This is the testimony of John.
When the Jews from Jerusalem sent priests and Levites to him
to ask him, “Who are you?”
he admitted and did not deny it, but admitted,
“I am not the Christ.”
John the Baptist was the last and greatest of the Old Testament prophets. He moved in the spirit and power of Elijah to prepare the people for the day of the Lord. But he was always careful not to put the spotlight on himself. He insisted that he was not the Christ, not Elijah himself, and not a Prophet so that people did not place their hope in him, but rather in the one toward whom he would ultimately point. He was the friend of the bridegroom who understood that his mission was to decrease. He was a voice crying out that the way of the bridegroom would be made smooth. He was the one who would identify Jesus as the lamb of God when he appeared.
John answered them,
“I baptize with water;
but there is one among you whom you do not recognize,
the one who is coming after me,
whose sandal strap I am not worthy to untie.”
The baptism of John with water was something we might almost call a baptism of desire for the baptism which Jesus would eventually make available through his Spirit. In the water baptism of John there was no power of the Holy Spirit to take away sins, just an expression of the desire to be free from sins. In the very act a longing was expressed for what only Jesus could provide.
John was so close to the threshold of the new covenant that Jesus called him the greatest person outside of the Kingdom. But for that reason it was surprising or even shocking that Jesus, the Kingdom in human form, would come to John for baptism. After all, Jesus himself had no need of repentance. What did John really have to offer? But there was nowhere so appropriate as the place where the old covenant was closest to the new for the revelation and beginning of the new in the baptism of Jesus, with the word of the Father, and the descent of the Holy Spirit. In the place where the people most clearly expressed their thirst for the living water of God Jesus gave the water both life and power by the Holy Spirit.
We are called to hold on to the truth which John spent himself to help the world recognize. John the Evangelist, once a disciple of John the Baptist, explained that people would in fact try to deceive us in such a way as to make us forget or contradict what we heard from the beginning. But he explained that we need not succumb to that temptation because of the power of the anointing we have received from Jesus himself. Jesus taught that the Spirit he unleashed by his death and resurrection would lead his followers into all truth. But we need his Spirit not just to attain that truth for the first time or to make our initial confession that Jesus is Lord. We need his Spirit to hold on to the truth and remain undeceived. It is an active power that is meant to keep us safe from deception in a world where disinformation and misinformation abound. We need to remain undeceived, not just so that we can pass an arbitrary test about the content of the deposit of faith. We need to remain undeceived so that we can remain in right relationship with the one who is himself the truth. We are called to remain in him and he in us. Only in this way can with live with confidence, ready to welcome him at his coming.
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