Point remains, he was doing something to give example of repentance.
Point remains, he was doing something to give example of repentance.
When John the Baptist was preaching as the forerunner of Christ, his preaching of repentance and baptism, which was scandalous at the time because baptism was for gentile converts to Judaism and not for Jews. The repentance or the changing of the heart and mind away from the false religion taught by the Pharisees and rulers of Judaism at the time to the true faith taught by the Scriptures which anticipated the Messiah, who would be God wrapped in Human flesh is nowhere close to the perverted dogma of penance which Rome developed in the middle ages.
That repentance preached by John the Baptizer and Christ, was not penance as works by man to atone for sins committed after baptism as Rome came to teach as part of a legalistic system of religion which is contrary to the Gospel of Christ and ultimately is a denial of the sufficiency of the Atoning Blood of Christ.