Verses 1-17
Chapter 3
3:1-6 In those
days John the Baptizer arrived on the scene, preaching in the wilderness
of Judaea. "Repent," he said, "for the Kingdom of the Heavens has come
near." It was this man who was spoken of by Isaiah the prophet when he
said, "The voice of one crying in the wilderness: 'Make ready the road
by which the Lord is coming, and make straight the paths which he must
travel!"' John himself wore a garment made from camel's hair, and he had
a leathern belt round his waist; and his food was locusts and wild
honey. Then Jerusalem and all Judea, and all the district around the
Jordan, went out to him. They were baptized in the river Jordan, and, as
they were baptized, they confessed their sins.
The emergence of John was like the sudden sounding of the voice
of God. At this time the Jews were sadly conscious that the voice of
the prophets spoke no more. They said that for four hundred years there
had been no prophet. Throughout long centuries the voice of prophecy had
been silent. As they put it themselves, "There was no voice, nor any
that answered." But in John the prophetic voice spoke again. What then
were the characteristics of John and his message?
(i) He fearlessly denounced evil wherever he might find it. If
Herod the king sinned by contracting an evil and unlawful marriage, John
rebuked him. If the Sadducees and Pharisees, the leaders of orthodox
religion, the churchmen of their day, were sunk in ritualistic
formalism, John never hesitated to say so. If the ordinary people were
living lives which were unaware of God, John would tell them so.
Wherever John saw evil--in the state, in the Church, in the
crowd--he fearlessly rebuked it. He was like a light which lit up the
dark places; he was like wind which swept from God throughout the
country. It was said of a famous journalist who was great, but who never
quite fulfilled the work he might have done, "He was perhaps not easily
enough disturbed." There is still a place in the Christian message for
warning and denunciation. "The truth," said Diogenes, "is like the light
to sore eyes." "He who never offended anyone," he said, "never did
anyone any good."
It may be that there have been times when the Church was too
careful not to offend. There come occasions when the time for smooth
politeness has gone, and the time for blunt rebuke has come.
(ii) He urgently summoned men to righteousness. John's message
was not a mere negative denunciation; it was a positive erecting of the
moral standards of God. He not only denounced men for what they had
done; he summoned them to what they ought to do. He not only condemned
men for what they were; he challenged them to be what they could be. He
was like a voice calling men to higher things. He not only rebuked evil,
he also set before men the good.
It may well be that there have been times when the Church was
too occupied in telling men what not to do; and too little occupied in
setting before them the height of the Christian ideal.
(iii) John came from God. He came out of the desert. He came to
men only after he had undergone years of lonely preparation by God. As
Alexander Maclaren said, "John leapt, as it were, into the arena
full-grown and full-armed." He came, not with some opinion of his own,
but with a message from God. Before he spoke to men, he had companied
long with God.
The preacher, the teacher with the prophetic voice, must always come into the presence of men out of the presence of God.
(iv) John pointed beyond himself. The man was not only a light
to illumine evil, a voice to rebuke sin, he was also a signpost to God.
It was not himself he wished men to see; he wished to prepare them for
the one who was to come.
It was the Jewish belief that Elijah would return before the
Messiah came, and that he would t)e the herald of the coming King.
"Behold I will send you Elijah the prophet before the great and terrible
day of the Lord comes" (Malachi 4:5).
John wore a garment of camel's hair, and a leathern belt around his
waist. That is the very description of the raiment which Elijah had worn
(2 Kings 1:8).
Matthew connects him with a prophecy from Isaiah (Isaiah 40:3).
In ancient times in the East the roads were bad. There was an eastern
proverb which said, "There are three states of misery--sickness, fasting
and travel." Before a traveller set out upon a journey he was advised
"to pay all debts, provide for dependents, give parting gifts, return
all articles under trust, take money and good-temper for the journey;
then bid farewell to all." The ordinary roads were no better than
tracks. They were not surfaced at all because the soil of Palestine is
hard and will bear the traffic of mules and asses and oxen and carts. A
journey along such a road was an adventure, and indeed an undertaking to
be avoided.
There were some few surfaced and artificially made roads.
Josephus, for instance, tells us that Solomon laid a causeway of black
basalt stone along the roads that lead to Jerusalem to make them easier
for the pilgrims, and "to manifest the grandeur of his riches and
government." All such surfaced and artificially-made roads were
originally built by the king and for the use of the king. They were
called "the king's highway." They were kept in repair only as the king
needed them for any journey that he might make. Before the king was due
to arrive in any area, a message was sent out to the people to get the
king's roads in order for the king's journey.
