John bare witness of Him
The pre-eminence of Christ
I. CHRIST’S SUPERIORITY TO JOHN THE BAPTIST.
1. John refers to and repeats previous testimonies, applying them to Him whom the congregation had just seen depart. The testimony was pointed, warm, confident, bold.
2. The substance and form of the testimony that, though Jesus was after John as to His birth and ministry, He was before him as to the dignity of His person, His mediatorial office, and above all His Deity.
II. CHRIST’S SUPERIORITY TO ALL BELIEVERS.
1. All the fulness demanded for their wants, the entire supply for their need, is treasured up in Him.
(1) This might be asserted of the Word.
(2) But it is here asserted of Him as made flesh.
2. What has the believer that he has not received from Christ? By nature he is empty.
3. How exalting to Christ the truth that all are and always have been, and always will be, dependent on Him.
4. We derive from Christ, not through merit, grace after grace, and grace corresponding in nature to that poured on Christ.
III. CHRIST’S SUPERIORITY TO MOSES.
1. Moses held a high place--the Law was given by him.
2. Nevertheless, no comparison could be made of Moses with Christ. He fulfilled his ministry and passed away, but Christ abides as the eternal administrator of grace and truth.
(1) The Law gives knowledge of sin and leaves us: grace and truth come with salvation from sin.
(2) The Law was the shadow of good things to come: the grace and truth of Christ were those good things.
IV. CHRIST’S SUPERIORITY TO ALL CREATED INTELLIGENCES.
1. God is invisible and incomprehensible to all except His Son Jesus Christ.
2. Many are sons of God, Christ alone is the only-begotten of the Father.
3. Christ has declared the Father as no creature has done, revealing His nature, perfections, counsels, by His teaching, example, and secret influence on the minds of His people.
4. The eternal life of the best of His creatures consist in the knowledge of Him. (A. Beith, D. D.)
Christ pre-eminent
I. IT IS CHRIST ALONE WHO SUPPLIES THE SPIRITUAL WANTS OF ALL BELIEVERS (John 1:16).
1. The Spirit of Life is His special gift to the Church, and conveys from Him, as from a great root, sap and vigour to all the believing branches.
2. He is rich in mercy, wisdom, righteousness, holiness.
3. Out of His fulness believers in every age have been supplied.
4. Every saint in glory will acknowledge that he is Christ’s debtor for all he is.
II. THE VAST SUPERIORITY OF CHRIST TO MOSES AND THE GOSPEL TO THE LAW (John 1:17).
1. Moses was employed as a servant to convey the moral and ceremonial law which could not justify.
2. Christ as a Son came with the keys of God’s treasury of grace and truth Hebrews 3:6).
(1) Grace bringing salvation through faith.
(2) Truth fulfilling in His own Person the types of the Old
Testament.
III. IT IS CHRIST ALONE WHO HAS REVEALED THE FATHER TO MAN (verse 18).
1. No man could see God and live.
2. Yet all that man is capable of knowing of God the Father is revealed to us by God the Son. In His words, deeds, life, and death we see the wisdom, love, and holiness of God.
IV. How GREAT THE HONOUR OF THE BAPTIST AND CHRISTIAN MINISTERS in heralding such a Being. (Bp. Ryle.)
Face to face with Jesus Christ
How far ahead John was of the apostles in his conception and reception of the Saviour. Throughout the Baptist was not only a seer of the light but was drenched by the light.
I. JOHN’S EXPERIENCE AND TESTIMONY. Verse 15 is information that the Apostle evidently thought very valuable. Having affirmed the Incarnation he recalls the testimony of the Baptist to that Incarnation. In this testimony lay the power and grace of the Forerunner. His was no outside knowledge or second-hand information, but experience, direct and personal. So now the man of permanent power is the man who speaks, or teaches, or works out of personal and spiritual experience. Learning, culture, travel, profoundest and most masterly thinking are well in their several places, because sanctifiable; but sanctity based on experience of the witness of the Spirit in us and to us individually is the grand thing.
