Commentary on John (Commentary on the New Testament Book #4)

By Robert H. Gundry

Delve Deeper into God's Word

In this verse-by-verse commentary, Robert Gundry offers a fresh, literal translation and a reliable exposition of Scripture for today's readers.

In the Gospel of John, Jesus appears as God's preexistent Son who carried out the will of God his Father completely, took full charge even of his own death and resurrection, and thus demands and deserves to be believed.

Pastors, Sunday school teachers, small group leaders, and laypeople will welcome Gundry's nontechnical explanations and clarifications. And Bible students at all levels will appreciate his sparkling interpretations.

This selection is from Gundry's Commentary on the New Testament.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Baker Publishing Group
• Release date: Nov 1, 2011
• ISBN: 9781441237613

Robert H. Gundry

Robert H. Gundry (PhD, Manchester) is a scholar-in-residence and professor emeritus of New Testament and Greek at Westmont College in Santa Barbara, California. Among his books are Mark: A Commentary on His Apology for the Cross; Matthew: A Commentary on His Handbook for a Mixed Church Under Persecution, Soma in Biblical Theology, and Jesus the Word According to John the Sectarian.

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Introduction

Dear reader,

Here you have part of a commentary on the whole New Testament, published by Baker Academic both in hardback and as an ebook. The electronic version has been broken into segments for your convenience and affordability, though if you like what you find here you may want to consider the whole at a proportionately lower cost. Whether in whole or in part, the e-version puts my comments at your fingertips on your easily portable Kindle, iPad, smartphone, or similar device.

I’ve written this commentary especially for busy people like you—lay people with jobs and families that take up a lot of time, Bible study leaders, pastors, and all who take the New Testament seriously—that is, people who time-wise and perhaps money-wise can’t afford the luxury of numerous heavyweight, technical commentaries on the individual books making up the section of the Bible we call the New Testament. So technical questions are avoided almost entirely, and the commentary concentrates on what will prove useful for understanding the scriptural text as a basis for your personal life as a Christian, for discussion with others, and for teaching and preaching.

Group discussion, teaching, and preaching all involve speaking aloud, of course, and when the New Testament was written, even private reading was done aloud. Moreover, most authors dictated their material to a writing secretary, and books were ordinarily read aloud to an audience. In this commentary, then, I’ve avoided almost all abbreviations (which don’t come through as such in oral speech) and have freely used contractions that characterize speaking (we’ll, you’re, they’ve, and so on). To indicate emphasis in oral speech, italics also occur fairly often.

You’ll mostly have to make your own practical and devotional applications of the scriptural text. But such applications shouldn’t disregard or violate the meanings intended by the Scripture’s divinely inspired authors and should draw on the richness of those meanings. So I’ve interpreted them in detail. Bold print indicates the text being interpreted. Translations of the original Greek are my own. Because of the interpretations’ close attention to detail, my translations usually, though not always, gravitate to the literal and sometimes produce run-on sentences and other nonstandard, convoluted, and even highly unnatural English. Square brackets enclose intervening clarifications, however, plus words in English that don’t correspond to words in the Greek text but do need supplying to make good sense. (As a language, Greek has a much greater tendency than English does to omit words meant to be supplied mentally.) Seemingly odd word-choices in a translation get justified in the following comments. It needs to be said as well that the very awkwardness of a literal translation often highlights features of the scriptural text obscured, eclipsed, or even contradicted by loose translations and paraphrases.

Literal translation also produces some politically incorrect English. Though brothers often includes sisters, for example, sisters doesn’t include brothers. Similarly, masculine pronouns may include females as well as males, but not vice versa. These pronouns, brothers, and other masculine expressions that on occasion are gender-inclusive correspond to the original, however, and help give a linguistic feel for the male-dominated culture in which the New Testament originated and which its language reflects. Preachers, Bible study leaders, and others should make whatever adjustments they think necessary for contemporary audiences but should not garble the text’s intended meaning.

