God gave all this teaching on humility and obedience to men indirectly, either through created nature or through His prophets, chosen men, and angels. Only in the Person of the Lord Jesus did God give this teaching directly, through Himself clothed in flesh. In every moment of His earthly life, from His birth in the cave to His death on the Cross, the Lord Jesus was a living example,
teaching men humility and obedience. He gave this living teaching also through His baptism in the Jordan.
John was the hero of the day. Christ was known to no one, and even when they knew Him, sinful men thought John to be greater than Him. The people flocked to John from all sides: the simple and the learned, the poor and the rich. John was eye-catching, both by his external appearance and
by his ascetic life in the desert, and also by his strange words ... Christ did not arouse curiosity. In the midst of the crowd, He slowly went up to the
Jordan. There was nothing about Him that caught theeye of the people, and nobody paid any attention to Him. His appearance was not as
remarkable as John’s, nor His clothing so unusual, nor His life so harshly ascetic.
However, in all that mass of people by the Jordan, there was one man, and one only, who truly knew Him. This was John the Baptist himself ... John forgot all about the rest of the crowd, and pointing to Jesus he said, “Behold the Lamb of God” (Jn. 1:29). “The Lamb of God!” With these four words, the Forerunner expressed the humility and obedie
nce of Christ the Lord. He is humble as a lamb, and obedient as a lamb.
He says, “The Lamb of God,” because He goes meekly and humbly as a lamb. As a lamb goes both to pasture and to slaughter with the same trust in his shepherd, so Christ goes wherever His heavenly Father guides Him: to birth in a cave, to baptism in the Jordan, and to death on the Cross
—all with the same readiness and trust.
St. Nikolai Velimirovic