John was preparing the way for the king. The preacher, the
teacher with the prophetic voice, points not at himself, but at God. His
aim is not to focus men's eyes on his own cleverness, but on the
majesty of God. The true preacher is obliterated in his message.
Men recognized John as a prophet, even after years when no
prophetic voice had spoken, because he was a light to light up evil
things, a voice to summon men to righteousness, a signpost to point men
to God, and because he had in him that unanswerable authority which
clings to the man who comes into the presence of men out of the presence
of God.
3:7-12 When he
saw many of the Pharisees and Sadducees coming to his baptism, he said
to them, "Brood of vipers! Who put it into your minds to flee from the
coming wrath? Produce fruit to fit repentance. Do not think that you can
say to yourselves. 'We have Abraham as a father.' For I tell you that
God can raise up children to Abraham from these stones. The axe is
already applied to the root of the trees. Therefore every tree which
does not produce good fruit is on the point of being cut down, and
thrown into the fire. I baptize you with water that you may repent. He
who is coming after me is stronger than I. I am not fit to carry his
sandals. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and with fire. His fan
is in his hand, and he will thoroughly cleanse his threshing-floor; and
he will gather the corn into his storehouse, but he will burn the chaff
with a fire that no man can quench."
In John's message there is both a threat and a promise. This whole passage is full of vivid pictures.
John calls the Pharisees and the Sadducees a brood of vipers,
and asks them who has suggested to them to flee from the coming wrath.
There may be one of two pictures there.
John knew the desert. The desert had in places thin, short,
dried-up grass, and stunted thorn bushes, brittle for want of moisture.
Sometimes a desert fire would break out. When that happened the fire
swept like a river of flame across the grass and the bushes, for they
were as dry as tinder. And in front of the fire there would come
scurrying and hurrying the snakes and the scorpions, and the living
creatures who found their shelter in the grass and in the bushes. They
were driven from their lairs by this river of flame, and they ran for
their lives before it.
But it may be that there is another picture here. There are many
little creatures in a standing field of corn--the field mice, the rats,
the rabbits, the birds. But when the reaper comes they are driven from
their nests and their shelters, and as the field is laid bare they have
to flee for their lives.
It is in terms of these pictures that John is thinking. If the
Pharisees and Sadducees are really coming for baptism, they are like the
animals scurrying for life before a desert fire or in front of the
sickle of the harvester.
He warns them that it will avail them nothing to plead that
Abraham is their father. To the orthodox Jew that was an incredible
statement. To the Jew Abraham was unique. So unique was he in his
goodness and in his favour with God, that his merits sufficed not only
for himself but for all his descendants also. He had built up a treasury
of merit which not all the claims and needs of his descendants could
exhaust. So the Jews believed that a Jew simply because he was a Jew,
and not for any merits of his own, was safe in the life to come. They
said, "All Israelites have a portion in the world to come." They talked
about "the delivering merits of the fathers." They said that Abraham sat
at the gates of Gehenna to turn back any Israelite who might by chance
have been consigned to its terrors. They said that it was the merits of
Abraham which enabled the ships to sail safely on the seas; that it was
because of the merits of Abraham that the rain descended on the earth;
that it was the merits of Abraham which enabled Moses to enter into
heaven and to receive the Law; that it was because of the merits of
Abraham that David was heard. Even for the wicked these merits
sufficed." If thy children," they said of Abraham, "were mere dead
bodies, without blood vessels or bones, thy merits would avail for
them!"
It is that spirit which John is rebuking. Maybe the Jews carried
it to an unparalleled distance, but there is always need of a warning
that we cannot live on the spiritual capital of the past. A degenerate
age cannot hope to claim salvation for the sake of an heroic past; and
an evil son cannot hope to plead the merits of a saintly father.
Then, once again, John returns to his harvest picture. At the
end of the season the keeper of the vineyards and the fig trees would
look at his vines and his trees; and those which were fruitless and
useless would be rooted out. They only cumbered the ground. Uselessness
always invites disaster. The man who is useless to God and to his
fellow-men is in grave peril, and is under condemnation.
