Wednesday, November 14, 2012

All Are Going To Him -John 3:22-26

John 3:22-26 ESV
22 After this Jesus and his disciples went into the Judean countryside, and he remained there with them and was baptizing. 23 John also was baptizing at Aenon near Salim, because water was plentiful there, and people were coming and being baptized 24 (for John had not yet been put in prison).
25 Now a discussion arose between some of John's disciples and a Jew over purification. 26 And they came to John and said to him, “Rabbi, he who was with you across the Jordan, to whom you bore witness—look, he is baptizing, and all are going to him.”

Jesus and His disciples part ways with John. People continued to come to John, but more and more were coming to Christ instead. This is evidence that John had fulfilled his mission of announcing and preparing the way for the Savior of the world.

Jesus was not baptizing with water, as we are told in John 4, but his disciples do. John's disciples raise this issue with teacher. The transition and kingdom movement continues, just as John had always said, but the reality of his words set in. The people are going to Jesus. John's mission of preparing the way was successful. The appeal to God through the water of John's baptism of repentance leads to Christ. When we are sealed with the Holy Spirit, we are then confirmed in the kingdom of God, which is the body of Christ. That body has yet to be made ready. It has not borne the sins of the world, or been raised in glory. The baptism of the Holy Spirit will come after Jesus has returned to the Father.


John 4:1-2
1 Now when Jesus learned that the Pharisees had heard that Jesus was making and baptizing more disciples than John 2 (although Jesus himself did not baptize, but only his disciples),

Hebrews 9:22-26
Indeed, under the law almost everything is purified with blood, and without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness of sins.
23 Thus it was necessary for the copies of the heavenly things to be purified with these rites, but the heavenly things themselves with better sacrifices than these. 24 For Christ has entered, not into holy places made with hands, which are copies of the true things, but into heaven itself, now to appear in the presence of God on our behalf. 25 Nor was it to offer himself repeatedly, as the high priest enters the holy places every year with blood not his own, 26 for then he would have had to suffer repeatedly since the foundation of the world. But as it is, he has appeared once for all at the end of the ages to put away sin by the sacrifice of himself.

1 Peter 3:21-22
Baptism, which corresponds to this, now saves you, not as a removal of dirt from the body but as an appeal to God for a good conscience, through the resurrection of Jesus Christ, 22 who has gone into heaven and is at the right hand of God, with angels, authorities, and powers having been subjected to him.

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