Benjamin Roseberry - Matthew 11

Pretentious or Perfect

As I was reading Matthew 11 the other day, I stumbled across an interesting situation between Jesus and John the Baptist’s disciples. John’s disciples were very concerned for two reasons. First, John, imprisoned at the time, sent them to ask Jesus, “Are you the one who is to come, or shall we look for another” (11:3)? John was having doubts about the authenticity of Jesus claimed to be the long awaited Messiah. This was concerning because if he were not the Messiah, then John had been proclaiming the wrong thing. Second, the disciples were concerned because John himself was doubting. Their teacher, who taught them with such confidence that Jesus was one of whose sandals John himself was not worthy of undoing, was doubting his whole ministry.
Jesus, after being asked this question, references a couple passages in Isaiah that pointed to the expected Messiah. Jesus’ ministry fulfilled these prophecies, which would take care of the first concern. John the Baptist, after hearing Jesus’ response, would have said “Ah, yes, of course. Jesus of Nazareth is, in fact, fulfilling these prophecies. I am sorry I even doubted.” But this does not resolve the second concern of the disciples. Their strong and assured teacher doubted for a bit. Jesus addressed this issue quickly by saying in verse 11, “Truly, I say to you, among those born of women there has arisen no one greater than John the Baptist.” This response was for the disciples. It meant that John the Baptist was greater than everyone the disciples held as “great.” This included Moses, the law-giver, Abraham, the father of the faith, and even King David, a man after God’s own heart. A man who doubted Jesus is greater than all of these others. But why?
Jesus was saying that John was greater because he had the priveledge to announce the Messiah’s coming! This is like getting up on stage after winning a Grammy and saying “There is none greater in the world than Katy Perry because she announced me!”
So now we are left with two options. Jesus is either insanely pretentious or he is perfect. He must be right or else he would be stepping on a lot of toes and about 1500 years of history.
I thought this passage was really interesting because we really are left with the two options. We can’t just partially reject him or partially accept him.