For many Christians, the term Scripture memory means rote memorization of Bible verses. And this conjures up feelings of past failure (over how often they’ve tried and given up), or futility (over how little they recall of what they once memorized), or fear (over memories of having to publicly recite verses).

Who wants to pursue Bible memory if it means more failure, futility, or fear?

No one, if that’s what Bible memory means. But that’s not what it means. It means so much more than rote memorization. And it’s crucial that we see the bigger picture of Bible memory so we understand why it’s so important to the Christian life — why God repeatedly commands us to remember.

Here’s how I describe it:

Bible memory means stockpiling your God-given memory with God-breathed truth (2 Timothy 3:16) so that your God-given imagination can draw from it to construct a more accurate understanding of God-created reality, enabling you to live in “a manner worthy of the Lord, fully pleasing to him: bearing fruit in every good work and increasing in the knowledge of God” (Colossians 1:10).

Let me try to briefly unpack this.

Your Amazing Memory

Your memory is amazing. If you’re thinking, “No, it’s not,” you’re probably overly aware of your memory weaknesses. And you probably measure yourself against people with extraordinary memories, like Charles Spurgeon, who, as J.I. Packer described, had “a photographic memory, virtually total recall, and as he put it ‘a shelf in my mind’ for storing every fact with a view to its future use” (Psalms, 4).

“Bible memory means so much more than rote memorization.”

But don’t let phenomenal memories blind you to the marvelous gift of God that is your own memory. Your ability to recall information to your conscious mind is just one function your memory performs. But it does far more than that.

Your memory is a vast library, far more sophisticated than the Library of Congress, where you’ve been collecting information since before your birth. In that three-pound lump of wet grey tissue inside your skull, in ways that remain largely mysterious despite wonderful recent advances in neuroscience, you have stored enormous amounts of information in the form of impressions, sensations, sights, sounds, smells, cause-and-effect observations, propositional statements, stories, and dreams, as well as real, unreal, or anticipated experiences that produce joy, sorrow, pleasure, anger, delight, horror, desire, fear, and on and on. And you draw from this mental library all the time, every day, consciously and unconsciously, to do everything you do.

And more marvelous still is how your memory works with all levels of your consciousness to allow you to imagine.

Why You Understand Anything

By imagination, I’m not talking about our ability to create fantasy worlds in our minds. I’m talking about our ability to draw from our vast store of information and construct an image (or model) of reality, and then draw implications for what it means. That is the primary function of our imagination. It allows us to conceptualize things we learn are true, but cannot see. Which is crucial for those of us called to “look not to the things that are seen but to the things that are unseen” (2 Corinthians 4:18), to “walk by faith, not by sight” (2 Corinthians 5:7).

And what empowers our ability to imagine is our memory.

Augustine, in his jaw-dropping meditations on the human memory in book 10 of his Confessions, explained it this way:

From [my memory] I can picture to myself all kinds of different images based either upon my own experience or upon what I find credible because it tallies with my own experience. I can fit them into the general picture of the past; from them I can make a surmise of actions and events and hopes for the future; and I can contemplate them all over again as if they were actually present. If I say to myself in the vast cache of my mind, where all those images of great things are stored, “I shall do this or that,” the picture of this or that particular thing comes into my mind at once. Or I may say to myself “If only this or that would happen!” or “God forbid that this or that should be!” No sooner do I say this than the images of all the things of which I speak spring forward from the same great treasure-house of the memory. And, in fact, I could not even mention them at all if the images were lacking. (215–16)

It’s our immense memory that provides our creative imagination the information from which to make sense of reality and draw the correct implications. And we can’t imagine anything that isn’t meaningfully present in our memory.

This is why Bible memory so important.

‘You Shall Remember’

Have you ever noticed how often the Holy Spirit inspired biblical authors to stress the importance of memory? Over and over God commands us to remember his word (for example, Numbers 15:40; Psalm 103:17–18; Isaiah 48:8–11; Luke 22:19; 2 Timothy 2:8). In fact, it would be worth a week of your devotional Bible reading to look up all the texts that mention these words as they relate to what God has revealed to us: memory, memorial, remember, remembrance, remind, call to mind, recall, forget, forgot, and forgotten.

To re-member is to call to mind something we’ve previously learned, something that exists in our memory. We can see such remembering in Lamentations 3:21–23, written while the author was experiencing terrible distress and suffering:

But this I call to mind,     and therefore I have hope:The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases;     his mercies never come to an end;they are new every morning;     great is your faithfulness.

