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Was John the Baptist confused about Jesus’ identity?
- VBVM Staff - July 09, 2009
In Luke 7 it says that John the Baptist asked if Jesus was the One they were waiting for, but back in Chapter 5 when John baptizes Jesus, it says that the heavens opened, the Holy spirit descended like a dove and the Father spoke. It sounds like this happened within a few moments of Jesus beingbaptized, so wouldn’t John have seen this and heard this and therefore known who Jesus was? - D.J.
The answer is a bit complex. In Jewish teaching of Jesus' day, there came to be a misconception concerning the Messiah. Jewish teachers taught that there must be two Messiahs to come, since the prophecies concerning the Messiah seemed split into two different types.
First, there was the suffering Messiah who would be led to the slaughter and die for the sake of Israel. Secondly, there would be a Messiah who would conquer and reign in glory. Since the teachers of Jesus' day couldn't reconcile these two (seemingly) contradictory prophecies, they solved the dilemma by imagining two Messiahs: one who would come to die for the sins of Israel and another who would come to conquer Israel’s enemies and rule over the world in peace.
Therefore, when John the Baptist sent his disciples to question Jesus, it's possible that his question reflected the confusion over the Jewish dual teaching of the Messiah. As you say, its fair to assume that John knew Jesus to be the Son of the God, so when he declares that Jesus is the Lamb of God in John 1, it could be said that John was declaring that Jesus was the suffering Messiah (i.e., the One who was appointed to die like a slaughtered lamb) without necessarily assuming that John knew Jesus was also to be the conquering Messiah.
If this analysis is correct, then we would interpret John's question in Luke 7 as being an inquiry as to whether Jesus was specifically the conquering Messiah (since presumably John already assumed Jesus was the suffering Messiah). Jesus' response to John’s question made reference to miracles found in prophecies out of Isaiah that were typically associated with the kingly Messiah, which seems to conï¬rm that this was the point to John's questioning.
So, John could have known that Jesus was the Son of God without necessarily knowing that Jesus was the complete fulfillment of the prophecies of a coming Messiah.