On John the Baptizer

I read in Luke 7:28 that Jesus presents his cousin with tremendous praise, "I tell you, among those born of women there is no one greater than John." My mind flashed to their childhoods. What was their relationship like? From within the womb John knew Jesus was God's Son. John’s mother, Elizabeth, knew that it was the Lord Himself in utero Who had walked into her home. There’s all this communion amongst four people, two of whom aren’t even born yet.

John is a few months older than Jesus, and surely they played together at family functions every year. Nazareth and Jerusalem are about 65 miles apart, and I’m sure there was at least the annual occasion of Passover that brought the relatives together as Joseph brought his family to Jerusalem. When Jesus was 12 and stayed behind in Jerusalem, sitting among the teachers, listening and asking questions, might John have been there too, watching and listening and marveling?

Did John enjoy Jesus’ company? They were both the only child of their parents, at least Jesus was for a little while. At any rate, they were the oldest sons. I have to wonder how they got along. Was John protective of his little cousin? Having no brothers, did he treat Jesus like one? Did he beat up on him in a brotherly way, give him a hard time in fun like brothers do? Was there a mutual respect right from the beginning, an understanding that they were involved in the greatest story ever told?

John’s disciples came to ask Jesus, “Are you the one who was to come, or should we expect someone else?” After He reassured them, they left to deliver the reply. It was only after they left that Jesus pronounced to the crowd, “I tell you, among those born of women there is no one greater than John.” John's disciples didn’t hear that part, so John most probably never heard it either. But is that how Jesus felt about John all along, all those years growing up together? Did the growing Son of God know the heart of this growing son and go on in their adulthood to proclaim it to the world so we all could consider him—and be challenged to go even further: “Yet the one who is least in the kingdom of God is greater than he.”

John must have been a truly wise, humble, and God-honoring man. “He must increase, but I must decrease” (John 3:30). Only the most reverent, profound, and respectful things are quoted by him of Jesus: “One more powerful than I will come, the thongs of whose sandals I am not worthy to untie” (Luke 3:16). Jesus declared that there was no one greater than John, and yet John readily affirmed his unworthiness when compared to that of Christ’s.

When I have thought of John the Baptizer, I've pictured locusts, honey, an animal skin, and baptism. I have seldom considered his great humility, his boldness and courage, and those heavy days of doubt in Herod’s dungeon when he had to know Are You the One? I thought You were, but I need to know from You for sure. I need You to confirm it. God bless John's disciples who did for him what he couldn’t do for himself in that trial! They brought back the word he so needed to hear: You were right. It is true. He is the One.

Godly. Courageous. Humble. Great. In the end, human. I will consider John the next time I spoon honey into my tea, step on a grasshopper (sorry, PETA, can’t stand ‘em), or hear of a baptism. And I will be challenged upward and onward to decrease day by day, to aspire to the least of these--not in my strength, but in the Person of the One John loved and promoted and honored with his whole life.