The truth that the author called up from his memory, which sustained him in great need, was something he learned prior to his need. And it was something he was learning in more profound ways at that very moment.

That’s Bible memory: calling to mind and keeping in mind biblical truth we’ve learned, so that it expands and deepens our understanding over time, and continues to shape the way we live.

Meditation’s Servant

That’s perhaps why the Bible doesn’t say much about rote memorization, but it says a lot about meditation, because meditation is the way we both learn and remember. If you take that week of devotional exploration, it will add to your understanding of how meditation relates to remembering if you look up all the texts that mention these words: meditate, meditation, understand, understanding, know, knowledge, wise, and wisdom.

Biblical meditation (or reflection, rumination, contemplation) takes place when our God-given imagination processes the God-breathed information we store in our God-given memory in an effort to understand, or further understand, God-revealed reality, so that we might live wisely. We can see this process at work in Psalm 119:97–99:

Oh how I love your law!     It is my meditation all the day.Your commandment makes me wiser than my enemies,     for it is ever with me.I have more understanding than all my teachers,     for your testimonies are my meditation.

Implicit in this text on meditation (and most others in Scripture) is repetition. We all know from experience that repetition is what drives most information into our long-term memory. And this is the great value of memorization — it is a servant of meditation.

That’s certainly been my experience. Few practices have helped me meditate on Scripture more than memorization. The method I’ve found most effective has me repeating the same section of text over many days. This repetition not only has driven these texts into my long-term memory, but it has given my imagination the opportunity to ruminate on them.

As a result, I’ve gained a deeper, richer understanding of these texts and how they relate to other Scriptures and the world. That’s been the greatest benefit for me. Even though I don’t retain perfect conscious recall of many Scriptures I’ve memorized, meditating on them has woven their meaning and application into the fabric of my understanding. And they do come to mind much more readily, especially in times of need.

Keep the Goal in Mind

If Scripture memory has negative connotations for you, don’t think of it as memorizing Bible verses. Rather, think of it as

stockpiling your God-given memory with God-breathed truth (2 Timothy 3:16) so that your God-given imagination can draw from it to construct a more accurate understanding of God-created reality, enabling you to live in “a manner worthy of the Lord, fully pleasing to him: bearing fruit in every good work and increasing in the knowledge of God” (Colossians 1:10).

“You won’t regret employing this very effective servant of meditation.”

It is a gift of God, a means of grace, to help you meditate on God’s word and bring reality to life.

As someone who struggles with memory weaknesses and who used to believe that Bible memorization wasn’t for me, I strongly recommend memorizing Scripture, especially larger sections. This is something you can do — you really can. You won’t regret employing this very effective servant of meditation.

For accurate understanding comes from careful meditation on true information. And accurate understanding results in our discerning right implications for what true information means. And when we live according to this understanding, the Bible calls it wisdom (Psalm 111:10).

This is the goal of Bible memory.

I have one, and only one, experience with sailing.

In my senior of college, one of my friends invited a number of us to his family’s lake house near the coast of North Carolina for one last weekend together before graduation. The house sat on a cove tucked just off the ocean shore. Down by the water sat the family’s beautiful (and expensive) two-person sailboat, tied firmly to a post.

The more experienced went out first. Several of my classmates had grown up close to the ocean, and knew how to handle a sail. They raced up and down the cove, making it look easy. When they were done, another first-timer and I stepped up to take the ropes. Once we pushed ourselves away from shore, we swung and tugged, leaned and lunged, stood and sat — and barely moved. The others, of course, took even more joy in our floundering than they had in their sailing. After a while, our titanic struggle left us tired and hungry, so we pulled the boat ashore and went in for dinner.

Early the next morning, a couple of aspiring sailors woke us, asking where we left the boat. “Down by the shore, of course. Where else would we leave it?” “Did you pull it into the grass?” “Umm, no.” “Did you tie it up?” “Umm, no.” “Well, the boat is gone.” Any experienced sailor (or just a man of common sense) knows what I learned that day: the tide rises at night, so you have to anchor your boat or it will drift away. I immediately started counting every dollar I owned. (It didn’t take long.)

A couple of us went out in the motorboat, driving up and down the shore, desperately looking for any sign of the sailboat. Surely it had been damaged, maybe even destroyed, after all these hours. After another hour or two, we’d come up empty. We saw nothing. And no one we saw had seen anything. I still remember the long ride back. I was sick to my stomach.

