Exegetical and Hermeneutical Commentary of John 1:20
And he confessed, and denied not; but confessed, I am not the Christ.
20. confessed, and denied not ] Antithetic parallelism, as in Joh 1:3.
but confessed ] Rather, and he confessed, to introduce what he confessed.
I am not the Christ ] ‘I’ is emphatic, implying that some one else not far distant is the Christ. Throughout the section (20 34) John contrasts himself with the Christ by an emphasis on ‘I.’
the Christ ] It is to be regretted that our translators have so often omitted the definite article before ‘Christ,’ although it is inserted in the Greek. In the Gospel narratives the article should always be preserved in English as here. Comp. Mat 16:16; Mat 26:63; Mar 8:29; and contrast Mat 24:5; Luk 23:35; Luk 23:39, &c. To us ‘Christ’ is a proper name, but to the Evangelists it is a title, ‘ the Christ,’ the Messiah so long expected. See Lightfoot, On Revision, p. 100.
Fuente: The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges
I am not the Christ – This confession proves that John was not an impostor. He had a wide reputation. The nation was expecting that the Messiah was about to come, and multitudes were ready to believe that John was he, Luk 3:15. If John had been an impostor he would have taken advantage of this excited state of public feeling, proclaimed himself to be the Messiah, and formed a large party in his favor. The fact that he did not do it is full proof that he did not intend to impose on people, but came only as the forerunner of Christ; and his example shows that all Christians, and especially all Christian ministers, however much they may be honored and blessed, should be willing to lay all their honors at the feet of Jesus; to keep themselves back and to hold up before the world only the Son of God. To do this is one eminent mark of the true spirit of a minister of the gospel.
Fuente: Albert Barnes’ Notes on the Bible
Joh 1:20
He confessed and denied not
John and Jesus
I.
THE DIGNITY OF TRUTH.
1. It seems easy for John to have confessed and denied not. But here is a people ripe for Christ. They had been expecting Him for four hundred years. Moreover, no sooner did John appear than there was a tendency in the whole nation to recognize him as the Christ. They ask expecting an affirmative. For in John they recognize a born leader, a man which met the traditional conception of what the Messiah was to be. The ball was at his feet; the sceptre within his grasp; the hermit of the desert may to-morrow be a king. One word decides the future, but the hardest temptation–that to power–is resisted.
2. It was not easy for John to resist; is it easy for us? How many are content to appear just as and what they are? There are very few who are not ready to appear more learned, clever, innocent, and better off than we really are, if our fellows will only give us credit for it. How much need there is for absolute truth telling in social life! When a man hates another he generally says what he means; but to speak truth at all times, in the ordinary dealings of life, even though admiring deputations leave us and in spite of neglect and pain, this is difficult.
3. This reality was the secret of Johns power.
(1) He was trained for it in the desert. He had been face to face with God and had learned to pray, think, act for himself without consulting any but his conscience and his God. He had accustomed himself, too, to self-denial and to do without enervating luxuries and dissipating companionships. The desert enters too little into the curriculum of our education.
(2) The evidence of Johns reality was his popularity. This position may seem doubtful, because we often find that a mans popularity is in inverse proportion to his sincerity. Yet men love reality. Johns preaching was direct, personal, frank, hard hitting; and yet the crowd was always there: the homely citizen, the publican, the warrior, the Pharisee, all swept into the vortex of this mans influence, and the reason was Johns reality. At heart the world hates humbug; and it is this religious manliness that we want to-day. The Church has grown afraid of plain speaking, and her apologetic hope I dont intrude the world listens to with disguised contempt and dismisses with easy scorn.
II. THE GRANDEUR OF SELF REPRESSION.
1. This a rare gift in the great scramble of life, where every man sets his heart upon a common prize. Here is a great, powerful, popular man swaying a nation, and yet at the very crisis of victory obliterates himself in favour of another.
2. Thus early in history we are taught that Christ must be all in all. They called John the Baptist; but John dismissed the title. He said, No, there is another baptism in comparison with which mine is nothing. We are not Wesleyans, Baptists, Churchmen–these are ephemeral distinctions which men set up. When the Master comes, all such distinctions die. We are Christians only. And when we begin to decrease into nothingness, when our poor getting on, our thirst for power, is swept out of us and there is left nothing but the desire that Christ shall shine–then there is increase for the Church.