But after John's threat there came the promise--which had also a
threat within it. As we have said, John pointed beyond himself to the
one who was to come. At the moment he was enjoying a vast reputation,
and he was wielding a most powerful influence. Yet he said that he was
not fit to carry the sandals of the one who was to come-and to carry
sandals was the duty of a slave. John's whole attitude was
self-obliteration, not self-importance. His only importance was, as he
saw it, as a signpost pointing to the one who was to come.
He said that the one who was to come would baptize them with the Holy Spirit and with fire.
All through their history the Jews had looked for the time when
the Spirit would come. Ezekiel heard God say, "A new heart I will give
you, and a new spirit I will put within you.... And I will put my Spirit
within you, and cause you to walk in my statutes, and be careful to
observe my ordinances" (Ezekiel 36:26-27). "And I will put my Spirit within you and you shall live" (Ezekiel 37:14). "And I will not hide my face any more from them; when I pour out my Spirit upon the house of Israel, says the Lord God" (Ezekiel 39:29).
"For I will pour water on the thirsty land, and streams on the dry
ground; I will pour my Spirit upon your descendants, and my blessing on
your offspring" (Isaiah 44:3). "And it shall come to pass afterward, that I will pour out my Spirit on all flesh" (Joel 2:28).
What then is the gift and work of this Spirit of God? When we
try to answer that question, we must remember to answer it in Hebrew
terms. John was a Jew, and it was to Jews that he was speaking. He is
thinking and speaking, not in terms of the Christian doctrine of the
Holy Spirit, but in terms of the Jewish doctrine of the Spirit.
(i) The word for spirit is ruwach (Hebrew #7307), and ruwach, like pneuma (Greek #4151)
in Greek, means not only spirit; it also means breath. Breath is life;
and therefore the promise of the Spirit is the promise of life. The
Spirit of God breathes God's life into a man. When the Spirit of God
enters us, the tired, lack-lustre, weary defeatedness of life is gone,
and a surge of new life enters us.
(ii) This word ruwach (Hebrew #7307)
not only means breath; it also means wind. It is the word for the storm
wind, the mighty rushing wind that once Elijah heard. Wind means power.
The gale of wind sweeps the ship before it and uproots the tree. The
wind has an irresistible power. The Spirit of God is the Spirit of
power. When the Spirit of God enters into a man, his weakness is clad
with the power of God. He is enabled to do the undoable, and to face the
unfaceable, and to bear the unbearable. Frustration is banished;
victory arrives.
(iii) The Spirit of God is connected with the work of creation.
It was the Spirit of God who moved upon the face of the waters and made
the chaos into a cosmos, turned disorder into order, and made a world
out of the uncreated mists. The Spirit of God can re-create us. When the
Spirit of God enters into a man the disorder of human nature becomes
the order of God; our dishevelled, disorderly, uncontrolled lives are
moulded by the Spirit into the harmony of God.
(iv) To the Spirit the Jews assigned special functions. The
Spirit brought God's truth to men. Every new discovery in every realm of
thought is the gift of the Spirit. The Spirit enters into a man's mind
and turns his human guesses into divine certainty, and changes his human
ignorance into divine knowledge.
(v) The Spirit enables men to recognize God's truth when they
see It. When the Spirit enters our hearts, our eyes are opened. The
prejudices which blinded us are taken away. The self-will which darkened
us is removed. The spirit enables a man to see.
Such are the gifts of the Spirit, and, as John saw it, such were the gifts the one who was to come would bring.
There is a word and a picture in John's message which combine both promise and threat.
John says that the baptism of the one who is to come will be
with fire. In the thought of a baptism with fire there are three ideas.
(i) There is the idea of illumination. The blaze of a flame
sends a light through the night and illuminates the darkest corners. The
flame of the beacon guides the sailor to the harbour and the traveller
to his goal. In fire there is light and guidance. Jesus is the beacon
light to lead men into truth and to guide them home to God.
(ii) There is the idea of warmth. A great and a kindly man was
described as one who lit fires in cold rooms. When Jesus comes into a
man's life, he kindles his heart with the warmth of love towards God and
towards his fellow men. Christianity is always the religion of the
kindled heart.
(iii) There is the idea of purification. In this sense
purification involves destruction; for the purifying flame burns away
the false and leaves the true. The flame tempers and strengthens and
purifies the metal. When Christ comes into a man's heart, the evil dross
is purged away. Sometimes that has to happen through painful
experiences, but, if a man throughout all the experiences of life
believes that God is working together all things for good, he will
emerge from them with a character which is cleansed and purified, until,
being pure in heart, he can see God.
