A voice in the wilderness: John the Baptist and the baptism of Jesus

John the Baptist appears in all four Gospels, and the way each tells his story says something about each writer's purpose. Mark opens his Gospel with John (Mark 1:1-11). Luke gives John's birth and the date of his ministry in terms of Roman and Jewish rulers (Luke 1; 3:1-2). John's Gospel presents him as a witness who points away from himself (John 1:19-34). Matthew, writing for readers who knew the Old Testament (see the class on Matthew 1 for the debates over his date, audience and use of Mark), introduces John with a single sentence, 'In those days', and moves at once to his message. Matthew follows Mark's outline here but expands the preaching to the Pharisees and Sadducees, material that Luke also has in a more general form (Luke 3:7-9), which is commonly taken as a sign that Matthew and Luke drew on a shared source of sayings. Only Matthew records the exchange between John and Jesus before the baptism (verses 14-15).

John is also known outside the New Testament. The Jewish historian Josephus, writing in the 90s AD in his Antiquities, describes him as a good man who urged the Jews to practise virtue and be baptized, and says Herod Antipas had him put to death. The two accounts differ in emphasis, but they agree on the main facts.

The setting is the 'wilderness of Judea', the dry country west of the Dead Sea and the lower Jordan valley. It was the place where Israel had crossed into the land under Joshua and where prophets such as Elijah had appeared. John's clothing, a garment of camel's hair and a leather belt, recalls Elijah (2 Kings 1:8), and Malachi had promised that Elijah would return before the day of the LORD (Malachi 4:5). Baptism, ritual washing, was familiar in Judaism, where it marked cleansing for priests and for converts, and the Qumran community near the Dead Sea practised frequent washings. John's baptism differed in that he administered it to Israelites, as a sign of repentance in view of what was coming.

Matthew 3 is narrative that moves between two kinds of speech. John's words are prophetic preaching, in the pattern of the Old Testament prophets: short, vivid, built on images from farming and wilderness life, and meant to confront. The images, a tree and an axe, wheat and chaff, a fork and a fire, are picture language for judgment and are not to be read as a detailed timetable. The second part is a scene of revelation, in which heaven opens, the Spirit descends and a voice speaks. The point of a scene like this is to tell the reader who Jesus is.

Three principles help.

• First, read the chapter against Isaiah 40, because Matthew quotes it. Isaiah 40:3 spoke of preparing the way for the LORD himself, and Matthew applies it to preparing for Jesus, so the chapter is a statement about who Jesus is as well as about John.
• Second, notice that Matthew quotes the Father's words in the third person, 'This is My beloved Son', where Mark and Luke have 'You are My beloved Son' (Mark 1:11; Luke 3:22). In Matthew the voice announces Jesus to the crowd and to the reader.
• Third, hold the chapter in its place in the book. Chapters 1-2 have said who Jesus is. Chapter 3 begins his public ministry, and chapter 4 will test the title the Father has just given him.

Verses 1–3

John comes 'preaching in the wilderness of Judea'. His message, 'Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is near', is the same message Jesus will preach (4:17). 'Repent' translates the Greek metanoeo, to change one's mind and direction; it has the force of the Hebrew shub, to turn back. 'The kingdom of heaven' is Matthew's characteristic phrase. 'Heaven' is a reverent way of saying God, and the parallel Gospels have 'kingdom of God'. The kingdom is God's rule coming into the world in the person of the coming King. Matthew quotes Isaiah 40:3, 'A voice of one calling in the wilderness: Prepare the way for the Lord', to say that John is that voice. In Isaiah the 'Lord' was the LORD who would come to lead his people home from exile.

Verses 4–6

John's camel hair and leather belt recall Elijah, and the locusts and wild honey are the diet of the desert. The crowds came from Jerusalem, all Judea and the Jordan region, confessing their sins as they were baptized in the Jordan. The Greek verb baptizo means to dip or immerse. The people confess and are baptized; the baptism does not itself remove sin, but marks a turn in view of what is coming.

Verses 7–10

When John saw 'many of the Pharisees and Sadducees' coming, he calls them a 'brood of vipers'. The Pharisees were a lay movement committed to careful keeping of the Law; the Sadducees were mostly the priestly aristocracy tied to the temple. John does not single them out for the sake of insult. He is saying that coming for baptism is not enough. 'Produce fruit, then, in keeping with repentance.' He also rejects the claim to safety based on descent: 'We have Abraham as our father.' God can raise up children for Abraham 'out of these stones'. In Hebrew and Aramaic the words for stones and sons sound alike, but whether John intended the play is unknown. The axe lying at the root of the trees pictures judgment about to begin.