3. Christ and John–how near they stand together; yet how far apart! Christ like John could be stern. It was to Johns murderer that Christ uttered the one purely contemptuous expression that ever passed His lips. John like Christ could be gentle. The most beautiful thing ever said of Christ was said by this stern ascetic. But John was not Jesus; and he confessed it. (W. J. Dawson.)
Fuente: Biblical Illustrator Edited by Joseph S. Exell
Verse 20. He confessed, and denied not; but confessed] A common mode of Jewish phraseology. John renounces himself, that Jesus may be all in all. Though God had highly honoured him, and favoured him with peculiar influence in the discharge of his work, yet he considered he had nothing but what he had received, and therefore, giving all praise to his benefactor, takes care to direct the attention of the people to him alone from whom he had received his mercies. He who makes use of God’s gifts to feed and strengthen his pride and vanity will be sure to be stripped of the goods wherein he trusts, and fall down into the condemnation of the devil. We have nothing but what we have received; we deserve nothing of what we possess; and it is only God’s infinite mercy which keeps us in the possession of the blessings which we now enjoy.
Fuente: Adam Clarke’s Commentary and Critical Notes on the Bible
And he confessed; he being asked openly and plainly, professed,
and denied not; and did not dissemble nor halt in his speech. These negatives are in Scripture often added to affirmatives, to exclude all exceptions, Job 5:17; Psa 40:10-12. But confessed: he did not tell them once so, but again and again, because many were musing about it, Luk 3:15.
I am not the Christ; I am not that great Messiah which God hath promised you, and in the expectation of whom you live, Luk 2:26,38; Lu 19:11; Joh 4:25. The diligence we shall constantly observe in the servants of God in holy writ, to avoid the arrogating of that honour to themselves which is due only to God and Christ; and this, together with Johns steadiness and plainness, doth very well become all professors, but the ministers of the gospel especially.
Fuente: English Annotations on the Holy Bible by Matthew Poole
20. confessed, &c.thatis, While many were ready to hail him as the Christ, he neither gavethe slightest ground for such views, nor the least entertainment tothem.
Fuente: Jamieson, Fausset and Brown’s Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible
And he confessed, and denied not,…. He freely, and without any reserve, declared, and in the plainest and strongest terms professed to the messengers before all the people, that he was not the Messiah; nor did he retract his confession, or draw in his words again, or drop any thing that looked doubtful or suspicious;
but confessed, I am not the Christ: he stood to it, and insisted on it, that he was not that illustrious person; nor had they any reason to entertain such an opinion of him; nor would he have them do so; they might assure themselves he was not Christ.
Fuente: John Gill’s Exposition of the Entire Bible
And he confessed ( ). The continued paratactic use of (and) and the first aorist active indicative of , old verb from (, , to say the same thing), to confess, in the Synoptics (Mt 10:32) as here.
And denied not ( ). Negative statement of same thing in Johannine fashion, first aorist middle indicative of , another Synoptic and Pauline word (Matt 10:33; 2Tim 2:12). He did not contradict or refuse to say who he was.
And he confessed ( ). Thoroughly Johannine again in the paratactic repetition.
I am not the Christ ( ). Direct quotation again with recitative before it like our modern quotation marks. “I am not the Messiah,” he means by (the Anointed One). Evidently it was not a new question as Luke had already shown (Lu 3:15).
Fuente: Robertson’s Word Pictures in the New Testament
1) “And he confessed, and denied not;- (kai homologesen kai ouk ernesato) “And he confessed, and he did not deny,” or hesitate to identify himself, and disavow being anyone else. This is his second testimony of the Definitive identity of Jesus, the former being found in Joh 1:15. This he did in a clear, frank, and unambiguous manner.
2) “But confessed,” (kai homologesen) “And he confessed,” forthrightly, negatively, openly, publicly, disclaiming himself as the Christ, though some imagined that he was, Luk 3:15.
3) “I am not the Christ.” (hoti ego ouk eimi ho Christos) “That I am not the Christ,” am not myself the Messiah at all, but suggesting that there was another who was, who then existed as the Christ. This forthright reply, to this esteemed official embassy of interrogators, evoked the following, further inquiries.
Fuente: Garner-Howes Baptist Commentary
20. And he confessed, and denied not. That is, he confessed openly, and without any ambiguity or hypocrisy. The word confess, in the first instance, means generally, that he stated the fact as it really was. In the second instance, it is repeated in order to express the form of the confession. He replied expressly, that he was not the Christ
Fuente: Calvin’s Complete Commentary
(20) Confessed, and denied not; but confessed.Comp. for the style, Note on Joh. 1:3.
