John & Johns of life

Mtt 11:11-15

"I tell you the truth, of all who have ever lived, none is greater than John the Baptist. Yet even the least person in the Kingdom of Heaven is greater than he is! 12 And from the time John the Baptist began preaching until now, the Kingdom of Heaven has been forcefully advancing, and violent people are attacking it. 13 For before John came, all the prophets and the law of Moses looked forward to this present time. 14 And if you are willing to accept what I say, he is Elijah, the one the prophets said would come. 15 Anyone with ears to hear should listen and understand!

Food for thought!

Jesus is declaring that John was nothing less than the divine herald whose duty and privilege it was to announce the coming of the Messiah. John was nothing less than the herald of God, and no man could have a greater and noble task than that. No one is greater than John.

But he who is least in the Kingdom of Heaven is greater than he.

Here there is one quite general truth. With Jesus there came into the world something absolutely new. The prophets were great; their message was precious, because they were messengers of God; but with Jesus there emerged something still greater, and a message still more wonderful. 

With Jesus’ coming, history got divided into B.C. (Before Christ) and After Christ, or A.D. But what was it that John lacked and that Jesus has? What is it that the Christian has that John could never have? The answer is simple and fundamental. John never saw the Cross nor the ressurrection. Therefore one thing John could never know--the Passion, Death and Resurrection of Christ. The holiness of God he might know; the justice of God he might declare; but the love of God shown in all its fullness he could never know. 

It is true, but the humblest Christian knows more about God than the greatest of the Old Testament prophets. The man who has seen the Cross has seen the heart of God in a way that no man who lived before the Cross could ever see it. Indeed the least in the Kingdom of Heaven is greater than any man who went before.

So John had the destiny which sometimes falls to us; he had the task of pointing men to a greatness into which he himself did not enter. It is given to some us to be the signposts of God. Some people are chosen just to point to a new ideal and a new greatness which others will enter into, but into which they themselves will not come. It is very common that revolutionaries don’t savoir the freedom for which they fought. 

Let us never be discouraged in life, if the dream we have dreamed and for which we have toiled is never worked out before our own eyes and times. God needed John; God needs his signposts who can point others on the way, although they themselves cannot ever reach the goal.