Chapter # 1 Paragraph # 2 Study #
October 2, 2018
Moss Bluff, Louisiana
(016)
1901 ASV
4 John came, who baptized in the wilderness and preached the baptism of repentance unto remission of sins.
5 And there went out unto him all the country of Judaea, and all they of Jerusalem; and they were baptized of him in the river Jordan, confessing their sins.
6 And John was clothed with camel's hair, and [
had] a leathern girdle about his loins, and did eat locusts and wild honey.
7 And he preached, saying, There cometh after me he that is mightier than I, the latchet of whose shoes I am not worthy to stoop down and unloose.
8 I baptized you in water; but he shall baptize you in the Holy Spirit.
- I. John Came...
- A. Mark's grammar indicates a deliberate connection between both Malachi 3:1 and Isaiah 40:3 for purposes of "rooting" the Gospel in the thesis of fulfilled prophecy [Note Acts 26:22].
- B. The translators of the Authorized Version absolutely dropped the ball with their "translation" of the main verb of Mark's sentence.
- 1. This "main verb" ( egeneto ) is used in 636 verses of the New Testament according to a Strong's listing.
- 2. Mark 1:4 is the only occasion out of the 636 in which the "translators" chose to totally confuse the meaning of the text by translating the main verb as "did". In the Authorized Version, "did" plus another verb is the standard way of translating many "aorist" tense verbs. This is in marked contrast to the way we typically translate "aorist-like" verbs in English. We simply put the verb into the past tense. Instead of saying someone "did baptize" we would simply say that someone "baptized".
- a. This confusing of the text is significant in that it hides Mark's major point: John "came into the historical scene" (a legitimate translation of Mark's main verb) as a direct consequence of the prophetic underpinnings of the historical development.
- b. This confusing of the text declares Mark's major point to be John's "baptism". "Baptizing" was not then, and is not now, the point; the point is that John's arrival on the scene was "determined" in so far as "prophetic utterances" declare what will be and that this arrival proves that both Isaiah and Malachi were "inspired by the Holy God" in their revelations of the future (Isaiah's "apologetic" at work: Isaiah 41:23). It was, by the way, this apologetic that moved Nebuchadnezzar to acknowledge that Daniel's "God" is "a God of gods": Daniel 2:4; 4:17.
- II. Baptizing And Preaching.
- A. Grammatically, these are the attendant participles that tell us of John's activities that tie his "arrival on the historical scene" to the prophecies.
- B. The first of these attending participles is used in the phrase "baptizing in the wilderness".
- 1. The first of the "issues" involved in "fulfillment" is that contained in the action of "baptizing".
- a. In any legitimate sense of "preparing the road of the Lord", there simply has to be an element of willingness to "do the work".
- 1) This is, in John's case, the same element as declared in Isaiah 6:8.
- 2) There is, however, an additional aspect of this "willingness": the response of John's hearers.
- 3) "Baptism" in water, in John's day, was a declaration by the baptized of "commitment to the doctrine of the baptizer".
- b. In the prophecies, God declares that He will send a preparer who will prepare.
- 1) "Preparation" involves both a "message" and a "submission of loyalty" to that message.
- 2) Thus, John's "arrival", explicated to some degree by the attending participle, is a direct implication of fulfillment.
- 2. The second of the "issues" involved in "fulfillment" is that contained in the "locus" of the action of the attending participle: "in the wilderness".
- a. In some of the prophecies (Isaiah 19:23; 35:8; and 49:11), it is the "road" that is to be built "in the wilderness". There is, in the Greek text of Mark 1:3 a question of punctuation raised by the parallelism that seems apparent in Isaiah 40:3. That question is whether the "in the wilderness" phrase is tied to the place of the voice that cries out, or the place where the voice says the work is to be done.
- b. It is a further explanation of that meaning for Mark to place John's "preparatory work" in the place where the work is to be done, but this reference to "in the wilderness" is another direct implication of fulfillment.
- C. The second of the attending participles is used in the phrase "preaching a baptism...".
- 1. The "preaching" is the "heralding of the message".
- 2. The "baptizing" is a summons to "submission to the message" as a part of the "preaching".
- III. A Baptism of Repentance Unto Forgiveness of Sins.
- A. This "baptism" was the above stated "summons to submission to the message".
- B. The "message" was "repentance unto the forgiveness of sins".
- 1. There is, here, another matter of punctuation that is theologically very critical. If a comma is placed in the text as "...preaching a baptism of repentance, unto forgiveness of sins..." the significance is that the "baptism" leads to forgiveness because the "of repentance" explains the noun "baptism". Alternatively, if a comma is placed in the text as "...preaching a baptism, of repentance unto the forgiveness of sins..." the significance is that "repentance" leads to forgiveness and the "baptism" is simply a subscription by the baptized that he/she has embraced the concept that "forgiveness" arises from "repentance".
- 2. Indisputably, the Bible teaches that forgiveness follows upon repentance, not its outward demonstration.