I am not.The better reading places the pronoun in the most emphatic position: It is not I who am the Messiah. He understands their question, then, Who art thou? as expressing the general expectation, Is it thou who art the Messiah?
Fuente: Ellicott’s Commentary for English Readers (Old and New Testaments)
20. Not the Christ Some of his disciples may, in their pride, have given out that their master was the Messiah himself. This committee cross-examine him, and thus draw out a prompt and explicit denial, which our Evangelist adduces to silence all false claimants in John’s behalf.
Fuente: Whedon’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments
‘And he confessed and denied not, and he confessed, “I am not the Christ (Messiah)”. And they asked him, “What then. Are you Elijah?”, and he says, “I am not”. “Are you the prophet?”, and he answers, “No”.’
John immediately discounted any of these ideas. First he discounted the idea that he was the Messiah (v. 20). The ‘Christ’ or ‘Messiah’ means ‘anointed one’. The idea behind the term was mainly of a Davidic king empowered by God who would come and intervene on behalf of God’s people, freeing them from tyranny, especially that of the Romans, usually by force of arms. (Kings of Israel and Judah were ‘anointed’ with oil when they were crowned). Others saw him as coming as a great teacher who would win the hearts of men to follow what they themselves believed in. ‘The prophet’ was in anticipation of a fulfilment of Deu 18:18. It was a general expectancy of the time, and is one we find very much in evidence at Qumran.
‘And he confessed and denied not’. John the Baptiser was true to his call to witness to Christ. He did not make great claims for himself but was speaking with the thought of pointing away from himself to the ‘coming One’. He did not deny the truth about himself.
Then, when asked if he was Elijah, he emphatically replied ‘No’. This was because he wanted them to know that he was not in fact the original Elijah returned in the flesh. He rated himself in lowly terms. Nevertheless Jesus would point out that while he was not literally Elijah, he was the fulfilment of the one promised by Malachi, one who was like Elijah (Mat 11:14; Mat 17:12). John also stressed that he was not the great expected prophet (v. 21). It is clear from all this that he wanted them to realise that he was ‘nothing special’. Like all great men of God he did not have an exalted opinion of himself.
The threefold question demonstrates the wide range of views. They did not conceive how one person could fulfil all the promises. Note how John’s replies become shorter and shorter. He did not want men to look at him. He was not the Word, it was Jesus Who was the Word.
Fuente: Commentary Series on the Bible by Peter Pett
20 And he confessed, and denied not; but confessed, I am not the Christ.
Ver. 20. He confessed and denied not, but confessed ] Sincerely and studiously; he put away that honour with both hands earnestly, as knowing the danger of wronging the jealous God in his glory, that is as his wife. All the fat was to be sacrificed to God. It is well observed, that nineteen times doth John use this kind of double affirmation. First, to strengthen our belief. Secondly, to show how sparing he was of an oath. Thirdly, for the greater certainty of the thing.
Fuente: John Trapp’s Complete Commentary (Old and New Testaments)
20. ] , he openly and formally confessed. This emphatic notice of his declaration seems to be introduced not with any view of removing too high an estimate of John’s work and office , as sometimes supposed, but rather to shew the importance of his testimony , which was so publicly and officially delivered, that the Messiah was come (see ch. Joh 5:33-35 ); and the way in which he depreciated himself in comparison with Him who came after him.
Fuente: Henry Alford’s Greek Testament
and denied not. Figure of speech Pleonasm (App-6), for emphasis.
denied. Greek arneomai. In John only here, and Joh 18:25, Joh 18:27.
but = and.
the Christ = the Messiah. App-98.
Fuente: Companion Bible Notes, Appendices and Graphics
20.] , he openly and formally confessed. This emphatic notice of his declaration seems to be introduced not with any view of removing too high an estimate of Johns work and office, as sometimes supposed, but rather to shew the importance of his testimony, which was so publicly and officially delivered,-that the Messiah was come (see ch. Joh 5:33-35); and the way in which he depreciated himself in comparison with Him who came after him.
Fuente: The Greek Testament
Joh 1:20. , he confessed) the truth. Comp. Joh 1:8; ch. Joh 5:33.- , he denied not) Whilst he denied himself, he did not deny Christ [Psa 118:15-16 (Perhaps Beng. means Ps. 119 = 118 in the Septuag.)]-, I) By thus limiting his speech [to the denial that he was the Christ] he gives a handle to the thought arising, that the Christ is not far off.- , the Christ) they had suspected that John was the Christ.