Out of respect for your abilities so far as English is concerned, I’ve not dumbed down the vocabulary used in translations and interpretations. Like the translations, interpretations are my own. Rather than reading straight through, many of you may consult the interpretation of an individual passage now and then. So I’ve had to engage in a certain amount of repetition. To offset the repetition and keep the material in bounds, I rarely discuss others’ interpretations. But I’ve not neglected to canvass them in my research.

On the theological front, the commentary is unabashedly evangelical, so that my prayers accompany this volume in support of all you who strive for faithfulness to the New Testament as the word of God.

Robert Gundry

John

In this Gospel Jesus appears as God’s preexistent Son and agent of creation who therefore, on becoming a human being, carried out the will of God his Father completely, took full charge even of his own death and resurrection, and thus demands and deserves belief in him.

A PROLOGUE ON JESUS AS THE WORD

John 1:1–18

1:1: In the beginning was the Word. So starts the Fourth Gospel. Mark started his Gospel, the earliest one, with the phrase, "The beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ (Mark 1:1), and proceeded to the ministry of John the baptizer (from here on, the Baptist to distinguish him from John the evangelist, who wrote the Fourth Gospel, though the evangelist never calls him the Baptist). Matthew started with Jesus’ genealogy and nativity; proceeded to the Baptist’s ministry, Jesus’ baptism, temptation, and move from Nazareth to Capernaum; and wrote, From then on Jesus began preaching and saying, ‘Repent, for the reign of heaven has drawn near’ (Matthew 4:17). In the prologue to his Gospel, Luke refers to those who from the beginning became eyewitnesses and assistants of the word" (Luke 1:2). For Mark, then, the beginning consists in the Baptist’s preaching and baptizing; for Matthew, in Jesus’ preaching; and for Luke, in the ministry of eyewitnesses to Jesus’ life on earth. Each of these beginnings came a little later in time: Jesus after the Baptist, and eyewitnesses after Jesus. John, who wrote last, breaks this pattern. His phrase, "In the beginning, echoes Genesis 1:1, In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth," and so takes us all the way back to creation rather than marking another, still later beginning than those in the other Gospels.

But created is a verb of action in Genesis 1:1, just as Mark, Matthew, and Luke used verbs of action, such as the verbs of baptizing and preaching. In contrast, John uses the past tense of a verb of existence: was. That is to say, in the beginning the Word already existed, because he himself had no beginning—or, as we read in Revelation 21:6; 22:13, "I am . . . the beginning. The Word preexisted. Because of the echo of Genesis 1:1 we expect the subject of John’s first sentence to be God: In the beginning was God. As we’ve seen, though, Luke’s prologue referred to those who from the beginning became eyewitnesses and assistants of the word [that is, the oral gospel]. So John picks up this term, the word, and—capitalizing it, so to speak—substitutes it for God." But we don’t yet know who this Word was, and if reading John’s prologue for the first time we won’t know for quite a while. John keeps us in suspense. In the meantime he’ll describe the Word without identifying the Word personally. On to that description, then.

And the Word was with God. Now the God of Genesis 1:1 comes into view. The Word and God preexisted together. In the beginning they were already there, both of them. "With God" distinguishes the Word from God and indicates a close, face-to-face relation with him. How close? And the Word was God. So close that the Word was identical with God at the same time as distinguishable from him. In other words, within himself—not just in relation to us, for neither human beings nor any other creatures existed already in the beginning—God was, is, and always will be a social being. (Add the Holy Spirit from later in John’s Gospel [1:32–33 and following] and we get the Trinity.) But note the singular of God. Despite the distinction between the Word and God we don’t have gods (plural) even though God and the Word are both God. What we do have is plurality within singularity, and singularity pervading plurality.

In polytheistic religions the gods and goddesses engage one another in competition, jealousies, rivalries, battles, adulteries, murders, deceit, and so on. Since we seek to become like what we worship (as in the current worship of celebrities, called stars and idols, in popular culture), the worship of those gods and goddesses encourages such behaviors instead of discouraging them. On the other hand, a god who alone is god and is only singular, who within himself is nonsocial—that kind of god tends toward sheer power untempered by what we call social graces. He becomes, in short, a despot. So when his worshipers gain power, they tend toward despotism. By way of contrast the God of John’s Gospel, being within himself social as well as singular, is both the God of love (God loved the world [3:16]) and the God of unity (that they [the disciples] may be one just as we [the Word and God] are one [17:22]).

