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 is not yet completely transformed. He speaks of Jesus as the One who has gone ahead of him, although He came after him. Of course, traditional Jewish ideas about the Messiah are reflected here as well, since according to those ideas the Messiah was conceived by God before the creation of the world.

But the matter, it appears, is not only Jewish tradition, but first of all the very nature of the Kingdom. From the point of view of our earthly history, the Kingdom comes at the end of time, after that history is completed. For God, however, it is neither "before" nor "after" history; rather, if we resort to the space-time concepts familiar to us, it is "above" it. It is greater than the space and time familiar to us; it embraces them and includes them in itself, after first transforming them and radically changing their very nature. And 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 does not fit within the framework of earthly history, while people who belong to that history entirely can see only a small part of what is taking place. But to those who, like John, understand what is really happening, it becomes clear that the One has entered the world who has enclosed all earthly history in Himself, so that no one is given a place ahead of Him.

Here is of what consists first of all the gift of prophesy: not in the prediction of the future, but to clear up the signification of what is already taken place. Jesus will afterward call John the Baptist the greatest of all prophets, and here we read how this greatest prophet begins to see clearly what was dark until this day, the carpenter of Nazareth, that most important, for which the Son of God was made flesh on earth. John uses the language, the notions of the Old Testament, showing therefore one more time that the New Testament is the continuation and the fulfillment of what was promised in the Old Testament, and that both Testaments show us the same thing, developing in time, in history - Revelation.

“The Lamb of God”. Of God - means belonging to God, and not to the world, “oblation” (saint), destined to be giving to God. The lamb – not just an animal of the flock, but a traditional sacrifice to God, beginning with Abel's sacrifice (Gen 4) and Abraham's (Gen 22). The sacrifice of an innocent and spotless lamb was carried out for the restitution of peace with God, this peace which was violated by the human sin. But, certainly no lamb can by its death pay for man's fault. Only a person, the Son of Man is capable of being the Redeemer; and as God doesn't want the death of any of the people created by Him, only the Son of God - been born pre-eternally, become a man, clean, innocent and pure, but Who took in charge the payment for the sin of the world, - reconciles us with God by His death on the cross.

John filled with the Holy Spirit, opens to people this inconceivable {to them} truth, and we see how some of his listeners accept this testimony and become the followers of Christ, the apostles. If we also accept this testimony, all our further life will then be to follow the Master and Savior, through death in resurrection and eternal life.

When reading today's passage, a question arises: why does John the Baptist still give no definite answer to the question asked him about his ministry (vv. 19-23)? Indeed, he had every right to define his mission as prophetic, and such an answer would have fully satisfied the commission sent by the Synagogue to check him (vv. 24-25). But John refuses on principle to speak of his ministry as something having significance of its own. He sees his mission only as a preliminary stage necessary for preparing the people for the coming of the Messiah-Christ, and outside the context of this task John's ministry evidently loses all meaning, including for the prophet himself (vv. 25-27).

And it is precisely this view of his own mission that enables John to see and recognize the Messiah (vv. 29-34). For in order to recognize Christ, it is not enough simply to see Him physically. Outwardly Jesus differed little from an ordinary person. Of course, what He said was not something one could hear every day or from everyone, but the main thing was still not in the words. The main thing was in the Kingdom that He carried with Him wherever He went. Therefore, in order to recognize in Jesus the Messiah-Christ promised by God, one had to touch and share in the Kingdom.

But one can share in the Kingdom only on one very important condition: the one seeking it must forget his own importance, forget that he, as well as his deeds and ministries, can mean anything in themselves apart from the Kingdom into which he wants to enter. Perhaps this is why John does not want to testify about himself as a prophet: all the great prophets of Israel had their own mission, and each of these missions was, in a certain sense, self-sufficient. Each prophet was a figure in his own right, and those around him always noticed this, even when, as was most often the case, the prophets themselves wanted nothing of the kind. But in those times, the prominence of the prophet helped accomplish the main task entrusted by God to one or another of His servants. Now, however, the task evidently consisted precisely in pointing to the Messiah and remaining as unnoticed as possible oneself. John the Baptist succeeds in this: he disappears in the radiance of the coming Messiah, and in the radiance of the Kingdom that the Messiah carries with Him.