NOTES for Luk 3:19-22
The washing, or “baptism,” performed by John was certainly not an ordinary purification ritual carried out by every observant Jew in the cases prescribed by the Torah. Nor was it a washing like that of the Essenes, with which some historians compare it. Outwardly, of course, John's baptism did indeed resemble it, which is not surprising, for John apparently spent considerable time in the Qumran community. But the washings of the Qumran community were still essentially purificatory, though not entirely traditional. They believed that contact with the world itself was fundamentally what defiled a person, and therefore they washed several times a day so that when the Messiah came, He would not find them unclean.
John apparently agreed with the Qumran community that no one was ready to meet the Messiah. But he saw the problem not in ritual impurity but in spiritual unreadiness. It is no accident that conversion became the principal theme of John's preaching. It had been revealed to him that without a new conversion, without a renewal of one's relationship with God, there could be no question of meeting the Messiah or entering the Kingdom. Yet the people around John, including many deeply and sincerely religious Pharisees, could not understand what more he wanted from them. What conversion was he talking about to people who observed all religious norms and rules, including, of course, the rules of ritual purity?
Only the Savior's own turning to the Father showed everyone clearly what was required. Of course, in Jesus' case there can be no question of imperfection or incompleteness in spiritual life. He did not need the conversion of which John spoke: His relationship with the Father was already perfect. But in the course of His communion with the Father in prayer, Jesus allows those around Him to see what a real and deep human relationship with God can be and what it means. Above all, this concerns the opened heaven and the testimony that sounded when it opened.
Of course, such testimony could sound in history only once. But in the life of the Kingdom, God's testimony in general may be regarded as the norm of spiritual life: in the Kingdom heaven is always open, and each of its inhabitants hears God and knows his or her purpose. This was the fullness of spiritual life to which John had already called people, a fullness no religion could provide, a fullness from which the Pharisees who listened to the prophet were so far removed.