Chapter 3 - JOHN'S BAPTISM OF REPENTANCE
The New Testament opens with a call to
repentance. The ministry of John the Baptist was
pre-eminently devoted to emphasizing its
importance. Sent of God in the spirit and power
of Elijah to prepare the way of the Lord, he
found a self-satisfied, self-righteous nation
prating of being the chosen people professedly
waiting for the promised Messiah, and yet
utterly unready to welcome Him because of their
low moral condition.
Like the Tishbite, he appeared suddenly and
unannounced, a wilderness preacher, declaring to
the abjects of Israel first, and then as others
sought him out, to the self-righteous scribes,
Pharisees, and Sadducees the need of heart
preparation for the reception of the Kingdom.
His message was summed up in the pregnant words:
"Repent ye: for the kingdom of heaven is at
hand." It was a challenge to face their sins and
the true state of their hearts in the light of
the holiness and righteousness of God. And we
are glad to learn that the publicans and sinners
hearing him justified God and were baptized in
recognition of the judgment of self and the need
of remission of sins.
For with the preaching was linked the rite of
baptism. It was definitely declared to be a
baptism of repentance for (or unto) the
remission of sins. That is, those who submitted
to his baptism were practically saying: 'In this
act I declare my change of mind, my new attitude
toward myself, my sins, and my God. I own my
unworthiness, and I cast myself upon the
infinite mercy of God, looking to Him for
deliverance, counting on Him to forgive my sins
and graciously fit me for the reception of the
King and a place in the Kingdom of the heavens.'
I do not say that all who were baptized
entered into its full meaning, but I do insist
that this was its true import. Baptism, of
course, did not procure remission of sins. It
was simply the acknowledgment of the need of
such forgiveness. Those so baptized might be
likened to debtors giving their notes in
recognition of their indebtedness. When our Lord
condescended to be identified with this remnant
by Himself undergoing baptism He was, as it
were, endorsing their notes, declaring that He
was ready to meet all their responsibilities by
fulfilling every righteous demand of the throne
of God on their behalf. It was more than three
years later that He said, "I have a baptism to
be baptized with; and how am I straitened [or
pained] till it be accomplished." Ah, the notes
were fast falling due, and on the cross He must
settle in bloody agony for them all.
How much of this John, the forerunner, saw it
is not easy to say. But that he did have some
insight into the great truth, that Jesus was not
only Messiah but Saviour, was evidenced by his
words, "Behold the Lamb of God, that taketh away
the sin of the world!" His baptism of repentance
was with a view to the remission of sins through
the offering up of the foreordained Lamb as a
propitiatory sacrifice.
To the haughty, self-righteous leaders John
said: "O generation of vipers, who hath warned
you to flee from the wrath to come? Bring forth
therefore fruits meet for repentance." And then
he warned them that natural relationship to
Abraham would not save anybody, but spiritual
kinship only; for faith alone makes one a child
of the faithful patriarch. "Fruits meet for
repentance." That is, the changed life must
evidence the changed attitude; otherwise there
is no true repentance at all.
And then he declared: "Now also the ax is
laid unto the root of the trees: Every tree
therefore which bringeth not forth good fruit is
hewn down, and cast into the fire." How
different this to the ameliorative measures
advocated by many who should know better! Some
modern preaching might be summed up in 'the axe
is laid to the fruit of the tree.' Cut off the
bad fruit. Prune the tree. Spray it with a
religio-philosophical mixture. Change its
environment if possible. Attempt by ethical
culture, by religious education, to make the
tree produce good fruit -- then all will be
well. No need of repentance. No place for a
second birth. But in spite of human reasoning,
the divine principle remains unchanged. The tree
is bad; that is why its fruit is corrupt. No use
experimenting and trying to produce good fruit
from so unwholesome a plant. Lay the axe to the
root. Hew down the bad tree to make way for a
new one of the heavenly Father's planting.
Repentance is the recognition, the avowed
recognition, of God's estimate of the hopeless
character of our hearts till renewed by the Word
and Spirit of God. Grapes cannot be gathered
from a thorn bush, nor figs from thistles. It is
not the fruit that must be dealt with. The tree
must be removed. To attempt to improve it is
useless. God Himself has given it up. "The heart
is deceitful above all things and desperately
[literally, incurably] wicked." Therefore the
need of a new heart and a new spirit.
It was thus that John prepared the way of the
Lord. No matter with whom he dealt, he sought to
expose the hidden evil of the heart and the need
of self-judgment, which is just the recognition
that, "in me, that is, in my flesh, dwelleth no
good thing." In order to make this manifest,
covetous soldiers were commanded to be content
with their wages, tax-gatherers to exact no more
than their due. Herod, the King himself -- who
sought to patronize John, while living in vilest
incest and licentiousness -- writhed as he heard
the stern preacher declare, while he pointed to
Herodias, "It is not lawful for thee to have
her." A prison cell and later the executioner's
sword might silence the tongue of the preacher
of repentance, but his words live on forever,
rebuking still the self-indulgent, the
self-righteous, the covetous, the lustful, to
the end of time, who fancy they can in some way
bribe an offended God to overlook and condone
their iniquity.