1:2–4: This one [referring to the Word] was in the beginning with God repeats the thought of 1:1 to reecho Genesis 1:1 in preparation for introducing the creation, about which that Old Testament text goes on to speak. ³All things came into existence through him [the Word], and apart from him there came into existence not even one thing that did come into existence. In Genesis God spoke things into existence. For example, "Then God said, ‘Let there be light,’ and there was light" (Genesis 1:3). So John turns God’s speaking into God’s Word as the agent of creation. The all things that came into being through the Word include not only inanimate objects but also living creatures, human beings at their head according to Genesis 1:26–30. ⁴In him [the Word] was life. But what kind of life is John writing about? The life that the Word conveyed to living creatures at the beginning? Probably not, because elsewhere in John life usually means eternal life for those who believe in the Word. This life is eternal because it’s the very life of the eternal Word who was in the beginning with God. And the life was the light of human beings. God created light first (Genesis 1:3). But in John the light is the uncreated Word, God’s agent in the creation of light along with everything else. The equation of life with light rests on some cultural background. Before the invention of matches, light bulbs, and the like, people had to keep a lamp burning if they wanted to avoid borrowing fire from a neighbor or laboriously rekindling fire by friction or percussion every time darkness fell. But when a living person wasn’t present to keep the lamp burning, it went out, so that the going out of a lamp came to represent death, as in Job 18:5–6: Indeed, the light of the wicked goes out and the flame of his fire gives no light. The light in his tent is darkened and his lamp goes out above him. On the other hand, life meant that the light of a lamp was kept burning.

John doesn’t say that the Word was the light of human beings. Rather, "the life was the light of human beings. We get a hint that the life" is not only life that was in the Word. More than that, the life is another way of referring to the Word himself. Later in John, as a matter of fact, the Word will say, "I am . . . the life (11:25; 14:6; compare 1 John 1:1–2: What was from the beginning, what we’ve heard, what we’ve seen with our eyes, what we’ve observed and our hands felt—[we’re writing] about the Word of life, and the life was manifested, and we’ve seen [the life] and are testifying to [the life] and announcing to you the eternal life, who as such was with the Father and was manifested to us"). But when was the life the light of human beings? At the dawn of creation and ever since? Some have thought so. But 1:9 will talk about the light’s coming into the world, and this coming is mentioned subsequent to the mention of the Baptist’s testimony in 1:6–8. Furthermore, in 9:5 the Word says, Whenever I’m in the world, I am the light of the world. In 12:46, I’ve come into the world as light. And in 12:35, the light is among you for only a little while yet. So 1:4 has skipped from creation in the beginning all the way to the Word’s shining among human beings in the first century.

1:5: And the light is shining in the darkness . . . . Just as the life is a way of referring to the Word himself, so also the light is a way of referring to the Word himself (compare 8:12: I am the light of the world). But the light was going to be withdrawn with the Word’s return to the Father after staying a little while in the world (see 12:35 again [compare 9:4–5]). So how should we take the present tense of is shining? It’s what we call a vivid historical present, the use of the present tense to emphasize a past event as though it were happening right now. In other words, the light shone intensely, brightly.

