Matthew 3:14

II. JESUS. APTIZED.

14. John forbade him.

The objection that John made to the baptism of Christ implies some knowledge of him. Their mothers were cousins. We do hot know that they had any intercourse after the birth of Christ and there is no evidence that Jesus and John ever met. The home of Jesus was at Nazareth, seventy miles north of Jerusalem; there are grounds for believing that Zacharias lived at Juttah, near Hebron, to the south of Jerusalem. John, long before he began his ministry, retired to the wilderness. The Spirit had told John to proclaim the Redeemer and had given him. sign by which he should know him. He was waiting earnestly for him, and when Jesus came before him, be perhaps knew by the Spirit his godlike purity and may have believed that he was the Messiah, but as yet he "knew him not" (see John 1:33). He could not be certain until he saw the divine sign, yet the probability seemed so strong and Jesus was so pure and sinless that he felt that it was out of place for him to baptize him.

I have need to be baptized of thee.

These words were uttered under the conviction, not certainty, that Jesus was the Christ. If so, he was the one that baptized in the Holy Spirit. John had far more need of that baptism than of Jesus to be baptized in water.