II. JOHN’S FULL-VOICED, ARTICULATE UTTERANCE OF THAT EXPERIENCE. Combine the two, “beareth” and “crieth,” and you have the perfection of Christ-like witness. Sometimes in law-courts witnesses have again and again to be instructed to speak “out” or “up.” There is self-evident reserve, hesitancy, a wish to say as little as possible. But John had no reserves, concealments, trickeries, and so “cried” out. Fitting it should have been so. Your private letter or personal explanation may be quiet and unobtrusive; but if your stand is in the public market, and the proclamation is a royal one, security must be taken that all around hear and know. If our heart be in our utterance the voice will answer to the heart. The testimony must not be chirped or whined, or spoken in falsetto. An unnatural twang will spoil the best speaking, albeit roaring, violence, physical sensationalism must not be confounded with “crying.”
III. THE WELL-BASED AND SELF-ABNEGATING CHARACTER OF JOHN’S TESTIMONY. It was the experience of no mere mood or frame, but the granitic conviction and enunciation that he was only the runner before another.
1. His aim was to keep men from leaning on himself.
2. He disclaimed any intention of founding a sect or organizing a Church. He called himself a “Voice,” not a foundation.
3. His great purpose was to lead men to Christ. From this he never swerved. John’s conduct in drawing attention away from self to Christ should be imitated by every worker for Christ. Explanation, system-making, to say nothing of self-proclamation, is often sheer waste of that strength which can only be profitably utilized in sending men straight to Christ.
IV. JOHN’S UNEXAGGERATED, almost charily worded, RECOGNITION OF CHRIST’S DIVINITY. There was no gospel for him as there is none for us if Christ were not human. He was “a Man,” but a Man who was co-eternal with the Father. But the Baptist’s economy of words in proclaiming that fact is noticeable. “He was before me.” Simple, ordinary-looking, superficially unremarkable, but they hold in them an absolute statement of the pre-existence and Divinity of the Man Christ Jesus.
V. THE SIMPLICITY AND DIRECTNESS OF JOHN’S WITNESS TO THE PERSON AND WORK OF CHRIST. “This is He.” To-day the message of the servant of Christ in relation to every problem of life and destiny must be, “this is He.” There lies the spell, the mission, the divinest success. Not His gospel even, but Himself. Not about Him, but to Him. Not the Bible or the Church, but Himself. (A. B. Grosart, D. D.)
The effectiveness of the Baptist’s ministry
“He who follows me preceded me.” Here, then, is an apparent contradiction, intended to excite attention and stimulate mental activity. The enigmatical form must have also contributed to impress this important declaration on the memory of the hearers. (F. Godet, D. D.)
Public attention drawn to Christ
The coming forth of the Incarnate Word among men was not in secrecy and silence, as a king might go forth incognito among his subjects; but public attention was directed to Him. This was done most efficiently by John. (J. Culross, D. D.)
John’s self-effacement
Not only is the moon changeable, waving and waning, and its shape and light declining as it grows older, and itself approaches nearer and nearer to the sun; but so soon as the sun arises, though the moon should be yet in its full size and roundness, its light immediately fades from view, and itself becomes as if it no longer existed, for the superior glory of that incomprehensible luminary. And so both John the Baptist and the Jewish form of worship faded and shrunk, and became as non-existent, after they had performed their parts and offices as witnesses and schoolmasters to the great and glorious appearing of the Son of God Himself, the Sun of righteousness, the Word made flesh, the Godhead incarnate, the light and life of men and all creation, embodied in shape, and planted in place, and made visible: though too bright and dazzling to be comprehended, except by those who had opened and exercised their eyes to see His witnesses in the hours of darkness, when others were immersed in sleep, and so were not forced to shut them close in the daytime, in the blindness of unbelief. (S. A. Bosanquet.)