According to Jesus, John had a pretty solid ministry. The
incarnate Son of God said this about him:
“But what did you go out to see? A prophet? Yes, I say to
you, and more than a prophet. “This is he of whom it is written: ‘Behold, I
send My messenger before Your face, Who will prepare Your way before You.’ “For
I say to you, among those born of women there is not a greater prophet than
John the Baptist.” [Luke 7]
It seems to me that if the Son of God describes you as the
greatest prophet in the history of the world, that’s probably a ministry you
can trust. But Jesus went further, calling him Elijah.
“For all the Prophets and the Law prophesied until John. And
if you are willing to accept it, he is the Elijah who was to come.” [Matthew
11]
Jesus was identifying John as the fulfillment of Malachi 4: “Behold,
I will send you Elijah the prophet
Before the coming of the great and dreadful day of the LORD,”
the prophet that the entire nation was waiting for.
This John the Baptist from Jesus’ point of view. Looking at
his life from his own perspective, we see a different picture:
“Now this is the testimony of John, when the Jews sent
priests and Levites from
Jerusalem
to ask him, “Who are you?” He confessed, and did not deny, but confessed, “I am
not the Christ.” And they asked him, “What then? Are you Elijah?” He said, “I
am not.” “Are you the Prophet?” And he answered, “No.”
“Then they said to him, “What do you say about yourself?” He
said: “I am ‘The voice of one crying in the wilderness: “Make straight the way
of the LORD,” ‘ as the prophet Isaiah said.”
And they asked him, saying, “Why then do you baptize if you
are not the Christ, nor Elijah, nor the Prophet?” John answered them, saying, “I
baptize with water, but there stands One among you whom you do not know. “It is
He who, coming after me, is preferred before me, whose sandal strap I am not
worthy to loose.” [John 1]
A lot of people did not understand John the Baptist, and
John himself was one of them.
John understood some of the role he was fulfilling. He knew
that he was preparing the way for Messiah, but he didn’t recognize that he was
fulfilling one of the more anticipated Old Testament prophecies.
In fact, John even questioned whether he had utterly failed
at the part of his ministry he did understand, at one point sending his
disciples to ask Jesus, “Are You the Coming One, or do we look for another?”
[Luke 7:19]
This is the man that the Messiah, the Incarnate Son of God
described as, “Among those born of women there is not a greater prophet than John
the Baptist.”
I was reflecting on these statements about John recently,
and I realized, “If John can miss it that badly, so can we. If John only
figured out part of what he was doing, and wasn’t even sure about that, then
how often, I wonder, do we misunderstand the impact that we’re having on the
world, on the lives around us. Do we miss the big picture?”
The reality is that we won’t really understand – we
cannot understand – our effectiveness in
our life in this life here on earth, not until we see it from God’s
perspective. I refer to that day as Big Screen Day, when we’ll actually see the
results of our life’s work, and we’ll meet the people whose lives we have
impacted.
Until then, we “see through a glass darkly,” and we lack the
whole picture. My recommendation is that we don’t waste our time wondering
about the efficacy of our ministry. He’s instructed us to “fix our eyes on
Jesus, the pioneer and perfecter of faith.”
We all know 1Thessalonians 5:11: “Therefore comfort each
other and edify one another, just as you also are doing.” We know about our
responsibility to comfort each other, to edify each other.
