Pride and Joy

After this Jesus and His disciples went into the Judean countryside, and He remained there with them and was baptizing. John also was baptizing at Aenon near Salim, because water was plentiful there, and people were coming and being baptized (for John had not yet been put in prison).

Now a discussion arose between some of John’s disciples and a Jew over purification. And they came to John and said to him, “Rabbi, He who was with you across the Jordan, to whom you bore witness—look, He is baptizing, and all are going to Him.” John answered, “A person cannot receive even one thing unless it is given him from heaven. You yourselves bear me witness, that I said, ‘I am not the Christ, but I have been sent before Him.’ The one who has the bride is the bridegroom. The friend of the bridegroom, who stands and hears him, rejoices greatly at the bridegroom’s voice. Therefore this joy of mine is now complete. He must increase, but I must decrease.”

He who comes from above is above all. He who is of the earth belongs to the earth and speaks in an earthly way. He who comes from heaven is above all. He bears witness to what He has seen and heard, yet no one receives His testimony. Whoever receives His testimony sets his seal to this, that God is true. For He whom God has sent utters the words of God, for He gives the Spirit without measure. The Father loves the Son and has given all things into His hand. Whoever believes in the Son has eternal life; whoever does not obey the Son shall not see life, but the wrath of God remains on him.

John 3:22-36

John’s disciples are tempted to see Jesus’ baptismal ministry as a rival to John’s. Their successful ministerial careers are puffing them up, so when they see someone else’s success, they feel threatened. So, they tell John, “Look, [Jesus] is baptizing, and all are going to Him” (v. 26). John perceives what is going on and is very concerned. He says, “A person cannot receive even one thing unless it is given him from heaven” (v.27), and “He must increase but I must decrease” (v. 30). This teaches us two things: everything is a gift from God, which shatters our pride, and Jesus is the greatest gift of all, which fills us with joy.

A person cannot receive even one thing unless it is given him from heaven. The first problem John sees in his disciples is pride. They think they earned a successful ministry, so John reminds them that everything, whether a successful ministry, career, or family is a gift from God; we did not earn it. When you become a Christian, you realize that you didn’t really find God; God found you. You realize that He was the one pursuing you the whole time, not the other way around. Shortly after that, you realize that not just your faith, but everything you thought you had achieved in life was really a gift, not a result of hard work. Maybe you were proud of your wealth or your humble upbringing, and you thought, “I earned that; I worked hard for that,” but when you become a Christian you realize that even though you worked hard, God was the One who gave you that potential in the first place. God is the One who gave you a family that valued hard work, or, if not, providentially ordered your life circumstances so that you learned that lesson and had the opportunities to succeed. Even John’s disciples only had a ministry because the Christ appeared when they were alive to see it. Hear Paul’s words in 1 Corinthians 4:7: “What do you have that you did not receive? If then you received it, why do you boast as if you did not receive it?”

But maybe you don’t have many successes. Maybe you even resent people who have more than you, or maybe you feel cheated. Remember Jesus, who, being the only One to ever live a perfect life, got the most unfair deal imaginable. But He did it “for the joy set before Him” (Hebrews 12:2), and you were the joy set before Him! For He did it to “bring many sons to glory” (Hebrews 2:10) through faith in His name. Remember that “we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses” (Hebrews 4:15). Remember that God is our loving Father, who uses even our failures and suffering to bring us to faith in Him and to strengthen our faith in Him, which gives us the greatest joy of all. So whether you are high or low, successful or a loser, if you are a Christian, you have the greatest gift of all. It is only because, like Paul, you were blinded by grace (Acts 9:3), “called by His grace” (Gal. 1:15), “granted repentance that leads to life” (Acts 11:18), and because “the Lord opened [your] heart” to believe (Acts 16:14). All is from God, even faith itself.

He must increase but I must decrease. The second problem John sees in his disciples is actually what he doesn’t see—joy.  John’s disciples have no joy because, as their success puffs them up, their vision of Jesus gets smaller and smaller. They’ve been so distracted by success and blinded by pride, that they missed Jesus, the One they were waiting for. John tells his disciples that it was never about success, but Jesus, our Bridegroom, and One True Love—"Therefore this joy of mine is now complete” (v. 29). When you become a Christian, you realize that all your old loves, the things you looked to for hope and happiness, significance and security, never really satisfied the longings of your heart because life was never about those things. When you put your faith in Jesus, all those things become so little in comparison to your newfound love for Him that they become as nothing at all. You learn, like Paul, to “count everything as loss for the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. . . and [to] be found in Him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which comes through faith in Christ” (Philippians 3:8-9). When you become a Christian, you immediately receive the greatest gift of all—Christ Jesus your Lord and Bridegroom. And as you behold Him you “rejoice with joy that is inexpressible and filled with glory” (1 Peter 1:8): “He must increase, but I must decrease.”