So, then, the word fire has in it the illumination, the warmth
and the purification of the entry of Jesus Christ into the heart of a
man.
But there is also a picture which has in it a promise and a
threat--the picture of the threshing floor. The fan was the great wooden
winnowing shovel. With it the grain was lifted from the threshing floor
and tossed into the air. When that was done the heavy grain fell to the
ground, but the light chaff was blown away by the wind. The grain was
then collected and stored in the barns, while any chaff which remained
was used as fuel for the fire.
The coming of Christ necessarily involves a separation. Men
either accept him or reject him. When they are confronted with him, they
are confronted with a choice which cannot be avoided. They are either
for or against. And it is precisely that choice which settles destiny.
Men are separated by their reaction to Jesus Christ.
In Christianity there is no escape from the eternal choice. On
the village green in Bedford, John Bunyan heard the voice which drew him
up all of a sudden and left him looking at eternity: "Wilt thou leave
thy sins and go to heaven, or wilt thou have thy sins and go to hell?"
In the last analysis that is the choice which no man can evade.
In all John's preaching there was one basic demand--and that basic demand was: "Repent!" (Matthew 3:2). That was also the basic demand of Jesus himself, for Jesus came saying, "Repent, and believe in the gospel" (Mark 1:15). We will do well to seek to understand what this repentance is, and what this basic demand of the King and his herald means.
It is to be noted that both Jesus and John use the word repent
without any explanation of its meaning. They use it as a word which they
were sure their hearers would know and understand.
Let us then look at the Jewish teaching about repentance.
To the Jew repentance was central to all religious faith and to
all relationship with God. G. F. Moore writes, "Repentance is the sole,
but inexorable, condition of God's forgiveness and the restoration of
his favour, and the divine forgiveness and favour are never refused to
genuine repentance." He writes, "That God fully and freely remits the
sins of the penitent is a cardinal doctrine of Judaism." The Rabbis
said, "Great is repentance for it brings healing upon the world. Great
is repentance for it reaches to the throne of glory." C. G. Montefiore
wrote, "Repentance is the great mediatorial bond between God and man."
The Law was created two thousand years before creation, but, the
Rabbis taught, repentance was one of the things created even before the
Law; the six things are repentance, paradise, hell, the glorious throne
of God, the celestial temple, and the name of the Messiah. "A man" they
said, "can shoot an arrow for a few furlongs, but repentance reaches
even to the throne of God."
There is a famous rabbinic passage which sets repentance in the
first of all places: "Who is like God a teacher of sinners that they may
repent?" They asked Wisdom, "What shall be the punishment of the
sinner?" Wisdom answered: "Misfortune pursues sinners" (Proverbs 13:21). They asked Prophecy. It replied: "The soul that sins shall die" (Ezekiel 18:4). They asked the Law. It replied: "Let him bring a sacrifice" (Leviticus 1:4),
they asked God, and he replied: "Let him repent and obtain his
atonement. My children, what do I ask of you? Seek me and live." So,
then, to the Jew the one gateway back to God is the gateway of
repentance.
The Jewish word commonly used for repentance is itself interesting. It is the word teshubah (Hebrew #8666) which is the noun for the verb shuwb (Hebrew #7725)
which means to turn. Repentance is a turning away from evil and a
turning towards God. G. F. Moore writes, "The transparent primary
meaning of repentance in Judaism is always a change in man's attitude
towards God, and in the conduct of life, a religious and moral
reformation of the people or the individual." C. G. Montefiore writes,
"To the Rabbis the essence of repentance lay in such a thorough change
of mind that it issues in a change of life and a change of conduct."
Maimonides, the great medieval Jewish scholar, defines repentance thus:
"What is repentance? Repentance is that the sinner forsakes his sin and
puts it away out of his thoughts and fully resolves in his mind that he
will not do it again; as it is written, 'Let the wicked forsake his way,
and the bad man his plans.'"
