In Bethel, the house of God (the consummation of which is the New Jerusalem—Rev. 21:2), Christ is the heavenly ladder that brings heaven to earth and joins earth to heaven as well (John 1:51). A ladder is a stairway by which people can ascend from the earth to something in the air. Christ as the Son of Man, in His humanity, is the ladder as the stairway, the way (14:6a), by which we can ascend from the earth to reach God (heaven—v. 6b). Through Him we reach God. He as such a ladder brings God (heaven) to us and joins us to God (heaven).
A ladder needs a strong base to stand on. In Genesis 28:12 and 19 the heavenly ladder which Jacob saw took Bethel as its base. Bethel is God's house, God's dwelling place. Today in God's organic salvation, our regenerated spirit is God's dwelling place (Eph. 2:22), even the Holy of Holies of God (Heb. 4:16; 10:19), which Christ as our heavenly ladder takes as His base. Whenever we turn to our spirit, we sense Christ bringing God (heaven) to us and joining us to God (heaven). Thus, Christ as the heavenly ladder is the stairway to bring God to us and join us to God.
In doing all these things for God's economy, Christ is the Messiah, the Christ of God (John 1:41). The Messiah of God, the Christ of God, is the God-appointed and God-commissioned One to accomplish God's economy.
As the temple of God, Christ is eternal and immovable (2:15-22). The temple of God, which Christ called His Father's house, firstly refers to Christ individually before His resurrection and then refers to Christ with His believers as His increase corporately after His resurrection to be God's permanent dwelling place in the spiritual world. This house of the Father is built by Christ and God with the believers as its constituents (14:2, 23). All the believers have been transformed to be stones, so they are now the constituents for the building up of God's eternal dwelling place. God's dwelling place is first the church, then the Body of Christ, and consummately the New Jerusalem.
The serpent lifted up on the cross (John 3:14) refers to Christ, who was crucified as the biting serpent for all the people bitten by the devil as the serpent, making them serpents (sinners). In His redemption God made Christ the replacement for the sinners, who are serpents in the eyes of God, to suffer God's judgment on the cross. In type the serpent, which signifies Christ as the replacement of God's people, is a bronze serpent, a serpent "in likeness" but not in reality. He "did not know sin" but He was only "made sin" by God in its likeness (2 Cor. 5:21). Similarly, in incarnation Christ became "in the likeness of the flesh of sin," without the sin of the flesh (Rom. 8:3).