“How Can He Say, ‘I Came Down from Heaven’?”

We met several faculty and administrators the weekend we took our son Matthew to school in St. Louis. One shared his observation of how society stereotypes its own. “When we moved here, one of the first questions people would ask us was, ‘Where did you go to high school?’ But when we lived in North Carolina prior to this, the question was, ‘What church do you go to?’” We peg people in various ways, quite often by asking, “Where are you from?” But what do you do with the man who answers, “I came down from heaven?” How do we categorize that guy?

We try. Consider the crowds’ attempts to stuff a 3D Jesus into their 2D frame of reference. “Who are you?”¹ “Where is your father?”² “Are you the one who is to come?”³ “Are you the Son of God?”⁴ “Are you the king of the Jews?”⁵ “Where did this man get this wisdom and these mighty works?”⁶ “How is it that this man has learning, when he has never studied?”⁷ And of course, “Where are you from?”⁸ Oh, how we try.

Yet Jesus made His origins clear. To the crowd of 5000 who sailed after Him in search of another miraculous meal, He said, “I have come down from heaven.”⁹ Perhaps for clarity, context, or emphasis, Jesus then doubled down, “I am the living bread that came down from heaven.”¹⁰ They said among themselves, “Isn’t this Jesus, the son of Joseph? We know his father and mother. How can he say, ‘I came down from heaven’?”¹¹ But there in heaven — and from before the world existed — Jesus lived with the glory he had with the Father.¹²

Jesus is a category of one. No other has come down from heaven to live among us.¹³ “No one has seen the Father except the one [Jesus] who is from God; only he has seen the Father.”¹⁴ Moreover, “there is salvation in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved.”¹⁵ For having shed His blood to cover our sins — His life for ours — Jesus “entered heaven itself, now to appear for us in God’s presence,”¹⁶ as only He can. He will come again to take us to be with Him that we also may be where He is.¹⁷ No longer will we ask, “Where are you from?” We will see for ourselves. For “we will be with the Lord forever.”¹⁸

So, “set your hearts on things above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God.”¹⁹ It’s where He’s from. It’s where we’re going.

Father, thank You for sending Jesus from heaven, that we would live there, too. Grace us to live this life with our sights on the next. In Christ we pray. Amen.

¹ John 8:25 ESV
² John 8:19 ESV
³ Luke 7:19 ESV
⁴ Luke 22:70
⁵ John 18:33 ESV
⁶ Matthew 13:54 ESV
⁷ John 7:15 ESV
⁸ John 19:9
⁹ John 6:38 ESV
¹⁰ John 6:51 ESV
¹¹ John 6:42 NLT
¹² John 17:5
¹³ John 6:42
¹⁴ John 6:46 NIV
¹⁵ Acts 4:12 ESV
¹⁶ Hebrews 9:24 NIV
¹⁷ John 14:3
¹⁸ 1 Thessalonians 4:7 NIV
¹⁹ Colossians 3:1 NIV