G. F. Moore very interestingly and very truly points out that,
with the single exception of the two words in brackets, the Westminster
Confession definition of repentance would be entirely acceptable to a
Jew: "Repentance unto life is a saving grace, whereby a sinner, out of a
true sense of sin, and apprehension of the mercy of God (in Christ),
doth, with grief and hatred of his sin, turn from it unto God, with full
purpose of and endeavour after, new obedience." Again and again the
Bible speaks of this turning away from sin, and this turning towards
God. Ezekiel had it: "As I live, says the Lord God, I have no pleasure
in the death of the wicked; but that the wicked turn from his way and
live; turn back, turn back from your evil ways; for why will you die, O
house of Israel" (Ezekiel 33:11). Jeremiah had it: "Bring me back that I may be restored, for thou art the Lord my God" (Jeremiah 31:18). Hosea had it: "Return, O Israel, to the Lord thy God.... Take with you words and return to the Lord" (Hosea 14:1-2).
From all this it is quite clear that in Judaism repentance has
in it an ethical demand. It is a turn from evil to God, with a
corresponding change in action. John was fully within the tradition of
his people when he demanded that his hearers should bring forth fruit
meet for repentance. There is a beautiful synagogue prayer which runs,
"Cause us to return, O Father, unto thy law; draw us near, O King, unto
thy service; bring us back in perfect repentance unto thy presence.
Blessed art thou, O Lord, who delightest in repentance." But that
repentance had to be shown in a real change of life.
A Rabbi, commenting on Jonah 3:10,
wrote, "My brethren, it is not said of the Ninevites that God saw their
sackcloth and their fasting, but that God saw their works, that they
turned from their evil way." The Rabbis said, "Be not like fools, who,
when they sin, bring a sacrifice but do not repent. If a man says, 'I
will sin and repent, I will sin and repent,' he is not allowed to
repent." Five unforgivable sinners are listed, and the list includes
"Those who sin in order to repent, and those who repent much and always
sin afresh." They said: "If a man has an unclean thing in his hands, he
may wash them in all the seas of the world, and he will never be clean;
but if he throws the unclean thing away, a little water will suffice."
The Jewish teachers spoke of what they called "the nine norms of
repentance," the nine necessities of real repentance. They found them in
the series of commandments in Isaiah 1:16
: "Wash yourselves; make yourselves clean; remove the evil of your
doings from before my eyes, cease to do evil, learn to do good, seek
justice, correct oppression; defend the fatherless, plead for the
widow." The son of Sirach writes in Ecclesiasticus: "Say not, I sinned,
and what happened to me? For the Lord is long-suffering. Do not become
rashly confident about expiation, and go on adding sin to sins; and do
not say, his compassion is great, he will forgive the multitude of my
sins; for mercy and wrath are with him, and upon sinners his anger will
rest. Delay not to turn to the Lord, and do not put it off from day to
day" (Sirach 5:4-7).
He writes again, "A man who bathes to purify himself from contact with a
dead body and touches it again, what profit was there in his bath? So a
man who fasts for his sins and goes again and does the same things--who
will listen to his prayer, and what profit was there in his afflicting
himself." (Sirach 34:25-26).
The Jew held that true repentance issues, not merely in a
sentimental sorrow, but in a real change in life--and so does the
Christian. The Jew had a holy horror of seeking to trade on the mercy of
God--and so has the Christian. The Jew held that true repentance brings
forth fruits which demonstrate the reality of the repentance--and so
does the Christian.
But the Jews had still more things to say about repentance and we must go on to look at them.
There is an almost terrifying note in the ethical demand of
the Jewish idea of repentance, but there are other comforting things.
Repentance is always available. "Repentance." they
said, "is like the sea--a man can bathe in it at any hour." There may be
times when even the gates of prayer are shut; but the gates of
repentance are never closed.
Repentance is completely essential. There is a story of
a kind of argument that Abraham had with God. Abraham said to God,
"Thou canst not lay hold of the cord at both ends at once. If Thou
desirest strict justice the world cannot endure. If Thou desirest the
preservation of the world. strict justice cannot endure." The world
cannot continue to exist without the mercy of God, and the gateway of
repentance. If there was nothing but the justice of God, it would be the
end of all men and of all things. So essential is repentance that in
order to make it possible God cancels his own demands: "Beloved is
repentance before God, for he cancels his own words for its sake." The
threat of the destruction of the sinner is cancelled by the acceptance
of repentance for the sinner's sins.
Repentance lasts as long as life. So long as life
remains, there remains the possibility of repentance. "God's hand is
stretched out under the wings of the heavenly chariot to snatch the
penitent from the grasp of justice." Rabbi Simeon ben Yohai said, "If a
man has been completely righteous all his days, and rebels at the end,
he destroys it all, for it is said, 'The righteousness of the righteous
shall not deliver him when he transgresses' (Ezekiel 33:12);
if a man has been completely wicked all his days, and repents at the
end, God receives him, for it is said, 'And as for the wickedness of the
wicked, he shall not fall by it when he turns from his wickedness'" (Ezekiel 33:12).