Verses 11–12

John says that the One coming 'after me' is 'more powerful' than he is, and he is not worthy to carry his sandals, a task for a slave. He will baptize 'with the Holy Spirit and with fire'. The meaning of 'fire' is debated. The context, with its chaff and unquenchable fire, points to judgment, and some scholars take the whole phrase as a single baptism of purifying judgment. Others see a baptism with the Spirit for the repentant and with fire for the unrepentant. Christians have also related it to the tongues of fire at Pentecost (Acts 2:3), though the connection is by association. The winnowing fork tosses threshed grain so that the heavier wheat falls and the chaff blows away. The wheat is gathered into the barn. The chaff burns.

Verses 13–15

Jesus comes from Galilee to be baptized. John objects: 'I need to be baptized by You, and do You come to me?' The objection shows that Matthew did not think Jesus had sins to repent of. Jesus answers: 'It is fitting for us to fulfill all righteousness in this way.' Righteousness (dikaiosune) in Matthew is conduct that conforms to God's will. Jesus is saying that it is God's will for him to identify with the people he has come to save and to take his place among sinners. Scholars have also connected the moment to the servant who bears sins (Isaiah 53:11-12), though Matthew does not say so here.

Verses 16–17

As Jesus comes up from the water, 'the heavens were opened'. He sees the Spirit of God 'descending like a dove and resting on Him'. A voice says, 'This is My beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased!' Each part draws on the Old Testament. The opened heavens recall Ezekiel 1:1 and Isaiah 64:1. The Spirit on the servant recalls Isaiah 42:1, which the voice also echoes with 'in whom I am well pleased'. The words 'My Son' come from Psalm 2:7, a royal psalm about the king of David's line. The dove has no firm Old Testament background; it may recall the Spirit hovering over the waters in Genesis 1:2, though that is an association, not a statement. Together the three persons appear: the Son in the water, the Spirit on him, the Father speaking.

The chapter holds together judgment and grace. John's preaching warns that there is a coming judgment and that no inherited privilege shelters from it. The tree that does not bear fruit is cut down. At the same time, the One who is coming will baptize with the Holy Spirit, which the Old Testament looked for as a mark of the new age (Ezekiel 36:25-27; Joel 2:28). Repentance is the right response to both. The Bible regards repentance as more than regret: it is a turn of the whole person, with its visible fruit in conduct.

The chapter also shows the Trinity in a way that the Gospel narrative can state without a doctrinal formula. The Father speaks, the Son is baptized and the Spirit descends. The church's later doctrine of one God in three persons rests on scenes like this and on the baptismal formula at the end of the Gospel (28:19). Christians have also seen in the baptism the origin of Christian baptism. Jesus' own baptism is distinct from it, since he had no sin to confess, but the Spirit's coming on him anticipates the Spirit given to his followers.

Finally, the chapter teaches that being of Abraham's family does not by itself secure a place in God's kingdom. Paul draws a related point in Romans 2:28-29 and 4:11-12, and the idea is part of how the early church understood that Gentiles could be Abraham's children by faith.

Matthew 3 makes three claims about who Jesus is.

• First, he is the Lord whose way John prepares. Isaiah 40:3 speaks of the way of 'the LORD', and Matthew applies it to Jesus. This is fulfillment: a text about God's coming becomes the key to John's work, and so it identifies Jesus with the God of Israel.
• Second, he is the Son and the servant. The voice joins Psalm 2:7, the promise to the Davidic king, with Isaiah 42:1, the servant on whom the Spirit rests. The King is also the Servant, and later in the Gospel Matthew will quote Isaiah 42 at greater length (Matthew 12:18-21).

Third, he is the one who stands with sinners. He receives a baptism for repentance without needing repentance, and by doing so he takes his place beside those he has come to save. That fits what the angel said in 1:21, that he would save his people from their sins, and Paul puts it strongly when he says that God made the sinless one to be sin for us (2 Corinthians 5:21). Matthew does not draw these connections himself, but the baptism is the first public step toward the cross.

John's description of the coming One also matters. He will baptize with the Holy Spirit and gather the wheat. The role of judge is given to Jesus. The baptism ends with the Father's approval before Jesus has done any miracle or given any teaching, which shows that his sonship rests on who he is.