In Genesis 1:4–5, "God separated the light from the darkness and called the light day and the darkness . . . night. But here in John the light is shining in the darkness to set up a confrontation between the two. And according to Genesis 1:4 God saw that the light was good. Darkness didn’t get the same description. So it’s natural to associate light not only with life but also with goodness, and darkness not only with death but also with evil, as 3:19 will do: the light has come into the world; and the human beings [who make up ‘the world’] loved the darkness rather than the light, for their deeds were evil." We have then a confrontation between good and evil, but not in the abstract—rather, in concrete, personal terms. The good light is the Word who was with God and was God. Correspondingly, the darkness is the human beings whose works were evil. So John continues: and the darkness [that is, those human beings] didn’t apprehend it [the light]. The verb apprehend carries two meanings: (1) take into custody, arrest, overpower and (2) take hold of mentally, perceive, understand, comprehend. Throughout the rest of John the human beings who make up the darkness constantly fail to understand. In fact they misunderstand, as in 2:20–21: "Therefore the Jews said, ‘For forty-six years this temple has been a-building, and you—will you raise it in three days?’ But that one [the Word] was talking about the temple [consisting] of his body." Neither do they overpower the light. They don’t even take the light into custody—not really. He will volunteer himself for arrest. Only then will they take him along (so a literal translation of 18:12 [contrast earlier, failed attempts to seize him in 7:30, 32, 44–46; 8:20; 10:39; 11:57]). How could the light be overpowered by the darkness if the light is none other than the Word who was God?

1:6–7: There came on the scene a human being sent from God. He had the name John [the Baptist]. ⁷This one came for the purpose of a testimony, [that is,] in order that he might testify concerning the light, [and what was the purpose of his testifying?] in order that all might believe through him. In Mark the Baptist is primarily a baptizer. In Matthew he’s equally a baptizer and a preacher of repentance. In Luke, primarily a preacher of repentance. In John, the Baptist is primarily a witness who bears testimony to the light. In the other Gospels he talks a little about the coming one. But in this Gospel he actually points him out. He sees him coming toward him and says, Look! The lamb of God that takes away the world’s sin! (1:29). His testimony has the purpose of getting people to believe in the light. So we can look at the whole of the Fourth Gospel as portraying a legal dispute in which various witnesses, like the Baptist, testify on behalf of the light while others accuse the light.

A negative statement balances a positive one in 1:8: That one [the Baptist] wasn’t the light; rather, [he came] that he might testify concerning the light. The negative suggests that some people at the time this Gospel was written still hadn’t transferred their allegiance from the Baptist to the light. All the Gospels mention disciples of the Baptist who hadn’t made the switch during the shining of the light in the world (Mark 2:18; Matthew 9:14; 11:2; Luke 5:33; 7:18–19, 24; John 3:25). Later, too, the Apostle Paul discovered twelve such disciples in Ephesus, far away in Asia Minor (Acts 19:1–7). He baptized them in the name of Jesus, so that they received the Holy Spirit (compare the early church tradition that the Fourth Gospel emanated from that city in the country now called Turkey). An ancient though probably unrelated sect of Baptist-followers, called Mandeans, still exists in Iraq.

There are several possible translations of 1:9:

He [the light who is the life who in turn is the Word]  was the true light that enlightens every human being who comes into the world.

He was the true light that by coming into the world enlightens every human being.

The true light that enlightens every human being was coming into the world.

The main meaning is pretty clear, though. First, the description of the light as true not only keeps us from mistaking the Baptist for the light. It also associates the light with truth, which will become a major theme in this Gospel, as in 14:6, I am . . . the truth, and 18:38, where the Roman governor Pontius Pilate asks, What is truth? when the truth is standing right in front of him. Second, although the people who make up the darkness don’t come to the light because their deeds are evil (3:19–20), the light enlightens all human beings in the sense that he shines on all of them. Astronomically speaking, the sun is the light of the world; and it shines on the righteous and unrighteous alike (Matthew 5:45). So also this divine light is the light of the world in that he exposes human evil but brings the light of life to all who believe. Third, since elsewhere in John’s Gospel coming into the world refers to the incarnation of the Word, here in 1:9 coming into the world probably relates not to every human being but to the true light and explains how that light shines. He shines by coming into the world. As the Word the light was with God in the beginning. But the Word became the light for human beings not till he left God and came into the world.

