Matthew 3:13 Commentary and Bible Study

The public ministry of the Lord Jesus Christ is about to begin, and therefore he leaves Galilee where he has grown up and comes to John the Baptist. John is the forerunner of the Messiah, the last of the Old Testament prophets, whose calling is to prepare the way for the one coming after him. He will not wish to retain his disciples indefinitely, but will hand them over to the one who is greater than him, so that the beginning of Christ’s ministry marks the beginning of the end of John’s ministry, for his work is now almost done. Jesus comes to the Jordan where John is baptizing because there is a plentiful supply of water for baptism by immersion, the only mode that John used. He asks John for baptism, but this seems inappropriate to John, so that he at first raises objections. John evidently knows who it is that has come to him; it is the one whom God has sent him to announce to Israel. That one is the long await Messiah, whose coming all the prophets have foretold. John knows that he is a fallen human being, but Jesus Christ is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. Since John’s baptism is a baptism of repentance in which those coming confess their sins publicly, and since Jesus is the one who takes away sin, John does not understand why Jesus needs to be baptized by him. This seems to John to be a mistake, and he judges that if any baptism is to take place it should be Jesus baptizing John. John is aware of his sin; he is aware of his need of forgiveness and that he too needs the Lamb of God to take away his sin. He has been sent by God to baptize and yet he too needs this baptism. Should the greater be baptized by the lesser? John’s conception of the Messiah is very high. Should the one whose shoe latchet he is not worthy to unloose come to him for symbolic cleansing? John is very uncomfortable with this. But Jesus Christ has not come to baptize with water but with the Spirit, and what John asks for would also be inappropriate.