By Pastor Lester Bentley
Jacob was alone.
As the sun sank in the west, Jacob found himself heading in the opposite direction, away from everything familiar. Home was gone. Family was fractured. His future was uncertain. The usurper who once grasped for the blessing now lay sleeping in the wilderness with a stone beneath his head for a pillow.
This is hardly the picture of rest.
And there, in the dark, Jacob dreamed.
“A ladder was set up on the earth, and its top reached to heaven; and there the angels of God were ascending and descending on it.” — Genesis 28:12
For years, perhaps many of us have read that passage as though the point of the ladder was for Jacob to climb it. As though the vision represented humanity finding its way back to God through effort, morality, or spiritual achievement.
But that is not what Jacob sees.
Jacob never climbs the ladder.
Instead, heaven keeps coming down to earth.
The angels ascend and descend. The Lord stands above it, speaking covenant promises over a broken man. The emphasis is not humanity reaching upward, but God moving toward humanity.
That changes everything.
As a kid growing up, I often heard adults talking about pulling themselves up by their bootstraps. It is a saying used to describe the hard work that is necessary to achieve a goal or change your position in life. Climbing the social, or corporate ladder.
In Eden, the serpent offered humanity a kind of spiritual bootstrap:
“You will be like God.”
The temptation was not merely about fruit. It was the promise of self-elevation. Humanity could rise above its present condition apart from trusting God. Since that moment, humanity has been trying to pull itself upward ever since.
We build towers like Babel.
We create systems of morality.
We attempt to prove ourselves worthy.
We strive, perform, compete, compare, and exhaust ourselves trying to ascend back into God’s favor.
But the gospel tells a different story.
It was never Jacob climbing to heaven.
It was heaven coming to Jacob.
And yet, even after hearing God’s promises, Jacob still responds the way many of us do:
“If God will be with me… if He will keep me… if He will give me bread to eat and clothing to put on… then the LORD shall be my God.” — Genesis 28:20–21
Jacob still thinks transactionally not relationship.
“If You bless me, then I will be faithful.”
But God’s covenant with Jacob was never rooted in Jacob’s performance. God had already spoken the promises before Jacob made vows. The blessing was flowing from God’s covenant faithfulness, not Jacob’s ability to earn it.
Jacob was blessed for the sake of the covenant, not because of his own effort.
That is grace.
And is that not how many of us still think today?
“If I perform well enough, maybe God will accept me.”
“If I obey consistently enough, maybe God will bless me.”
“If I become moral enough, maybe I can climb higher.”
But morality is not the ladder into heaven.
Relationship is the gift heaven keeps offering to earth.
Jesus echoes Jacob’s dream in The Gospel of John 1:51 when He says:
“You shall see heaven open, and the angels of God ascending and descending upon the Son of Man.”
Christ Himself becomes the ladder.
Not a ladder we climb, but the place where heaven and earth meet.
The incarnation is heaven coming down.
The cross is heaven coming down.
Grace is heaven coming down.
This is why morality alone can never save us. Morality pursued apart from relationship simply becomes another tower of Babel—another attempt to ascend by human effort.
True transformation comes differently.
It comes through relationship with the One who first loved us.
Jesus did not say:
“They will know you are My disciples because you have mastered religious performance.”
He said:
“By this all will know that you are My disciples, if you have love for one another.” (John 13:35)
Love is the evidence of abiding relationship with Christ.
In Eden, Adam and Eve reflected God’s character naturally because they lived in unhindered communion with Him. Sin severed that relationship, and morality collapsed afterward. Humanity became restless, striving, fearful, and divided.
But in Christ, heaven keeps coming down to restore what was lost.
That means the Christian life is not fundamentally about climbing higher. It is about abiding deeper.
It is resting in the reality that God has already moved toward us in Christ.
Jacob awoke from his dream and said:
“Surely the LORD is in this place, and I did not know it.” — Genesis 28:16
Perhaps that is what many of us need to rediscover today.
Not a God waiting for us to climb successfully toward Him,
but a God who has never stopped coming toward us.
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