THE CALL (1:15)

John’s Vocation (1:5-8)

When King Ahaziah heard a description of a man his messengers had met, he exclaimed, “It is Elijah the Tishbite.”  That description of Elijah reminds us now of John the Baptist:  “He was a hairy man with a leather girdle bound about his loins” (First Kings 1:8)  It is not until chapter 9 that Mark reveals explicitly that John corresponds to Elijah in the prophecy of Malachi 4, but here Mark’s description of John’s camel hair clothing with a leather belt around his waist reminds us of the prophet.

But why Elijah?  Why not say that John the Baptist corresponded to some other prophet like Isaiah or Jeremiah?  What made Elijah especially appropriate as a way of describing John the Baptist’s identity?  Let’s start with some seemingly random observations, from Mark’s gospel and elsewhere, about John the Baptist.  Notice that John confronts a king (Mark 6:17) and stays in the region of the Jordan (Matt 3:5; Luke 3:3) in the wilderness (Mark 1:4) across from the Promised Land (John 1:28; 10:40).

Now a few of these details do remind us of Elijah.  He too confronted an evil king (1 Kin 17:1; 21:17-19) and spent a lot of time outside of Israel proper (1 Kin 17:3, 9). But he also did more. He called down plagues on the Land (1 Kin 17:1), called down fire on his sacrifice (1 Kin 18:38), was fed by angels in the wilderness (1 Kin 19:4-7), and met God at Mt. Sinai (1 Kin 19:8-14).  Elijah stands out among Old Testament prophets as a new Moses. No one else was met by God at Mt. Sinai.  It is a unique marker in the Bible. Incidentally, both Moses and Elijah end their careers by ascending—Moses up a mountain to die and Elijah in a fiery chariot. In both cases, this happened across the Jordan from Jericho (Deut 34:1; 2 Kin 2:4-8).

There is more to say about John as Elijah, but for now it will suffice to recognize that linking John to Elijah also links him to Moses, the foremost of the prophets.

Yet Moses and all the prophets are about to be surpassed.  John is speaking for the whole Mosaic administration when he confesses, “After me One is coming who is mightier than I, and I am not fit to stoop down and untie the thong of His sandals.”  John’s prophecy echoes Malachi’s prophecy.  Malachi said that a messenger would prepare the way for the Lord; John says that he is preparing the way for Jesus.  It is rather hard to escape the idea that Mark is affirming the deity of Jesus by parralelling Malachi’s prophecy with John’s.

John says the one who is coming will baptize with the Holy Spirit, whereas he merely baptizes with water.  It has become something of an American fundamentalist shibboleth to use this verse and it’s parallels to claim that the real baptism mentioned in places like Romans 6:3 or Colossians 2:12 is a dry “baptism” done by the Spirit, not with water.  Whatever the merits of this idea, it is almost certainly not what John the Baptist was saying, according to Mark and the other gospel-writers.  Rather, this refers to the miracle of Pentecost when the Spirit signed and sealed the identity of Jesus’ disciples as His new people (Acts 2).  After Pentecost and a three other Pentecost-like events (Acts 8:14ff; 10:44ff; 19:1ff), water baptism is once again the normal means of entering the Church and gaining access to all the blessings Christ has given the Church (Acts 2:38-41; 22:16).