John 1:27-34

The Baptists Witness to Himself. The baptism of Jesus has apparently taken place. John points to Him as the greater one of whom he had spoken. His own work of baptism, which has not been described but is assumed to be known, is, he says, preparatory to the manifestation of Messiah to Israel. Like others John had been ignorant, till the sign of the Spirit descending and abiding on Jesus had revealed to him the true Baptizer, who should give men the true baptism of the Spirit. The section ends with John's witness that such an one is the very Son of God. [In John 1:34 there is a variant reading, the Elect of God instead of the Son of God. It has very strong early attestation, and is accepted by Blass, Nestle, and Zahn. In the work already mentioned on John 1:13, Harnack has adopted it and sought to show its importance. It is simply a term for the Messiah, but it forms an addition to the contacts of the Fourth Gospel with the Third (Luke 9:35; Luke 23:35), and it illustrates how deeply the Fourth Evangelist is rooted in Jewish theology, a point which deserves emphasis in view of the present tendency to attribute to him an un-Jewish Hellenism. A. S. P.] The full recognition of Jesus as Messiah by John and others at the outset is a well-known difficulty. If it is historical it was the act of men who saw in a remarkable man the fulfilment of their expectations, but thought of Him as one who would satisfy their national Messianism. When they found out that He would do nothing of the sort they changed their minds, till He had taught them what to look for in the true Messiah. [John 1:22 and John 1:25 may be parallel narratives; so also John 1:29 and John 1:32. See Wellhausen, Das Evangelium Johannis, pp. 9, 11. A. J. G.]

John 1:29. The Lamb of God has been interpreted with reference (a) to the Paschal lamb (Exodus 12) with which the writer, like Paul (1 Corinthians 5:7), identifies Jesus, but which was not a sin offering (see John 1:29); (b) to the lamb of the morning and evening sacrifice; (c) to the lamb of Isaiah 53:4 ff. where the connexion with sin-bearing is certain. The evangelist has probably interpreted, and perhaps modified, in the light of later Christian thought (cf. also Genesis 22) what originally referred to the destruction, not the bearing, of sin.