The culmination of the Baptist's personal experience was reached when, standing in the water of Jordan, he saw and heard the signs with which the baptism of Jesus was accompanied. Hut he had still a great work to do in bearing testimony to the Messiah. There are three recorded occasions on which he did so-the first when a deputation was sent to him from Jerusalem by the Jewish authorities; the second when he pointed Jesus out to his own disciples as the Messiah; and the third when he rebuked the attempt of his disciples to stir up rivalry between Jesus and himself. And on each of these occasions John not only bore conscious witness to Christ, but at the same time unconsciously revealed his own character.
1. Farrar is very precise as to the time of the embassy, fixing it “the day previous to our Lord's return from the wilderness.” That is possible, of course, if Jesus came directly to Bethany, where John was now baptizing. The location of this Bethany beyond Jordan is unknown. It was somewhere on the eastern side of the river, probably about half-way between the Dead Sea and the Sea of Galilee. We do not at all know that John had remained in the same place during the forty days while Jesus was in the wilderness. It is more than probable that John had kept moving up the river, having crossed over to the eastern side.
The “priests and Levites” who formed the deputation were the Temple dignitaries, regarded by all, and regarding themselves, as custodians of the Law and all matters religious. They were the ecclesiastics of their time, who, in their narrow conscientiousness, were sent to know who the prophet really professed to be, and what his mission was. There is no need to assume that they had prejudged him and sought only his condemnation, though the Pharisees who sent them still smarted under the castigation they had received from him in the face of the people. Probably the whole of them would be ready to welcome him, and to sanction his movement, if they could be satisfied of his credentials.
There was a profound silence, and men craned their necks and strained their ears to see and hear everything, as the deputation challenged the prophet with the inquiry, “Who art thou?” There was a great silence. Men were prepared to believe anything of the eloquent young preacher. “The people were in expectation, and all men reasoned in their hearts concerning John, whether haply he were the Christ.” If he had given the least encouragement to their dreams and hopes, they would have unfurled again the tattered banner of the Maccabees; and beneath his leadership would have swept, like a wild hurricane, against the Roman occupation, gaining, perhaps, a momentary success, which afterwards would have been wiped out in blood. “And he confessed, and denied not; and he confessed, I am not the Christ.”
If a murmur of voices burst out in anger, disappointment, and chagrin, as this answer spread from lip to lip, it was immediately hushed by the second inquiry propounded, “What then? Art thou Elijah?” (alluding to the prediction of Mal_4:5). If they had worded their question rather differently, and put it thus, “Hast thou come in the power of Elijah?” John must have acknowledged that it was so; but if they meant to inquire if he were literally Elijah returned again to this world, he had no alternative but to say, decisively and laconically, “I am not.”
There was a third arrow in their quiver, since the other two had missed the mark; and amid the deepening attention of the listening multitudes, and in allusion to Moses' prediction that God would raise up a prophet like to himself (Deu_18:15; Act_3:22; Act_7:37), they said, “Art thou the prophet?” and lie answered, “No.”
(1) Observe the simplicity of John's answer. “He confessed, and denied not.” He was not thinking about himself, except as one of manifold things in God's world. So when they asked him about himself, he answered just as he would about anything else, outside of himself, on which they questioned him. He thought neither too much nor too little about himself. So when his own disciples got into trouble with the Jews, he gave no opinion, as we should say, but answered so simply-“A man can receive nothing, except it be given him from heaven.”
It is a good rule, “If anything comes to your mind which seems a good answer to anything you don't like, suppress it.” There is sure to be something of self in it. It is pride putting down pride.1 [Note: Spiritual Letters of E. B. Pusey, 72.]
(2) Then its clear-sightedness. He knew at once what he was, and what he was not. “He confessed, and denied not.” Is not our trouble often that we do not know? And this haziness, is it a moral or an intellectual defect? Is it want of luminous judgment? or is it a double-mindedness? Certain it is that there are few notes of character more evident than this clear sight. It is like the purity of a child's vision in matters of conscience: knowledge without the trouble of thought, intuition, the action of light, quick, instantaneous, delicate, irresistible, and pure.
The seer, what is he? Is he not just the man who sees deeper than others, more clearly than others; sees right into the heart of things, into the essential equality of being; one who, from an accurate knowledge of the great spiritual forces at work in the world, can predict how they will act, and what results will come from this action? This it is which has made the prophets-the true ones-the great moral authorities of the world.… Their insight, you may say, was a scientific one. It was the result of a true diagnosis. Just as the modern researcher, probing and testing the qualities of radium, can give his forecast of what it is to accomplish, so the prophet, the moral genius, whether he lived three thousand years ago or is among us to-day, predicts what the spiritual will do from his knowledge of what it contains.1 [Note: J. Brierley, Faith's Certainties, 85.]
