Greg and Amy explain why John the Baptist—despite his earlier confidence in Jesus as the Messiah—began to doubt while suffering in prison. They use this moment to encourage Christians facing seasons of doubt to anchor themselves in the objective truth of the cross.
Transcript
Question: In John 1:34, John the Baptist acknowledges that Jesus is the Son of God after baptizing him. Why does he seem confused in Luke 7:19 and Matthew 11:13?
Greg: This is the place where he’s in prison, and he says, “Are you the one, or should we look for another?” And I think it’s very interesting, the conversation that happens, because what Jesus does is he offers his pedigree: “Tell John this. The blind see. The oppressed are rescued.” He gives these characterizations of supernatural power.
And, by the way, the oppressed are clearly the oppressed of the devil. Those are the ones that are getting rescued, not just culturally oppressed. Sometimes people will change the meaning there or make it more like a social justice thing. But, no, those are the oppressed of the devil. That’s what Peter points out Jesus rescued people from.
But the point here is that now you’ve got John the Baptist, and he’s the one who said Jesus would baptize with the Holy Spirit and with fire—so, salvation and judgment. So, this is the guy who’s going to bring the judgment on the bad guys—all the evil guys, including the evil Romans So, he has an understanding of how this is going to play out, and it ain’t working out the way he thought.
Amy: Not for John.
Greg: Not for John. “He must increase, and I must decrease.” He didn’t realize how much he would decrease, because now he’s in prison and facing a death sentence—and that’s what happened to him. He was beheaded. So, he’s having a moment of doubt, or a season of doubt.
I really appreciate this passage because, in John’s case, he has plenty of good reasons to believe that Jesus is the one, for the reason he gives earlier on. He said, “I wasn’t sure, but the Father told me this would be a sign—the one who I baptize, and the Holy Spirit descends upon him, that’s the one.” And then he could say, “Behold, the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world.” So, people had plenty of evidence that Jesus was the one. Plus, keep in mind that Jesus and John the Baptist are cousins. So, they had some time before, growing up together, where they got together. And remember, when John says to Jesus, “You should be baptizing me, not me you,” that was before he got the revelation that Jesus was the Messiah. He’s referring, probably to the fact that Jesus was remarkable, even as a lad, and holy. If anybody didn’t need to repent—have a baptism of repentance—John knew it was his cousin Jesus.
So, John’s got lots of information there. Plenty. That doesn’t mean he’s immune to periods of doubt. And here he is in prison. He’s saying, “This isn’t what I signed up for. I didn’t think it was going to turn out like this. Maybe I’m mistaken about something. Are you the one?” And Jesus responds with evidential features. And then he says this. Now, I’ve heard somebody say Jesus doesn’t chastise John for his doubt, but he does, in a gentle fashion. He says, “And blessed is he who does not stumble over me. You tell John this.” Because what was happening—John was stumbling over Jesus, who Jesus was showing himself to be, and it wasn’t what John expected.
Now, there’s a lesson in here for all of us. When we become Christians, or when we’re raised as Christians, we have a kind of expectation of what the future is going to look like and what we’re going to get as Christians—how God is going to be toward us as believers. And, generally, this is not an accurate picture. We learn the hard way that in this world you have tribulation, as Jesus pointed out. We start stumbling because we have a false understanding of what to expect out of being a Christian in a fallen world in this lifetime.
People still get it wrong, especially in a very narcissistic culture. John got it wrong for a little different reason. He wasn’t narcissistic, but he was discouraged because now he’s in prison, and, “This isn’t what I thought was going to happen.” And Jesus said, “I’m the guy. Here’s my creds. Don’t stumble over me. Don’t force-fit me into your preconceived notions about how I’m going to do things.”
That also happened in John 6 when he did the bread of life discourse and said, “Eat my flesh, drink my blood,” and it grossed a lot of people out, and they left. And Jesus said to his disciples, “Aren’t you going to leave?” He’s not begging them to stay, but Peter says for the rest of them, “Where are we going to go? You have the words that give eternal life.” So, it wasn’t as if he really resonated with Jesus’ sermon. Nevertheless, he knew that Jesus was the Messiah. So, in a certain sense, by contrast to John the Baptist, he’s going to hang with Jesus even though he’s confused. And this is the right response. Don’t stumble over me.
So, I think what this does is give encouragement to us—that Jesus is still the Messiah, even when things don’t go as we expect them to go. Don’t stumble over him. “Blessed is he who does not stumble over me. Here’s my creds. Hang in there.”
Amy: To me, this is so realistic because anyone who’s been a Christian for any amount of time—when things go wrong, that’s when you start to say, “Wait, did I get this wrong?” Which, again, it doesn’t make any sense, because we can look at just John the Baptist and know that things aren’t going to go right. But that’s just the way we think. We start to doubt when things are going wrong in our lives. So, to me, this whole passage rings true. This is what we do as human beings.
The question was, “Why does John seem confused?” Well, why do any of us seem confused? We have all this evidence—we have more evidence than John had, except maybe not direct revelation from God. But we have all this evidence, and yet we do the same thing. We start to doubt when things are going wrong. I always tell people, that’s when I have to think about something objective. What I think about is the cross, and I think about how that shows God’s wisdom, his sovereignty, his justice, his love, his grace—all these things that I can hang my hat on, regardless of what’s happening to me. When I think about that objective reality of what’s happened—and again, John didn’t know what was going to happen at this point, but we do—we know where everything is heading, and we know what Jesus was here for. We know what he’s doing today. We can look at those objective things and know that whatever’s happening is not outside of God’s control, and it’s not for our harm. It’s for our good in some way, and it’s for the good of God’s plan. And so, I always have to think about those objective things when I emotionally start to doubt that God loves me or to doubt whatever it is, as we all do.