In Christ, after the discipline of long-waiting years, there was no
ambition, no self-delusion. He had measured the way, and counted the
cost, of lifting his own people and the world out of bondage to visible
things and false gods, and bringing them to the only Father of their
spirits, into the true kingdom of their God. He must, indeed, have been
well enough aware how infinitely more fit for the task he himself was
than any of his own brethren in the flesh, with whom he was living day
by day, or of the men of Nazareth with whom he had been brought up.
But he knew also that the same voice which had been speaking to him,
the same wisdom which had been training him, must have been speaking
to and training other humble and brave souls, wherever there were open
hearts and ears, in the whole Jewish nation. As the humblest and most
guileless of men, he could not have assumed that no other Israelite
had been able to render that perfect obedience of which he was himself
conscious. And so he may well have hurried to the Jordan in the hope
of finding there, in this prophet of the wilderness, “Him who should
come,” the Messiah, the great deliverer—and of enlisting under his
banner, and rendering him true and loyal service, in the belief that,
after all, he himself might only be intended to aid and hold up the
hands of a greater than himself. For we must remember that Christ could
not have heard before he came to Bethabara that John had disclaimed the
great title. It was not till the very day before his own arrival that
the Baptist had told the questioners from Jerusalem, “I am not he.”
But if any such thought had crossed his mind, or hope filled his heart,
on the way to the Baptist, it was soon dispelled, and he, left again
in his own loneliness, now more clearly than ever before, face to face
with the task, before which even the Son of God, appointed to it before
the world was, might well quail, as it confronted him in his frail
human body. For John recognizes him, singles him out at once, proclaims
to the bystanders, “This is he! Behold the Lamb of God! This is he who
shall baptize with the fire of God’s own Spirit. Here is the deliverer
whom all our prophets have foretold.” And by a mysterious outward sign,
as well as by the witness in his own heart and conscience, Christ is at
once assured of the truth of the Baptist’s words—that it is indeed he
himself and no other, and that his time has surely come.
That he now thoroughly realized the fact for the first time, and
was startled and severely tried by the confirmation of what he must
have felt for years to be probable, is not only what we should look
for from our own experiences, but seems the true inference from the
gospel narratives. For, although as soon as the full truth breaks upon
him he accepts the mission and work to which God is calling him, and
speaks with authority to the Baptist, “Suffer it to be so now,” yet the
immediate effect of the call is to drive him away into the wilderness,
there in the deepest solitude to think over once again, and for the
last time to wrestle with and master the tremendous disclosure.