(3) Look in the third place at the disinterestedness of the Baptist's answer. He emptied himself into the fulness of Christ. All colour of self, deep-dyed as it was in the intensely characteristic life of the desert, was quenched in the burning light of his Lord. There was nothing in him of his own. “I am the voice of one crying in the wilderness, Make straight the way of the Lord, as said Isaiah the prophet.” A voice-not a word; a voice crying only because God had foretold that it should cry; a voice crying in the wilderness, needing no audience; enough if it be heard by God and accepted as the true echo of His own word; a voice careless whether or not it make present impressions; a voice going out into the future, foretelling the mind of the Eternal, who is and is to come.
In a sermon that he preached in Union Chapel on the Sunday that concluded the fortieth year of his ministry there, he insisted that the preacher's business was not to establish a bet of theological principles or to proclaim simply a morality, but to proclaim a living Person and a historical fact. He frequently referred to John the Baptist's answer to the question “Who art thou?” “I am a voice,” as being the model for all time. Most truly he took to himself the advice he gave: “We must efface ourselves if we would proclaim Christ.”2 [Note: Dr. M. Luren of Manchester, 211.]
2. It may have been whilst Jesus was away in the wilderness, into which He plunged immediately after His baptism, to endure the forty days' temptation, that the deputation from Jerusalem came to John. It is easy to conceive that, after so unique and prolonged an experience as Jesus had passed through in the wilderness, there may have been in His aspect something unusually impressive; and, when He came suddenly again into the circle where the Baptist was standing, the first look at Him sent through the forerunner's soul a revealing shock; whereupon, with outstretched finger pointed to Him, he cried, “Behold the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world.”
One stood among the people whom they knew not; but John knew and perceived features of the glory which was veiled from others. He saw the beauty which the scribe and Pharisee neither saw nor desired. What were these features?
(1) He recognized the purity of Christ's humanity.-“Behold,” he said, “the Limb.” Whatever else may be signified in this phrase, and the phrase has many meanings, none can doubt that the idea of the blamelessness and spotlessness of Christ's character is suggested: the notion is drawn from the paschal lamb, the lamb which must be “without blemish and without spot.” When, then, John the Baptist, looking with loving regard upon Christ as He walked, said, “Behold the Lamb of God” (whatever anticipations of sacrifice might pass through his mind), he seems at that moment to be occupied chiefly with the thought of the beauty and the purity of Christ's character. If John's knowledge of our Lord began in early life, then we must suppose that the unsullied character of Christ, known to the Baptist through so many years, at last forces upon his mind the thought that this pure humanity is a revelation of something Divine. But in any case, John recognizes the moral beauty and dignity of our Lord when he counts it fitting to describe Him as the Lamb of God.
In his conception of Christ the humanity was the thing on which Denny laid chief stress. He did not intrude into the region of dogmatic theology either in a heterodox or in an orthodox interest; but I think he would have agreed, at least substantially, with the opening words of Hinton's “Lawbreakers”: “If I believe that Christ is Divine, that is of no moment. We all wish to know what man He was.”1 [Note: A. B. Bruce. Life of Williem Deury 232.]
(2) He recognized His pure Divinity.-Think for a moment of that token of Divine anointing of which John spoke. “Upon whomsoever thou shall see the Spirit descending, and abiding upon him, the same is he that baptizeth with the Holy Spirit.” The advent of this Divine anointing, the sign of the Spirit descending like a dove, came within the range of John's experience. Whatever the historical circumstances connected with this descent of the Spirit may have been, the ethical meaning surely is clear. John recognized in Christ more than the mere purity of a beautiful human character; be recognized the fire of that Divine life which glowed within Him. He saw, too, that that fire was not a fire to glow unused upon the altar of Christ's manhood, but was destined to be a kindling fire setting aflame the hearts of men and purifying the order of the world. He was not only anointed with the Holy Ghost, He was also destined to baptize the world with the Holy Ghost and with fire.
Christ either deceived mankind by conscious fraud, or He was Himself deluded and self-deceived, or He was Divine. There is no getting out of this trilemma. It is inexorable.1 [Note: John Duncan, Colloquia Peripatetica, 109.]
(3) He recognized the work of Christ as one of suffering and love.-He not only said, “Behold the Lamb of God,” but he said, “the Lamb which taketh away the sin of the world.” It is difficult to believe that the prophecy of Isaiah was not in his mind. If so, and we can hardly doubt it, the whole range of that wondrous prophecy is gathered up in the utterances of John the Baptist; and in his view Christ was “the servant of the Lord” who was to “see of the travail of his soul” and was to “be satisfied.” He was One upon whose life was to fall sorrow, and yet in whose sorrow the world was to find life. He was to accomplish the reconciliation which should make the world glad. He was to achieve that work which would inaugurate among men a new era of love and a noble principle of sacrifice.
