9 The ax is already at the root of the trees, and every tree that does not produce good fruit will be cut down and thrown into the fire."
10 "What should we do then?" the crowd asked.
11 John answered, "Anyone who has two shirts should share with the one who has none, and anyone who has food should do the same."
12 Even tax collectors came to be baptized. "Teacher," they asked, "what should we do?"
13 "Don't collect any more than you are required to," he told them.
14 Then some soldiers asked him, "And what should we do?"
He replied, "Don't extort money and don't accuse people falsely—be content with your pay."
15 The people were waiting expectantly and were all wondering in their hearts if John might possibly be the Messiah. 16 John answered them all, "I baptize you with [b] water. But one who is more powerful than I will come, the thongs of whose sandals I am not worthy to untie. He will baptize you with [c] the Holy Spirit and fire. 17 His winnowing fork is in his hand to clear his threshing floor and to gather the wheat into his barn, but he will burn up the chaff with unquenchable fire." 18 And with many other words John exhorted the people and proclaimed the good news to them.
19 But when John rebuked Herod the tetrarch because of his marriage to Herodias, his brother's wife, and all the other evil things he had done, 20 Herod added this to them all: He locked John up in prison.
Dig Deeper
Every year in the United States, tens of thousands of people make a long journey to fulfill the lifelong dream of millions of Americans. They pack their bags, get everything prepared, and board a flight to go see the Super Bowl, the championship game of American professional football. Of course, Americans don’t need me to tell them that, but it might surprise you to know that there are millions of people around the world who could not care less about American football and don’t know much about it. The people who go to the Super Bowl are considered quite fortunate by those who would like to go, as the usual way that a normal person can get tickets is to win a lottery which enables you to buy the extremely expensive tickets. There are always, however, other ways to go about getting tickets whether it be through a ticket agent, a scalper, or through online means. Every year, though, you hear stories of someone who buys a ticket and confidently packs their bags and makes the trip to the big game, only to get there and be stunned to find out that their ticket is a forgery. They put all of their faith and trust in believing that they were one of the few to be able to watch the game live, only to find out that they had put their trust in the wrong thing. They did not have the proper qualification (a legitimate ticket) to get into the game. So, do you think that the people who put on the Super Bowl have mercy on these people and will let them in after all? I hope you didn’t get your hopes up very high because there is no way that would ever happen. It’s simple when it comes down to it. You either have a legitimate ticket or you go home and do not get into the game.
John’s vocation is to make the way for the Messiah, to clear the path for the anointed one. He went symbolically into the wilderness, the place of the Exodus of God’s people, and called people to return to God. This is the big event that most Jews were waiting for. They had, in fact, been waiting for hundreds of years and John was declaring that the time had finally come. Yet, the last thing that John wanted the Jewish people to whom he was speaking to think was that they would automatically be part of the family that God had promised to Abraham so long ago. If they relied simply on the fact that they were already in the family tree of Abraham and had nothing to worry about they were sadly mistaken. That would be to rely on the wrong thing. It would be like thinking that a forged ticket would get you into the Super Bowl. There were expectations of what the people of God’s family would be and what kind of people they would need to be in order to be prepared to properly respond to the message of the Messiah once he came. For those in Israel who didn’t have a legitimate “ticket” by embracing the Messiah, would find themselves just like those poor folks at the Super Bowl; on the outside looking in.
John came to prepare the way for Jesus and that included the reality that judgment awaited those who did not respond. As Simeon had foretold, he would be the cause of the rising and falling of many in Israel. This is not the Jesus that our culture prefers as opposed to the Jesus who would never dare to judge anyone, but it is the real Christ that John was preparing people for. The ax was already at the tree, meaning that the time was near. The trees that lacked the good fruit of keeping God’s covenant would be cut down and thrown to the fire (Ps. 74:5-6; Jer. 2:21;22; 11:16; Ezek. 15:6-7; Hos. 10:1-2).
Many in the crowd understood the point that they had not held up to the covenant. They were not the kind of people that would be numbered among God’s family. So, they want to know, what can they possibly do? John was doing two important things as he answered them. The first was that he was calling people to the standard of being God’s family, God’s Israel. They didn’t need a bunch of lengthy rabbinical arguments and numerous rules to remember. They needed some basic principles to prepare themselves and show that they were serious about the desire to be God’s people. Being God’s people required a new way of life and a new way of thinking. There would be no more room in God’s family for thinking of only themselves. They needed to learn principles of serving and loving others and thinking of other’s interests even before their own. Even the reviled tax collectors would have to serve as example that they should not rip people off and gain benefit to themselves at the expense of others. Herod’s own soldiers (it’s unlikely that these were Roman soldiers) were listening too and will serve Luke’s purposes as another representative group. The soldiers, said John, needed to not use low pay as an excuse to extort and abuse others. They needed to be content with what they had.
