Jesus and John go baptizing.

John 3.22-26.

After the discourse with Nicodemus, Jesus and his students went traveling around Judea, baptizing.

Yes, baptizing. You know, like John the baptist had. Really. It’s in the gospel of John:

John 3.22 KWL

After these things,

Jesus and his students go into the Judean countryside.

They’re staying there with the Judeans,

and are baptizing.

I use “countryside” to translate γῆν/yín, “earth.” Basically it’s everywhere in Judea that’s not Jerusalem. The gospel of John spends a lot of time in Judea, because John was trying to correct the misconception we might get from the other gospels, that Jesus spent all his time in the Galilee and Dekapolis, and never went to Judea till Holy Week. Nope; he was in Jerusalem for all the festivals, same as any devout Jew. And sometimes longer, visiting friends.

Here John says they were baptizing. Now, John makes it clear a bit later that it’s Jesus’s students actually doing the baptizing, not Jesus himself. Jn 4.2 But don’t you get the idea Jesus didn’t approve of it! He absolutely did. He got baptized, by John. You recall he also told his students much later: When you make new students, baptize ’em in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Mt 28.19 And they did. Ac 2.38 And still do.

Now, the other thing to be aware of is we’re not yet talking about Christian baptism; this isn’t our sacrament where a new Christian declares they’ve renounced sin and trust Jesus and intend to follow him. This is still John-style baptism. These were people who’d likewise renounced sin, and intended to now follow the Law of Moses. Likely the students doing all the baptizing were former John students, who were simply doing as the prophet had taught ’em: Whenever somebody repents, put ’em in the water and ritually cleanse them. Give ’em an experience, which’ll help ’em remember the new commitment they made.

On occasion you’ll find a Christian who gets dismissive of John’s baptism. Mostly because they figure Jesus, or Christian baptism, supersedes it. Which yeah, it kinda does… but it kinda doesn’t. It’s still valid to turn away from sin and follow God; it’s just we now know the way to follow God is by following Jesus, not the Law. Follow a person, not a text… one we can way too easily poke loopholes into.

Meanwhile, John.

So that’s what Jesus was up to; now to what John was up to.

Because he was still ministering at the time. Whereas the synoptic gospels make it look like he wasn’t; that Herod Antipas had arrested him almost immediately after Jesus’s baptism. Mk 1.14, Mt 4.12 Or—if you take the gospel of Luke literally—John was arrested right before Jesus’s baptism. Lk 3.20 But nobody takes that verse literally; we figure it’s a foreshadow, and John was right there to see the heavens open above Jesus, just as John describes. Jn 1.33 Even though Luke actually says no such thing. Lk 3.21-22

John’s gospel never does talk about John the baptist’s arrest and execution. The last we see of John in this gospel is right here in chapter 3.

John 3.23-24 KWL

23 John is also baptizing, in Enon-by-Saleim:

Lots of water is there.

People are coming, and being baptized,

24 for John is not yet thrown into prison.

Not yet thrown into prison. John wasn’t immediately arrested after Jesus’s baptism. The other gospels make it look like John was arrested right before Jesus began preaching in the Galilee, Mk 1.14, Mt 4.12 so maybe it was fairly soon after this; after Jesus and his kids stopped visiting people in Judea and went home, then John got arrested. But not yet.

Meanwhile John and his kids were in Enon-by-Saleim, a place we cannot identify for certain. Αἰνὼν/Enón (KJV “Aenon”) is probably Greek for עַיִן/ayín, which means both “eye” and “fountain.” (Israelis cried a lot, y’know. Stands to reason they’d start calling their springs of water “eyes.”) So it’s a fountain near Σαλείμ/Saleím (KJV “Salim”) …and no, we don’t know where Saleim is. No it’s not Salem, i.e. Jerusalem. Nor is it present-day Salem in northern Israel. Eusebius Pamphili thought it was a town 8 miles from Beit She’an called Salumias, which is the most popular explanation. But archaeology and later history hasn’t confirmed this. Wherever Saleim was, it was likely in Judea.

And the reason we figure it was in Judea was because John hadn’t been arrested yet. See, the guy who had John arrested was the Roman governor of the Galilee, the son of the last king of Judea (and therefore called “king” himself in the gospels Mk 6.14), Herod Antipas. Herod didn’t properly have jurisdiction in Judea to arrest anyone. I mean, he could have; he had Roman soldiers with him, and could’ve had them just grab some guy he wanted to arrest, and drag the poor fella off to Tiberias and stick him in prison. But that would’ve got him in trouble with the Roman governor of Judea, who at this time (around the year 27) was the newly-appointed prefect Pontius Pilate, who would not be happy with a neighboring governor flexing in his province.

So more than likely, John crossed the border into Galilee… and that’s where Herod nabbed him.

The controversy.

As John and his kids are baptizing at Enon, someone from Judea got into a debate with the kids about καθαρισμοῦ/katharismú, “[ritual] cleansing.” Here, I’ll quote the verse:

John 3.25 KWL

So there’s a debate between John’s students and a Judean

about ritual cleansing.