And what is this world he entered? 1:10: He was in the world, and the world came into existence through him. So far, all we have to think of is the planet Earth. But the verse finishes with this statement: and the world didn’t know him. So the world isn’t planet Earth, or at least not exclusively or primarily this planet. It’s the world of human beings who live here—in particular, unbelievers who make up the darkness that opposes the light and didn’t recognize the Word for what he was: the way, the truth, and the life (14:6). World translates the Greek word cosmos, which contrasts with chaos and therefore means in John the society of human beings organized around their unbelief, around their failure to recognize the true light.

1:11–13: He came into his own things and his own ones didn’t accept him. His own things are the all things which came into existence through him and therefore belong to him as his proper home (1:3 [compare 16:32; 19:27]). That is, he entered his creation. His own ones are the Jews, who figure prominently later in John (compare 1:31; but avoid any anti-Semitic inference, for Jesus himself says in 4:22, Salvation is from the Jews). Not even they accepted him. And they didn’t accept him because by and large they didn’t recognize him. Happily, there were exceptions: ¹²But as many as did accept him—to them, the ones believing in his name, he gave authority to become God’s children . . . . To accept the light means to believe in his name. To believe in his name means to entrust our fate to him because of who his name indicates he is. But what name is in view? Not Jesus or Christ or Lord or Son of God or Son of Man, because those names haven’t yet appeared in John’s text. The name could be Word except for the fact that later we’ll read that the name belongs also to God the Father (17:11–12), yet John never calls the Father Word. John has already mentioned a shared name, though. It’s God: "the Word was with God, and the Word was God (1:1). To believe in the light’s name, then, is to entrust our fate to him because of his being the Word who is God in communication with us human beings to give us the eternal life of God himself, a communication of light, the light of divine truth—a word of communication that stands in stark contrast with Silence," which was a divine name in the Greco-Roman religions of John’s era.

Since the light that is the Word shines on all human beings and since most of his own ones didn’t accept him, those who did accept him became God’s children as distinct from the children of Israel. But why does John say that the light gave them authority to become God’s children instead of saying simply that as many as accepted him became God’s children? Why does the word authority slip in? Probably because biological ancestry, even Israelite ancestry, gives nobody a claim on God. So John continues: ¹³who were born not out of bloods [the bloodlines of biological parents] nor out of the will of flesh [sexual attraction of male and female] nor out of the will of a husband [who wants an heir to carry on his family line], but out of God. That is to say, God himself is the source of this birth that carries the authority, the right, to become his children. Because it originates from God the birth will later be designated a birth from above (3:3, 7). It doesn’t have its source in the flesh, but to make it possible the Word became flesh.

1:14: And the Word became flesh and tented among us. Flesh—not an apparition, but honest-to-goodness flesh, incarnation as a means toward communication. In the Word incarnate, God speaks the language of humanity, which we as human beings can understand. The Word’s tenting among us indicates a communication at close range—open, immediate, and accessible. Tented indicates a temporary such communication, for tents don’t have the permanence of buildings. We’ve already seen that the light shone for only a little while (see the comments on 1:4). But tented also alludes to the tent, traditionally called the tabernacle, in which God dwelled for a while among his people Israel and where they met him (see Exodus 25 and following chapters). So believers met God when the incarnate Word, who was God, tented among them. John aims his statement, And the Word became flesh, against certain heretics (called Gnostics) who out of a belief that everything physical is inherently evil denied the incarnation. According to them, the Word only seemed to be fleshly (hence docetism, after a Greek verb that means seem [see further the introduction to 1 John]). And we saw his glory, glory as of a one-and-only from the Father, [glory] full of grace and truth. The traditional translation only begotten is misleading, because 1:13 has told us that believers were born—that is, begotten—from God, so that the Word can’t be God’s only begotten one. Furthermore, the Word’s existing already in the beginning rules out being begotten then. Nor is there textual warrant for an eternally timeless begetting. And because the Fourth Gospel contains no account of a virginal conception and birth, that kind of begetting, though unique, is hardly in view. So one-and-only highlights the uniqueness of the incarnate Word as him who came from the Father bearing his own divine glory because he along with the Father was God. The term Father implies the Word is God’s Son. This relationship doesn’t imply that the Word had a beginning at a birth, though. It means only that the Word relates to God as a son relates to his father. The relationship is one of subordination by way of obedience alongside equally shared deity, as will come out explicitly and repeatedly later in John. Similarly, in human relationships a son is no less human than his father even though he obeys his father. And John’s choice of the Father rather than God suggests that a one-and-only also implies God’s fatherly love for the Word, for a one-and-only son naturally becomes the special object of his father’s love (so also in the Old Testament, and see John 3:35; 5:20; 10:17; 15:9–10; 17:23–24, 26 for God the Father’s loving Jesus his Son).