That boat came to mind again recently when I read Tim Keller describe a tool he used over the years to help him discern the health of a soul (and particularly the health of a person’s prayer life).

Which Boat Describes You?

Keller paints the nautical picture this way: “Imagine that your soul is a boat, a boat with both oars and a sail” (Prayer, 258). Into that scene, he asks four pointed questions: Are you sailing? Are you rowing? Are you drifting? Or are you sinking? In terms of my story, does your spiritual life resemble my master-sailor friends gliding up and down the cove, or the two first-timers working hard and going nowhere, or the empty sailboat drifting aimlessly away?

The tool’s helpful in two directions. First, it helps us assess and maintain our own boats. How often have we assumed that we’re rowing when we’re actually drifting, or that we’re drifting when we’re actually sinking? Second, the tool gives us a window into the boats of others. It’s a simple, vivid question that cuts through shallow places (where we often prefer to swim in our relationships) to the heart of a person, to how he is really doing.

Keller doesn’t attach particular texts to the four different boats, but the Psalms came to mind as potential examples because they model, with unusual vulnerability and emotion, the highs and lows of the human soul. So I’ve attempted to identify at least a few lines that give voice to each of these four spiritual conditions.

1. Are You Sailing?

When you think about your spiritual life right now, do you feel the wind at your back? Does prayer feel easier and more enjoyable than normal? Does daily Bible reading sparkle like a treasure in the field? Do you find yourself on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday actually looking forward to Sunday morning and the opportunity to sing and serve with your local church? Do you find spiritual conversation natural and gratifying?

If you’re currently in the sweet thrill of sailing, you might pray like King David does in Psalm 16:6–9:

The lines have fallen for me in pleasant places;     indeed, I have a beautiful inheritance.I bless the Lord who gives me counsel;     in the night also my heart instructs me.I have set the Lord always before me;     because he is at my right hand, I shall not be shaken.Therefore my heart is glad, and my whole being rejoices;     my flesh also dwells secure.

As we’ll see, David didn’t always feel this kind of spiritual high. He often struggled and had to fight hard for faith. At times, he fell into valleys of despair. In these verses, however, we can almost feel the wind lifting and driving his sails. Anyone who’s riding a spiritual breeze can identify with what he’s describing, and anyone who isn’t would want what he’s experiencing.

2. Are You Rowing?

If you’re rowing, you’re still making progress, but it’s a slower, hard-fought progress. You’re moving forward, but you’re really earning each passing wave. “Rowing,” Keller writes, “means you are finding prayer and Bible reading to be more a duty than a delight” (259). They’re chores you keep doing, but they honestly feel like chores. You keep attending worship, and discipline yourself to listen, engage, and even sing, but you often walk out distracted and tired. You want your heart to be in a different place, and you put effort into feeling differently, but you haven’t felt a strong wind in a while.

If you’re currently in the wearying work of rowing, you might pray like David does in Psalm 63:1:

O God, you are my God; earnestly I seek you;     my soul thirsts for you;my flesh faints for you,     as in a dry and weary land where there is no water.

“The vast majority of drifters and sinkers drift and sink alone.”

In these verses, he’s not praying from the pleasant places of Psalm 16. Now he’s kneeling in the wilderness — “in a dry and weary land where there is no water.” But as the spiritual winds died down and the ground under him dried up, he didn’t give up and lie down in the boat. No, he kept his eyes on God and started rowing: “Earnestly I seek you.”

3. Are You Drifting?

From a distance, drifting may look and feel like rowing, but swim up closer to the two boats and you’ll notice one massive difference: effort. The drifter stops trying. You stop praying earnestly. You stop reading the Bible regularly. You stop paying attention during church gatherings (or stop attending altogether). Tired and discouraged and maybe even disillusioned, you set your oar aside and passively wait for some gust of wind to come along to save you.

This condition is probably the hardest to pair with a psalm, mostly because the psalms themselves are prayers. So even at their darkest, they model what it looks like to row in the dark — to keep praying, keep gathering, keep seeking. But in Psalm 42, dangerous circumstances have prevented the psalmist from attending the temple (“When shall I come and appear before God?” verse 2), so though he’s still able to pray, he’s cut off from other vital means of grace.

When shall I come and appear before God? . . .These things I remember,     as I pour out my soul:how I would go with the throng     and lead them in procession to the house of Godwith glad shouts and songs of praise,     a multitude keeping festival.Why are you cast down, O my soul,     and why are you in turmoil within me? (Psalm 42:2, 4–5)

The drifter has desires for more, and he can remember times when he experienced spiritual health and community, but he’s lost the will to keep fighting. His soul is cast down, and so his boat wanders aimlessly, from app to app, from show to show, from task to task, from meal to meal, from week to week. He wakes up farther and farther from where he wants to be spiritually, and yet with less and less resolve to change course.

