“What should we do?”
The crowds desired to know what were the fruits that John the Baptist considered worthy of repentance. John himself was known for an extreme ascetic lifestyle, so they might have been afraid to ask. Would he enjoin on them locusts and camel skin? The answer John gave was actually surprisingly simple, and even mundane. To people of different professions he gave a similar answer, seemingly commanding them all to be content without excess. Then they would avoid inflicting suffering on others to satisfy their own selfishness. Then they would even be able to give to those who had not that which they had but did not need. It was reminiscent of what God communicated through the prophet Isaiah:
Is it not to share your bread with the hungry
and bring the homeless poor into your house;
when you see the naked, to cover him,
and not to hide yourself from your own flesh? (see Isaiah 58:7).
Isaiah was telling God's people how to prepare for the coming of healing, righteousness, and then dawn from on high, the glory of the Lord in their midst. John was similarly telling the people how to prepare and make straight the way of the Lord. This was why the people were so filled with expectation and even ready to accept that John himself was the Christ. He was so close to being the Christ that he too baptized and preached repentance. But he was, as he himself confessed, not the Christ because of the crucial difference. He could not give "the Holy Spirit and fire". When people received the baptism of John they were acting with an implicit desire for the sacramental baptism that Jesus would establish and a wish to be filled with the Holy Spirit that he would pour out, though they could not have said it in so many words. They all stood on the threshold of the coming of the Messiah. And those who embraced the message of John were perfectly situated to recognize the lamb of God when John identified him for them.
John himself was a perfect example of the justice to which he called others. He kept nothing extra from himself, no fame of glory that might have made the Messiah more obscure when he arrived. John was content to decrease that Jesus could increase. The reason for this, we may surmise, was the joy that John found in the Messiah even from his mother's womb. He seemed to be one who was able to do what he did because he gave every potential cause of anxiety over to God "by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving". But we have been given an advantage John never had: the Holy Spirit about which he spoke. That means that we, even if we are the least in the Kingdom of heaven, have the potential to bear spiritual fruit even greater than that of John. If he jumped for joy in the womb at the presence of the Messiah and lived a life of unflinching authenticity because the peace of God guarded his heart then how might we live? Try as we might we will discover no upward limit to the possibilities.
The LORD, your God, is in your midst,
a mighty savior;
he will rejoice over you with gladness,
and renew you in his love,
he will sing joyfully because of you,
as one sings at festivals.
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