John 3 - Jesus Baptizes

Jesus Baptizes

In the second part of the chapter John contrasts Jesus' talk of being born again with a scene of Jesus baptizing. Jesus goes into Judea with his disciples and baptizes. John the Baptist is also baptizing people nearby, at Aenon. John's disciples tell John that Jesus is also baptizing people, more than John it seems. John replies that "A man can receive only what is given him from heaven. You yourselves can testify that I said, 'I am not the Christ but am sent ahead of him.' The bride belongs to the bridegroom. The friend who attends the bridegroom waits and listens for him, and is full of joy when he hears the bridegroom's voice. That joy is mine, and it is now complete. He must become greater; I must become less." He finishes by saying "Whoever believes in the Son has eternal life, but whoever rejects the Son will not see life, for God's wrath remains on him." This passage is meant to show John's acceptance of Jesus's superiority as well as a further emphasis on belief in him as the path to eternal life/heaven.

John was trying to show to his presumably Jewish audience that John himself knew that Jesus was the Messiah and that baptism into Christianity, not John's group, is the true path to God. There is a group still surviving today, the Mandaeans, who claim John as the greatest prophet. Verses 31-36 are largely a restatement of material in the first half. This had led scholars to speculate that this part, and much else in John such as material in chapter 6, 14, 16 and chapter 21 was the work of a redactor who added sections to the original writing to perhaps make it less radical and include material the person thought was left out of the original account.