4. Are You Sinking?

Is the boat within you quietly taking on water? You drifted for a time, but then you hit something hard — a job loss, a breakup, an illness, a death — and water started trickling in. Now, weeks or months later, your faith is gasping for air. You’re not longing for former days of stronger, more satisfying faith. You’re questioning whether it was ever real. You’re not thinking about restarting your prayer life, or looking for a Bible-reading plan, or joining a small group. You’re looking elsewhere for answers (or you’re avoiding the questions altogether).

Again, even psalmists dealt with sinking moments in the soul. Listen to the heartache and despair in Asaph’s voice when he thinks back on a dark night in his own soul:

All in vain have I kept my heart clean     and washed my hands in innocence. . . .But when I thought how to understand this,     it seemed to me a wearisome task. . . .When my soul was embittered,     when I was pricked in heart,I was brutish and ignorant;     I was like a beast toward you. (Psalm 73:13, 16, 21–22)

He remembers a time when he was living in spiritual peril. Do you feel your heart slowly growing embittered to God? Has your pain crystallized into self-pity? Has confusion mutated into bitterness and resentment? Have your doubts ripened into apathy? Is your boat filling with water?

Obviously, any boat that’s sinking needs some serious attention. One of the blessings of a tool like this is simply putting a sinking boat on someone else’s radar. How many souls sink without anyone ever knowing, at least until it’s too late?

Drifting and Sinking Alone

Later that long day, when we had nearly given up hope finding my friend’s sailboat, a neighbor from down the cove phoned. It had landed on their shore. Amazingly, no damage. The boat had drifted more than a mile.

For all our failures aboard that extraordinarily expensive piece of fiberglass, my first-timer friend and I did one thing right that day: we went out together. When it comes to our spiritual health and joy, the vast majority of drifters and sinkers drift and sink alone. And the vast majority of rowers and sailors row and sail with others.

Keller ends his book on this note:

Those who enjoy sailing might find these nautical images helpful. However, a metaphor used more often in the Bible to describe fellowship with God is that of a feast. . . . Eating together is one of the most common metaphors for friendship and fellowship in the Bible, and so this vision is a powerful prediction of unimaginably close and intimate fellowship with the living God. It evokes the sensory joys of exquisite food in the presence of loving friends. The “wine” of full communion with God and our loved ones will be endless and infinite delight. (260–61)

The image of the feast gets at the satisfying fullness of sailing. It also gets at the togetherness, though. Somebody might eat alone, but nobody ever feasts alone. And, spiritually speaking, nobody sails alone either. Richer communion with God requires richer communion with other souls, in the church.

So, if we feel ourselves drifting or worse in our walk with God, our first step to righting the ship will be to steer our boat into more crowded waters, where the sailors and rowers live.

ABSTRACT: When John the Baptist appears in the wilderness, baptizing and “proclaiming a baptism of repentance” (Mark 1:4), his ministry may seem novel — and in some ways, it is. At the same time, however, almost every aspect of John’s ministry fulfills Old Testament expectations. His mission fulfills Malachi’s promise of a new Elijah. His call to repentance reaches back to the prophecy and new-covenant promise of Deuteronomy 30. And even his meeting place comes freighted with prophetic significance: by calling Israelites into the wilderness across the Jordan, he calls them to follow a new Joshua through the waters of a new exodus into a new covenant. Since John, baptism has marked a spiritual crossing of the Jordan River, as God’s people pass from the wilderness of exile into the promised land, now citizens of a new kingdom and a new King.

For our ongoing series of feature articles for pastors and Christian leaders, we asked Colin Smothers (PhD, The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary), executive director of the Council on Biblical Manhood and Womanhood, to explain the origins and meaning of John’s baptism.

When John the Baptist appears in the wilderness, baptizing and “proclaiming a baptism of repentance” (Mark 1:4), what is he doing? From where did John’s baptism come (Matthew 21:25)? And what does its origin mean for Christians today?