John’s fiery message of needing to recognize your own falling short even extended to the dangerous ground of speaking against Herod Antipas in verse 19. Herod had created quite a scandal by having an affair with his brother Philip’s wife. She then divorced Philip (a Jewish woman getting a divorce from her husband was almost unheard of in Jewish law and would have been quite distressing for the people under Herod’s rule) and married Antipas. But John was doing more than just criticizing the moral failings of a ruler. His point was that if Herod were going to think of himself as the king of the Jews, something he was eager to do, then he, and they, had better think again. His behavior alone should demonstrate that he was not the one that would call people to a new way of life that was so needed. He was nothing more than a pretender to the throne.
The second thing that John was accomplishing is related to the first but importantly different. He was calling people to a new life rather than a set of rules but the gospel message would soon make clear that they could not actually live this life on their own and earn their way into God’s family. To do so would be to trust in themselves. What John’s call was really about was not to find people who could actually live consistently according to these aspects of God’s will, and indeed God’s will as a whole. What was necessary was to find people who wanted to live like this. God wanted people who would be humble and realize that they needed something beyond the way of life that they were currently conformed to. People who humbly embraced the types of values that John was espousing would be people that would be ready for the message of the coming Messiah.
John spoke so clearly, so definitively, and so differently that people began to wonder if he was the Messiah himself. Yet, John would have none of that. His vocation was not to think more highly of himself than he ought. That would be to go against the very values that he had just espoused. John was not even worthy to perform the most menial task of a slave in comparison to the Messiah. In stating as much, he demonstrated the very kind of humility that would be necessary for people to be ready for God’s true Messiah.
John was baptizing people symbolically and preparing them for the realization that they needed a new life but it was only a preparation not the real thing. He was the warm-up act but not the headliner. He baptized with water, but it was just water and merely symbolic. People would need a new life, but not one that they could bring about on their own. They would actually need a different life, the life that the Messiah would offer them. He would make hi own life available for people to die to themselves and enter into (Rom. 6:1-10; Gal. 2:20; 3:26-27 Eph. 4:21-24; John 3:17, etc.). The Messiah’s baptism would be the real thing that John’s only pointed to (those who knew John’s baptism would still need to be baptized into Christ as Acts 18:25-26 and Acts 19:1-5 demonstrate) in the same way that the life that John was calling people to could only point to the life in Christ that they would truly need to enter into God’s family.
The Messiah would, in one sense, bring two baptisms (We must be careful, though, in using such language because Ephesians 4:5 is clear that there is only one valid baptism for believers. Claiming that there is more than one baptism for believers is clearly false and must be rejected.). One of the Holy Spirit and one of fire. This would be the spirit of fire that the prophet Isaiah had prophesied about (Isa. 4:4). Many have speculated what the baptism of fire is but the context of verses 17 and 18 make it clear that the baptism of fire refers to the judgment that would come on those who rejected the Messiah. The Messiah’s vocation always involved dividing the wheat from the chaff, those that would embrace his life and those who would reject. His baptism would be into his life and not a symbolic baptism and it would involve the indwelling of the Holy Spirit (Acts 2:38). Through this baptism, people could receive the Holy Spirit and have a renewed life, becoming the children of God. Paul stated this all quite clearly in Titus 3:5-7: “ he saved us, not because of righteous things we had done, but because of his mercy. He saved us through the washing of rebirth and renewal by the Holy Spirit, whom he poured out on us generously through Jesus Christ our Savior, so that, having been justified by his grace, we might become heirs having the hope of eternal life.” Baptism would come down to the dividing nature of the life of the Messiah. Those who would enter into his baptism with the Spirit would receive the life of the Messiah but those who rejected that would be baptized, so to speak, into the unquenchable fire of judgment. Thus there really is one baptism for each person: the baptism into Christ or the baptism of judgement.
John’s message, including his denunciation of Herod, had the same effect that the Messiah would have; it divided people. Some came to John and embraced his message but others, like Herod rejected his message. In fact, Herod did what so many of us can sadly do. He was given the dividing choice to repent or remain in his sin and he responded by trying to remove John, the source of his accountability, rather than removing the sin.
When the Messiah finally came, he would show himself committed to the same two things that John was. He would be fiercely dedicated to giving new life to those who would embrace God’s justice as it broke into the present age, but he would be just as fiercely dedicated to opposing and peacefully overthrowing those who set themselves up in opposition to God and his kingdom.
Devotional Thought
Are you fiercely dedicated to bringing God’s justice to bear in the world? Are you just as dedicated to respectfully but firmly opposing those who stand opposed to God’s justice? What does it mean for your life today to take up both of those vocations?
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