The Conservative Reformation and Its Theology - Saint Mary ...

kingdom would be in Baptism, that He preeminently would be the
Baptizer. "They asked him, and said unto him, Why baptizest thou, then, if
thou be not that Christ?" Nicodemus came to settle in his mind whether
Jesus was the Christ. Nothing would be more sure to be a question with
him than this: Whether Jesus would claim the right to baptize? The answer
of John implied that he baptized by authority of the Messiah, as His
divinely appointed forerunner and provisional administrator of this right of
Baptism, whose proper authority lay in Christ alone. Nicodemus would be
peculiarly alive to any allusion to Baptism, would be likely to understand
as referring to it any words whose obvious meaning pointed to it, and our
Lord would the more carefully avoid whatever might mislead him on this
point. 3. John continually characterized his work in this way: "I baptize
with water," Matt. iii. 2; Mark i. 8; Luke iii. 16; John i. 26, 31, 33; Acts i. 5.
At this time, and under all these circumstances, the word "water" would be
connected specially with Baptism.
4. John had said of Jesus, shortly before this interview of Nicodemus,
Mark i. 8: "I, indeed, have baptized you with water; but He shall baptize
you with the Holy Ghost..." Here, before the Ruler of the Jews, was the
very person of whom this had been uttered; and when he takes up these
words "water" and "the Spirit," it seems impossible that Nicodemus
should doubt their allusion to, and their close parallel with, John's words.
5. John had made two kinds of utterances in regard to Christ's work,
and we beg the reader to note the great difference between them, for they
have been confounded, and gross misrepresentation of them has been the
result. The first of these utterances we have just given, Mark i. 8. It was
made to the body of John's disciples, and the two things he makes
prominent are Baptism with water, and Baptism with the Holy Ghost; that
is, water and the Spirit.
The other utterance, Matt. iii. 7-12, was made to those to whom he
said: "O generation of vipers, who hath warned you to flee from the wrath
to come?" John knew that, as a class,