John the Baptist has been described as "the
last of the prophets," and his ministry was
certainly most intimately linked with that of
the great prophetic brotherhood of the Old
Testament. We have already seen how our Lord
identifies him in spirit with Elijah; and to His
questioning disciples, who were perplexed
regarding the prediction in Malachi of Elijah's
return prior to the ushering in of the great and
dreadful day of the Lord, the Saviour replies,
referring to John, "If ye will receive it, this
is Elijah which was for to come." He came to
break up the fallow ground that the word of the
Kingdom might not be sown among thorns. Thus he
was chosen of God as a voice crying in the
wilderness to prepare the way of the Lord and
make straight in the desert a highway for our
God. His was a leveling message. There were
hills of pride to come down and valleys of
degradation to be filled in by grace in order
that the divine program might be expeditiously
carried out.
In one sense his was a unique ministry which
can never again be repeated, inasmuch as the
same circumstances will never be duplicated. But
there is a wider sense in which a similar
message is always in order, for man's heart
remains unchanged and the King is still seeking
those who will acknowledge and bow to His
authority. Hence the importance of ever
insisting upon the need of repentance, a state
of soul which must always precede blessing.
The words of the holy Virgin, in the
Magnificat, have an ever present application:
"He hath put down the mighty from their seats,
and exalted them of low degree. He hath filled
the hungry with good things; and the rich he
hath sent empty away" (Luke 1:52-53). This is
the same leveling doctrine as that proclaimed by
John. It is the "no difference" doctrine of the
Apostle Paul. Yet how the human heart rebels
against it. How men pride themselves on fancied
distinctions which God's eye does not discern.
"Must I be saved in the same way as my
coachman?" indignantly asked a distinguished
lady.
"Madam," was the faithful reply, "you do not
need to be saved at all. But if you ever are
saved it will be on exactly the same ground as
any other poor sinner."
Years ago I was amazed to hear an eloquent
French evangelist, Paul J. Loizeaux, exclaim,
"Oh, how hard it is to find sinners! If only I
could find one, I have a marvelous message for
him." A moment's thought made his meaning clear.
To be a sinner is one thing; to know it is
another.
Faithful preaching of man's responsibility
will drive this truth home to the conscience.
Repentance is the recognition of my sinnership
-- the owning before God that I am as vile as He
has declared me to be in His holy Word. Until
one comes to this place there is no further word
from heaven for any man, except the sentence of
doom. This truth does not in the least degree
compromise the Gospel of grace. It rather
prepares the sinner to know "the grace of God in
truth" and to rejoice in it, reveling in the
marvellous provision God has made to "satisfy
the longing soul."
Just as one may be hungry and not realize it
because of a cloyed taste, and so fail to heed
the dinner call, so one may be dying for lack of
God's gracious provision and have no sense of
his lost estate, and therefore no appreciation
of the message of grace. The call to repentance
is designed of God to produce that soul hunger
that will make the distressed one come with full
appetite to the Gospel feast. Until one is thus
aroused and made conscious of his need he will
turn from the Gospel story with indifference and
contempt. "The full soul loatheth an honeycomb;
but to the hungry soul every bitter thing is
sweet."
Too often the earnest Gospel preacher dwells
on the hopelessness of obtaining salvation by
good works, when addressing men whose works are
altogether evil and who have no thought of
meriting life eternal but care only for the
things of this godless world. We are warned
against casting pearls before swine. Is it not
possible even in Gospel preaching to do this
very thing? We may make it all too simple, so
easy that we quite misrepresent the God of all
grace, who has in all ages first sought to show
men their sinfulness and guilt, and then has
offered the remedy to those who confessed to
their dread disease.
I am persuaded revival would come to
believers and awakening to the lost if there
were more faithful preachers of the John the
Baptist type, who would cry aloud and spare not,
but would solemnly show the people their sins
and call upon them in the Name of the Lord to
repent, remembering that he who justifies
himself must be condemned by God, but he who
condemns himself will find complete
justification in Christ, who died for his sins
and who now is exalted to God's right hand as a
Prince and a Saviour, granting repentance and
remission of sins to all who receive His
testimony.
"I am not told to labor
To put away my sin,
So foolish, weak and helpless,
I never could begin.
But, blessed truth, I know it,
Though ruined by the fall,
Christ for my sin has suffered,
Yes, Christ has done it all."
It will be seen that repentance is the very
opposite of meritorious experience. It is the
confession that one is utterly without merit,
and if he is ever saved at all it can only be
through the merits of our Lord Jesus Christ,
"who gave himself a ransom for all." Here is
firm footing for the soul who realizes that all
self-effort is but sinking sand. Christ alone is
the Rock of our salvation.
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