"Many," they said, "can go into the world to come only after years and
years; while another gains it in an hour." As the poet said of the man
who gained the mercy of God in the instant of death:
Between the saddle and the ground,
I mercy sought, and mercy found."
Such is the mercy of God that he will receive even secret
repentance. Rabbi Eleazar said, "It is the way of the world, when a man
has insulted his fellow in public, and after a time seeks to be
reconciled to him, that the other says, 'You insult me publicly, and now
you would be reconciled to me between us two alone! Go bring the men in
whose presence you insulted me, and I will be reconciled to you.' But
God is not so. A man may stand and rail and blaspheme in the market
place, and the Holy One says, 'Repent between us two alone, and I will
receive you.'" God's mercy is open to the man who is so ashamed that he
can tell his shame to no one except God.
There is no forgetfulness in God, because he is God, but such is
the mercy of God that he not only forgives, but, incredible as it may
sound, he even forgets the sin of the penitent: "Who is a God like thee
pardoning iniquity and passing over transgression for the remnant of his
inheritance?"" (Micah 7:18). "Thou didst forgive the iniquity of thy people; thou didst pardon all their sin" (Psalms 85:2).
Loveliest of all, God comes halfway and more to meet the
penitent: "Return so far as you can, and I will come to you the rest of
the way." The Rabbis at their highest had a glimpse of the Father who in
his love ran to meet the prodigal son.
Yet, even remembering all this mercy, it remains the case that
in true repentance reparation is necessary in so far as it can be made.
The Rabbis said, "Injury must be repaired, and pardon sought and
forgiven. The true penitent is he who has the opportunity to do the same
sin again, in the same circumstances, and who does not do it." The
Rabbis stressed again and again the importance of human relationships,
and of setting them right.
There is one curious rabbinic passage. (A tsaddiyq (Hebrew #6662)
is a righteous man.) "He who is good towards heaven and towards his
fellow men is a good tsaddiyq. He who is good towards heaven and not
towards his fellow men, is a bad tsaddiyq (Hebrew #6662).
He who is wicked against heaven and wicked against his fellow men, is a
bad sinner. He who is wicked against heaven, but not wicked against his
fellow men is not a bad sinner."
It is because reparation is so necessary that he who teaches
others to sin is the worst of sinners; for he cannot make reparation
because he can never tell how far his sin has gone out and how many it
has gone on to influence.
Not only is reparation necessary for true repentance; confession
is equally necessary. Again and again we find that demand within the
Bible itself." When a man or woman commits any of the sins that men
commit ... he shall confess his sin which he has committed" (Numbers 5:6-7). "He who conceals his transgressions will not prosper; but he who confesses and forsakes them will obtain mercy" (Proverbs 28:13).
"I acknowledged my sin to thee, and I did not hide my iniquity; I said,
'I will confess my transgressions to the Lord'; then thou didst forgive
the guilt of my sin" (Psalms 32:5). It is the man who says that he is innocent and who refuses to admit that he has sinned who is condemned (Jeremiah 2:35).
Maimonides gives the formula which a man may use to confess his sin: "O
God, I have sinned, I have done iniquity, I have transgressed before
thee, and have done thus and so. I am sorry and ashamed for my deed, and
I will never do it again." True repentance necessitates the humility to
admit and to confess our sin.
No case is hopeless for repentance, and no man is beyond
repentance. The Rabbis said, "Let not a man say, 'Because I have sinned,
no repair is possible for me,' but let him trust in God and repent, and
God will receive him." The classical example of a seemingly impossible
reformation was the case of Manasseh. He worshipped the Baals, he
brought strange gods into Jerusalem; he even sacrificed children to
Moloch in the valley of Hinnom. Then he was taken away captive to
Assyria, and there in fetters he lay upon the thorns. Then he prayed to
God in his distress, and God heard his supplication and brought him
again to Jerusalem. "Then Manasseh knew that the Lord was God" (2 Chronicles 33:13). Sometimes it takes God's threat and God's discipline to do it, but none is beyond the power of God to bring him home.