The glory isn’t that of a cloud and pillar of fire such as hovered over the Old Testament tabernacle. It’s a glory of grace and truth (compare Exodus 33:18–19; 34:5–7). Grace has an aesthetic dimension. It connotes beauty and attractiveness, but above all it means favor—here divine favor to an ill-deserving world of moral darklings. Truth is what is trustworthy as opposed to falsehood, but also what is real and genuine as opposed to imitation and superficiality. The Word’s glory is full of such grace and truth. There’s no lack. The supply is sufficient for all.

Who are the we who saw this glory? John seems to be referring to himself and his fellow disciples who with him saw in person the glory of the incarnate Word (compare 19:35; 21:24). And before those original disciples was John the Baptist. 1:15: John testifies [note the emphasis in a vivid historical present tense again, as in 1:5] concerning him and has shouted, saying, "This was he about whom I said, ‘The one coming behind me [in space and therefore as my follower, because disciples followed their teacher physically rather than walking side by side with him] has come to be ahead of me [in rank] because he was prior to me [in time, for he was in the beginning (1:1)] . . . .’ " So the Baptist testifies to the preexistence of the Word and therefore to the Word’s superiority despite the Word’s having followed the Baptist briefly.

The Baptist has given one reason why the Word outranks him: because he was before me. In 1:16–17 he or, more probably, John the evangelist gives two more reasons: [1] because from his [the Word’s] fullness we’ve all received even grace in place of grace [that is, one gift of grace after another—a never-ending succession of ill-deserved divine favors from the Word, whose supply of such grace is never diminished no matter how many favors he grants (compare the gracious signs and works that John narrates one after another in following chapters)], [2] ¹⁷because the Law was given through Moses; grace and truth came on the scene through Jesus Christ. Finally, after seventeen and a half verses, after all the suspense stemming from nonidentification of the Word—finally we’re told that the Word is none other than the historical figure of Jesus Christ, the Word-made-flesh. But because he was a historical figure it wouldn’t have been appropriate to call him Jesus Christ in his preexistent, prehistorical, preincarnate state.

Some interpreters think that the first gift of grace back in 1:16 was the law of Moses. But here in 1:17 grace along with truth doesn’t arrive on the scene till the Word’s incarnation in Jesus Christ, so that law and grace seem to contrast with each other. We’re reminded of Paul’s contrasting the Law’s command to do works of righteousness and the gospel’s saying to believe because salvation comes by grace through faith, not by works (see, for example, Romans 10:5–10; Galatians 2:16; 3:10–14; Ephesians 2:8–9). As in 1:14, John adds truth to grace, this time to imply that Jesus Christ embodied the divine reality to which Moses’ law only testified. For this function of the Mosaic law in John see 1:45; 3:14; 5:45–46; 15:25 and, indirectly, 8:17; 10:34–37. The addition of all expands the meaning of we who have received grace to include every believer (contrast the limitation of we in 1:14).

John rounds off his prologue in 1:18: No one has seen God at any time. The emphasis falls on God as distinguished from the Word-made-flesh, whose glory eyewitnesses saw. A one-and-only [who was] God, the one existing in the bosom of the Father—that one has explained him. Some manuscripts, followed by many English translations, have "a one-and-only Son instead of a one-and-only [who was] God. But those manuscripts are generally later and inferior. It seems that in order to suit the description of a one-and-only as having come from the Father in 1:14, here in 1:18 copyists would more likely have changed an original God to Son" than vice versa. And since the Word wasn’t only with God but also was God, the earlier manuscripts that have God instead of Son are probably correct. Here’s the main, climactic point, though: Jesus Christ is called the Word in that he has explained God the Father. As a human being his words, his deeds, and his death and resurrection explain God in human terms that we can understand and believe. And this explanation is sufficient and reliable because it comes from the one who has a uniquely intimate relation to God: "in the bosom of the Father."

