John 1: 19 – 34; Philippians 3: 4b – 11
Introduction: Identifying Yourself
How do you identify yourself? Would you say that you have a strong sense of identity? Or do you perhaps have a weak sense of self? Do you identify yourself with your family background? Do you carry yourself with a sense of pride because of a position? Because of wealth? Because of social standing?
Who is John?
In our passage today we see John the Baptist and some priests and Levites playing a guessing game. They were sent from Jerusalem to find out who John was. Already John had gained a reputation. He was an unruly sort. Dressed like a first century hippie, he was from the wilderness; and his message, his proclamation, was sharp as a knife and as straight as an arrow. No one who heard John preach could mistake what he was saying. He was clear and he was uncompromising. He openly criticized Herod because he took up with his brother’s wife. He told Jews that being children of Abraham was meaningless, that God could raise up children of Abraham from the rocks on the ground. Heritage and family connections meant nothing. Power meant nothing to John. Only having a repentant heart before God mattered, and he made it plain that nothing but a humble and sincere heart was of any significance. His message called for a radical life change. And as he himself said, “I am the voice of one crying out in the wilderness, ‘Make straight the way of the Lord.’” John was on the scene to prepare others for the coming Messiah, whom he would learn was his cousin Jesus.
But these priests and Levites want to know who John is. They want to pin him down, and get a handle on him. Knowing who he is would help them know how to respond to him. They press him. They refuse to go away without an answer. “Who are you?” they ask. Rather than telling them who he is, he tells them who he is not: “I am not the Messiah.” Then they get more specific. “What then? Are you Elijah?” John answers, “I am not.” They keep going. “Are you the prophet?” Again, John responds tersely, “No.”
Clearly, those sent to interrogate him thought he had something to do with the Messiah. Both Elijah and the prophet were figures upon whom messianic expectations had come to rest. Malachi 4:5 says, “Lo, I will send you the prophet Elijah before the great and terrible day of the Lord comes. He will turn the hearts of parents to their children and the hearts of children to their parents, so that I will not come and strike the land with a curse.” Elijah was supposed to appear and herald the coming Messiah. Deuteronomy 18:15 says, “The Lord your God will raise up for you a prophet like me from among your own people; you shall heed such a prophet.” The people of Israel had messianic expectations of this prophet. Was John one of these figures? Was he the expected Messiah? John evades all of these identifications. He says no to all of the above. In one sense this is odd, only because even Jesus identifies John with Elijah, saying that “for all the prophets and the law prophesied until John came; and if you are willing to accept it, he is Elijah who is to come.” Yet, even so, John refuses this identification. He refuses almost any identification. Why?
But wait: there was still one more question. The priests and Levites were not quite finished. They demanded that John give them something to go on, some piece of information they could take back to their superiors. They were determined not to return empty handed. So they asked him, “Who are you? Let us have an answer for those who sent us. What do you say about yourself?” I like how Eugene Peterson translates their question in his paraphrase, The Message: “Tell us something – anything! – about yourself.”
And what does John say? “I am the voice of one crying out in the wilderness, ‘Make straight the way of the Lord.’” John answers them from Scripture, from Isaiah 40:3 to be exact. And what he says is not really an answer. What does this tell us about John? Not much, you might think.
You see, John was on fire with a message, and this message was one of good news, of calling the people of Israel to repentance, to receive forgiveness of sins. He was bold. And he was also focused. The center of his attention was the One for whom he was preparing the people. His eyes were fixed on the One the thong of whose sandal he was not worthy to untie. The heart of John’s passion was a someone. It was Jesus. Earlier in the Gospel we read, “He himself was not the light, but he came to testify to the light.” The driving force of John’s preaching and mission was Jesus. He saw himself as preparing the way for Jesus. John was baptizing with water, preaching repentance and forgiveness, and at the end of the day Jesus was his message.
Jesus was John’s message because God had revealed to him that this Jesus, his cousin, was the Son of God come into the world. It had been revealed to John that this Jesus was the Lamb of God who would take away the sin of the world. It had been revealed to John that this Jesus existed even before he was born. It had been revealed to John that this Jesus would baptize with the Holy Spirit, while John himself only baptized with water. John knew that he was not the Messiah, that whoever he was and whatever he did, he was completely secondary to this Jesus. Knowing this, John willingly and totally identified himself with this Jesus.
You will notice if you look that at every turn, when given the chance, he points away from himself and to Jesus. Even when he quotes Isaiah and refers to himself as a voice in the wilderness, he makes sure that those listening know he is simply preparing the way for the Lord. He was not the Messiah, and he didn’t want there to be any confusion on this point. When the priests and Levites questioned his baptizing, he quickly downplayed himself and attempted to draw attention to the One who would follow him.