We don’t know which Yahwist sect this Judean came from. Some sects were obsessive about ritually washing themselves, like the Pharisees and Essenes; others not so much. Ritual washing (βαπτίζω/vaptídzo, from whence we get our word “baptism”) required people to immerse themselves, fully clothed, in running water. This’d “clean” you from the various things in life which made you ritually unclean. And there were a lot of ’em! Your own bodily fluids, others’ bodily fluids, rot, mildew, dead things, inappropriate food, and of course anything touched by a ritually unclean person—and that’s assuming people even knew they were ritually unclean or not; you might’ve bumped a gentile and had been ritually unclean all day, and didn’t know it, and contaminated everything you touched. Heck, the person before you coulda done this too.

So before you entered God’s presence—before you went to temple, or for Pharisees, synagogue—God wanted you “clean” first. Get baptized and wait till sundown.

John’s baptism technically wasn’t any of these things. His baptism was unique: It symbolizes how people wanna leave behind their “unclean” sinful lives, repent, and turn to God. We do the very same thing with Christian baptism.

But that’s not how Pharisees did baptism. Uncleanliness wasn’t about sin. In fact you could be totally sinless, like Jesus, He 4.15 and still be ritually unclean: You could unintentionally touch a bleeder, or someone who recently had sex; you could accidentally touch a dead animal, or step on something rotten; you could obey the Law and bury the dead, Dt 21.23 and in so doing become ritually unclean. (Various Christians argue Jesus is so clean, when he touches an unclean person it cleanses them. But if this were true, Jesus wouldn’t have instructed lepers to go show themselves to the priests Lk 17.14 and get officially clean. Lv 14.1-9)

So we don’t know the details of this debate, but we can guess it was the usual:

JUDEAN. “You’re not doing it right.”

JOHANNITE. “We’re doing something different.”

JUDEAN. “Who gave you the authority to do something different?”

You know, the sort of fight-picking we usually find legalists start. They just aren’t happy unless they’re spoiling someone’s joy.

In the course of this fight, Jesus must’ve came up. Likely by the Judean, ’cause in the very next verse, John’s students come to John all anxious about it. Possibly—I’m still speculating—because the Judean didn’t approve of Jesus either.

JUDEAN. “Nobody’s doing it right anymore. Not you, not that Galilean baptizing people south of here…”

JOHANNITE. “Hold up. There’s someone else baptizing people?”

JUDEAN. “Yeah, he and his students. Also talking about repentance instead of obedience. Who’s teaching you guys this heresy? What, is there a school?”

JOHANNITE. “Describe the Galilean.”

JUDEAN. “Thirtysomething, white hair, students smell like fish. Keeps referring to himself as ‘the son of man.’ Who isn’t a son of man, I’d like to know.”

So, discovering what Jesus’s group was up to, off John’s students ran to tell on him.

John 3.26 KWL

The students come to John and tell him, “Rabbi,

‘the one who comes after you,’ Jn 1.15

of whom you testified beyond the Jordan:

Look, he’s baptizing.

And everyone is coming to him.”

John’s students behave much the same as many Christians who see another ministry growing, doing well, thriving… and they’re envious.

In the United States we’re usually raised to compete with one another. Life is a contest, there are winners and losers, and we’re encouraged to be one of the winners. Often so much so, we’re never taught how to gracefully handle losing. (Or, for that matter, gracefully winning. ’Cause in order to make us strive all the harder, we’re taught these aren’t just opponents: They’re enemies. Show no mercy.)

Competition is how a lot of our society works. Businesses compete. Politicians compete. Scholars compete for scholarships, grants… and notoriety. Employees compete for jobs, promotions, perquisites, bonuses. Advertisers and entertainers compete for your attention. Even for fun, we compete. Capitalism is based on the idea people are gonna be selfish anyway, so we may as well harness it, and use it to drive the economy.

This attitude leaks into the church way too often. As a result churches don’t cooperate, as sisters and brothers in Jesus’s kingdom. We also compete. We excuse it as “healthy competition”—and sometimes it legitimately is, when we remember our goal is to grow the whole kingdom, and not just our outpost. But all too often, it’s not at all healthy. We find reasons to slam our neighbor churches, our fellow Christians’ ministries, and discourage people from their group in favor of our group. Even though all these groups really belong to Christ. It’s not kind, nor loving, nor of God.

I’m not a member of the biggest church in town. I used to be, years ago. Then I moved to another town, joined another church in my denomination which was much smaller… and ran into other people in my denomination who’d bash the bigger churches in our district. That’s right: Churches who particularly go out of their way to declare themselves sister churches, who share resources, who are supposed to be even more on the same team than usual, bash each other.

Why? Envy. Pure, simple, barely-disguised envy.

It’s a work of the flesh, a form of selfishness which covets other people’s success or wealth. And Jesus had to deal with it among his followers since the very beginning. His own students envied one another, Lk 9.46 or envied outsiders whom God worked through regardless. Lk 9.49 In this story, John dealt with it too: Students who noticed Jesus was gaining… and their master was waning.

Just like Christian college students who insist their school is better than every other school in the world, just like evangelism ministries who want their team to save the world—not those creeps from the other ministry—John’s students felt slighted by someone else’s success. They felt envy.

John’s response doesn’t directly rebuke them for their envy; he’s very kind in the way he goes about it. But I’ll get to that response next time.