Fuente: Gnomon of the New Testament
Joh 1:20
Joh 1:20
And he confessed, and denied not; and he confessed, I am not the Christ.-Without evasion or denial he said, I am not the anointed one of God. He was not willing to claim the honor that belonged only to Christ.
Fuente: Old and New Testaments Restoration Commentary
Joh 3:28-36, Mat 3:11, Mat 3:12, Mar 1:7, Mar 1:8, Luk 3:15-17
Reciprocal: Joh 1:8 – that light Joh 1:24 – that Christ Act 13:25 – whom
Fuente: The Treasury of Scripture Knowledge
0
The messengers’ the Jews sent to John asked him about his identity. He was the most unusual person who had come among them in that generation, and it had raised questions and suggestions in connection with some historic characters of the Old Testament. Many knew it was predicted that the Christ (the Anointed) was to come into the world, and perhaps John was that person. The inquiry was doubtless prompted by both curiosity and genuine interest. Confessed often implies some unfavorable charge having been made; it does not in this case. The first definition of the original shows it to mean simply, “to declare.” It had been the attitude of John all along, to be humble and to show deep respect for the One who was to follow him, hence he wished to leave no uncertainty as to his position.
Fuente: Combined Bible Commentary
Joh 1:20. And he confessed and denied not. And he confessed, I am not the Christ. The answer of the Baptist is reported with great solemnity. The effect of the double statement, he confessed and denied not (comp. Joh 1:3; 1Jn 2:4; 1Jn 2:27) is to give peculiar impressiveness to the words: St. John thus brings into relief the single-minded faithfulness of the Baptist, and at the same time corrects mistaken opinions as to the character of his mission (see note on Joh 1:8). In the reply itself the first word is strongly emphatic, It is not I who am the Christ. The Baptist thus prepares the way for the further statements which he is to make with the view of guiding his hearers to that Christ who is come, and whom with gradually increasing clearness he is to proclaim.
Fuente: A Popular Commentary on the New Testament
Ver. 20. And he confessed, and denied not, and confessed:I am not the Christ.
Before pointing out the contents of the response of John the Baptist, the evangelist sets forth its characteristics: it was ready, frank, categorical. The first he confessed, indicates spontaneity, eagerness. By the negative form: he denied not, the evangelist means to say he did not for an instant yield to the temptation which he might have had to deny. The second he confessed is added in order to connect with it the profession which is to follow. This remarkable form of narrative (comp. Joh 1:7-8) seems to us, whatever Weiss may say of it, to be more naturally explained if we suppose an allusion to people who were inclined to give to the person of John the Baptist an importance superior to his real dignity. According to the reading of the Alexandrian authorities and Origen, we must translate: It is not I who am the Christ ( ). This reply would have been suitable, if the question had been, Is it thou who art the Christ? But the question is merely, Who art thou? and the true response is consequently that which is found in the T. R. following the Byzantine authorities: I am not the Christ ( ), that is, I am indeed something, but not the Christ.
Fuente: Godet Commentary (Luke, John, Romans and 1 Corinthians)
Verse 20
Some persons, in those days, were inclined to believe that John the Baptist was himself the Messiah. This is intimated in Luke 3:15; and decisive evidence of it is contained in the writings of the early Christians. It was to meet and refute this error, that the evangelist thus repeatedly and emphatically adduces the testimony of John the Baptist in favor of Jesus. (Comp. John 1:8,15,)
Fuente: Abbott’s Illustrated New Testament
1:20 And he {g} confessed, and {h} denied not; but confessed, I am not the Christ.
(g) He did acknowledge him, and spoke of him plainly and openly.
(h) This repeating of the one and the selfsame thing, though in different words, is often used by the Hebrews, and it has great force, for they used to speak one thing twice in order to set it out more certainly and plainly.
Fuente: Geneva Bible Notes
The writer stressed that John vigorously repudiated any suggestion that he might be the Messiah. "Christ" (Gr. Christos) is the Greek equivalent of the Hebrew "Messiah" or "Anointed One." John’s ministry consisted of pointing the Messiah out to others so they would follow Him. Therefore it would have been counterproductive to allow anyone to confuse him with the Messiah.