The Word and His Witness
John 1:6–8
Introduction
The summer after my first year in seminary, Janna and I decided we wanted to do some California sightseeing, and so we planned a weekend trip to San Francisco. And even though the drive up the 5 freeway was shorter, we decided to take the famous drive up the Pacific Coast Highway. And it was longer, and windier, but it was also exponentially more beautiful. I hope many of you have been able to take that drive at some point in your life in California, because it is absolutely breathtaking. The tapestry of colors is what especially struck me: the blues of the ocean and the sky, accented by the whites of the clouds, and the ocean’s foam, along with the glistening of the sun’s reflection on the water, all set against the golden sand, the imposing mountains, and the green of the foliage that covered the mountains, along with the different colors of wildflowers on the hillsides—it was basically too much for me to take in,
And so, literally for hours as we drove, our conversation was: Look at that! “Look at that cloud!” or “Look at that flower!” or “Look at that view of the coastline!” “Look at the way this color contrasts with that!” We eventually started to laugh at one another at how redundant we sounded. It was like a worship service full of one-liner exclamations of the beauty of God reflected in the beauty of His creation.
That day, I learned by experience an ancient biblical truth concerning all human experience: that beauty compels praise. Our delight in some wonderful thing is in a true sense incomplete unless we express it, unless we say it to somebody. “Look at that!” “That’s beautiful!” We couldn’t stop saying that to each other in the car. Our enjoyment of the beauty of creation couldn’t help overflowing into expression and celebration. And we see it everywhere in Scripture, don’t we? “Great is the Lord, and greatly to be praised!” “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ!” “Oh, the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God!”
C. S. Lewis was no fine theologian, but he captured this truth well in his Reflections on the Psalms. He wrote, “We delight to praise what we enjoy because the praise not merely expresses but completes the enjoyment; it is its appointed consummation.” Praise is the consummation of joy. Lewis continues, “It is not out of compliment that lovers keep on telling one another how beautiful they are; the delight is incomplete till it is expressed. It is frustrating to have discovered a new author and not to be able to tell anyone how good he is; to come suddenly, at the turn of the road, upon some mountain valley of unexpected grandeur and then to have to keep silent because the people with you care for it no more than for a tin can in the ditch; or to hear a good joke and find no one to share it with. … The [Westminster] catechism says that man’s chief end is ‘to glorify God and enjoy Him forever.’ But we shall then know that these are the same thing. Fully to enjoy is to glorify.”
Fully to enjoy is to glorify. It’s why Janna and I couldn’t stop saying, “Wow!” and “Glorious!” and “Look at that!” Because praise is the consummation of joy. Our delight is incomplete until it’s expressed.
And if that’s true of created realities, how much more true is it of our enjoyment and praise of the eternal God! I mentioned a moment ago those great exclamations of praise littered throughout Scripture. One of the most common phrases throughout the Old Testament is, “Blessed be Yahweh.” But as the Apostle John has begun his Gospel account of the Lord Jesus—which he has written, chapter 20 verse 31, so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that believing you may have life in His name—in the first five verses of his Gospel, John has exposed us to a grandeur, to a beauty, to a wonder that is beyond anything any created reality could ever approximate.
He has set before us the glory of the eternal Word—the Word that was in the beginning, who was in existence before all creation; the Word that was eternally distinct from the Father, but who always was consubstantial with the Father—fully and truly God, just as the Father was; the Word that was the Creator of all things; the Word in whom was all life, the self-existent fountain of all life and being; the being in which everything else has its being; the One whose existence is the ground of the existence of everything that exists; the One in whom all things hold together! Here is the Word who is the Light of men; the Light of truth that conquers all lies; the Light of holiness that conquers all wickedness! When all the powers of darkness raged at their fiercest to try to snuff out this Light, the darkness did not overcome Him, but He triumphed over them! And He is the Light that still today shines through the darkness, who rules in victorious majesty even over the whole world that lies in the power of the evil one.
John has set before us that beautiful One. And he realizes that such beauty compels praise. It compels proclamation. And so he introduces to the reader of his Gospel—in almost an awkward manner—he introduces us to John the Baptist: to the forerunner who came to proclaim the Good News of the coming of this Word, the messenger of Yahweh, who would be a voice crying in the wilderness, “Make ready the way of the Lord! Make His paths straight!”