John was self-denying and Christ-focused. He witnessed powerfully to Jesus as the Son of God, and was called by God to prepare the people of Israel to receive Jesus, to be ready for His message. He knew the difference between himself and Jesus. He knew that while he was baptizing people, it would be Jesus who would really change people. John knew his place. He knew that being a witness to Jesus meant drawing attention away from himself and toward Jesus. John was not interested in who he was. He was only interested in Jesus, in the One who was coming after him, the Lamb of God. When he finally offers information about who he is, he identifies himself simply as one called to make straight the way of the Lord. He identifies himself completely through his relationship with Jesus: it is the identity of Jesus that determines his identity, his mission, his life.
Who Are We?
I began this morning by asking you how you identify yourself. From what source do you get your identity? You job or career? Your spouse? Being a parent? Your standing in your community or in this church? There are endless ways in which we can form our identity, our sense of self. But if someone were to approach you, as the priests and Levites approached John, and asked, “Who are you? Let us have an answer for those who sent us. What do you say about yourself,” what would you answer? How would you respond? Better yet, how should each of us respond to such a question?
In Philippians 3, Paul tells his readers that he has plenty to brag about, all kinds of reasons to have, as he says, “confidence in the flesh.” He says, “If anyone else has reason to be confident in the flesh, I have more: circumcised on the eighth day, a member of the people of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew born of Hebrews; as to the law, a Pharisee; as to zeal, a persecutor of the church; as to righteousness under the law, blameless.” What else does Paul need? His identity seems to be both sure and confident.
However, Paul continues on to say this: “Yet whatever gains I had, these I have come to regard as loss because of Christ. More than that, I regard everything as loss because of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things, and I regard them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but one that comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God based on faith. I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the sharing of his sufferings by becoming like him in his death, if somehow I may attain the resurrection from the dead.”
Paul here considers whatever reputation, whatever reason for confidence he may take pride in as so much rubbish. Instead of placing the emphasis on himself and forming his identity on his Jewish heritage and his education and obedience to the law, Paul identifies himself completely with Jesus. He only wants to know Jesus’ death and resurrection and to participate so fully in the former that he can look ahead with joy to the latter. In other words, he has willingly given up any sort of standing or reason for boasting.
As we have seen John, too, completely identifies himself with Jesus.
Now, none of us here is John. None of us is Paul. This is true. But yet these men are both examples to all of us. Each one of is called to do just what they have done: identify ourselves completely with Jesus. We should be much less concerned with letting people know who we are than we are with letting people know about who Jesus is.
The Rev. William Secker once said, “It would be well if there were as great a similarity between the life of Christ and the life of Christians, as there is between a just copy and the original. What He was by nature, we should be by grace.”
In John 3 there is a story about some of John’s disciples having a discussion with other Jews; this discussion was prompted by the fact that Jesus’ ministry had begun and his disciples had begun to baptize. They approach John and want to know whether Jesus has now become a competitor and whether they should worry that he will take attention away from John’s ministry. John will have none of this. Referring to Jesus as the bridegroom and to himself as the bridegroom’s friend, he says, “He who has the bride is the bridegroom. The friend of the bridegroom, who stands and hears him, rejoices greatly at the bridegroom’s voice. For this reason my joy has been fulfilled. He must increase, but I must decrease.”
Conclusion
He must increase, but I must decrease.
These words spoken by John ought to be our words also. They ought to be our prayer. The purpose of the Christian life is for Christ to be formed in us. Through the power of the Spirit, the character of Jesus is daily being shaped in each one of us – even if only in fits and starts! – and this what Scripture means by bearing the fruit of the Spirit. We are being remade into His image. Who we are – each one of us – should be primarily determined by our relationship with Jesus. It is who we are in Jesus – children of God, sons and daughters, brothers and sisters – that matters most of all. Our identity in Jesus means that we are called to be humble, self-denying servants of the Son of God – just like John and just like the Apostle Paul.
This doesn’t mean that we are all to become prophets and evangelists, proclaiming and preaching, travelling from city to city or living in the wilderness. We are called to testify and witness to Jesus from wherever we are. God wants it that way, because wherever we are there are people that need us to be Jesus to them.
As a parent, you can identify with Jesus by letting your little ones come to him, just as he did. As a husband or wife, you can identify with Jesus through acts of selfless sacrifice, love and faithfulness. As a child, you can identify with Jesus who was obedient to his Father in heaven. As a neighbour, you can identify with Jesus by loving those no one else is willing to love.
To be these witnesses we need to identify ourselves with Jesus and surrender completely to Him. This is a daily, ongoing discipline that requires prayer, the study of Scripture, and the community of fellow believers in order to happen at all.
Identifying ourselves with Jesus means, of course, knowing who Jesus is. Knowing who Jesus is means watching Him closely. We will do this through spending the time between now and the Easter season looking at the life of Jesus in the Gospel of John. Already we know that He is the Word made flesh, with God from all eternity. We know that Jesus is the Son of God, sent to take away the sin of the world. We know that Jesus is the source of the truest grace and gracious truth. He is the Lamb of God, a symbol of the sacrifice He would become on the cross, the reality of which we remember and celebrate today. Let us pray that as we learn how Jesus makes God known through the Gospel of John that we, by identifying ourselves with Jesus, can make God known to those around us.
