NATHANAEL

Hugo McCord

I. A “GIFT OF GOD”

Philip found a man named “Nathanael” (John 1:45). The parents of Nathanael are to be complimented, for to name a baby “Nathanael” was to tell everybody “Our child is a gift of God” (Hebrew, nethen, “gift,” plus ‘El, “God”). Undoubtedly the baby’s mother and father had long appreciated Solomon’s words:

Behold! Children are the heritage of Yahweh, and the fruit of the womb is his pay. Like arrows in the hand of a strong man, so are the children of young men. Happy is he who has his quiver full of them (Psalm 127:3-5).

After 3,000 years the words of David are still true:

You created the organs inside of me, and you knitted me together in my mother’s womb. I am fearfully and wonderfully made (Psalm 139:13-14).

Every newborn child has been a living human being for nine months, beginning as a microscopic cell. Whereas animals also begin as microscopic cells, into the human microscopic cell the “Father of spirits” (Hebrews 12:9) sends a spirit in the “image” of God (Genesis 1:26) from heaven (Ecclesiastes 12:7; Zechariah 12:1) that will never die (Luke 20:36-38).

II. MURDER

Sad it is that officially, on January 22, 1973, the officials of the United States of America have descended to paganism, to heathenism, to barbarity, by legalizing the murder of unborn children! In the United States it is

a felony to destroy a sea turtle’s egg, or a bald eagle’s egg, but it is perfectly legal to destroy a human body in its mother’s womb (Maxie B. Boren, WAYMARKS, Feb., 1999).

III. “ORIGINAL SIN”

Furthermore, the parents of Nathanael, believing that their baby was a “gift of God,” would have been horrified if somebody had told them that God, who “is love” (1 John 4:8, 16), had lovingly given them a sin-infected child!

However, David had made such a statement, “Indeed, in iniquity I was born, and in sin my mother conceived me” (Psalm 51:5). But literally David’s words are false, and are true only poetically. David was so overwhelmed as he realized the enormity of his sin in adulterizing Bathsheba (2 Samuel 11:2-5) and in murdering her husband Uriah (2 Samuel 11:6-25), that, in confessing his sins to God, he went overboard, feeling that in him was nothing good, and indeed, never had been, even in his mother’s womb!

In David’s full-souled confession was another statement literally false, saying to God, “Against you, you only, have I sinned” (Psalm 51:4), for he had also sinned against Bathsheba and Uriah.

Nothing that God has inspired, when meant to be taken literally, has even hinted that unborn babies are already afflicted with the guilt of Adam’s sin. Literally, not poetically, God had Ezekiel to write that

the son shall not bear the iniquity of the father, neither shall the father bear the iniquity of the son; the righteousness of the righteous shall be upon him, and the wickedness of the wicked shall be upon him (18:20).

To the king of Tyre, Ezekiel wrote:

You were perfect in your ways from the day that you were created, till unrighteousness was found in you (28:15).

To Israel, God said through Isaiah that

your iniquities have separated between you and your God, and your sins have hid his face from you, so that he will hot hear (59:2).

That babies are born sin-infected has never been the teaching of the rabbis:

Indeed, Jews, be they orthodox or not, do not believe that babies are born in any way depraved or burdened with sin. In fact, the truth is quite the opposite, babies are totally innocent (Rabbi E. N. Kaye, quoted in the GOSPEL ADVOCATE, February 20, 1986).

Thus the doctrine of inherited sin did not originate with the Jews. Its origin is in a mistake in the Latin version of the Bible by Jerome (340-420 A.D.), “the authorized version of the Roman Catholic Church” (Webster). The mistake is carried over into the English version of the Roman Catholic Church (the Douay).

Paul’s Greek phrase eph ho (“for that,” “because,” Romans 5:12, Thayer, p. 233) Jerome translated into the Latin in quo (“in whom”). This mistake caused Augustine (354-430 A.D.) to begin the teaching of hereditary sin, that every baby is born with “original sin.” As a result, Roman Catholic priests sprinkle babies to cleanse them of Adam’s sin.