I say that it’s almost awkward, because, look at John chapter 1. He finishes in verse 5 with this crescendo: “The Light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it!” And if you were to skip down to verse 9, and read it like it followed verse 5, you’d think it a smooth transition. “The true Light, coming into the world, enlightens every man. He was in the world, and the world was made through Him, and the world did not know Him,” and so on. But between those two verses comes this abrupt, seeming-interruption of verses 6 to 8: “There came a man sent from God, whose name was John. 7He came as a witness, to testify about the Light, so that all might believe through him. 8He was not the Light, but he came to testify about the Light.”
“John! You were doing so well! The prologue to your Gospel started out so glorious and so sublime and so Christ-centered! Why are you interjecting about John the Baptist?” Because John understood that beauty compels praise, that glory compels proclamation; that one of our great purposes in life as Christians is to testify to the majesty of Jesus. We who have beheld His glory and tasted of His excellencies are called, 1 Peter 2:9, to “proclaim the excellencies of Him who has called you out of darkness into His marvelous light.” Christians are those who are confronted with entrancing displays of Christ’s beauty—infinitely greater than a scenic drive with new vistas at every turn—and it is our delightful duty to burst forth in praise and proclamation of that beauty. Friends, it is the Christian’s delightful duty to testify to the worth of Jesus—to be His witnesses in this lost world to the glories of His person and work—“so that,” verse 7, “all might believe through [you].”
In these verses, we’re introduced to John the Witness—which is the Apostle John’s overwhelming emphasis. He may be John the Baptist in Matthew, Mark, and Luke, but the Apostle John makes only incidental reference to John’s baptizing ministry. Instead, John “came as a witness, to testify,” verses 7 and 8. John testified about Jesus, verse 15. The body of the Gospel begins in chapter 1 verse 19 by saying, “This is the testimony of John.” The word for witness appears fourteen times in John’s Gospel—but it’s absent in Matthew, appears only once in Mark, and only three times in Luke. The verb, to witness, or to testify, appears thirty-three times in John—but is absent in Mark, and appears only once each in Matthew and Luke. The Apostle John is quite concerned with establishing eye-witness, historical testimony to the Divine Word. And that means that John the Baptist has become John the Witness.
Proposition
And we meet him in our text for this morning, which we’ve already read, verses 6 to 8. And in these verses—much like we found seven characteristics of the Divine Word in verses 1 to 5—here we find seven characteristics of the witness to that Divine Word. But because you and I are all called to be witnesses of the person and work of Jesus Christ, who testify to the Good News of repentance for the forgiveness of sins in His name, this passage functions not only as an introduction to John, the Forerunner of the Messiah. It also provides us with several lessons about our witness to Christ—and about how our sight of His beauty ought to overflow in expressions of delightful praise and evangelistic proclamation.
I. The Humanity of the Witness (v. 6a)
So, let’s look to it. The first characteristic of the faithful witness to Jesus is, number one, the humanity of the witness. Verse 6 says, “There came a man sent from God, whose name was John.” “There came a man.”
Literally, “There became a man.” We’ve spoken several times already about how John is intending to present a contrast between the eternal Word and all of creation by speaking of each with distinct verbs: eimi versus ginomai; being versus becoming. God is, but man becomes. There is no becoming in God, but only pure being; whereas man is always in a state of contingency and change. We saw this same contrast in verse 3: the Word was—eimi—in the beginning, but all things came into being—ginomai—through Him. The Apostle is repeating that emphasis here: Jesus was—eimi—in the beginning, but John came into being—ginomai. Jesus is the eternal Word; John is “a man” who came into being through the creative power of Jesus. He wants to set out a clear contrast.
And John seems particularly concerned to make this point. He’ll say explicitly in verse 8: “He was not the Light.” In verse 15, he highlights that John speaks of Jesus’ “higher rank” than him, or being “in front of him.” In verse 20, we read, “And he confessed and did not deny, but confessed, ‘I am not the Christ.’” Are you Elijah? No! Are you the Prophet? No! John the Apostle is especially adamant about distinguishing and subordinating John the Baptist to Jesus.