The thesis of this essay is that the meaning of John’s baptism relates to its inspired novelty: namely, John’s baptism prepares a new-covenant people of God for a new exodus and conquest — albeit with escalated and spiritualized aims. Through John’s baptism, a new-covenant people are prepared to follow a new Joshua, or Yeshua, across the River Jordan — very much like the people of Israel when they entered the promised land — as citizens of a new kingdom under a new King, a Son of David. Moreover, because Jesus, the Christ, receives John’s baptism at the inauguration of his ministry and continues the practice throughout his earthly ministry and beyond (John 3:22; 4:2; Matthew 28:19), the meaning of John’s baptism has implications for Christian baptism.

We will explore three aspects of John’s baptism under three headings: the message, the meeting place, and the meaning. Once we sound the meaning of John’s baptism, we will be prepared to comment on the meaning of New Testament baptism.

The Message of John’s Baptism

In the three Synoptic Gospels, John’s ministry of baptism is clearly tied to his proclamation of repentance and the nearness of the kingdom of God. Matthew directly quotes John the Baptist’s message in Matthew 3:2, where he says, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.” Matthew ties this message explicitly to Isaiah’s new-covenant prophecy by quoting from Isaiah 40:3: John is “the voice of one crying in the wilderness: ‘Prepare the way of the Lord’” (Matthew 3:3). Matthew, a student of Scripture, knows John’s redemptive role. Isaiah 40 is a hinge that marks a turning from the former things under the old covenant to the new things under the new covenant. By hyperlinking, as it were, John’s ministry and message to Isaiah 40, Matthew announces for his readers that the new things have arrived with the arrival of John.

Instead of quoting John’s message, Mark summarizes it in Mark 1:4: “John appeared, baptizing in the wilderness and proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins.” Repentance is central to John the Baptist’s message — a message that, as we will see, is central to the prophetic literature surrounding the “return” or “turn” from exile that initiates the new covenant. Significantly, Jesus himself takes up this message of repentance in his own preaching ministry in Mark 1:15: “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand; repent and believe in the gospel” (cf. Matthew 4:17).

Repentance and “returning” or “turning” are related concepts in the Old and New Testaments. For example, the word translated “repent” in John’s and Jesus’s message is metanoeō, which is used in LXX Isaiah 46:8 to translate the Hebrew word shuv, or “turn” — a word that we will see is extremely significant.

In Luke’s Gospel, we are given further background details to John the Baptist’s ministry, as Luke begins his Gospel with details surrounding John’s conception and birth. An angel is sent to John’s father, Zechariah, with a message about his unborn son’s ministry in Luke 1:16: “He will turn [epistrephō] many of the children of Israel to the Lord their God.” The word translated “turn” here in Luke 1:16 is used 298 times by the LXX to translate the Hebrew word shuv, “turn” or “return.”

John’s baptism is further substantiated as a message of “turning” and “repentance” when Luke summarizes John’s baptism as a “baptism of repentance” in Luke 3:3 and again in Acts 19:4. Luke goes on to connect John’s ministry to Isaiah with a quote from Isaiah 40 (Luke 3:4–6), just as the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, and John do.

Message of Return in Deuteronomy 30

From these passages, it is clear that “repentance” or “turning” is a significant element to John’s message and ministry of baptism. What can we conclude from this? Significantly, this same language of “turning” and “return” is used in a prominent place in the book of Deuteronomy, in arguably the Torah’s most explicit new-covenant passage. In fact, the angel’s words to Zechariah in Luke 1:16 almost certainly echo Deuteronomy 30:2.

Luke 1:16: “He will turn [epistrepho + epi] many of the children of Israel to the Lord their God.”Deuteronomy 30:2: “Return [epistrepho + epi] to the Lord your God, you and your children.”

In Deuteronomy 30:1–10, the Hebrew word shuv — which the Brown-Driver-Briggs lexicon glosses as “turn back, return” — occurs seven times.1 In context, Deuteronomy 30 is a record of Moses’s words to a new generation that has replaced the faithless wilderness generation. The book of Deuteronomy is a covenant renewal. But Moses predicts the dire future of this covenant in Deuteronomy 28–29: the people will enter the land, they will disobey the covenant, and they will be exiled.

Deuteronomy 28–29 becomes programmatic for the history of Israel in the land. All that Moses says will happen in these chapters comes true as Israel’s history unfolds. But Moses does not leave them without hope. In Deuteronomy 30, Moses says that “when all these things come upon you,” and the people call (shuv) these words to mind (verse 1), and the people and their children return (shuv) to the Lord (verse 2), then the Lord will restore (shuv) them and gather them again (shuv) from exile (verse 3). Then the people will again (shuv) obey the Lord and keep his commands (verse 8), and the Lord will again (shuv) delight in them (verse 9), when they turn (shuv) to the Lord with all their heart and soul (verse 10).

