Verse 7
7. Baptized of him Baptism proper, doubtless, was inaugurated by John the Baptist. It was an appropriation and concentration into a single rite of all the lustrations and washings of the Old Testament dispensation. Thereby it became the emblem of the out-poured spirit, of regeneration, and so of induction from the world into the kingdom of God. And thence being the rite of initiation into the Christian Church, it becomes the successor of circumcision.
John’s baptism proclaimed to the Jew that he needed yet to be introduced into the kingdom of God. That baptism by faith was the transition process by which the nation was to pass from the old Church to the new. Rejecting it, Israel would miss his way, and finally find himself outside the kingdom of God.
Generation of vipers No apology must be made (as by Van Oosterzee) for the denunciatory preaching of John; no more than for the thunder and smoke of Sinai, or for the fire and brimstone of Gehenna. Neither commentator nor preacher should effeminately shrink at the “mention of hell to ears polite.” Doubtless John applied precisely the right epithet, and threatened precisely the true destiny, to these future murderers of the Messiah he crone to announce.
The multitude hero embraced, according to Matthew 3:7, the Pharisees and Sadducees, for whom the rebukes of John, however general, had a special application.
Be the first to react on this!