Now, why would that be? Well, even as those questions from the priests and Levites show, plenty of people in Israel saw this strange man, dressed in garments made of camel’s hair, living in the wilderness, eating locusts and honey, preaching repentance and proclaiming the coming kingdom of God—and they started to wonder. This was the first prophet they had seen in 400 years. And as they heard him preach and saw him baptize, Luke 3:15 says, “…all were wondering in their hearts about John, as to whether he was the Christ.”
And even by Acts chapter 19, well after Jesus had ascended and the disciples were taking the Gospel to the known world, Paul went as far as Ephesus and found disciples of John the Baptist, who, you remember, hadn’t even heard of the Holy Spirit. And Paul explains that John was a forerunner and pointed to Jesus, and then those disciples were baptized in Jesus’ name (Acts 19:1–5). Even Apollos, the one called “mighty in the Scriptures,” of whom it is said he was “instructed in the way of the Lord,” and even “speaking and teaching accurately the things concerning Jesus”—even he was, Acts 18:25, “acquainted only with the baptism of John.” And of course it’s Priscilla and Aquila who have to take him aside and “explain to him the way of God more accurately.” In the 5th century, Cyril of Alexandria speaks of rumors having circulated that John the Baptist was an angel from heaven, because the Greek word for “messenger” is angelos, which also meant “angel.”
Well, the Apostle wants there to be no confusion. John the Baptist was a great man. As we’ll be reminded of in a moment, Jesus Himself said that “among those born of women there has not arisen anyone greater than John the Baptist” (Matt 11:11). But John was not an angel. He was not the Christ. He was not the Light. He was a man. A great man, but a mere man nonetheless.
But the humanity of the witness brings a lesson for us. God chooses human witnesses to testify to the Light of His Son. He did not have to do it this way. The Light of the eternal Word could have been its own testimony. No one has to testify to the brightness of the sun. The fact that it shines in the sky and enlightens our entire solar system is its own testimony. And if that sun came into being through the true Light, then the true Light could have borne sufficient witness to Himself— the way a lightning bolt pierces through the pitch black sky during a midnight storm. One preacher observes that God could have written the testimony to the Gospel in the clouds, or He could have made the wind whisper it to each person (Piper). He could have made rocks cry out. He could have sent angels to be His heralds. But He didn’t. In the infinite wisdom of God, He has ordained that the Gospel of His Son is going to be heralded through the testimony of human beings, or not at all.
And that means, you are afforded an unspeakable honor, Christian. What does Jesus Himself say in His prayer to the Father in John 17:20? “I ask on behalf of … those also who believe in Me through their word.” It is through our proclamation that sinners are awakened to saving faith! Romans 10:15: “How will they believe in Him whom they have not heard? And how will they hear without a preacher?” Dear brother or sister, you are that preacher. You are Christ’s witnesses—from Jerusalem, to Judea and Samaria, and now even to the ends of the earth. And without your testimony, God will save no one. That is just stunning to me!
And it throws light upon the great necessity of our evangelistic witness. No one will believe apart from being born again, John 3:3: “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born again he cannot see the kingdom of God.” But by what means are sinners born again? First Peter 1:23: “You have been born again not of seed which is perishable but imperishable, that is, through the living and enduring word of God. … And this,” verse 25, “is the word which was preached to you.” Human witnesses preach God’s Word. What a privilege! What a stewardship! What a responsibility! May it be, dear people, that as new believers stand in the waters of baptism on Sunday nights, recounting how they came to be freed from their sins and were given new life from heaven, that they say, “There came a man sent from God,” or “There came a woman sent from God, who testified to me about the Light.” And may they be talking about you and me, who faithfully proclaimed the Gospel to them.
II. The Commission of the Witness (v. 6b)
Secondly, consider the commission of the witness. Verse 6 again: “There came a man sent from God.” John the Baptist was not the Word. He was not the Light. He was not an angel. He was a man. But he was not just any man. He was a man sent from God. He had received a divine commission to be the forerunner of the Messiah, to prepare the way of the Lord.