However, Roman Catholic theologians had to scramble for an answer to the argument that, if all babies arrive with inborn sin, then Jesus was a sinner in Mary’s womb! They solved their problem by having Pope Pius IX, in 1854, to issue a papal bull, Ineffabilis Deus, the “Immaculate Conception,” announcing that Mary, alone among all babies from Adam down, was conceived and born miraculously sin-free, pure, and holy. Consequently, she had no sin to pass on to Jesus.

But all other mothers, according to Roman Catholic doctrine, from Adam on down, have sin-infected babies. Dr. Daniel Defoe, who delivered the Canadian quintuplets, afraid that one or more would die before a priest could sprinkle them, performed the religious act himself.

It is sad that Protestant theologians have agreed with the Roman Catholics that babies are born sinners. They misuse Romans 5:12:

... as sin entered the world through one man, and death through sin, in this manner death passed over to all men, for all have sinned.

But “all” have not actually sinned: fetuses, babies, children, the mentally ill. If all have not actually sinned, then “all have sinned” only figuratively, for no one will give an account to God for the sins of others: “each one of us shall give an account of himself to God” (Romans 14:12).

All people are “made sinners” (Romans 15:19), but not actually. All are “made sinners” only in the sense of receiving the penalty for Adam’s sin, that is, death, “even those who” have “not sinned according to the transgression of Adam” (Romans 5:14). Actually and literally

all of us must appear before the judgment seat of Christ, that each one may receive the things he did in the body, whether good or bad (2 Corinthians 5:10).

John Calvin (1509-1564) wrote that the “original sin entailed by Adam” lies “upon the whole human family” (COMMENTARY ON THE BOOK OF PSALMS, 5, 290). John Wesley (1703-1791) wrote “that infants should be baptized” to “be washed from original sin” (WESLEY’S WORKS, II, 16). As infants were sprinkled, Methodist pastors were taught to say,

Forasmuch as all men are conceived and born in sin, I baptize you into the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit.

But a change was made in the Methodist Discipline in 1910. Since that time Methodist pastors, as they sprinkle infants, say:

Forasmuch as all men are conceived and born in Christ, I baptize you into the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit.

A Nazarene pastor, in a debate at Carbon Hill, Alabama, in 1934, said that the very fact that a baby cries shows that he is a sinner. The reply that Gus Nichols (sitting by me) whispered was all that I needed: “If crying is sin, then Jesus was a sinner, `Jesus wept’” (John 11:35). At that moment, the Nazarene pastor was so demoralized he got up and walked out of the building.

The first medical doctor to obey the gospel in South Africa, December 3, 1972, a father of four children plus one adopted, has written that

babies are innocent and cannot be tainted with their fathers’ sins, and to think otherwise is an iniquitous concept (GOSPEL ADVOCATE, February 20, 1986).

IV. AN ADMIRABLE SON

After Nathanael, the son of the parents who were thrilled to have a “gift of God,” had grown up, a man named Philip said to him,

We have found him of whom Moses (in the law), and the prophets, wrote: Jesus of Nazareth, the son of Joseph (John 1:45).

Nathanael replied, “Can anything good be from Nazareth? (John 1:46). Nathanael lived in Cana (John 21:2), a village ten miles from Nazareth, and his reply to Philip shows he had quite a dislike for Jesus’ hometown, and shows also he was a skeptic, an unbeliever, in Jesus. However, he was an honest skeptic, for when Philip said, “Come and see,” he went with Philip to meet Jesus (John 1:46-47).

As the two were walking toward Jesus, Jesus spoke: “Behold! A true Israelite, in whom there is no deceit” (John 1:47). For Jesus to say those complimentary words about a man whom he had never seen physically shows that Jesus “knew all men” and “had no need that anyone should testify about man, for he himself knew what is in man” (John 2:24-25). Jesus’ complimentary words also show that Nathanael had been baptized by John the baptizer, for any “Israelite” (as Jesus called him) who rejected John’s baptism “rejected the counsel of God against” himself (Luke 7:30), and certainly Jesus would not compliment a man who had rejected the counsel of God.