“John’s baptism prepares a new-covenant people of God for a new exodus and conquest.”

Significantly, it is in Deuteronomy 30:6, the heart of this passage, where we find the theme of heart renovation, or heart circumcision, which is a significant component of the new covenant: “The Lord your God will circumcise your heart and the heart of your offspring, so that you will love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul, that you may live.” The prophet Jeremiah picks up this theme of heart renovation in his new-covenant prophecy in Jeremiah 31:33, which builds on Moses’s prophecy in Deuteronomy 30.

Message of Return in the Prophets

As I argue in my book In Your Mouth and In Your Heart,2 Deuteronomy 30 is a wellspring that later biblical authors return to again and again in their Spirit-inspired expositions and developments of new-covenant promises and messianic hopes. A few examples of this will have to suffice.

In the first chapter of the book of Isaiah, the prophet announces coming judgment against Israel because of their continual disobedience to the covenant. But as in Deuteronomy, this note of judgment comes with a promise of redemption. Though God will turn his hand against them, “Zion shall be redeemed by justice, and those in her who repent [shuv], by righteousness” (Isaiah 1:27). Who will announce this coming righteousness? The one who, according to Isaiah 40:3, cries out “in the wilderness” — or perhaps, according to some interpretations, “prepares a way in the wilderness” — for the Lord. And the Lord comes with a promise: “I have blotted out your transgressions like a cloud and your sins like mist; return [shuv] to me, for I have redeemed you” (Isaiah 44:22).

The theme of “turning” and “returning” is a major thread through the Minor Prophets, or the Book of the Twelve (see Hosea 6:1–2 as one example), which includes the following expectant words of Malachi the prophet before God’s special revelation goes dark for centuries — until, that is, the world sees a great Light:

Behold, I will send you Elijah the prophet before the great and awesome day of the Lord comes. And he will turn [shuv] the hearts of fathers to their children and the hearts of children to their fathers, lest I come and strike the land with a decree of utter destruction. (Malachi 4:5–6)

It is no coincidence, then, that the first word of John the Baptist’s message is “Repent!” “Turn!” And his baptism is a baptism of repentance. Why? For the new covenant has arrived; the kingdom of heaven is at hand — the King is here.

The Meeting Place of John’s Baptism

Almost as significant as John the Baptist’s message is his chosen meeting place. Where does John the Baptist choose to proclaim his message of repentance for the forgiveness of sins and the announcement of the coming kingdom and King? He could have gone many places to find water. He could have stayed in the land of Israel, perhaps at the Sea of Galilee. But instead, John goes across the Jordan, outside the historical boundaries of the promised land, to the wilderness, much like some of the messianic pretenders of his day were doing.3

Why is John in the wilderness, baptizing in the Jordan River? The prophets are replete with possible reasons. Considered together, I believe these texts form a formidable rationale and theological explanation for John’s wilderness ministry of baptism. As we will see, they also have implications for Christian baptism.

The most obvious prophetic background to John the Baptist’s ministry comes from Isaiah 40, which, as we have already seen, every one of the Gospel writers notes. But the book of Isaiah contains several other textual backdrops to John’s baptismal ministry in the wilderness.

Right before Jesus preaches his message of repentance in Matthew 4:17, Matthew quotes Isaiah 9:1–2, saying, “The land of Zebulun and the land of Naphtali, the way of the sea, beyond the Jordan, Galilee of the Gentiles — the people dwelling in darkness have seen a great light” (Matthew 4:15–16). This phrase in Isaiah 9:1, “the land beyond the Jordan,” is cited in relation to the land of Israel, which means it is the land opposite the promised land, in the wilderness, that “he has made glorious.” Significantly, John 1:28 uses the same language to describe where John was baptizing, “across the Jordan,” in the wilderness.

From the Wilderness to the Jordan

In fact, Isaiah’s entire new-covenant program seems predicated around a wilderness sojourn. We will pick up this thread in Isaiah 43. Many scholars have noted the new-covenant turn that Isaiah 40 and following takes — what Brevard Childs refers to as the “new things,” in contrast to the “old things” of chapters 1 through 39 — and chapter 43 is no exception.4

The whole chapter deserves quotation, but we must be selective. Isaiah 43 begins with a promise of God’s redemption in verse 1, and then a promise of God’s protection in verse 2: “When you pass through the waters, I will be with you; and through the rivers, they shall not overwhelm you.” Here we have latent baptismal language (cf. 1 Peter 3:21): God promises to be with his people when they are in the midst of the waters and to see them safely to the other side. Isaiah is clearly invoking exodus imagery, which itself is an echo of the waters of the salvation through judgment in Noah’s flood.5 God promises to be with his people just as he was when they passed through the midst of the Red Sea (Exodus 14). But the mention of rivers in Isaiah 43:2 suggests also Israel’s crossing the Jordan River (Joshua 3), a reference Isaiah amplifies a few verses later.

