The presentation that John makes of the testimony of John the Baptist to those sent by the Jews (Levites, priests and Pharisees) may at first appear no different to that given in the Synoptic Gospels. Yet when one reads the account in John 1:19-28 IN CONTINUITY with the Johanine Prologue, then one discovers remarkable differences:
- John the Baptist appears as one giving witness to the Light that is also the source of life and enlightenment for all men. The Baptist is not just pointing to the coming of a Messiah who will establish God's Kingdom. He is bearing witness to Him who was in the beginning with God, through whom all that exists came to be. There is a big jump here from the world-view that is presented in Mark, for example, who presents Jesus as the one "stronger" than John the Baptist and even the powers of this world (e.g. the other "Son of God", the Emperor of Rome).
- The group that sends the embassy to John the Baptist is not a neutral group that seeks "objective" information (like a news agency, for example). The group is identified as the "Jews". It is not an ethnic-cultural designation, however, but a theological one. The title "Jews" represent all the forces that go against the one sent by the Father. Thus, it is in this first image given of John the Baptist that we see the first of two groups that will be delineated in the Gospel: the Jews and those they send (the Pharisees, priests and Levites) on the one hand, and Jesus (the One sent by the Father) and those he sends ("As the Father has sent Me, so I send you"), on the other.
- John the Baptist "testifies" for Jesus. In chapter 5 of the Gospel, Jesus names three witnesses for his cause. The Law of Moses demands at least two witnesses to authenticate one's claims. In chapter 5, he names, not only John the Baptist but also the works that he has been doing and God Himself:
Ye sent unto John, and he bare witness unto the truth.
But I receive not testimony from man: but these things I say, that ye might be saved. He was a burning and a shining light: and ye were willing for a season to rejoice in his light. But I have greater witness than that of John: for the works which the Father hath given me to finish, the same works that I do, bear witness of me, that the Father hath sent me. And the Father himself, which hath sent me, hath borne witness of me.
John, in this description, is like a lesser light giving witness to a greater one. He too was a "burning and shining light." But his perhaps was like the light of the moon that points to the source of its own reflected light. Was John the Evangelist here painting a picture of the night of sin that is lightened up by the Baptist's moon?
- "I baptize with water: but there standeth one among you, whom ye know not..." In this statement of the Baptist, the Evangelist seems to have omitted the reference to the baptism of the Spirit mentioned in the Synoptic Gospels. Instead, he immediately follows up this statement with the one about "the one you know not", an echo of verses 10-11:
He was in the world, and the world was made by him, / and the world knew him not. He came unto his own, / and his own received him not.
The verses constitute a complete parallelism. Each line have terms that are balanced in a corresponding line. In this case, we have "was in the world" and "came unto his own" as parallels and "the world knew him not" and "his own receiveth him not" as the other paired terms. In other words, the Baptist's pointing out "the one you know not" implies an identification of the Jews, their embassy and the world as the darkness that refused the light (John 1:5) and ultimately, those that rejected the Word of God made flesh. - "He it is, who coming after me is preferred before me,
whose shoe__________________Don't curse the darkness, light a fire. Don't wait for the sunrise. Walk towards the dawn.
