Jesus and John are constantly interwoven in the events of Jesus’ career.  We moderns, who do everything by the calendar, have been puzzled in the attempt to piece together these events into an exact calendar arrangement.  And the beautiful mosaic of the Gospels has been cut up to make a new, modern, calendar mosaic.  But these writers see things by events, not by dates.  They have in mind four great events, and about these their story clusters.  And in these Jesus and John are inextricably interwoven.  First is John’s wilderness ministry, heading up in his presenting Jesus to the nation.  Then John’s violent seizure, and Jesus’ withdrawal from the danger zone.  Then John’s death, and Jesus’ increased caution in His movements.  Then Jesus’ death.  John comes, points to Jesus, and goes.  Jesus comes, walks a bit with John, reaches beyond him and then goes, too.

John baptized.  That is, he used a purifying rite in connection with his preaching.  It helps to remember the distinction between baptism as practised in the Christian Church, and as practised by John, and by Jesus in His early ministry.  In the church, baptism has come to be regarded as a dedicatory rite by some, and by others an initial and confessional rite.  But in the first use of it, by John and Jesus, it was a purifying rite.  It was a confession too, but of sin, and the need of cleansing, not, as later, of faith in a person, or a creed, although it did imply acceptance of a man’s leadership.  To a Hebrew mind it was preaching by symbol as well as by word.  The official deputation sent from Jerusalem to look John up asked why he should be using a purifying rite if he were neither the Christ, nor Elijah, nor the prophet.  They could understand the appropriateness of either of these three persons using such a rite in connection with his preaching as indicating the national need of cleansing.  And in the beginning Jesus for a time, through His disciples, joined in John’s plan of baptizing those who confessed sorrow for sin.

Jesus acknowledged John as His own representative, and honored him as such, from first to last.  He gives him the strongest approval and backing.  The national treatment of John always affects Jesus’ movements.  When, toward the close, His authority is challenged, He at once calls attention to the evident authority of His forerunner and refuses to go farther.

A trace of that ominous, puzzling foreboding noticed in the Old Testament vision of the coming One creeps in here.  Pointing to Jesus, John says, “Behold the lamb of God, who beareth (away) the sin of the world.”  Why did John say that? We read his words backward in the light of Calvary.  But he could not do that, and did not.  He knew only a King coming.  Why?  Even as Isaiah fifty-third, and Psalm twenty-second were written, the writers there, the speaker here, impelled to an utterance, the meaning of which, was not clear to themselves.