John’s ministry was prophesied in Isaiah chapter 40 and verse 3: “A voice is calling, ‘Clear the way for Yahweh in the wilderness; make smooth in the desert a highway for our God.’” In all four Gospels, this verse is cited as fulfilled in the ministry of John the Baptist. We read of John’s ministry in the final book of the Old Testament, the prophecy of Malachi—with which we’ve become familiar here in GraceLife. In Malachi 3:1, God promises, “Behold, I am going to send My messenger, and he will clear the way before Me. And the Lord, whom you seek, will suddenly come to His temple.” In the next chapter, in the closing verses of the Old Testament, Yahweh promises to send Israel “Elijah the prophet before the coming of the great and terrible day of Yahweh. He will restore the hearts of the fathers to their children and the hearts of the children to their fathers.” And in Luke chapter 1, as the angel prophesies to Zacharias of the birth of his son John, he says, verse 15, that he’ll be “filled with the Holy Spirit while yet in his mother’s womb”! He goes on in verse 17: “It is he who will go as a forerunner before Him in the spirit and power of Elijah,” and then he quotes Malachi 4, “to turn the hearts of the fathers back to the children, and the disobedient to the attitude of the righteous, so as to make ready a people prepared for the Lord.” John is God’s divinely commissioned forerunner!
But not only was John’s coming prophesied long before, his birth itself was miraculous. Luke 1:7 says that Elizabeth, John’s mother, was childless, barren, and advanced in years. And all of a sudden the angel Gabriel appeared to Zacharias and told of his son’s birth. And Gabriel struck Zacharias mute because he didn’t believe that he and Elizabeth could have a child, as old as they were. But, Luke 1:36, “She who was called barren is now in her sixth month.” And when Mary comes to Elizabeth, John leaps for joy in her womb, because the Messiah had come into his presence. And then finally, when he was born, Zacharias was filled with the Holy Spirit and prophesied, Luke 1:76, “You, child, will be called the prophet of the Most High; for you will go on before the Lord to prepare His ways; to give to His people the knowledge of salvation by the forgiveness of their sins.”
And in Luke chapter 3, in the fifteenth year of the reign of Tiberius Caesar, Luke says, “the word of God came to John, the son of Zacharias, in the wilderness.” This is precisely how the prophets of the Old Testament are introduced. There hadn’t been a word from the Lord to His people for four hundred years. But there, in the wilderness of Judea, the man wearing the camel-hair robe and eating locusts and wild honey, was pressed into prophetic ministry by the commission of God Himself. Matthew says, in chapter 3 verse 5, “Jerusalem was going out to [John in the wilderness], and all Judea and all the district around the Jordan; and they were being baptized by him in the Jordan River, as they confessed their sins.”
And he fearlessly confronted sin, even calling the Pharisees and Sadducees—the most respected religious leaders of the day—a “brood of vipers,” who had reason to fear the coming wrath of God. He so fearlessly committed himself to God’s standard of righteousness that he even called out Herod himself, telling him that it was not lawful for him to have his brother’s wife (Mark 6:18)—a prophetic word that eventually cost John his head. And his life matched his message. Mark 6:20 says that “Herod was afraid of John, knowing that he was a righteous and holy man.” Matthew Henry wrote, “John wrought no miracle, nor do we find that he had visions and revelations; but the strictness and purity of his life and doctrine, and the direct tendency of both to reform the world, and to revive the interests of God’s kingdom among men, were plain indications that he was sent of God.”
And this reminds us that the faithful witness to the Lord is commissioned by the Lord to testify of Him. To be commissioned by God is to be under God’s authority—to proclaim precisely what his Master has commissioned him to speak. It is to be a herald, whose message does not originate with himself. One theological dictionary says, “Heralds adopt the mind of those who commission them” (TDNT). The faithful witness does not express his own views. He does not act on his own initiative. He does not add to his Master’s message any of his own ideas. He is not an orator, whose job it was to concoct whatever message would produce the desired results in the audience. He is a herald, who must deliver his Master’s message exactly as it has been given to him—a witness, who must testify only to the objective facts that he himself has seen and heard.
