We will certainly stumble in reading this Gospel if we attempt to understand it as a stand-alone biography. The wonderful story told here cannot be comprehended apart from the backdrop of the entire narrative of God’s purposes for Israel given in the Old Testament. This section shows us the richness of scriptural allusion found in this gospel.
We are invited to see the advent of the Christ as the culmination of all that has gone before. The prophets spoke of this expressly, but, just as important, the passage is filled with antitypes of Old Testament types. First is Malachi. The prophet Malachi tells us that the messenger of the covenant will certainly come (Mal. 3:1). But before He comes, a messenger will precede Him. This messenger does not just inform, he prepares (v. 2). And then the fortieth chapter of Isaiah is one of the great passages of the Bible. It is quoted in the New Testament in seven different places. One of the prophecies it contained was of the forerunner to the Messiah (Is. 40:3), who would come before the glory of the Lord would be revealed. As Isaiah predicted, the forerunner would be a preacher, lifting up his voice (v. 3). And so there came a voice in the wilderness — the ministry was one of straightening, restoring, putting right. This is why John came preaching repentance.
John was a new Tishbite. John came in fulfillment of these prophecies. He baptized in the wilderness, and preached a baptism of repentance for the remission of sins. The remission was to come, when the Christ would forgive sins. Those who were baptized by John were prepared to believe in Jesus, and be forgiven by Him. Think for a moment about John’s clothing — the detail of his clothing is mentioned because it ties him to Elijah, who dressed the same way (2 Ki. 1:8). This is important because Malachi had also prophesied that Elijah (and not just some prophetic voice) would come before the Christ (Mal. 4:5). As Jerome put it, John was certainly a shaggy man. His was a hard, disciplined ascetic life. Although he was the son of a priest, he was a humble man, as we see here. He was not worthy to unloose the thongs of Christ’s sandals (1:7), but that was a task that the lowliest servant could perform for the greatest dignitary. And John was the son of a priest who ministered in the Temple at Jerusalem; he could have had the same ministry himself, but he resorted to the wilderness. God gifted him greatly, from the womb, which enabled him to put himself under. And the fact that he lived in the wilderness was striking. For the ancient Hebrew, the connotations of “wilderness” were not at all like ours. We think of pristine, untouched glory; they thought of it as a demonic haunt, a place for jackals. This is where John lived (v. 4), in the midst of a fitting picture of unbelieving Israel. The nation was a spiritual wilderness.
The ministry of John was to make it possible for him to be overshadowed by the Christ. And so all Judea turned out — we are told that he was a very popular preacher. The whole country sought him out (v. 5). His baptism was greater than other Old Testament washings or baptisms (Heb. 9:10) because it addressed all sins, not just some, it was general, not particular, and was not accompanied with a sacrifice in the Temple. At the same time, his baptism was the highest example of an Old Testament baptism. It still looked forward. It was a baptism of preparation, looking forward to the coming baptism. The coming Messiah would baptize with the Holy Spirit, which would bring in the promised remission of sins (v. 8).
Now Jesus came from Nazareth and was baptized (v. 9), and we see the only baptism in the history of the world where the water was cleansed and hallowed. The triune God was present — the Father’s voice from heaven, the Son in the water, and the Spirit descended as a dove (vv. 10-11). God was well-pleased with His Son, who fully identified with sinners from the very beginning of His ministry. At this point, the sky was torn open, just like the veil of the Temple later, which pictured the body of Christ (Heb. 10:20), which body was dedicated here. The message is that the way to God has been opened.