I Chose You

Using modern parlance, John the Baptist
was quite a weird dude. Even in his ancient
setting, he was a throwback. He was to many
simply a spectacle—a guy who clung to old
ways and old habits. His fashion sense was
suspect. I mean, he wore camel’s hair and a
belt, if you can believe it! His diet was odd as
well. He ate locusts and wild honey. In every
way, to the people of his day and time, John
the Baptist was an eccentric. He was
nonconformist and unconventional.
But he was all of this from the beginning of
his life. He was chosen by God to be
something special, and to be something that
people had not experienced for a long, long
time in their world. He was a true prophet sent
from God. He was literally “the voice of one
crying in the wilderness, ‘Make straight the
way of the Lord,’” right out of the mouth of the
inspired prophet Isaiah. John the Baptist was
the forerunner. He was the one called to
prepare the way for the Messiah who had now
arrived.
And people listened to John. Some
listened only because they thought him crazy,
of course. Peculiar people in every generation
attract such attention. Many listened and
followed, however, because of the power and
truth in his words. Thus it is that when the
Messiah came near and John saw him, John
pointed to him and declared, “Behold, the
Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the
world!” Going further to describe Jesus as the
one whom he had predicted would come, the
one whose shoes John did not deserve even
to untie, John directed people away from
himself and towards the Lamb.

And people obeyed. They left off from
following John and turned instead to follow
Jesus. First of all, at least according to the
account of John the Apostle in his gospel,
at John the Baptist’s word, Andrew and
one other of John’s disciples decided to
follow Jesus. They heard the words of
John the Baptist as they all walked
together (“Behold the Lamb of God”), and
they changed their loyalty. They went from
being disciples of John to being disciples
of Jesus, the Lamb of God. John was
certainly thrilled by this, since he had been
tasked with this very thing. John’s role was
to blaze the trail for the coming Messiah.
His responsibility was to point folks away
from following him in order that they might
follow the Christ who had come into the
world. As John the Apostle records later in
John 3:30, John the Baptist confirmed this
in his own words, “He [Jesus] must
increase, but I must decrease.”
When people truly recognize Jesus as
the Savior of the world—as the suffering
servant whose sacrifice brings us to God,
as the one whose sandals we are not
worthy to loosen, as the God who came
near, as the one who took upon himself the
sins of the world so that we might receive
and reflect the holiness of God—they
follow. Whether people come to this
realization of their own accord, or whether
they are led to it by another, the truth of
Jesus compels people to follow.
Jesus reminds his disciples in John
15:16 of a critical truth, a truth that we all
do well to remember. Mere hours before
his arrest and torture and death, Jesus
says to them, “You did not choose me, but
I chose you.”
We follow the Lamb because he chose
us. Read that again. Jesus chose us.

-Ricky

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