{"collection":"chr","html_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/browse/chr/ecf/009/0090282.htm","path":"chr/ecf/009/0090282.htm","source_url":"https://sacred-texts.com/chr/ecf/009/0090282.htm","text":"6. Messianic Discussion with John the Baptist.\nThen the Jews sent priests and levites from Jerusalem to ask him, Who art thou? And he confessed and denied not; and he confessed, I am not the Christ. 4837 What legates should have been sent from the Jews to John, and where should they have been sent from? Should they not have been men held to stand by the election of God above their fellows, and should they not have come from that place which was chosen out of the whole of the earth, though it is all called good, from Jerusalem where was the temple of God? With such honour, then, do they enquire of John. In the case of Christ nothing of this sort is reported to have been done by the Jews; but what the Jews do to John, John does to Christ, sending his own disciples to ask him, 4838 \u201cArt thou He that should come, or do we look for another?\u201d John confesses to those sent to him, and denies not, and he afterwards declares, \u201cI am the voice of one crying in the wilderness;\u201d but Christ, as having a greater testimony than John the Baptist, makes His answer by words and deeds, saying, \u201cGo and tell John those things which ye do p. 355 hear and see; the blind receive their sight, and the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed and the deaf hear, and the poor have the Gospel preached to them.\u201d On this passage I shall, if God permit, enlarge in its proper place. Here, however, it might be asked reasonably enough why John gives such an answer to the question put to him. The priests and levites do not ask him, \u201cArt thou the Christ?\u201d but \u201cWho art thou?\u201d and the Baptist\u2019s reply to this question should have been, \u201cI am the voice of one crying in the wilderness.\u201d The proper reply to the question, \u201cArt thou the Christ?\u201d is, \u201cI am not the Christ;\u201d and to the question, \u201cWho art thou?\u201d\u2014\u201cThe voice of one crying in the wilderness.\u201d To this we may say that he probably discerned in the question of the priests and levites a cautious reverence, which led them to hint the idea in their minds that he who was baptizing might be the Christ, but withheld them from openly saying so, which might have been presumptuous. He quite naturally, therefore, proceeds in the first place to remove any false impressions they might have taken up about him, and declares publicly the true state of the matter, \u201cI am not the Christ.\u201d Their second question, and also their third, show that they had conceived some such surmise about him. They supposed that he might be that second in honour to whom their hopes pointed, namely, Elijah, who held with them the next position after Christ; and so when John had answered, \u201cI am not the Christ,\u201d they asked, \u201cWhat then? Art thou Elijah?\u201d And he said, \u201cI am not.\u201d They wish to know, in the third place, if he is the prophet, and on his answer, \u201cNo,\u201d they have no longer any name to give the personage whose advent they expected, and they say, \u201cWho art thou, then, that we may give an answer to them that sent us. What sayest thou of thyself?\u201d Their meaning is: \u201cYou are not, you say, any of those personages whose advent Israel hopes and expects, and who you are, to baptize as you do, we do not know; tell us, therefore, so that we may report to those who sent us to get light upon this point.\u201d We add, as it has some bearing on the context, that the people were moved by the thought that the period of Christ\u2019s advent was near. It was in a manner imminent in the years from the birth of Jesus and a little before, down to the publication of the preaching. Hence it was, in all likelihood, that as the scribes and lawyers had deduced the time from Holy Scripture and were expecting the Coming One, the idea was taken up by Theudas, who came forward as the Messiah and brought together a considerable multitude, and after him by the famous Judas of Galilee in the days of the taxing. 4839 Thus the coming of the Messiah was more warmly expected and discussed, and it was natural enough for the Jews to send priests and levites from Jerusalem to John, to ask him, \u201cWho art thou?\u201d and learn if he professed to be the Christ.","title":"Ante-Nicene Fathers, Vol IX: Epistle to Gregory and Origen's Commentary on the Gospel of John.: Chapter VI","type":"page"}