John the Baptist: Tell About The Light

It might seem strange that in John's account of the Lord Jesus' life and ministry, John the Baptist would introduced in the first few verses. But this points to one of the heresies that John was combatting – there were groups of people in as late as 200 A.D. who were worshiping John the Baptist as the Messiah.

The apostle John had started out as a disciple of John the Baptist; he knew him well. So the apostle John quoted the Baptist several times as saying he was not the Messiah, but a messenger.

God sent a man named John,who came to tell about the light and to lead all people to have faith. John wasn't that light. He came only to tell about the light.

[emphasis mine] The Baptist understood that he was not the light, but he was to prepare the people to believe the true light when they saw it.

The task of a witness is to point to the truth. You know the phrase “to tell the whole truth and nothing but the truth.” We use that in a court of law because that is what everyone is expecting the witness to do, to bring out the truth.

In fact everyone who knows Who Jesus really is, is called to be a witness to the truth.

Witnessing is both verbal and nonverbal – to keep integrity, the words have to match the life of the person saying the words. How well does my own life act as a witness to the true light of Jesus? Well how much of Jesus’ light, His wisdom, is active in my life? That’s how I would know.

And how capable am I of telling the whole truth about Jesus?

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