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Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.com | DownloadGreater Men and Women of the Bible by James Hastings: 498. John and Jesus
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John and Jesus
Literature
Blakiston, A., John Baptist and his Relation to Jesus (1912).
Brooke, S. A., Sermons Preached in St. James's Chapel, i. (1873) 148.
Cumming, J. E., John: The Baptist, Forerunner, and Martyr.
Davidson, A. B., The Called of God (1902), 229.
Dawson, W. J., The Man Christ Jesus (1901), 29.
Edersheim, A., The Life and Times of Jesus the Messiah, i. (1887) 260, 275.
Farrar, F. W., The Life of Christ (1894), 272.
Feather, F., The Last of the Prophets (1894).
Ferguson, F., A Popular Life of Christ (1878), 79.
Furse, C. W., The Beauty of Holiness (1903), 47.
Higginson, E., Ecce Messias (1871), 247.
Hough, L. H., The Men of the Gospels (1913), 7.
La Farge, J., The Gospel Story in Art (1913), 180.
Lange, J. P., The Life of the Lord Jesus Christ, ii. (1864) 324.
Lee, F. T., The New Testament Period and its Leaders (1913), 56.
Meyer, F. B., John the Baptist (1911).
Moberly, R. C., Christ Our Life (1902), 106.
Neander, A., The Life of Jesus Christ (1880), 213.
Reuss, E., History of Christian Theology in the Apostolic Age, i. (1872) 119.
Reynolds, H. R., John the Baptist (1872).
Robertson, A. T., John the Loyal (1912).
Scott, E. F., The Kingdom and the Messiah (1911), 58.
Selwyn, E. C., The Oracles in the New Testament (1912), 179.
Simpson, W. J. S., The Prophet of the Highest (1895).
Stalker, J., The Two St. Johns (1895), 189.
Taylor, W. M., The Silence of Jesus (1894), 17.
Vaughan, D. J., The Present Trial of Faith (1878), 358.
Whyte, A., Bible Characters: Joseph and Mary to James (1900), 26.
Baptist Review and Expositor, xi. (1914) 41 (W. Lock).
Catholic Encyclopœdia, viii. (1910) 486 (C. L. Souvay).
Dictionary of the Bible, ii. (1899) 677 (LI. J. M. Bebb).
Dictionary of the Bible, (Single-volume, 1909), 474 (J. G. Tasker).
Dictionary of Christ and the Gospels, i. (1906) 861 (J. C. Lambert).
Encyclopœdia Biblica, ii. (1900), col. 2498 (T. K. Cheyne).
Expository Times, xii. (1901) 312 (J. Reid); xv. (1904) 5; xviii. (1906) 193 (R. H. Kennett).
Lay Sermons from the Spectator (1909), 8.
Smith's Dictionary of the Bible, i. (1893) 1736 (E. Hawkins).
1. From ancient times it has been the custom with Oriental monarchs, when about to travel through any part of their dominions, to send heralds before them to announce their coming and to see that the roadways over which they were to pass were in order. All obstacles had to be removed, and rough places made smooth. If no roadway existed, one had to be made, even if it required the filling of valleys and the levelling of hills and mountains. In this way an easy and pleasant highway was provided for the royal travellers. This custom is alluded to in Isa_40:3-4 : “The voice of one that crieth, Prepare ye in the wilderness the way of Jehovah; make level in the desert a high way for our God. Every valley shall be exalted, and every mountain and hill shall be made low; and the uneven shall be made level, and the rough places a plain.” In the New Testament this passage is applied to John the Baptist as the herald or forerunner of the Messiah.
John himself originated the idea that he was the forerunner of the Messiah, the voice crying in the wilderness, for he quoted Isa_40:3 to the embassy from Jerusalem, and applied it to himself. It is possible that in Mat_3:3 also we have the language of John, but it is more probable that it is that of the Evangelist. All four Gospels thus bear witness to this “primitive interpretation” that John is the forerunner described by Isaiah.
(1) We know that the Jewish people as a whole were not prepared to receive Jesus as their Saviour; for they rejected and crucified Him. Still, much was done by the testimony of John. At the very last, when the enmity of the scribes and Pharisees was at its highest, we find they dared not insinuate that the baptism of John was not from heaven but of men,-because all the people held John for a prophet. Now what a vast advantage it must have given the early preachers of the gospel, to have had to do with a people who held John for a prophet! For John's testimony to Jesus was matter of notoriety. Our Lord appeals to it, in the face of the Jews themselves. How easy to lead on any candid mind from belief in John to belief in Jesus! And consequently we find, when the Church assembled to fill up the place of the traitor Judas, St. Peter specifying, as the qualification of a candidate for the Apostleship, that he must have companied with them all the time that the Lord Jesus went in and out among them, “beginning from the baptism of John.” Again, in the only detailed sermon of St. Paul to Jews in their synagogue, we have him distinctly appealing to the testimony of John among the proofs of the Messiahship of our Lord.
(2) And if John thus prepared the way by witnessing to Jesus in person, he also prepared many of the children of Israel in spirit to receive the message of life by Him. In such an age of worldliness and hypocrisy, to hear “there is a prophet among us,” to see once more the garb of Elijah in the desert, to hear once more that voice, clear as when it rang among the cliffs of Carmel, “How long halt ye between two opinions?”-that must have gone into the depths of many a heart in Israel, and called up again the almost forgotten presence of Israel's covenant God. And then, when they stood and listened to the wonderful messenger of repentance, how the words of their old prophets, long wrapped in the napkin of formalism, and heard muffled through the drawl of the scribe in the synagogue, must have leapt out into life, and gone right to their hearts!
