John 1:6-8, 19-28

I’ve taught high school and college English for many years, and when we teach students to write essays, we encourage them to begin with a “roadmap” thesis statement. This is a summary of the main argument of the essay, along with a list of your main points in the order they appear. This leaves a type of “roadmap” to help the readers follow your argument.

The Fourth Evangelist seems to be doing something similar here–Verses 6-8 read like a “roadmap thesis” telling the reader exactly what the following sections will be about: 1) A man named John was sent by God; 2) He comes to testify to the light; 3) He himself is not the light.

The first point, in this case, is missing, or just implied. Although John the Baptist is written about in all four Gospels, in the Johannine telling of the story we do not get any background information on the Baptist himself: who he is, where he came from, or even what he looked like. Unlike the Gospel of Luke, we do not get the backstory about how Jesus’s mother and John’s mother were related, making John and Jesus distant relatives (Luke 1:5-25; 39-45). We also get no information about where John came from or what his life was like before encountering the Jewish authorities and Pharisees, as we do in Matthew (3:1-6) or in Luke (3:1-20). In the Fourth Gospel, John just appears abruptly out of nowhere with little explanation, perhaps the reason for the parenthetical addition in v. 15 reminding readers familiar with these other stories that this is the same John the Baptist they already know about.

Why did the Fourth Evangelist leave this information out? There is likely more than one reason. As mentioned above, the Evangelist probably knew he was writing for an audience already familiar with at least one of the other Gospels, or the oral tradition behind them (since John was likely written a couple of decades later), and so didn’t feel it necessary to repeat the basics of the story. Secondly, and perhaps most importantly, the author of John wanted to focus less on John the Baptist himself and more on his role as the one who would point to Jesus. This is completely in keeping with the emphasis in the rest of the Gospel on “signs” as actions that point away from Jesus and toward God the Father. John is, in essence, the first “sign” in the Gospel—in this case pointing away from himself and toward Christ, the Messiah.

We see this from the very beginning of the story, as the first sentence out of John’s mouth in the entire Gospel describes himself in relationship to the coming Messiah. When the authorities ask, “Who are you?” (1:19) John responds not with who he is, but rather with who he is not: “I am not the Messiah” (1:20). John clearly knew the authorities were not enquiring about his name; they were concerned with whether he was claiming to be the coming Messiah, or perhaps one of the Messiah’s traditional forerunners, Elijah or the prophet like Moses (1:21). He denies each of these suggestions in turn and instead quotes the words of Isa 40:3: “I am the voice of one calling in the wilderness, ‘Make straight the way for the Lord’” (v. 23).

But the authorities are not satisfied with this answer; in particular, they wonder why John is engaging in an eschatological activity like baptism if he is not one of the expected eschatological forerunners (1:25). John describes the significance of his baptismal ministry as secondary to the ministry of “the one coming after [him]” (1:27), the one who stands among them whom they do not know (1:26). This is the first direct mention of this “one” coming after John and, it is perhaps significant that the very first thing we learn about this person is that he is “not known” to the authorities and, by extension perhaps, to the watching crowds. John gives little actual information about this mysterious “one,” for he himself does not yet know him (vv. 31, 33), but declares this “one” is so great that John is not worthy to even do the work of a slave on his behalf (v. 27).

The revelation of this unknown “one” will not come until later but is foreshadowed in the answer John gives to his inquisitors in 1:20. The word for “I” here (ego) is emphatic: “I am not the Messiah,” implying that while John is not the Messiah, he knows of one who is, or at least has confidence that such a one is nigh. Indeed, the emphatic ego is used repeatedly in this passage (vv. 23, 26, 27, 30, 31, 33, 34) by John the Baptist, to highlight the contrast between himself, who is not the Messiah, who is not first in precedence or eminence, who does not baptize with the Holy Spirit, etc., and the coming “one” who will be and do all of these things. In this way the Messiah plays a critical role in 1:19-28 even though he is not identified and introduced by the Baptist until v. 29: he is the silent figure that lies just behind all of the Baptist’s remarks.

But why include John the Baptist at all? If he’s not the Messiah and not one of the expected Messianic forerunners, what is his role in this story? The Fourth Evangelist might have included John simply because his story is found in all the Synoptic Gospels and his readers might wonder why he was missing from John’s retelling. But I think there is greater significance here.

As the one who baptizes him (vv. 29-34), John is an important part of Jesus’ story. This is a significant role, not so much for the fact of Jesus’ baptism, for Jesus surely did not need forgiveness of sins or repentance, which was the sole purpose of John’s baptism according to the Synoptics (cf Mt 3:1-11; Mk 1:4; Lk 3:3). The significance comes from who John represents while he is performing this ritual. Although the author does not give us a description of John’s appearance, again the audience would probably be familiar with the vivid details of John’s clothing and lifestyle from the Synoptics, which tell us he was dressed in camel’s hair and leather, he came from the “wilderness,” and he ate locusts and honey (Mt. 3:4; Mk.1:6).

This description would have pegged John as a prophet, in the vein of the Old Testament prophets who were known for appearing at God’s appointed time to announce a new thing God was doing, be it good news or bad news for the people. The fact that an archetypal representative of this group not only comes to announce Jesus’ arrival on the scene but also baptizes him, essentially inaugurating his ministry, would have been a powerful message to the Jewish audience of the Gospel. God is doing a new thing, just like he did in the days of the Old Testament, and the successor to the legacy of the Old Testament prophets is this Jesus, the Messiah.

John didn’t claim to be Elijah or the prophet like Moses because they were the expected eschatological forerunners of the Messiah—they were to be a sign of the Messiah’s coming at last. But as he often does, God upends popular expectations and does things a different way. He is doing something new—unexpected, perhaps unsettling, but unmistakably a continuation of the plan for salvation of the world that He has had all along. John the Baptist is the bridge between the old and the new parts of that plan.