Many among the Jewish leadership and people of Jesus’ day had the highest respect for John the Baptist; some even thought of him as the Messiah. Had John the Baptist announced that he was Elijah, as Jesus had testified, those who were eagerly waiting for the Messiah would have readily believed John’s testimony and flocked to Jesus.
Instead, John’s ignorance of God’s providence, which led him to insist that he was not Elijah, became the principal reason why the Jewish people did not come to Jesus.
John the Baptist testified to Jesus at the Jordan River: I baptize you with water for repentance, but he who is coming after me is mightier than I, whose sandals I am not worthy to carry; he will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and with fire (Matt. 3:11). I myself did not know him; but he who sent me to baptize with water said to me, “He on whom you see the Spirit descend and remain, this is he who baptizes with the Holy Spirit.” And I have seen and have borne witness that this is the Son of God (John 1:33-34).
God had directly revealed to John that Jesus was the Messiah, and John bore witness to this revelation. Moreover, he said, “I am the voice of one crying in the wilderness, ‘Make straight the way of the Lord'” (John 1:23), and declared that he was the one who had been sent before the Christ (John 3:28).
Therefore, John should have realized through his own wisdom that he was the returning Elijah. Even if John did not realize this fact, since God had revealed to him that Jesus was the Messiah, he should have accepted the testimony of Jesus and, in obedience, proclaimed himself to be Elijah.
However, John was ignorant of God’s Will. He negated Jesus’ testimony concerning him; moreover, he separated from Jesus and went his own way. We can imagine how sorrowful Jesus must have been as these events unfolded. How sorrowful must God have felt as He looked upon His Son in such a difficult situation.
In truth, John the Baptist’s mission as a witness ended when he baptized Jesus and testified to him. What should his mission have been after that point?
At the time of John’s birth, his father Zechariah, filled with the Holy Spirit, had prophesied concerning the mission of his son to serve the Messiah, saying: “grant us that we . . . might serve him without fear, in holiness and righteousness before him all the days of our life” (Luke 1:74-75). In this light, after John the Baptist bore witness to Jesus, he more than anyone, should have served Jesus with ardent devotion as a disciple for the rest of his life.
However, John left Jesus and went about baptizing independently. It is no wonder that the Jewish people were confused to the point of even supposing that John was the Messiah (Luke 3:15). Their leaders were confused, too (John 1:19-20). What is more, in one incident, a Jew who followed Jesus and the disciples of John the Baptist quarreled with each other over whose teacher was giving more baptisms (John 3:25-26).
We can also discern from John’s statement, “He must increase, but I must decrease” (John 3:30), that in his heart John did not regard himself as sharing the same destiny as Jesus.
If John the Baptist and Jesus were walking side by side and sharing the same destiny, how then could John ever decrease as Jesus was increasing? Indeed, John the Baptist should have been Jesus’ foremost apostle, zealously proclaiming the Gospel of Jesus. Yet, due to his blindness, he did not fulfill his mission. His precious life, which was meant to be offered for Jesus’ sake, was eventually lost over a relatively insignificant affair (Mark 6:14-29).
When the mind of John the Baptist was focused on God, he recognized Jesus as the Messiah and testified to him. Later, when the inspiration left him and he returned to a mundane state, his ignorance returned and exacerbated his faithlessness. Unable to acknowledge that he was the return of Elijah, John began to regard Jesus in the same disbelieving way as other Jews viewed him, particularly after he was imprisoned. Jesus’ every word and deed seemed to him only strange and perplexing. At one point, John tried to resolve his doubts by sending his disciples to Jesus, asking, “Are you he who is to come, or shall we look for another?” (Matt. 11:3).
When Jesus was confronted with this question from John, he answered indignantly, with an air of admonition: Go and tell John what you hear and see: the blind receive their sight and the lame walk, lepers are cleansed and the deaf hear, and the dead are raised up, and the poor have good news preached to them. And blessed is he who takes no offense at me (Matt. 11:4-6).