Note: It’s popular to think that John borrows his description of the Word largely from Jewish descriptions of personified Wisdom (see Proverbs 8, for example) and that Word substitutes for Wisdom, perhaps because in John’s Greek language Wisdom is feminine, Word is masculine, and Jesus was a man, not a woman. But John uses a number of Greek feminine nouns for Jesus, such as those for way, truth, resurrection, and life. So John’s universally acknowledged fondness for using synonyms (whatever their reference) makes it likely that he avoids using Wisdom in addition to Word because he wants not to portray Jesus as personified Wisdom. He may even be pitting Word-Christology against Wisdom-Christology. In either case, Genesis 1 plus the use of word for the oral gospel provides a more likely inspiration than Wisdom for John’s portrayal of Jesus as the Word. The same holds true against the suggestion that John borrows from the ancient philosophical use of the Greek behind Word, namely, Logos in the sense of Reason. For where in this passage does John portray Jesus as divine Reason? The Word’s explaining the Father points to communication, not reason (1:18).

MAKING THE FIRST DISCIPLES

John 1:19–51

Verses 19–28 constitute the first paragraph in this section. 1:19–20: And this is the testimony of John [the Baptist] when the Jews sent to him priests and Levites from Jerusalem so that they might ask him, Who are you? The attention is so concentrated on the Baptist’s testimony that we aren’t told till much later where he was at the time or what he was doing, such as baptizing people. And his preaching of repentance never does get mentioned, nor his dress (a camel’s hair shirt and a leather belt) or his diet (locusts and wild honey). We find those details in other Gospels (Mark 1:6; Matthew 3:4). Who’d want a wild man like that for a witness anyway? John the author of this Gospel doesn’t. So he omits those details. ²⁰And he [the Baptist] confessed and didn’t deny—indeed, he confessed, I’m not the Christ. He didn’t deny that he wasn’t the Christ; rather, he confessed that he wasn’t. So we have a triple emphasis: he confessed . . . he didn’t deny . . . he confessed. In Mark 1:5 and Matthew 3:6, too, there’s confession. But it’s the people who come to be baptized who do the confessing, and it’s their sins that they confess. Here it’s the Baptist who does the confessing, and it’s his nonidentification with the Christ that he confesses. In Luke 3:15 the people wonder whether the Baptist is the Christ. Here in John, then, do the emissaries of the Jews in Jerusalem ask him whether he’s the Christ? No, they ask only who he is, whoever that might be—a completely open-ended question. And for the moment he doesn’t answer the question by saying who he is. He says only who he isn’t, and specifies that he’s not the Christ. Saying that he isn’t clears the ground for his later testimony concerning who Jesus is. It also goads the Baptist’s questioners to ask who he is if he isn’t the Christ, and even to suggest other possibilities since he doesn’t seem to be very forthcoming.

1:21: And they asked him, What then? Are you Elijah? and he says, I’m not. Are you the prophet? and he answered, No. First-century Jews had various expectations of figures whom God would send in the end time. Not only was there the expectation of a coming Messiah, or even two Messiahs, a priestly one and a kingly one. (Messiah is Hebrew; Christ is Greek; and both terms mean Anointed One, that is, someone specially chosen for a divinely commissioned task.) Also expected were a return to earth of Elijah (compare Malachi 4:5–6) and the appearance of a prophet like Moses (compare Deuteronomy 18:15–18). So the emissaries suggest these other possibilities. In the other Gospels such possible identifications are voiced concerning Jesus (Mark 6:15; 8:28; Matthew 16:14; Luke 9:8, 19), but John doesn’t let in even a suggestion that Jesus is Elijah or the prophet. The suggestion applies only to the Baptist, which he promptly denies in favor of his role as a witness for Jesus.

