Part 3 (1/2)
75 Whence, then, caion where he spent his youth and where he first proclaie co been custo his early years John was associated with these felloellers in the desert, if he did not actually join the order He certainly s Their syh moral earnestness would inal a estions to be worked out in his own fashi+on The siard of cere separate him from these monks John may have known his desert cos in their discipline, but he reuidance
76 The leaders of religious life and thought in his day were unquestionably the Pharisees The controlling idea with them, and consequently with the people, was the sanctity of God's law They were conscious of the sinfulness of the people, and their demand for repentance was constant It is a rabbinic co is due to lack of repentance in Israel But near as this conception is to John's, we need but to recall his words to the Pharisees (Matt iii
7) to realize how clearly he saw through the hollowness of their religious pretence With the quibbles of the scribes concerning ss, John shows no affinity He s from these ”sitters in Moses' seat,” but he was not of thee announced the near approach of the kingdoht his baptis that consummation
Josephus indicates that it was Herod's fear lest John should lead these Zealots to revolt that furnished the ostensible cause of his death But similar as were the interests of John and these nationalists, the distance between thereat The prophet's replies to the publicans and to the soldiers, which contain not a word of rebuke for the hated callings (Luke iii 13, 14), sho fundamentally he differed from the Zealots
78 But there was another branch of the Pharisees than that which quibbled over Sabbath laws, traditions, and tithes, or that which itched to grasp the sword; they were men who saw visions and dreamed dreams like those of Daniel and the Revelation, and in their visions saw God bringing deliverance to his people by swift and sudden judgment There are soht and that of John,--the i, were all in John; but one need only compare John's words with such an apocalypse as the assu John's life in the desert, to discover that the two ht at all; there is so, so at ho kingdom that is quite absent from the visions of his conte sympathy for people steeped in sin He traced their troubles to their own doors, and would not let ceremonies pass in place of ”fruits meet for repentance” He ca on his lips; with no word against the hated Roes of Abrahae nor artificial device of drea, but the old-fashi+oned prophetic method of declaration of truth ”whether men will hear or whether they will forbear” ”All was sharp and cutting, i overthrow of all fictitious shams in individual as in national life There are no theories of the law, no new good works, no belief in the old, but sihty accusation, a crushi+ng summons to contrite repentance and speedy sanctification” (KeimJN II 228) We look in vain for a parallel in any of John's conte, ”I have need to be baptized of thee”
79 John had, however, predecessors whose work he revived In Isaiah's words, ”Wash you, nizes the type which reappeared in John The great prophetic conception of the Day of the Lord--the day of wrath and salvation (Joel ii 1-14)--is revived in John, free from all the fantastic accompaniments which his contemporaries loved
The invitations to repentance and new fidelity which abound in Isaiah, Ezekiel, Hosea, and Joel; the su froreat prophet of the exile (Isa lviii), these tell us where John went to school and hoell he learned his lesson It is hard for us to realize how great a novelty such siinality it required to attain to this discipleshi+p of the prophets From the time when the curtain rises on the later history of Israel in the days of the Maccabean struggle to the co in the wilderness,” Israel had listened in vain for a prophet who could speak God's ith authority The last thing that people expected when John cae He was not the creature of his time, but a revival of the older type; yet, as in the days of Elijah God had kept him seven thousand in Israel that had not bowed the knee to Baal, so, in the later ti faith These devout souls furnished the soil which could produce a life like John's, gifted and chosen by God to restore and advance the older and ion
80 If John was thus a revival of the older prophetic order, a second question arises: Whence caospels describe it as a ”baptism of repentance for the remission of sins”
(Mark i 4) John's declaration that his greater successor should baptize with the Holy Spirit and fire (Matt iii 11) shows that he viewed his baptism as a symbol, rather than as a n of repentance, it was a confession of loyalty to the kingdom which John's successor was to establish It had thus a twofold significance: (_a_) confession of and turning fro kingdom Whence, then, came this ordinance? Not from the Essenes, for, unlike John's baptism, the bath required by these Jewish ascetics was an oft-repeated act Further, John's rite had a far deeper religious significance than the Essene washi+ngs
These performed their ablutions to secure ritual cleanness as exe of heart which preceded John's baptisn to Essenism The baptism of John, considered as a ceredom, was parallel rather to the initiatory oaths of the Essene brotherhood than to their ablutions Their custoest to John a different application of the familiar sacred use of the bath; indeed John could hardly have been uninfluenced by the usage of his conteht, he was not a product of their school
81 John's baptism was equally independent of the pharisaic influence The scribes nificance as would furnish to John his baptise of life That he was not following a pharisaic leading appears in the question put to him by the Pharisees, ”Why, then, baptizest thou?” (John i 25) They saw so unique in the ceremony as he conducted it
