Tractates on the Gospel of John (continued)
TRACTATE 5 111 was one salvation then and another now. If Christ has been changed, salvation, too, has been changed; if salvation is in Christ, and if Christ is the same, we have the same salvation.
(2) But why was John sent baptizing? Because it was necessary for Christ to be baptized. Why was it necessary for Christ to be baptized? Why did Christ need to be born? Why did Christ need to be crucified? For if he had to come to show the way of humility and to make himself the very way of humility, humility ought to have been fulfilled by him in all things. Hence he deigned to give authority to his own baptism that his servants might know with what eagerness they ought to run to the Lord's baptism since he himself did not disdain to receive a servant's baptism. For this has been granted to John, that the baptism be called his.
4. My beloved people, ponder this, observe it discriminatively, and know it. The baptism which John received was called John's baptism. He alone received such a gift; there was no just man before him, none after him, to receive a baptism which would be called his baptism. He did, to be sure, receive it; for he could not do anything on his own. For if anyone speaks on his own, he speaks a lie from what belongs to himself.^ And from what source did he receive it except from the Lord, Jesus Christ? He received the power to baptize from that one whom he later baptized. Don't be astonished! For Christ did this regarding John just as he did some particular thing regarding his mother.
(2) For it was said about Christ, "all things were made through him."'^ If all things [were made] through him, through him also Mary was made from whom afterwards
Christ was born. Pay attention, my beloved people. As he created Mary and was created through Mary, so he gave baptism to John and was baptized by John.
5. Therefore he received baptism from John for this reason, that by receiving what was inferior from an inferior, he might encourage inferiors to what was superior. But why was not he alone baptized by John, if John, through whom Christ g. Cf. Jn 8.44 and section 1. 10. Jn 1.3; cf. Tractate 1.12—15.