And again, when, confessing their sins, they were baptized by John in Jordan, must we not believe that many of those thousands who received the outward rite became deeply humbled within? that many reeds were bruised, whom the Redeemer came not to break but to heal? And if John was made the discloser of pain that he could not assuage, the discoverer of burdens that he could not remove, for whom was this a preparation but for Him who cried, “Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest”?
John the Baptist is the supreme example of a general law; of the fact that all great changes in the worlds of spirit and of thought have their forerunners; minds which perceive the first significant movement, the sword of the spirit stirring in its sheath, long before the new direction is generally perceived or understood. John was a “prophet”-that is to say, a spiritual genius-with that intuitive knowledge of the immediate tendencies of life often found in those who are possessed of an instinct for Transcendent Reality. The span of a great mind, a great personality, gathers up into its “Now,” and experiences “all at once,” a number of smaller rhythms or moments which are separate experiences for lesser men. As we, in our wide rhythm of perception, gather up the countless small and swift vibrations of the physical world and weld them into sound or light; so the spiritual genius gathers up into his consciousness of a wide present, countless little tendencies and events. By this synthetic act he transcends the storm of succession, and attains a prophetic vision, which seems to embrace future as well as past. He is plunged in the stream of life, and feels the way in which it tends to move. Such a mind discerns, though he may not understand, the coming of a change long before it can be known by other men; and, trying to communicate his certitude, becomes a “prophet” or a “seer.”1 [Note: E. Underhill. The Mystic Way, 83.]
2. John is not only called Christ's forerunner; he is also spoken of as Elijah. In what sense was he Elijah? Everything in him recalled the great prophet of action. Elijah did not write a single page in the Book of God; his book was himself, his prophecy was his life; it was enough for him to appear, to call up before degenerate Israel the living image of holiness. There runs a real parallel between the careers of the two men. It is strikingly put by Edersheim. “John came suddenly out of the wilderness of Judæa, as Elijah from the wilds of Gilead. John bore the same ascetic appearance as his predecessor; the message of John was the counterpart of that of Elijah; his baptism that of Elijah's novel rite on Carmel.” It is true that John pointedly disclaimed being Elijah; but what he denied was the exaggerated expectations of the people, not the real promise of the prophet. Indeed, it was probably some word of John about this very matter that had led the Sanhedrin to make this inquiry, a word which had been misunderstood and which John now bluntly corrects. Jesus expressly says that John was the real fulfilment of the prophecy, he was the Elijah that was to come; he was to come in the spirit and power of Elijah, as Gabriel had said. That is all that ever was meant, but it had been grossly misunderstood again.
If we except Moses, who was the real founder of the nation, there is no man in Jewish history whose fame stands so high as Elijah's. What story is there so thrilling, so impressive, at times so overwhelmingly dramatic, as the story of this Bedouin of the desert, sweeping down in fire and thunder from the caves of Carmel, to subdue kings and terrify a whole people into submission by the force of a single imperious will? The very name of Elijah is to this day terrible in the East; never was there memory so potent and implacable. The manner of his removal from the earth added to the superstitious awe which clothed his name. He was believed not to have died; to have vanished from the earth only to halt upon some dim borderland between life and death, ready to reappear at any time; to have become a supernatural man, who might return, and assuredly would return in his chariot of flame, when some great national crisis called for him. Such legends are common; they are associated with King Arthur, and even with Sir Francis Drake. It is a curious testimony to man's inherent conviction of immortality, that he finds it difficult to believe that a great hero is really dead. But to the Jew, the sense of Elijah's real presence in the national life, his incompleted work upon the national destiny, was not so much a legend as a creed. It was an impassioned belief, increasing in vehemence as the times grew darker. The deeper the despair and impotence of the nation the more eager became the hope that Elijah would return. He would surely come again and smite the house of Herod as he had smitten the house of Ahab. The desert would once more travail in strange birth, and from it would come the redeeming Titan.1 [Note: W. J. Dawson, The Man Christ Jesus, 32.]
From the time that the Jewish nation had begun to reflect upon its destiny with a kind of despair, the imagination of the people had reverted with much complacency to the ancient prophets. Now, of all the personages of the past, the remembrance of whom came like the dreams of a troubled night to awaken and agitate the people, the greatest was Elias. This giant of the prophets, in his rough solitude of Carmel, sharing the life of savage beasts, dwelling in the hollows of the rocks, whence he came like a thunderbolt, to make and unmake kings, had become, by successive transformations, a sort of superhuman being, sometimes visible, sometimes invisible, and as one who has not tasted death. It was generally believed that Elias would return and restore Israel. The austere life which he had led, the terrible remembrances he had left behind him,-the impression of which is still powerful in the East,-the sombre image which, even in our own times, causes trembling and death,-all this … vividly struck the mind of the people, and stamped as with a birth-mark all the creations of the popular mind. Whoever aspired to act powerfully upon the people must imitate Elias; and, as solitary life had been the essential characteristic of this prophet, they were accustomed to conceive “the man of God” as a hermit. They imagined that all the holy personages had had their days of penitence, of solitude, and of austerity. The retreat to the desert thus became the condition and the prelude of high destinies.1 [Note: Renan, The Life of Jesus, chap. vi.]