To say that John was “sent from God,” it to say that God Himself is the origin of the faithful witness’s mission and message. And Jesus Himself has sent you and me, as His disciples, to be His witnesses just as well. For what is the Great Commission? Matthew 28:18: “All authority in heaven and on earth is given to Me! Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations!” We speak on the authority of Christ’s own commissioning. Let us therefore be faithful witnesses, as we speak the message entrusted to us, not manufactured by us.
III. The Dignity of the Witness (v. 6c)
In the third place, consider the dignity of the witness. Not just the humanity and the commission, but the dignity of the witness. “There came a man sent from God, whose name was John.”
And I say, “dignity of the witness,” in part because John’s name means “grace.” He was a man full of the grace of God—one on whom God bestowed the gifts of prophetic ministry by His grace. He was a preacher of the grace of God, and that preaching brought the grace of God to many who heard him (cf. Gill). And John truly was a great man. As I mentioned already, in Matthew 11:11, Jesus Himself says, “Truly I say to you, among those born of women there has not arisen anyone greater than John the Baptist.” And despite what the transgender movement will tell you, no one has been born except of women, which means Jesus Himself—the eternal Word, the Light of the world, God the Son—is saying that John the Baptist is the greatest man who ever lived! Now, obviously, Jesus didn’t mean to say that John was greater even than Him. John himself would say that after him was coming One mightier than he was, and that he was unfit even to stoop down and untie his sandals (Matt 3:11; Mark 1:7; Luke 3:16). But that is an amazing endorsement from the Lord Himself.
And why was John so great? Because “God chose him to perform the most important task to that point in human history—being the forerunner of the Messiah” (MacArthur, 30). He was the last of the Old Testament prophets, even as Jesus says in Luke 16:16, “The Law and the Prophets were proclaimed until John.” And that means that he was the first herald of the New Covenant. He himself was the pivot point of all biblical history. James Montgomery Boice commented that “if John the Baptist had not lived in that age and if the preparation of Christ’s way had not been his primary ministry, we would no doubt look back on him with the highest praise, much as we look back on Isaiah, Daniel, Jeremiah, Amos, or any other of the great Old Testament figures.” (50–51).
IV. The Work of the Witness (v. 7a)
Well, we move, quickly, from the dignity of the witness to the work of the witness. And what was John’s task? We’ve been saying it all morning, but now we come to it in earnest. Look at verse 7. John says, “He came as a witness.”
And, literally, the text says, “He came for a witness”—eis marturian—for a testimony. In other words, it’s the activity of witnessing that’s being emphasized, not the man who comes to testify (Morris, 79n53). And that’s fitting isn’t it? Surely, the character of a witness is not irrelevant to the testimony he gives. If a man is a scoundrel, you’re not likely to receive his testimony. But the emphasis here isn’t on John himself. It’s on the testimony that he would come to bear for the One who does matter: the Word! the Light that he is testifying to! Let that be a reminder that the work of our witnessing is not about us. We are merely incidental. The important thing is the truth about Jesus.
And the work of witnessing—the concept of testimony—is a decidedly legal concept. It is the language of the courtroom. The testimony of a witness is what establishes the facts of a matter, so that justice might be done—so that a judge or jury might hand down a righteous verdict in accordance with the truth. A witness gives verbal testimony to what he has seen with his own eyes and heard with his own ears (1 John 1:1–3). He reports words and events just as he himself has observed them to happen with his own eyes. There is no spin. There is no commentary. No editorializing. His testimony of the truth corresponds to reality as it happened (cf. Prov 12:17).
To be a faithful witness is a weighty thing. Such testimony is how the truth was vindicated and stewarded and passed down among the people of God! The Old Testament placed a high premium on testimony. It was by the testimony of two or three witnesses that every matter was to be established (cf. Deut 17:6; 19:15). The Apostle John wants his readers to know that the truth concerning Jesus that they will read in his Gospel was reliable, eye-witness testimony.