However, Nathanael, as he walked to meet Jesus, was shocked to hear such words. So he asked Jesus, “How is it that you know me?” (John 1:48). Jesus replied, “Before Philip called you, while you were under the fig tree, I saw you” (John 1:48). Jesus’ statement, showing supernatural knowledge of a stranger’s character, and showing supernatural eye-sight, immediately convinced Nathanael that Jesus was divine, and he said, “Rabbi, you are the Son of God! You are the King of Israel!” (John 1:49).

The two titles that Nathanael ascribed to Jesus were from the Old Testament Scriptures (Psalm 2:6-7). This means that Nathanael was a Bible student. In Psalm 2:7 the psalmist quotes words that Jesus would say a thousand years later on Jesus’ resurrection day, Sunday, April 9, A.D. 30: “I will celebrate the decree of Yahweh. He said to me, `You are my Son. Today I have begotten you” (cf. Acts 13:33; Hebrews 1:5). In Psalm 2:6 the psalmist quotes words a thousand years ahead of time that God would say to Jesus on King Jesus’ coronation day in heaven on the day of Pentecost, May 28, A.D. 30 (Acts 2:1-4, 30; Hebrews 1:8-9, A.D. 30): “Most certainly I will anoint my King in Zion, my holy mountain.”

Jesus’ response to the two titles that Nathanael gave to Jesus, the Son of God and the King, was:

Do you believe because I said that I saw you under the fig tree? You will see greater things than these. ... Truly, truly, I assure you, you will see heaven opened, and God’s angels going up and coming down on the Son of man (John 1:50-51).

Jesus’ words to Nathanael certainly are a reference to Jacob’s dream of

a ladder set up on the earth, and the top of it reached to heaven: and behold, the angels of God ascending and descending on it (Genesis 28:12).

The dream of a ladder as a connection between heaven and earth would be replaced, according to Jesus’ prediction, not by another dream, but by a literal cross, with “the Son of man” hanging on it, as the connection between heaven and earth:

O safe and happy shelter, O refuge tried and sweet,

O trysting place where heaven’s love and heaven’s justice meet!

As to the holy patriarch That wondrous dream was giv’n.

So seems my Savior’s cross to me, A ladder up to heav’n (“Beneath the Cross of Jesus.” Elizabeth Clephane, 1872).

V. AN APOSTLE?

Did Jesus select Nathanael to be an apostle under the name “Bartholomew”? Since

antiquity attempts have been made to identify him [Nathanael] with various apostles, especially Bartholomew (B-G-D, 532). Nathanael, on this supposition, was his personal name, and Bartholomew was a title derived from his father (Thayer, 422).

The word “bar” in Aramaic means “son” (B-D-B, 135), and so “Bartholomew” (bar and Tolmai) is the “son of Tolmai” (G. Abbott-Smith, 76). A parallel construction is the inspired explanation that a blind man named “Bartimaeus” was “the son of Timaeus” (Mark 10:46).

If Nathanael was called “Bartholomew,” then his father was “Tolmai,” a complimentary name meaning “abounding in furrows” (Gesenius, 865), referring to the “furrows” or “ridges” in a cultivated wheat field as the farmer prepares “the earth” looking to the time the “grain” will be harvested (Psalm 65:9-10). A father-in-law of David was named “Tolmai” (2 Samuel 3:3; 13:37). If Nathanael was called Bartholomew, then he was an apostle of Christ (Matthew 10:3; Mark 3:18; Luke 6:14; Acts 1:13). John Foxe (1516-1587), an “English reformer and author” (Webster), in his BOOK OF MARTYRS reports that Bartholomew, after preaching in India, was “cruelly beaten and then crucified by the impatient idolaters.”

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