From: John 1:19-28
The Witness of John
[24] Now they had been sent from the Pharisees. [25] They asked him, “Then
why are you baptizing, if you are neither the Christ, nor Elijah, nor the prophet?”
[26] John answered, “I baptize with water; but among you stands One whom
you do not know, [27] even He who comes after me, the thong of whose sandal
I am not worthy to untie.” [28] This took place in Bethany beyond the Jordan,
where John was baptizing.
*********************************************************************************************
Commentary:
19-34. This passage forms a unity, beginning and ending with reference to the
Baptist’s “testimony”: it thereby emphasizes the mission given him by God to
bear witness, by his life and preaching, to Jesus as the Messiah and Son of
God. The Precursor exhorts people to do penance and he practices the auste-
rity he preaches; he points Jesus out as the Lamb of God who takes away the
sin of the world; and he proclaims him boldly in the face of the Jewish authori-
ties. He is an example to us of the fortitude with which we should confess Christ:
“All Christians by the example of their lives and the witness of the word, wherever
they live, have an obligation to manifest the new man which the put on in Bap-
tism” (Vatican II, “Ad Gentes”, 11).
19-24. In this setting of intense expectation of the imminent coming of the Mes-
siah, the Baptist is a personality with enormous prestige, as is shown by the
fact that the Jewish authorities send qualified people (priests and Levites from
Jerusalem) to ask him if he is the Messiah.
John’s great humility should be noted: he is quick to tell his questioners: “I am
not the Christ”. He sees himself as someone insignificant compared with our
Lord: “I am not worthy to untie the thong of His sandal” (verse 27). He places all
his prestige at the service of his mission as precursor of the Messiah and, lea-
ving himself completely to one side, he asserts that “He must increase, but I
must decrease” (John 3:30).
25-26. “Baptize”: this originally meant to submerge in water, to bathe. For the
Jews the rite of immersion meant legal purification of those who had contracted
some impurity under the Law. Baptism was also used as a rite for the incorpora-
tion of Gentile proselytes into the Jewish people. In the Dead Sea Scrolls there
is mention of a baptism as a rite of initiation and purification into the Jewish
Qumran community, which existed in our Lord’s time.
John’s baptism laid marked stress on interior conversion. His words of exhorta-
tion and the person’s humble recognition of his sins prepared people to receive
Christ’s grace: it was a very efficacious rite of penance, preparing the people for
the coming of the Messiah, and it fulfilled the prophecies that spoke precisely
of a cleansing by water prior to the coming of the Kingdom of God in the mes-
sianic times (cf. Zechariah 13:1; Ezekiel 36:25; 37-23; Jeremiah 4:14). John’s
baptism, however, had no power to cleanse the soul of sins, as Christian Bap-
tism does (cf. Matthew 3:11; Mark 1:4).
“One whom you do not know”: Jesus had not yet publicly revealed Himself as
Messiah and Son of God; although some people did know as a man, St. John
the Baptist could assert that really they did not know Him.
27. The Baptist declares Christ’s importance by comparing himself to a slave
undoing the laces of his master’s sandals. If we want to approach Christ, whom
St. John heralds, we need to imitate the Baptist. As St. Augustine says: “He
who imitates the humility of the Precursor will understand these words. [...]
John’s greatest merit, my brethren, is this act of humility” (”In Ioann. Evang.”,
4, 7).
28. This is a reference to the town of Bethany which was situated on the eastern
bank of the Jordan, across from Jericho—different from the Bethany where Laza-
rus and his family lived, near Jerusalem (cf. John 11:18).
*********************************************************************************************
Source: “The Navarre Bible: Text and Commentaries”. Biblical text from the
Revised Standard Version and New Vulgate. Commentaries by members of
the Faculty of Theology, University of Navarre, Spain.
Published by Four Courts Press, Kill Lane, Blackrock, Co. Dublin, Ireland, and
by Scepter Publishers in the United States.