And so it’s not only John the Baptist who testifies to Jesus. He is the first, and the forerunner. But if you turn over to John chapter 5, you’ll find a whole host of other witnesses to Jesus. John 5, and verse 36: “But the testimony which I have is greater than the testimony of John; for the works which the Father has given Me to accomplish—the very works that I do—testify about Me, that the Father has sent Me.” So, Jesus’ own works testify about Him. Verse 37: “And the Father who sent Me, He has testified of Me.” God the Father is a witness to Jesus. Verse 39: “You search the Scriptures because you think that in them you have eternal life; it is these that testify about Me.” The Old Testament Scriptures themselves witness to Jesus! And we can go on: the Samaritan woman testifies of Jesus: “He told me all the things that I have done,” chapter 4 verse 39, and then men believe because of her testimony. The crowd that had been with Him when He raised Lazarus from the dead, they “continued to testify about Him,” chapter 12 and verse 17. The Holy Spirit would come and testify about Him, John 15:26, and then the disciples themselves will testify also, 15:27, because they had been with Him from the beginning. And they did. In the book of Acts, Peter’s early sermons emphasized this point. As he preaches the Gospel in Acts 2:32 he says, “This Jesus God raised up again, to which we are all witnesses.” In Acts 3:15, he says, you “put to death the Prince of life, whom God raised from the dead, to which we are witnesses.”
And that extends to us as well. We are witnesses of His resurrection power at work in our lives. By that power, He raised us from death to life, forgave us our sins, and now works in us to kill sin and love righteousness. Our entire lives are to be monuments of testimony to the power of the grace of God to save sinners. We are to be witnesses, that speak of what we have seen and heard of the power of Christ.
V. The Theme of the Witness (v. 7b)
And that brings me to point number five. What specifically does the witness testify to? That brings us to the theme of the witness. Again in verse 7: “He came as a witness, to testify about the Light.”
We testify about Jesus! He is the theme of our testimony! It’s amazing to me how often professing Christians seem to be confused about this. Perhaps we’re just inveterate lovers of self. But it is tragic how self-referential some people can be when they are supposedly giving a testimony for Jesus. We even have a word for that, don’t we? A braggamony. But your testimony is not about you. John “came for a witness, to testify about the Light”! The Light is the theme of the faithful witness’s testimony!
Now, that’s a curious thought, isn’t it? We don’t usually think of having to testify to people that light is here. The presence of light is self-evident. Light is that by which you see everything else. And so it’s rather strange to think about someone going around telling people that the Light has come. But what has the world done? In its own sin and rebellion, the world has shut its eyes. John 3:19: “The Light has come into the world, [but] men loved the darkness rather than the Light.” Second Corinthians 4:4: “The god of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelieving so that they might not see the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God.” And so what does Christ say to Paul when He commissions him for ministry? Acts 26:17–18: “I am sending you to open their eyes.”
The world has shut their eyes to the light of the gospel of Christ’s glory! And so Christ has sent His witnesses—you and me, but typified by John the Baptist—to testify to these blind people: “The Light has come!” “You people who walk in darkness,” Isaiah 9:2, “see this great Light that has come and is shining upon you! A light of revelation to the Gentiles, and the glory of the people of Israel (Luke 2:32). Friends, your long night is over! Morning is dawning! Here is coming the One who will abolish death, and bring life and immortality to light through His Gospel” (2 Tim 1:10).
Witnessing is speaking to others about Jesus Christ. It’s not living or behaving in a certain way—though some people mistakenly think that you can “witness” to Jesus simply by living your life differently than others. I understand where those folks are coming from; your life ought to look like it’s been changed and empowered by God’s grace. But hear me well, friends: your life is not the Gospel. The good news we preach is not, “Look at my changed life!” The good news is, “Look at Jesus’ perfect life! Look at His sacrificial and substitutionary death! See the Law that condemns us fulfilled by Him! See the wickedness of sin, as the thought of bearing it brings Him to His knees in the Garden! See the love of the Father that gives so precious a Son over to so horrific a death! See the power of God that raises Him from the dead, victorious over sin and death!” Jesus Christ and Him crucified is the theme of the witness!
I love that line in There is a Fountain: “E’er since by faith I saw the stream Thy flowing wounds supply, / Redeeming love has been my theme, and shall be till I die.” As soon as the eyes of my heart beheld the purifying power of the blood of Christ, the theme song of my life has been and forever will be, “Redeeming love!” You know how you get a song stuck in your head, you’re just humming and whistling and singing it everywhere you go? The faithful witness goes through life, exclaiming, “Redeeming love! Redeeming love!” He speaks to everybody He knows: “Redeeming love! Can you believe it? Redeeming love!” Just like me and Janna in the car: “Wow! Look at Him!”