In Isaiah 43:5–7, God promises to bring his people from the east, the west, the north, and the end of the earth — “everyone who is called by my name.” In these verses, Isaiah describes Israel’s redemption as a return from exile, an ingathering from the nations, using the cardinal directions much as Psalm 107 does, which opens book 5 of the Psalter — the book sometimes called the “Book of Redemption.” The new covenant involves a new (re)turn.

Isaiah 43:16–17 picks up the exodus imagery and develops the theme of passing through the waters on the way of redemption or return. Then comes an explicit mention of the “new thing” God promises to do:

Remember not the former things,     nor consider the things of old.Behold, I am doing a new thing;     now it springs forth, do you not perceive it?I will make a way in the wilderness     and rivers in the desert.The wild beasts will honor me,     the jackals and the ostriches,for I give water in the wilderness,     rivers in the desert,to give drink to my chosen people,     the people whom I formed for myselfthat they might declare my praise. (verses 18–21)

The wilderness theme in Isaiah 43 is invoked in part due to the exilic imagery and the return journey of the people of God, through the deserts, on the way to the promised land. But the journey intentionally channels the one God’s people took in their exodus out of Egypt — a journey that brought them through the midst of the Red Sea into the wilderness, only to camp on the “other side of the Jordan” and await another crossing, another passing through the midst of waters, on their way to inherit the promised land.

Importantly, the Law and the Prophets are negative in their assessment of this first journey and inheritance: the people became undeserving and the land spit them out (cf. Leviticus 18:28; Deuteronomy 28:15–68; Jeremiah 25:11–12). But the Prophets also tell of a day when the people will once again inherit the land — a new kingdom — after a wilderness exile (Jeremiah 29:10–14; Isaiah 40:1–11; Daniel 9:24–27).

Is it not reasonable, then, to expect this new “return” to come with yet another crossing of the River Jordan from the wilderness?

New Exodus, New Return

This new wilderness sojourn as part of the beginning of a “return” to the promised land is reinforced in polyphonic harmony when we bring in other prophetic witnesses. In Ezekiel 20, the prophet speaks of the “return” or “restoration” of Israel that God has promised, even in spite of their current exilic judgment. In verses 33–35, Ezekiel says that this program will include a going out from their current dwelling places, a wilderness gathering, and a coronation with God as King:

As I live, declares the Lord God, surely with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm and with wrath poured out I will be king over you. I will bring you out from the peoples and gather you out of the countries where you are scattered, with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm, and with wrath poured out. And I will bring you into the wilderness of the peoples, and there I will enter into judgment with you face to face.

This wilderness gathering is compared to the wilderness gathering of the exodus generation in verse 36, and it precedes a promise of a new covenant, “I will make you pass under the rod, and I will bring you into the bond of the covenant” (verse 37), and a new entrance into the land, “You shall know that I am the Lord, when I bring you into the land of Israel, the country that I swore to give to your fathers” (verse 42).

Historically speaking, the Scriptures do not record a covenant renewal or covenant establishment “in the wilderness” in the generations that returned to the land during the ministries of Ezra and Nehemiah and after. Instead, the New Testament authors appear to assume that the foundation of this covenant promise is inaugurated with the new-covenant ministry of Jesus, whose way is prepared by the baptism of John “in the wilderness.”

A final prophetic witness provides one more reason to pay attention to the meeting place of John’s baptism in order to grasp its theological meaning. Hosea speaks of the Lord’s tenderness toward his unfaithful people in Hosea 2:14: “Behold, I will allure her, and bring her into the wilderness, and speak tenderly to her.” Later in the book, in Hosea 6:1–2, the prophet issues a clear call to God’s people to “turn” that they might be healed in the midst of their sinfulness.

The meeting place of the Jordan River becomes especially intriguing when we consider the New Testament’s testimony that John the Baptist is the Elijah to come, as promised by the prophet Malachi (Malachi 4:5–6). Where in the Scriptures do we see Elijah at the Jordan River? In 2 Kings 2:6–8, Elijah “prepares the way” for Elisha by parting the waters of the Jordan to cross to the other side — something Elisha himself does on the way back, entering into the land of promise through the waters of the Jordan (2 Kings 2:13–14).

