John 1:20,21 - Who are you?

1:20

John is emphatic that John the Baptist explicitly denied being the Messiah. We need to realise that in the period around the early part of the 1st century, there were several people who claimed to be the Messiah. As we saw in the notes on 1:19 John the Baptist was doing something most unusual, so the authorities wanted to know if he was claiming to be the Messiah. In fact that is what you would have expected someone as "odd" as John the Baptist to do.

1:21

So John has made it clear that he is not claiming to be the Messiah. So the next question of the priests and Levites is to ask if he is Elijah or the Prophet. Again the answer is no, but why these two people, and who are they anyway? Elijah is well known, especially for his battle with the Baals and Ahab and Jezebel. However, in the current context there are two key features of Elijah that matter. First he never died (2 Kings 2:11), then in Mal 4:5 it says that Elijah must come before the great and terrible day of The Lord. Then in Deut 18:15 Moses said that The Lord would raise up a prophet like him, and that the Jews must listen to him. Jesus is that Prophet and it is a great pity that the Jews did not listen to Him. One day they will.

By the way, Muslims claim that Deut 18:15 is pointing to Mohammed (erroneously!).

John the Baptist again refuses to make any such claim. Now this is a little surprising, for in Luke 1:17 the angel said John would go in the spirit of Elijah, and Jesus ( Matt 11:14, 17:10) identified John as Elijah. So why does John deny being Elijah here? There are various possible explanations. One is that he did not want to draw attention to himself. The other is that Jesus meant it in a different sense to what the Jews meant here.