How did John the Baptist fulfill Isaiah's prophecy "to prepare the way of the Lord; make His paths straight" (Matthew 3:3)?

Only those who admitted they had sinned would come to him therefore, for everyone baptized with John's baptism was in this act admitting that he had broken the law of God and therefore death and burial (typified in baptism) was a just sentence against him. This baptism was in view of remission of sins, for a confession of guilt is required if there is be forgiveness, Symbolically, this baptism looks forward to the sacrifice of the Lord Jesus, in which alone forgiveness is to be obtained.

Isaiah 40 is quoted in verse 4-6 as referring directly to John as a voice crying in the wilderness, "Prepare the way of the Lord." Repentance was certainly a prime necessity in this preparation, an honest facing of sin that had dishonored God. The Lord's paths were to be made straight, for He would allow no tortuous, twisting deceit of men's minds: they could not approach Him in a state of dishonesty.

(4) How available. We come now to ask how the blessedness of forgiveness and deliverance is to be made available for sinful man. The Gospels are as clear in this as in all the rest. "Repentance toward God and faith toward our Lord Jesus Christ" are written all over their pages. The whole preaching of John the Baptist was a call to repentance. It was thus alone that the way for the Lord could be prepared; thus alone would the people be in readiness to receive Him who should come after.

THE COMMENCEMENT of John's ministry is very fully dated in the opening two verses. They show that things were entirely out of course, government was vested in the Gentiles, and even in Israel things were in confusion, for there were two high priests instead of one. Hence repentance was the dominant note in his preaching. Earlier prophets had reasoned with Israel and recalled them to the broken law. John no longer does this, but demands repentance. They were to acknowledge that they were hopelessly lost on the ground of the law, and take their place as dead men in the waters of his baptism. It was "the baptism of repentance for the remission of sins." If they listened to John and repented, they were morally prepared to receive the remission of sins through the One who was about to come. Thus the path before the Lord would be made straight.

The message is new — at least in the absolute and complete character it assumes, and in its direct and immediate application. It was not the Jewish privileges which should be obtained by repenting and returning to the Lord. The Lord was coming according to His promise. To prepare His way before Him, John was preaching repentance for the remission of sins. It was this they needed: remission of sins for the repentant was the great thing, the formal object of John's mission.

To this condition of the people the ministry of John the Baptist is addressed. He preaches not in the city or towns and villages, but in the wilderness of Judea. He stands apart altogether from the people and is marked by a personal austerity that befits the message he has to preach. The kingdom of the heavens was at hand the kingdom that the God of the heavens was to set up (Dan. 2:44). But what of the children of the kingdom? Repentance was necessary. Self judgment and the confessing and forsaking of sins were morally essential if blessing and not judgment was to be their portion (v. 12). For the One whose way John was to prepare was Jehovah Himself (the) Lord. What then was John compared to such a glorious Person? He was but a voice. John's previous history is passed over. It was the message that he brought and the right response of his hearers to it, which was all important. In preparation for receiving Jehovah their King they were to make His paths straight. As His people they were to walk in His paths and not paths of their own choosing. Reality and the evidence of it was what was required and not natural claim and empty profession. While there were those who "justified God, being baptised with the baptism of John", and the Lord Jesus in grace identified Himself with these, the "Pharisees and lawyers rejected the counsel of God against themselves, being not baptized of him" (Luke 7:29-30). The forerunner and his message rejected, it was certain that the King too would be refused (Matt. 17:10-13).

