John 3:28

28. Yourselves bear me witness So clearly did Peter and John (who were originally the Baptist’s disciples) understand that the Baptist was the mere herald of Jesus the Messiah, that they left John and went to Jesus. It seems strange, therefore, that any of John’s disciples should fail to understand John’s subordination. He therefore rebukes them by appealing to their own recollection of his testimony.

I said, I am not the Christ Not the Messiah.

Sent before him Not as a superior, but as a herald before a superior. This humility of the Baptist, as narrated by our Evangelist, is more fully, but not more energetically, expressed in the previous Gospels. In the first three Gospels John is a voice proclaiming a reality; a herald preceding a coming Jehovah; he is the sandal-bearer of a Master, unworthy to unloose his shoe-lachet; he is the outpourer of mere water, shadowing the Outpourer of the Spirit, who is therefore God, who is Author of final judgment and retribution. Now much is said in the fourth Gospel more diffuse and extended, but nothing more intense and decisive.