Jesus' divinity and "Son of Man" to his humanity. These truths are right, but that is not first of all the meaning of the text. Otherwise, since Luke calls Adam "son of God," we would have to believe he was divine, and we would start to look like the Mormons.
In the Old Testament, "son of God" is royal language: it refers to the one whom God chooses to rule and have dominion over the earth.
Adam is the first: Luke's genealogy goes back to him, "the son of Adam, the son of God" (Luke 3:38). Jesus is, in the new creation, what Adam was in the first: its head and its king. But where the first Adam brought death and the curse, Jesus brings life and righteousness.
Israel is then called a son of God. God tells Moses to declare to Pharaoh: "Israel is my son, my firstborn" (Exodus 4:22). He also says: "I am a father to Israel" (Jeremiah 31:9), and: "When Israel was a child, then I loved him, and called my son out of Egypt" (Hosea 11:1). This does not mean that Israel had an angelic or divine nature, but that it was chosen, commissioned and unique among all the nations.
All of this becomes clearer with David. God says about David's kingship and his descendants: "I will be to him a father, and he will be to me a son" (2 Samuel 7:14). The king anointed by God was like a son charged with doing his Father's work: he represented God on earth, reigned in his name and extended his sovereignty.
Jesus is therefore the new Adam, the new Israel and the new David. He is tied to each of them, and yet better and greater than them all.
Did Nathanael have all this in mind? We cannot know. No one had the full understanding before the resurrection. But his understanding was real, he was on the right path, and what he said was entirely true. "King of Israel" was, moreover, a politically charged expression, associated with overthrowing Rome: this is why Jesus avoided it, even though it is true.

5. Heaven opened, Jacob's ladder

Jesus answers: "Because I told you, 'I saw you underneath the fig tree,' do you believe? You will see greater things than these!" (John 1:50). The pastor paraphrases: really, one small prophecy, one word of knowledge, and you believe? But Jesus does not rebuke him or speak of a hasty faith: he confirms that it is indeed faith, a faith that will have to grow, for what he is about to see will be greater still.
These "greater things" are not first of all a visible spectacle. Through the miracles, the teaching, the atonement and the resurrection of Christ, the disciples will come to understand that the whole Old Testament speaks of Jesus.
"Truly, truly": where the other Gospels say "truly," John doubles it. It amounts to saying "amen, amen." Usually, the listener answers amen to a truth he has heard; Jesus, for his part, takes the amen from his listeners' mouths and puts it at the beginning: get ready, what follows will astonish you.
"Hereafter you will see heaven opened, and the angels of God ascending and descending on the Son of Man" (John 1:51). Jesus refers back to Genesis 28: Jacob sees in a dream a ladder set up on the earth, with its top reaching to heaven, and the angels of God ascending and descending on it (Genesis 28:12). The Lord renews there the covenant made with Abraham: the land, offspring "as the dust of the earth," and "in you all the families of the earth will be blessed" (Genesis 28:13-14). After Abraham and Isaac, God confirms his promise to the third generation: from generation to generation, he remains faithful.
Tom Foord points out that Jacob disappears from the scene: Jesus does not tell Nathanael that he will be like Jacob, nor that he is himself Jacob. He presents himself as the one on whom the angels ascend and descend: he is the ladder.
So it is Jesus who opens heaven to people so that they can draw near to God, and who brings the word and the good news down to us. He is the ladder, the bridge between sinners, you, me, all of us, and a holy God, so that we may be welcomed. And in him all the families of the earth will be blessed.

6. The Son of Man of Daniel 7

Jesus gives himself this title: the Son of Man. The expression comes from Daniel 7. Just before, Daniel has seen great beasts that represent the kingdoms and empires of the earth, which rise and then fall.
God appears there as the Ancient of Days, who judges all empires with justice: the King of all history, before whom the greatest emperor sits to be judged.
Then Daniel sees coming with the clouds of heaven one like a son of man. "There was given him dominion, glory, and a kingdom, that all the peoples, nations, and languages should serve him. His dominion is an everlasting dominion, which will not pass away, and his kingdom that which will not be destroyed" (Daniel 7:13-14).
Yet no man can approach God this way, or travel on the clouds, which are God's chariot. This is why "Son of Man," despite this human word, carries the idea of a divine person: like a man, but more than a man, the one who receives the kingdom of God.
Jesus will use this expression eleven more times in the Gospel of John. Across all the Gospels, it is the title he uses most often for himself.

7. Are you an honest seeker?

The pastor draws the conclusion: Jesus taught his disciples to see him exactly as the Old Testament Scriptures presented him, as the subject of their prophecies, as their fulfillment, and as the way that opens heaven so that we can know God.
Then he questions his audience: are you a Nathanael, someone who thinks honestly? Not a skeptic because he read a book by Dawkins, nor someone who believes only what he can put under a microscope, nor someone who invokes science as an excuse: a sincere seeker.
If you are, you will be ready to test the truth and to accept it when you meet it. And this truth you have before you, at least in the words of Jesus Christ.

Key takeaways

Jesus is the subject and main character of the Old Testament: the more you read it, the more you find him there.
Nathanael's doubt was not cunning but honest perplexity, and Jesus sees him as a man "in whom is no deceit."
Jesus knows each person individually: a single word about the fig tree was enough for Nathanael to know he was known.
"Son of God" is a royal title: Jesus is the new Adam, the new Israel and the new David, greater than them all.
Jesus is Jacob's ladder and the Son of Man of Daniel 7: through him heaven is opened and sinners can draw near to a holy God.

Personal application

When you read the Old Testament, do you look for Jesus in its pages, or do you read it as a book separate from the Gospel?
Are your doubts those of an honest seeker who wants to see, or excuses for not coming to Jesus?
Do you read the Bible to justify yourself, or to hear the voice of God?
Do you remember a word, a song or a prayer through which God made you understand that he knew you personally?
Like Philip, to whom could you say this week: "Come and see"?

Verses cited

Frequently asked questions

What does Jesus mean when he says Nathanael is an Israelite in whom is no deceit?

For Tom Foord, Jesus is not talking about Nathanael's ancestry but about his heart. He is an honest man who reads the Scriptures to hear the voice of God, not to justify himself. This does not mean he is without sin: he is sincere in his search for the truth, unlike the religious leaders Jesus will meet later.

What does the title "Son of God" mean on Nathanael's lips?

In the Old Testament, this title carries a royal meaning. Adam is called a son of God (Luke 3:38), Israel is God's firstborn son (Exodus 4:22), and God says of the king descended from David: "I will be to him a father, and he will be to me a son" (2 Samuel 7:14). Jesus is the new Adam, the new Israel and the new David, better and greater than them all.

Why does Jesus speak of angels ascending and descending on the Son of Man?

Jesus is alluding to Jacob's dream in Genesis 28, where a ladder connects earth to heaven. He presents himself as that ladder: through him heaven is opened, the word of God comes down to us, and sinners can draw near to a holy God. The title Son of Man comes from Daniel 7:13-14.