It would seem, then, that John’s baptismal ministry and message of “repentance” or “return” is not just an individual call — although it most certainly is that — but also a programmatic call that initiates a new exodus and new return under a new Joshua who is King of a new kingdom.

The Meaning of John’s Baptism

If the several canonical threads regarding the message and meeting place of John’s baptismal ministry have been sufficiently established, then we are ready to explore a few biblical-theological possibilities for the meaning of John’s baptism, which have implications for Christian baptism.

The apostle Paul clearly connects baptism to the exodus crossing of the Red Sea:

I do not want you to be unaware, brothers, that our fathers were all under the cloud, and all passed through the sea, and all were baptized into Moses in the cloud and in the sea, and all ate the same spiritual food, and all drank the same spiritual drink. (1 Corinthians 10:1–4)

But John comes baptizing not in the Red Sea, but in the River Jordan, proclaiming his preparatory prophetic message of repentance to God’s people, the same message given to Hosea and the other prophets: “Return to the Lord.” How are the people supposed to respond to John’s message? By leaving the promised land and joining him in the wilderness, they acted out a confession of their covenantal disobedience and unworthiness to be in the land — Ezekiel said God would enter into covenant with them in the wilderness — so that God’s people might return again to the land as citizens of the kingdom of God under a new and rightful king.

This is what John is doing, baptizing across the Jordan in the wilderness. He is preparing a people for a new exodus, or return, to the promised land under a new Joshua, crying out in the Spirit of Elijah, “Repent! (Return! Turn!) For the kingdom of God is at hand!” Where is this kingdom? Who is this king? He is the one called Yeshua, Salvation, who bears the name of another who parted the waters of the Jordan ahead of the people entering the promised land.

How does all of the foregoing relate to Christian baptism, especially the explicit teaching in Romans 6 that baptism symbolizes the Christian’s union with Christ? Romans 6:3–11 makes clear that Christian baptism has at its theological center our blessed union with Christ by faith in his death, burial, and resurrection. The very act of water immersion signifies a burial in the waters of God’s judgment, having died to sin and put to death the old man in Christ — these waters that are typified by the great flood and the Red Sea and even the Jordan River. And when the baptized emerges from these waters, this signifies his resurrection to new life — life as a new man, a new creation, in Christ by faith (2 Corinthians 5:17).

But when Jesus received John’s baptism at the Jordan River, it became Christian baptism, and he and his disciples continued the practice during Jesus’s earthly ministry and beyond (John 3:22; 4:2; Matthew 28:19; Acts 2:38). Those who did not receive this baptism as Christian baptism, but only as John’s baptism, had to receive the true sign of which the Holy Spirit is the seal (Acts 19:1–7).

In fact, when Paul encounters some disciples who had not heard of the Holy Spirit, he seems to fault them for not understanding John’s baptism, which they had received. In Acts 19:3, Paul asks them, “Into what then were you baptized?” They answer, “Into John’s baptism.” Paul’s response is instructive: “John baptized with the baptism of repentance, telling the people to believe in the one who was to come after him, that is, Jesus” (Acts 19:4). In other words, if John’s baptism is received as Christian baptism — baptism into Christ — then it is true baptism.

In this way, it seems proper to understand New Testament baptism as a continuation of what John began and Jesus received in the wilderness, beyond the Jordan River. I do not think it is a coincidence, then, that John 1:28 says, “These things took place in Bethany across the Jordan, where John was baptizing.” Perhaps John chose this site intentionally, as the place where Israel would have camped and even crossed into Canaan as they prepared to enter the land, first coming to the city of Jericho, not far across the way from where John began his baptismal ministry.

With John in the Jordan

It has been tradition for many Baptist churches to have a mural of the River Jordan painted over their baptismal. If the texts and implications in this exploration hold together, this imagery rightly offers at least a partial understanding of the meaning and origins of both John’s baptism and Christian baptism.

We too have crossed the River Jordan, being put under the waters of judgment, following the new Joshua in a new exodus under a new covenant, and by faith in him we have at least begun to enter the promised land as citizens of a new kingdom and a new King. God has caused us to return, to repent, for the kingdom of God is near — indeed, it is at hand, and though we are sojourners, we are no longer in the wilderness. We are citizens of the kingdom of heaven.