Theopedia

John the Baptist

John the Baptist was the son of Zechariah, a Jewish priest, and Elizabeth, born to them in old age after an angel announced his birth to Zechariah during his priestly service (Luke 1:5-25, 57-66). He began his public ministry in the Judean wilderness around AD 28-29, “in the fifteenth year of the reign of Tiberius Caesar” (Luke 3:1-2), preaching repentance and baptizing in preparation for the coming of the Messiah. Reformed theologians have read that ministry as the fulfillment of Isaiah’s prophecy of “the voice of him that crieth in the wilderness, Prepare ye the way of the Lord” (Isa. 40:3).1

Life and Ministry

Luke’s Gospel places John’s conception about six months before Jesus’s own, while Zechariah and Elizabeth “were advanced in years” and Zechariah was serving his priestly course.2 John made his home in the wilderness of Judea, where “his food and dress were extraordinary” (Matt. 3:4; Mark 1:6). There he preached repentance “as the true preparation for the Messiah’s kingdom” and baptized converts “according to the custom of the Jews, who baptized their proselytes.”2

When Jesus himself came to be baptized, John initially resisted. Eighteenth-century Baptist theologian John Gill wrote that John “modestly declined it at first, having some hint of who he was,” before yielding when Jesus insisted it was necessary “to fulfil all righteousness” (Matt. 3:13-15).3 John considered himself unworthy even “to unloose” the sandal of the one who held “the power of baptizing with the Holy Ghost and with fire,” yet he baptized him at Jesus’s insistence. Afterward he “bore testimony of him that he was the Son of God,” identifying him as “the Lamb of God, that takes away the sin of the world” (John 1:29-36; Matt. 3:16-17).3

John’s preaching brought him into open conflict with Herod Antipas, the tetrarch of Galilee, whom he denounced for “his incestuous marriage with his brother Philip’s wife.”2 Herod imprisoned him for it and, “at the request of his daughter, whom the wicked Herodias had instructed for that purpose,” had him beheaded (Matt. 14:3-12; Mark 6:17-29).2

Theological Contribution

Forerunner of the Messiah

Matthew’s Gospel identifies John’s wilderness preaching as the fulfillment of Isaiah’s prophecy of a voice crying “Prepare ye the way of the Lord, make straight in the desert a highway for our God” (Matt. 3:1-3; Isa. 40:3). Gill drew a christological conclusion from that identification: since the prophecy names the one being prepared for as “Jehovah,” and Matthew applies the prophecy to John’s preparation for Christ, “the Jehovah, whose way he was to prepare… could be no other than Christ.”1 For Gill, John’s own role as “harbinger and forerunner” was itself carried out “through his preaching the doctrine of repentance, administering the ordinance of baptism, and declaring the kingdom of heaven, or of the Messiah, was at hand.”1

Calvin traced the same connection from a different angle, tying John’s preaching to the substance of the gospel itself. Both John and Jesus began their ministries with the same words, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand” (Matt. 3:2; 4:17), and Calvin read that shared formula as evidence that repentance follows from the gospel’s promise of grace rather than preceding it: “Matthew, after relating that John so preached, says that therein was fulfilled the prophecy concerning the voice of one crying in the desert.”4 Charles Hodge likewise treated John’s preaching as the opening act of Christ’s kingly office: “John the Baptist, the forerunner of Christ, prepared the people for his coming, saying, ‘Repent ye for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.’”5

Testimony to Christ

Puritan theologian Thomas Watson pointed to John as a model of directing honor away from oneself and toward Christ. Citing John’s own words, “He that comes after me is preferred before me” (John 1:15), Watson wrote that “John Baptist transferred all the honour from himself to Christ; he was content to be eclipsed that Christ might shine the more: I am but the Herald, the voice of one crying, he is the Prince; I am but a lesser Star, he is the Sun; I baptize only with Water, he with the Holy Ghost.”6 The same posture appears in John’s declaration at Jesus’s baptism, “the Lamb of God, that takes away the sin of the world” (John 1:29), which the Second Helvetic Confession cites as testimony that Christ is “the sole Redeemer and Savior of the world.”7

Historical Significance

Pictet summarized the verdict Scripture itself renders on John: “He bore an illustrious testimony to Christ, and was the greatest of all the prophets.”2 That estimate echoes Jesus’s own words: “Among them that are born of women there hath not risen a greater than John the Baptist” (Matt. 11:11).

John is also attested outside the Gospels. The first-century Jewish historian Josephus, writing decades after John’s death, recorded that many Jews interpreted a military defeat suffered by Herod Antipas as divine punishment for his execution of John:

Now some of the Jews thought that the destruction of Herod’s army came from God, and that very justly, as a punishment of what he did against John, that was called the Baptist: for Herod slew him, who was a good man, and commanded the Jews to exercise virtue, both as to righteousness towards one another, and piety towards God, and so to come to baptism; for that the washing [with water] would be acceptable to him, if they made use of it, not in order to the putting away [or the remission] of some sins [only], but for the purification of the body; supposing still that the soul was thoroughly purified beforehand by righteousness.8

Josephus’s account confirms John’s execution by Herod Antipas and his reputation as a moral teacher who called the people to righteousness and baptism, independent of the Gospel writers.

Related Doctrines

References

  1. John Gill, A Body of Doctrinal Divinity; or, A System of Evangelical Truths, Deduced from the Sacred Scriptures, 2 vols. (London: Printed for the Author, and Sold by George Keith, 1769), book I, chap. 30. ↩ ↩2 ↩3

  2. Benedict Pictet, Christian Theology, trans. Frederick Reyroux (Philadelphia: Presbyterian Board of Publication, 1845), 242. ↩ ↩2 ↩3 ↩4 ↩5

  3. Gill, A Body of Doctrinal Divinity, book V, chap. 2. ↩ ↩2

  4. John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, trans. Henry Beveridge (Edinburgh: Calvin Translation Society, 1845-46), book 3, chap. 3, sec. 1. ↩

  5. Charles Hodge, Systematic Theology, vol. 2 (New York: Charles Scribner and Company, 1872), chap. XI, 596-97. ↩

  6. Thomas Watson, A Body of Practical Divinity: Consisting of Above One Hundred and Seventy-Six Sermons on the Lesser Catechism (London: Thomas Parkhurst, 1692), 448. ↩

  7. The Second Helvetic Confession (1566), chap. XI, “Of Jesus Christ, True God and Man, the Only Saviour of the World.” ↩

  8. Flavius Josephus, Antiquities of the Jews 18.5.2, trans. William Whiston, in The Works of Flavius Josephus (London: printed for W. Bowyer, 1737). ↩