John 4:1,2 - Jesus the baptist?

John’s disciples were concerned about Jesus’ “success”. The Pharisees also had heard about it and were even more concerned. Maybe some of John’s disciples had told the Pharisees, or maybe they had just learnt about it. No doubt the Pharisees were concerned enough about John the Baptist, as Mark 11:27-33 indicates. Now things seemed to be getting even more out of hand.

The Pharisees and other religious leaders thought they had control of situation. There was a mixture of appeasement or accommodation with the Roman authorities, then religious control of the people. But no man is ever in full control of anything, as every dictator has found out. God intervened, and in a most extraordinary way.Today it is secularists who seek to control in the West, and Islamists in many other parts of the world. Neither of them will succeed.

John then clarifies that it was not Jesus who was actually doing the baptising, but His disciples. Why does John mention this? A couple of possibilities are:

1. Some people took great pride in who baptised them (1 Cor 1:13,14). So John makes it clear that Jesus did not physically baptise anyone. What matters is what Name we are baptised into, and it is the Name of the Father, and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit (Matt 28:19).
2. Jesus clearly could not baptise believers any longer. John is letting people know that He never did. We sometimes think what it would be like to have been alive when Jesus was here on earth. The truth is that we would be no better off. It is faith in the living Christ that counts.