82 Many have held that he derived his baptis proselytes into the Jewish fellowshi+p It is clear, at least, that the later ritual prescribed a ceremonial bath as well as circumcision and sacrifice for all who came into Judaism from the Gentiles, and it is difficult to conceive of a time when a cerearded all Gentile life as defiling While such an origin for John's baptisive peculiar force to his rebuke of Jewish confidence in the merits of Abraham (Matt iii 9), it is more likely, as Keim has shown (JN II 243 and note), that in this as in his other thought John learned of his predecessors rather than his conte of the older covenant from Sinai, it is said that Moses was required ”to sanctify the people and bid the the establishment of a new covenant, as the prophets had promised That the people should prepare for this by a similar bath of sanctification seems most natural John appeared with a revival of the older and si his rite as well as his thought froious life
83 This revival of the prophetic past had nothing scholastic or antiquarian about it John was a disciple, not an ie was not learned fro them What he declared, he declared as truth im a revival, not in letter but in spirit, of the old, direct cry, ”Thus saith the Lord” Inase to tradition and the study of the letter, by so ain God's direct reatness was that of a pioneer The Friend of publicans and sinners also spoke a simple speech to human hearts; he built on and advanced from the old prophets, but it was John as appointed to prepare the people for the new life, ”to make ready the way of the Lord”
(Mark i 3) The clearness of his perception of truth is not the least of his claie of the simplicity of God's requirements in contrast with the hopeless ht into the characters hom he had to deal, whether the sinless Jesus or the hypocritical Pharisees, show a ift This greatness appears in superlative degree in the self-effacement of him who possessed these powers Greatness always knows itself norance that led John to claim to be but a voice, nor was it mock humility The confession of his unworthiness in cohtier one who should follow is unmistakably sincere, as is the coreatly because of the bridegrooroom's presenceobscurity (John iii 30)
84 But John had hteousness of God; he knew, and, in effect, proclaiive them that would turn from their wicked ways; he knew the si breadth of the divine coht (John i 29-36), which did not avail to re love of God which seeks to save It is not strange that he did not Soe of it than he, his own favorite Isaiah knew ht of John's day The wonder is that the Baptist so far freed hi to the new order He thundered as from Sinai The simplest child that has learned froe and entered a higher privilege (Matt xi 11) John's self-effacement, wonderful as it was, fell short of discipleshi+p to his greater successor; in fact, at a much later time there was still a circle of disciples of the Baptist who kept themselves separate from the church (Acts xix 1-7) He was doubtless too strenuous a man readily to becorace, but he remained the prophet of the wilderness still He see consciously to the old order, and, by the very circumstances ordained of God who sent hi at Jesus' feet, learned to surrender to him their preconceptions and hopes, and in heart, if not in word, to say, ”To whoo, thou hast the words of eternal life?” (John vi 68)
VII
The Messianic Call
Matt iii 13 TO iv 11; Mark i 9-13; Luke iii 21, 22; iv 1-13; John i
30-34
85 In the circle about John all classes of the people were represented: Pharisees and Sadducees, jealous of innovation and apprehensive of popular excitement; publicans and soldiers, interested in the new preacher or touched in conscience; outcasts who came in penitence, and devout souls in consecration The wonder of the new reat multitudes to the Jordan Jesus in Nazareth heard it, and recognized in John a revival of the long-silent prophetic voice
The summons appealed to his loyalty to God's truth, and after the ht the prophet of the wilderness
86 The connection which Luke mentions (i 36) between the families of Jesus and John had not led to any inti men John certainly did not know of his kinsman's mission (John i 31), nor was his conception of the Messiah such that he would look for its fulfil, however, was clear as soon as they nized in Jesus one holier than hiht he read the character of Jesus at a glance, and although that character did not prove him to be the Messiah, it prepared John for the revelation which was soon to follow
87 The reply of Jesus to the unwillingness of John to give him baptism (Matt iii 15) was an expression of firm purpose to do God's will; the absence of any confession of sin is therefore all the enerations the holiest men have been those e and baptism confession and repentance were primary demands; yet Jesus felt no need for repentance, and asked for baptism with no word of confession But for the fact that the total iat in his disciples the conviction that ”he did no sin” (I Pet ii 22; compare John viii 46; II Cor v 21), this silence of Jesus would offend the religious sense Jesus, however, had no air of self-sufficiency, he cahteousness” (Matt iii 15) It was the positive aspect of John's baptis of God's kingdodo of Jesus ht had been filled with it forof the prophets Jesus undoubtedly emphasized the spiritual phases of their pro of the ideas held by his contemporaries before he came to John As already remarked he seems to have been quicker to discover his affinity with the older truth than to be conscious of the novelty of his oays of apprehending it (Matt v 17)
When, then, Jesus heard John's call for consecration to the approaching kingdoht the baptisht do all that he could to ”make ready the way of the Lord”
88 This act of consecration on Jesus' part was one of personal obedience