WHAT WAS SHOWN BY THE BAPTISM OF JOHN?
By O. Davis
The angel said to Joseph, “Thou shalt call his name Jesus [Saviour]; for he shall save his people from their sins.” Matt. 1: 21. If he was to save his people from their sins, the previous sanctuary service had not done this work, but had only remitted the sins under or through the figure of the death which Jesus was to die, when as the “Lamb of God” he became the atoning sacrifice. Let us watch the unfolding of the plan in which Jesus becomes the Saviour of his people as it is connected with the mission of John the Baptist. Luke 3: 4: John the Baptist was “the voice of one crying in the wilderness, Prepare ye the way of the Lord, make his paths straight.” Luke 1: 76, 77: “For thou shalt go before the face of the Lord to prepare his ways; to give knowledge of salvation unto his people by the remission of their sins.” He was to give the knowledge of salvation by the remission of sins in preparing the way for the great sacrificial act of Jesus the “Lamb of God,” who was to give his life for the sins of the world. How did he do this work? He preached (Luke 3: 3) “the baptism of repentance for the remission of sins.” Let us look carefully at this work which was to prepare the way for Christ,—to give the knowledge of salvation to his people. In Mark 1: 5 we are told that the people were “all baptized of him in the river of Jordan, confessing their sins.” The first act in this work was the repenting and confessing of sins. In this part of the work there was no making known any particular plan or work of remission; but John was to give the knowledge of salvation by Jesus and to make his paths straight. This knowledge, then, must be found in the ordinance of baptism, as the sins were remitted through this ordinance and the knowledge of salvation was to be given through the remission of sins. This salvation, then, must be prefigured by this ordinance, the ordinance which the Lord had sent him to prepare his way with. (John 1: 33: “But he that sent me to baptize with water,” etc.) As the sins were remitted by this baptism, as the wages of sin is death, and as without the sacrifice of life there is no remission, it could only be done through this ordinance as a figure of the death of the Lamb of God, who was to take away the sin, in fact. Baptism, then, must have been an acknowledgment of the penalty of sin, and if it was to prepare the way for Christ, it could only, and must, prefigure that great sacrificial act. And further, John was to make his paths straight. The great act of Christ in becoming the saviour of his people must be shown entire. The former sacrifices, which had prefigured the death of Christ, and through which sins had been remitted, had shown only his death; they did not show his resurrection from the dead. But John was to make his paths straight; and as his resurrection from death was a part of the act by which he becomes the saviour of his people, this figure which John was sent with must show that also. Does baptism, then, contain these essential figures? First, as to its being a figure of death. Is it not a positive necessity that it should be such a figure, as sins were remitted through it? As it was given by Heaven, by one who saw the end from the beginning and knew the fitness of things, by one who had for four thousand years taught the remission of sins through the figure of death, and as it was now to specially prepare the way for the work of Jesus, would it not be strange if this crowning work in the preparation for Christ should not contain this previously essential figure! And was not Cain’s offering rejected because there was no figure of death in it, and it did not therefore recognize the necessary work of an atoning Saviour? We will try this figure by which the way of salvation was made known by John. We take the candidate for baptism out into the water, we baptize or immerse him beneath its surface, we hold him there a short time and he will die. There is nothing but death there. (Ah, how true that the wages of sin is death!) Here, then, we truly find the figure of death, and by accepting of the death of Christ through this figure, our sins can be remitted. (Paul says, in Rom. 6: 5, “Planted together in the likeness of his death.”) And we can be raised out of this state of death, thus showing the resurrection from the dead also. Here we accept in figure that which Christ accomplishes in fact; and thus John’s baptism showed the way of salvation, and made Christ’s paths straight. As the time draws near for this atoning sacrifice of Christ, how much more significant the figure! The sinner himself must now pass under a state of death; he must show more directly than by the death of an animal that condemnation rests upon him; and thus the penalty is brought nearer home, and he is better prepared to accept his Saviour’s death. Significant, truly, and given at the right time, was this institution of God. How well adapted, not only to recognize death as the wages of sin, but the resurrection from the dead also. Is it not consistent to suppose that John understood the meaning of this institution, to some extent at least, if not fully? He says, John 3: 36, “He that believeth on the Son hath everlasting life; and he that believeth not the Son shall not see life; but the wrath of God abideth on him.” And although he preached remission of sins by his baptism, he could point to Jesus as the Lamb of God that takes away the sin of the world. What a spirit of inquiry must have been awakened in the minds of those who had had their sins remitted only through the blood of an animal, as John constantly affirmed that this work was but to prepare the way for Christ! Must they not have understood it as a figure of Christ’s work? And when he actually died on the cross and was raised from the dead, and when Peter and the rest of the apostles preached repentance and remission of sins in the name of a crucified and risen Christ, memorializing as a fact that that had been prefigured, is it a wonder that the people were brought under conviction at the wonderful work of God, accompanied as it was by the manifestations of the Holy Spirit, and that three thousand souls were converted? Can we not profitably pause here and contemplate this wonderful unfolding to man of God’s great act of love in his plan for man’s redemption? And can we not unite with the angels in the anthem, “Glory to God in the highest”? O. DAVIS.