Dear people, is Christ the theme of your life? Is His person and His work constantly on your lips? You are a witness, to testify concerning the Light. Preach Christ and Him crucified.
VI. The Purpose of the Witness (v. 7c)
Well, in the sixth place, let us look to the purpose of the witness. Once more in verse 7: “He came as a witness, to testify about the Light, so that all might believe through him.” The purpose of the witness is to bring others to faith in Christ. The reason we testify is so that everyone we have the privilege of speaking to would find forgiveness of sins through faith alone in Christ alone.
This might seem like a bit of an obvious point, and if it is, then good for us. But I do think it serves as an important reminder. Sometimes, if we take our eyes off of Christ for too long, we can even pervert our evangelism into something that is ugly and unfaithful. As one pastor observed, it’s possible for us to become so mechanical in our witness that we can go through the motions of evangelism, and give no evidence that we expect, and hope for, and pray for the actual conversion of the people we’re speaking to. Some people evangelize like their only goal is to recite a script and count their duty performed. Others seem to do it like they expect the person to reject the Gospel. Still others treat it like it’s a matter of winning an argument. But it’s not about winning an argument; it’s about winning a person (Boice, 54).
VII. The Negation of the Witness (1:8)
Well, time constrains us to move on. So far, we’ve seen the humanity of the witness, the commission of the witness, the dignity of the witness, the work of the witness, the theme of the witness, and the purpose of the witness. We come now to the seventh characteristic of the faithful witness to Christ. And that is, number seven, the negation of the witness. And we see this in verse 8. “He was not the Light, but he came to testify about the Light.” He was not the Light!
One of the most important lessons the faithful witness will ever learn is that we are not the Light! We are not the protagonist! We are not the leading man or the leading lady! We are ministers that point to the Light. We are servants that herald the glory of our Master. We are not the point! Our church is not the point! Our programs are not the point! Our children’s ministry is not the point! Our youth camps are not the point! None of it! Jesus is the point! There is a great “Not” that hangs over all of our ministry for Christ! “Not me, but Him!” Psalm 115:1: “Not to us, O Lord, not to us, but to Your name give glory!”
And John the Baptist is a wonderful example of this great principle of the self-negation of the witness. You’re already in John 1. Look at verse 19. The priests and Levites ask him, “Who are you?” Verse 20: “And he confessed and did not deny, but confessed, ‘I am not the Christ.’ They asked him, ‘What then? Are you Elijah?’ And he said, ‘I am not.’ ‘Are you the Prophet?’ And he answered, ‘No.’” Verse 22: Then “what do you say about yourself?” And he says, I’m the forerunner Isaiah prophesied of. My only job is to announce His coming.” In verse 25, they ask him why he’s baptizing if he’s not the Christ, Elijah, or the Prophet. And he doesn’t even answer their question. He just starts talking about Jesus: “I baptize in water, but among you stands One whom you do not know. It is He who comes after me, the thong whose sandal I am not worthy to untie.”
And then, verse 29, the next day, John sees Jesus, and he exclaims, in the tagline of his ministry, “Behold, the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world!” “Look at Him! He’s the One I was saying was greater than I am! He’s the One who’s going to baptize with the Holy Spirit! I have testified that this is the Son of God!” You can’t get him off that note! And then again, the next day, John sees Jesus, and he says in verse 36: “Behold, the Lamb of God!” John is a broken record!
And it happens again in chapter 3. Turn there with me. One of John’s disciples comes to him and says, “John, the One you were testifying about, He is baptizing and everyone’s going out to Him!” And the implication is, “You’re the guy! You’re my rabbi! You were here first! I don’t like that this other guy is getting all the attention!” John 3:27: “John answered and said, ‘A man can receive nothing unless it has been given him from heaven. You yourselves are my witnesses that I said, ‘I am not the Christ,’ but, ‘I have been sent ahead of Him.’” I told you that I’m not the guy! He’s the guy! Verse 29: “He who has the bride is the bridegroom,” and it’s Christ who is the head of the church, not John. “But do you know who I am? I’m the friend of the bridegroom, and so when He comes, and everybody looks away from me and fixes their eyes on Him, I am thrilled! I am overjoyed for Him to come and have His bride!” And then, verse 30, the great banner that flies over every Christian’s life: “He must increase, but I must decrease.” Pastor John has called that, “The First Law of Ministry.” The negation of the witness! “I am not! I am not! I am not!” And the exaltation of the Word! “He is! He is! He is!”
