John 3:22 Commentary and Bible Study

Jesus came with at least five disciples, and probably six including James, who would have been coupled with John ‘into the land of Judea’. This would be possibly between May and December of AD 27. There Christ ‘tarried with them’, perhaps for some six months, and baptised. John 4:2 tells us that, that it was the disciples of Christ who actually performed the baptisms. He did not baptise himself, and this was probably necessary to demonstrate that he was greater than John. If he needed to do the baptising then people might have thought that this was essential, and that this was a kind of salvation by ceremony. But no, baptism was just a sign that they wished their hearts to be cleansed, and they wanted to receive the Saviour. Therefore the disciples did the baptism, so there could be no superstitious misunderstanding. We note also that the disciples of course were not Levitical priests, neither was Christ, and this emphasised that water baptism was a symbol. It was not to be connected with the Jewish rite of baptism. And beside it was extraordinary in that both John and the Lord Jesus Christ were baptising large numbers of Israelites, which had never happened before. Israelites were not baptised by the Old Testament purifying baptisms; that was for Gentiles who were made proselytes. But here they are baptising Israelites with a baptism of repentance; children of Abraham, and even some of the Pharisees went to be baptised by John. He was so popular in his heyday that even they yielded to it, although it went against the grain with them, with their meticulous keeping of the ceremonial law. It would normally have been a scandal for them to allow non-priests and especially the disciples of Christ to baptise Jews.