NOTES for Joh 1:29-34

In bearing witness to Jesus, John notes an astonishing feature of the Kingdom in its relation to our world, which is being transformed but has not yet been fully transformed. He speaks of Jesus as the One who came after him yet passed ahead of him. Of course, this also reflects traditional Jewish ideas about the Messiah, who, according to those ideas, was conceived by God before the creation of the world. But apparently this is not only a matter of Jewish tradition; it is above all a matter of the very nature of the Kingdom. From the perspective of our earthly history, the Kingdom comes at the end of time, after history itself is completed. For God, however, it is neither "before" nor "after" history; rather, it is "above" it, if we must resort to our customary concepts of space and time. It is greater than the space and time familiar to us; it encompasses them and contains them within itself, having first transformed them and radically changed their very nature. The Messiah who brought the Kingdom into the world belongs to our world only insofar as this world becomes part of the Kingdom. That is why His coming becomes an event that cannot be contained within the bounds of earthly history, while people who belong entirely to that history can see only a small part of what is taking place. But those who, like John, understand what is really happening can see that the One who entered the world has contained all earthly history within Himself, so that no one can stand ahead of Him.