It’s true that Jesus says of John the Baptist, John 5:35, that “He was the lamp that was burning and was shining and you were willing to rejoice for a while in his light.” But, you know, it’s interesting that the term “lamp” there is the Greek luchnos. It refers to a portable oil lamp—what we might think of as a lantern. But the Greek word used for “the Light” that Jesus is here in John 1 is phos. It refers to light in its essence. John was the lamp, but Jesus was the Light! John was a luminary, but Jesus was the source of all light from which John’s light was derived! The same thing is true of the church. Jesus says that His disciples are “the light of the world,” Matthew 5:14. Paul says the church is “light in the Lord,” Ephesians 5:8. But our light is only the reflection of His light—of the true Light, verse 9—the eternal, uncreated Light that has shone from all eternity. We shine like the stars in the heavens, but He is the sun that lightens and outshines us all.
This is one of the most important lessons we could ever learn: the negation of the witness! Second Corinthians 4:5 says, “We do not preach ourselves but Christ Jesus as Lord, and ourselves as your slaves for Jesus’ sake.” And so any so-called minister of the Gospel, who makes himself the point or the draw of his ministry, who uses Jesus to make a name for himself, steals the glory of Jesus! He violates the first law of ministry: the negation of the witness, and the exaltation of the Word. The faithful witness does everything he can to get himself out of the way, everything he can to be merely incidental—just the finger that points to the Light, and the Lamb, and the Life. “Don’t look at me! Look through me, to Him who is the fountain of life and the spring of all your joy!”
Conclusion
Dear unbeliever, look to Christ! He is commended to you by faithful testimony in these opening verses of the Gospel of John. Come to Him in repentant faith. Let today be the day that you turn from your sins in repentant disgust for all the fruitless joys that sin has brought you. Let today be the day that you cease all your striving to earn your own righteousness by trusting in your own goodness to commend you to God. Let today be the day that you look upon Christ with the eyes of faith, and trust in Him for all your righteousness in the courtroom of heaven, relying upon His merits alone to avail for you at the bar of God’s justice. Let today be the day that you pass out of death and into life.
And dear brothers and sisters, you who are trusting Jesus for life and light: beauty compels praise! And you have beheld a beautiful Savior! And as you proclaim His glory, may you be faithful witnesses in the example of John the Baptist.
Let the humanity of the witness remind you of the great necessity, and the great privilege, of testifying to the glory and worth of Jesus. God did not need us to bear witness to His Son, but He has chosen to use us. And no one will be saved apart from the faithful testimony of a human witness to the Gospel.
Let your divine commission as witnesses remind you that you are sent into the world with the authority of Christ Himself—that He has earned your right to be heard—and that your responsibility is simply to herald your Master’s message, untainted and unadulterated: exactly as He has revealed it to you.
Let the dignity of John’s example motivate you to be a man or woman of dignity—one who presses hard to walk in the grace of God, in order to minister grace to others.
Remember the work of the witness is to testify—to speak (with words!) of the truth of Christ’s person and work, and of how His grace has conquered sin in your own life
Remember that the theme of the witness is always Christ and Him crucified. We ourselves are not the message; He is. Let “redeeming love” be your theme, now until you die.
Remember that the purpose of the witness is to see all we come in contact with come to faith in Christ. Concern yourself more with wining the person than the argument.
And, dear people, never forget the negation of the witness—that you must decrease, and He must increase; that though you have the unspeakable privilege of testifying to the Light, you are not the Light! You are the finger that points to something greater than yourself! the mailman that delivers the anticipated package, the earthen vessel that carries the treasure of Christ and His Gospel. And so do all you can to be invisible, and display His glory alone.