There is one last Jewish belief about repentance, and it is a
belief which must have been in John's mind. Certain, at least, of the
Jewish teachers taught that if Israel could repent perfectly for even
one day the Messiah would come. It was only the hardness of the hearts
of men which delayed the sending of God's Redeemer into the world.
Repentance was the very centre of the Jewish faith as it is the
very centre of the Christian faith, for repentance is the turning away
from sin and the turning towards God, and towards the life that God
means us to live.
3:13-17 Then
Jesus came from Galilee to the Jordan to John to be baptized by him. But
John tried to prevent him. "It is I," he said, "who need to be baptized
by you, and are you coming to me?" Jesus answered him, "Let it be just
now, for so it befits us to fulfil all righteousness." Then he allowed
Jesus to be baptized. After Jesus had been baptized he came up
immediately from the water and, lo, the heavens were opened for John,
and he saw the Spirit of God descending, like a dove, and coming upon
him. And, lo, there came a voice from heaven, saying, "This is my Son,
the Beloved One, in whom I am well pleased."
When Jesus came to John to be baptized, John was startled and
unwilling to baptize him. It was John's conviction that it was he who
needed what Jesus could give, not Jesus who needed what he could give.
Ever since men began to think about the gospel story at all,
they have found the baptism of Jesus difficult to understand. In John's
baptism there was a summons to repentance, and the offer of a way to the
forgiveness of sins. But, if Jesus is who we believe him to be, he did
not stand in need of repentance, and did not need forgiveness from God.
John's baptism was for sinners conscious of their sin, and therefore it
does not seem applicable to Jesus at all.
A very early writer suggested that Jesus came to be baptized
only to please his mother and his brothers, and that it was in answer to
their entreaties that he was almost compelled to let this thing be
done. The Gospel according to the Hebrews, which is one of the gospels
which failed to be included in the New Testament, has a passage like
this: "Behold the mother of the Lord and his brethren said to him, 'John
the Baptist baptizeth for the remission of sins; let us go and be
baptized by him.' But he said to them, 'What sin have I committed, that I
should go and be baptized by him? Except perchance this very thing that
I have said is ignorance.'"
From the earliest times thinkers were puzzled by the fact that
Jesus submitted to be baptized. But there were reasons, and good
reasons, why he did.
(i) For thirty years Jesus had waited in Nazareth, faithfully
performing the simple duties of the home and of the carpenter's shop.
All the time he knew that a world was waiting for him. All the time he
grew increasingly conscious of his waiting task. The success of any
undertaking is determined by the wisdom with which the moment to embark
upon it is chosen. Jesus must have waited for the hour to strike, for
the moment to come, for the summons to sound. And when John emerged
Jesus knew that the time had arrived.
(ii) Why should that be so? There was one very simple and very
vital reason. It is the fact that never in all history before this had
any Jew submitted to being baptized. The Jews knew and used baptism, but
only for proselytes who came into Judaism from some other faith. It was
natural that the sin-stained, polluted proselyte should be baptized,
but no Jew had ever conceived that he, a member of the chosen people, a
son of Abraham, assured of God's salvation, could ever need baptism.
Baptism was for sinners, and no Jew ever conceived of himself as a
sinner shut out from God. Now for the first time in their national
history the Jews realized their own sin and their own clamant need of
God. Never before had there been such a unique national movement of
penitence and of search for God.
This was the very moment for which Jesus had been waiting. Men
were conscious of their sin and conscious of their need of God as never
before. This was his opportunity, and in his baptism he identified
himself with the men he came to save, in the hour of their new
consciousness of their sin, and of their search for God.
The voice which Jesus heard at the baptism is of supreme
importance." This is my beloved Son," it said, "with whom I am well
pleased." That sentence is composed of two quotations. "This is my
beloved Son," is a quotation from Psalms 2:7.
Every Jew accepted that Psalm as a description of the Messiah, the
mighty King of God who was to come. "With whom I am well pleased" is a
quotation from Isaiah 42:1, which is a description of the Suffering Servant, a description which culminates in Isaiah 53:1-12 .
So in the baptism there came to Jesus two certainties--the
certainty that he was indeed the chosen One of God, and the certainty
that the way in front of him was the way of the Cross. in that moment he
knew that he was chosen to be King, but he also knew that his throne
must be a Cross. In that moment he knew that he was destined to be a
conqueror, but that his conquest must have as its only weapon the power
of suffering love. In that moment there was set before Jesus both his
task and the only way to the fulfilling of it.
-Barclay's Daily Study Bible (NT)