1:22–23: So they said to him, "Who are you? [Tell us,] so that we may give an answer to the ones who sent us. What do you say about yourself?" They insist on a positive identification; they’re not satisfied with the Baptist’s modesty. ²³He said, "I’m the voice of one calling out in the wilderness, ‘Straighten the way of the Lord,’ just as Isaiah the prophet spoke [see Isaiah 40:3]." In the earlier Gospels it’s Mark, Matthew, and Luke—evangelists—who identify the Baptist with the voice prophesied by Isaiah. Here it’s the Baptist himself who uses Isaiah’s prophecy to identify his role, but he modestly shortens the quotation. It’s longer in those earlier Gospels (see Mark 1:2–3; Matthew 3:3; and especially Luke 3:4–6). So the Baptist says he’s a mere voice telling people to get ready for someone else. Way means road. Making a crooked road straight makes it easier to travel, and you want a dignitary to have a pleasant trip to your place. So straightening a road is a figure of speech for getting ready for the visit of somebody important. Here that dignitary is the Lord, who turns out to be Jesus, the incarnate Word, who was in the beginning with God and was God. No higher dignitary than he!

1:24–25: And they’d been sent by the Pharisees. So the Jews of 1:19 turn out to be Pharisees, members of a leading Jewish sect (compare 3:1, where Nicodemus, who came to Jesus at night, is called not only a Pharisee but also a ruler of the Jews). In Matthew 3:7 the Pharisees are among those who come to the Baptist, but here they just send as their emissaries some priests (who ministered at the temple in Jerusalem) and Levites (who helped the priests there). Apparently John saves the Pharisees themselves for a direct confrontation with Jesus, a confrontation between darkness and light. ²⁵And they [the priests and the Levites] asked him and said to him [the doubling of verbs emphasizes the emissaries’ concern], "Why then are you baptizing [people] if you’re neither the Christ nor Elijah nor the prophet?" Finally it comes out that the Baptist is a baptizer, but only as background for his testimony to Jesus. Baptism isn’t the main point. In Matthew 3:7 the Baptist does the questioning; he asks the Pharisees and Sadducees (another leading Jewish sect), Who warned you to flee from the wrath that is going to come? In Luke 3:7 he asks the crowds the same question and in Luke 3:10 they ask, So what should we do [to prepare the way of the Lord]? John isn’t interested in those questions. He wants only to highlight the Baptist’s testimony to Jesus.

In 1:26–27, then, John [the Baptist] answered them [the priests and the Levites], saying, "I baptize in water. In your midst is standing one whom you don’t know, ²⁷[that is,] the one coming behind me [1:15], the strap of whose sandal I’m not worthy to loosen." In the other Gospels the Baptist says, I am baptizing you in/with water (Matthew 3:11; Mark 1:8; Luke 3:16). Here in John the pronoun you drops out because the Baptist is talking to the Pharisees’ emissaries. He wasn’t baptizing them, and they certainly hadn’t come to be baptized—rather, to interrogate the Baptist the way a prosecutor interrogates a witness in court. Again in the other Gospels the Baptist goes on to say that the one coming after him is stronger than he is. But John omits that statement and substitutes the statement that in their midst is standing one whom they don’t know. They don’t recognize or acknowledge Jesus for who he is. We’re reminded of 1:10, which said the light was in the world and the world came into existence through him but the world didn’t know him. "Standing in your midst recollects 1:14, The Word became flesh and tented among us," and leaves the nonrecognition of Jesus without excuse. Has the Baptist answered the question why he baptizes people? No, he has ignored the question entirely and testified instead to the presence of someone the strap of whose sandal he’s unworthy to loosen. Only a slave was obligated to perform this service for his master. But the Baptist exalts Jesus to such a high level, the level of preexistent deity, that even a slave’s service for Jesus seems too honorable for the Baptist to perform.

1:28: These things happened in Bethany, the other side of the Jordan, where John was baptizing. From the standpoint of Jerusalem, the other side is east of the Jordan River. So John can’t be