John the Baptist had been chosen while still inside the womb for the mission of attending Jesus. He led an arduous, ascetic life in the wilderness, building his ministry in order to prepare the way for the coming Messiah. When Jesus began his public ministry, God revealed the identity of Jesus to John before anyone else and inspired John to bear witness to him as the Son of God. Yet John did not properly receive the grace that Heaven had bestowed on him. Therefore, when confronted with John’s doubting question, Jesus did not answer explicitly that he was the Messiah; he instead answered in this circuitous way. Certainly, John the Baptist must have known about Jesus’ miracles and signs. Despite this, Jesus gave a veiled answer, reminding John of the works that he was doing, with the hope of awakening him to his true identity.
We should understand that when Jesus said, “the poor have good news preached to them,” he was expressing his deep sorrow over the disbelief of John the Baptist and the Jewish leadership. The prepared Jews, and John the Baptist in particular, were the rich people who had been blessed with an abundant wealth of God’s love. Yet because they all rejected Jesus, he had to roam the seacoast of Galilee and the region of Samaria to search among the “poor” for those who would listen to the Gospel. These poor ones were uneducated fishermen, tax collectors and prostitutes.
The disciples whom Jesus would have preferred to find were not such as these. Since Jesus came to establish the Kingdom of Heaven on earth, he was more in need of one leader who could guide a thousand than a thousand who would follow a leader. Did he not first preach the Gospel to the priests and scribes in the Temple? He went there in search of prepared and capable people.
Nonetheless, as Jesus indicated in a parable, because the guests who were invited to the banquet did not come, he had to roam the streets and byways to gather the poor and maimed, the blind and lame (Luke 14:16-24). Faced with the miserable situation of having to offer the riches of his banquet to the uninvited outcasts of society, Jesus expressed his sorrow in these words of judgment: “Blessed is he who takes no offense at me” (Matt. 11:6).
Though John was greatly admired in his day, Jesus judged John’s life by saying obliquely that one who took offense at him would not be blessed, no matter how great he might be.
John took offense and thus failed in his mission to attend Jesus devotedly for the whole of his life.
After the disciples of John the Baptist finished questioning Jesus and left, Jesus remarked that although John may have been the greatest of all prophets, he failed to complete the mission God had entrusted to him: Truly, I say to you, among those born of women there has risen no one greater than John the Baptist; yet he who is least in the kingdom of heaven is greater than he (Matt. 11:11).
Everyone in heaven was born of woman and lived an earthly life. One would expect that since John was the greatest among all those born of women, he should also have been the greatest in the kingdom of heaven. Why was John less than even the least in the kingdom?
Numerous prophets in the past had borne testimony to the Messiah indirectly, across the expanse of time. John, on the other hand, had the mission of testifying to the Messiah directly. If testifying to the Messiah was the main mission of the prophets, then John the Baptist was surely the greatest of prophets.
Nevertheless, in terms of attending the Messiah, he was the least of all. Everyone in the kingdom of heaven, no matter how lowly, knew that Jesus was the Messiah and served him with devotion. Yet John the Baptist, who had been called upon to serve the Messiah more closely than anyone else, separated from Jesus and walked his own way. In terms of his devotion to Jesus, therefore, he was less than even the least in the kingdom of heaven.
Jesus continued, “From the days of John the Baptist until now the kingdom of heaven has been forcefully advancing, and forceful men lay hold of it” (Matt. 11:12). John the Baptist was chosen from before his birth and led an arduous ascetic life in the wilderness. Had he attended Jesus with a sincere heart, the position of Jesus’ chief disciple was surely reserved for him.
However, because he failed in his mission to serve Jesus, Peter, a “forceful man,” laid hold of the position of chief disciple. We can deduce from the expression “from the days of John the Baptist until now” that Jesus spoke the verses that follow (Matt. 11:16-19) in reference not primarily to the people in general but specifically to John the Baptist.
Jesus concluded, “Wisdom is justified by her deeds” (Matt. 11:19). Had John acted wisely, he would not have left Jesus, and his deeds would have been remembered forever as righteousness. Unfortunately, he was foolish. He blocked the Jewish people’s path to Jesus, as well as his own path.
Here we have come to understand that the main reason why Jesus had to die on the cross was the failure of John the Baptist.
Sun Myung Moon