Jesus And John The Baptist
JESUS AND JOHN THE BAPTIST
MATTHEW 11:1-15
John the Baptist was greater than the greatest Old Testament prophet—yet less than the least in God’s kingdom, for he faded out as the kingdom arrived.
We have not been told thus far of the imprisonment of John the Baptist: it is related as a “flash-back” in 14:3ff. John had announced that the Coming One would carry out a ministry of judgment, but the reports of Jesus’ activity which reached him in the cell at Machaerus had little to do with judgment. Was Jesus, he wondered, the Coming One after all? Had he himself perhaps been mistaken in so identifying him? When he sent his messengers for reassurance on these questions, Jesus performed before their eyes many of the signs which, according to the prophets, would mark the new age (cf. Isaiah 35:5f.; 61:1); when they told John what they had seen, his faith would be confirmed, and he would not feel that Jesus had let him down (for this is what “take offense” amounts to in 11:6.)
Jesus’ witness to John sets John on a pinnacle by himself. Those who remembered John’s appearance and demeanor must have laughed as they heard the inappropriate metaphors of 11:7-8. Jesus confirmed the general belief that John was a prophet—“and more than a prophet,” he added (11:9), for John, the last prophet of the old order, was the herald of the imminent kingdom (cf. 3:2), the messenger of Malachi 3:1 who would prepare the way of the Lord (cf. Isaiah 40:3 quoted in Matthew 3:3) and the returning Elijah foretold in Malachi 4:5f., whose advent would precede “the great and terrible day of the Lord.” At the end of the old age of “the prophets and the law” John stood and announced the dawn of the new age, without himself entering that new age; therefore, unsurpassed as he was in personal stature, he was surpassed in privilege by the least in the new age (11:11).
The reference in 11:12 may be to the Zealots and other militant nationalists, who endeavored to hasten the new age by force of arms. They, too, were liable to “take offense” at Jesus when he refused to exploit his popularity by putting their policy into practice; and indeed, in this day as in that, all who find that he will not accommodate himself to their preconceived pattern do well to pay heed to the beatitude of 11:6.