That by the title “the Lamb of God” the Baptist meant only to designate Jesus as a person full of gentleness and innocence is out of the question. The second clause forbids this. He is the Lamb that takes away sin. And there is only one way in which a lamb can take away sin, and that is, by sacrifice. The expression no doubt suggests the picture in the fifty-third of Isaiah of the servant of Jehovah meekly enduring wrong. But unless the Baptist had been previously speaking of this chapter, the thoughts of his disciples would not at once turn to it, because in that passage it is not a lamb of sacrifice that is spoken of, but a lamb meekly enduring. In the Baptist's words sacrifice is the primary idea, and it is needless to discuss whether he was thinking of the paschal lamb or the lamb of morning and evening sacrifice, because he merely used the lamb as the representative of sacrifice generally. Here, he says, is the reality to which all sacrifice has pointed, the Lamb of God.2 [Note: Marcus Dods, The Gospel of St. John, i. 46.]
3. John was but a herald voice; and his work was but a symbol. He but drew diagrams to suggest the realities that were coming. Water will wash the body, but it will not purify the spirit. The spirit is like a precious metal, from which water will run off, leaving all its impurities and dross still there. The spirit must be baptized with fire, suffused with heat, penetrated, even melted, with the fire of God, that it may be cleansed; and He who would thus set aglow the spirit of man was at hand. Thus John, in the midst of his popularity, remained unaffected. He passed through all its temptations unchanged. But it began to appear that his day was over. People wearied of him. The fashion changed. The thunder and the earthquake had lost their terrors. Men revenged themselves upon him for the terrors he had caused them, and because he brought them to their knees, by ridiculing him and his manner. They had recovered from the fright he gave them, and they vented their dislike in mockery. John came neither eating nor drinking, and they said he had a devil. “The man,” they said, “is touched in the head, and why mind him?” They forsook him. Another voice had begun to be heard, a still small voice; and some found it had a greater charm than the thunder of John's, and they flocked to listen to its gentle tones.
It was a trying hour for John; and there were some who rubbed the salt into the wound. Whether they were sympathizers, or candid friends, or busybodies pleased to make mischief, it is hard to say. “Rabbi,” said they, “he that was with thee beyond Jordan, to whom thou barest witness, behold, the same baptizeth; and all men come to him.” Professional jealousy is said to breed the deadliest rancour known; when one hears praise bestowed on another of the same cloth, it is said to run through the veins like poison. John heard the words that told him that his sun was setting, and that a brighter star had risen on the horizon, and he answered not with chagrin, but with joy: “A man can receive nothing, except it be given him from heaven. He must increase, but I must decrease.” Surely nothing greater or nobler was ever said. A man has nothing except it be given him of God. What I have, God has given me. What my professional brother has, God has given him. If he can alleviate human pain and distress with more skill than I, it is from God he has the gift; if he can speak to men's consciences with greater power than I, it is of God. A spark of goodness or power from God animates us all. It is God in us. Let us see God in each other, and rejoice.
By far the very best thing that the Baptist ever said or did was what he said to his jealous disciples: “A man can receive nothing,” he said, “except it be given him from heaven. He that hath the bride is the bridegroom. He must increase, but I must decrease.” I would rather have had the grace from God to say that than have been the greatest man ever born of woman. For he who thinks, and says, and does a thing like that is born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God.1 [Note: A. Whyte.]
Perhaps the secret of Father Stanton's success as a preacher is told in the advice he once gave to all his fellow-preachers, and most steadily followed in his own ministry: “Remember, our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ has made you fishers of men, and a good fisher keeps himself well out of sight. Let your Master be always to the fore and yourself in the background. Then when the time comes for you to go behind the scenes, and for others to take your place, you will be comforted by the words of the greatest among men of all the preachers, Illum oportet crescere, me autem minui.”2 [Note: J. Clayton, Father Stanton of St. Allan's, Holborn, 83.]
Writing of the festival of the Nativity of John the Baptist, which is celebrated on June 24th, Baring-Gould says: “A mystical signification may have attached to the position of this day in the kalendar. For in the months of June and December are the solstices,-with the first, the days decrease, with the latter they increase. In connection with this the words of the Baptist, ‘He must increase, but I must decrease,' acquire a new and fanciful significance. S. Augustine says: ‘At the nativity of Christ the days increase in length, on that of John they decrease. When the Saviour of the world is born, the days lengthen; but when the last prophet comes into the world, the days suffer curtailment.' ”3 [Note: S. Baring-Gould, The Lives of the Saints (ed. 1898), vi. 332.]