But John had no conception of such a compass of blessing. The Jews looked upon the kingdom as the state when Israel would be blessed of God as a nation; and even those that may have more fully understood, still looked for all the power of the kingdom to be brought in, entirely independent of anything on their part. "But the kingdom of heaven suffereth violence, and the violent take it by force." The Lord shows that there is an action of faith needed now; that the kingdom of heaven here presented demands the rupture of natural ties and the giving up of previous associations. In the sense of power and glory introduced by a personal Messiah upon the earth, John had already pressed on consciences that it was not a thing of mere ordinance or privilege by birth — that God would not be content except with moral realities. And allow me to say that it is a very solemn thing indeed to claim the privileges of grace for that which is contrary to the nature of God. I am not speaking now of the lost one found by grace, to whom God gives a new life fresh from Himself. But the effect of a soul's receiving life in the person of Christ is that there are produced feelings, thoughts, judgments and ways acceptable to God and akin to His nature. If a person is a child of God, he is like his Father; he has a nature suitable to God, a life that dislikes sin and is surely pained by what is iniquitous in others, but more particularly in himself. Many bad men are strong against evil in others; they are weak where it might touch themselves. But a Christian always begins with self-judgment. That is the reason why, now that there was to be a moral preparation for the Messiah, John preaches, "Repent." Repentance is the soul's moral judgment of itself under the eye of God; the soul's acceptance of His judgment of its state before Him, and bowing to it. John called upon them to repent because the kingdom of heaven was at hand. "For this is He that was spoken of by the prophet Esaias, saying, The voice of one crying in the wilderness, Prepare ye the way of the Lord, make His paths straight." This clearly implied two things — that he was but a voice, pretending to nothing, and that the work would be done by another. The voice only was on his part; but the other, whose way he was preparing, was the Lord, Jehovah Himself. "Prepare ye the way of Jehovah."

With John's answer they departed. Who he was not, but also who he was, he had made quite plain. He did not leave it to any one of them to draw conclusions. Nor were any doubts to rest on their minds. The forerunner to prepare the way of the Lord was on earth, and at work. And the preparation was being effected, not by martial conquest, nor the subjugation of earthly hostile powers, but by that preaching which aroused consciences and brought people to real repentance. Yet, effecting such a mighty work, how modestly does he speak of himself — a voice of one crying in the wilderness.

This is why John the Baptist does not appeal to the people as a whole, like the prophets who had preceded him. He says, "The voice of one crying in the wilderness." Israel was a wilderness for God. The prophet's appeal is henceforth based on their irretrievable ruin, whilst that of the ancient prophets always supposed the possibility of a national return to Jehovah. Divine judgment was not then definitively pronounced on the human race, and the prophets were authorized by their mission to search and see if there were any good in man by which he might be brought back to God. Like them, doubtless, John the Baptist had preached repentance, but a repentance founded on ruin without remedy. Therefore Isaiah, describing the ministry of John, adds, "The voice said, Cry. And he said, What shall I cry? All flesh is grass, and all the goodliness thereof is as the flower of the field: the grass withers, the flower fades because the Spirit of the Lord blows upon it surely the people is grass." What remains of man? Nothing. The wrath of the Lord has blown upon him. Henceforth repentance owned that there must be self-judgment in the presence of God; and they "went out" to the prophet, "confessing their sins," to be baptized of him in Jordan. The sinner did not confine himself to the confession of his sins, but owned that henceforth the only answer to his state was death, that there was no remedy.

John's baptism was a baptism of repentance to prepare people for the coming Lord. Hence it was a purification — a "baptism of repentance," — and marked out and separated a remnant from the mass of the people to escape the coming judgment. He stands himself aloof from the nation, not going up to Jerusalem, though the son of a priest, but in the deserts until the time of his showing unto Israel. In his dress and food he shows the same separateness. He preaches in the wilderness, telling the people that they must not think to say within themselves that they have Abraham for their father, because God was able of the very stones to raise up children to Abraham. The multitudes came therefore to his baptism, confessing their sins, and were baptized of him in Jordan, the river of death, as owning that all was over with them as to natural claim, and divine mercy in a Saviour alone could meet their need. They are therefore baptized for, or rather unto remission of sins, awaiting this in hope, though not yet having received it.

To a nation of legalists thus it was that John the Baptist came. He came as the true voice of the law and the prophets, the spirit of the Old Testament incarnate in him. He came with the sound of his Master's feet behind him, and the announcement that at last the Kingdom of heaven was at hand. But the years that had passed had brought no recovery, and the promise had to come with a voice of warning in it. Crying in the wilderness, and not in the cities of the land, ― there where Jehovah still remembered there had been shown the kindness of her youth, the love of her espousals, when Israel was holiness to the Lord, and the first-fruits of her increase (Jer. 2:2-3), and whither again He will have to allure her, in order that He may speak comfortably to her (Hosea 2:14). There the cry of "Repent" was in its place.

It was the cry Isaiah had predicted, the voice of the herald before Jehovah Himself, urging them to prepare His way by taking their true place before Him, making His paths straight, as righteousness required. For he was "come in the way of righteousness," as the Lord afterwards testified of him, and could only "mourn" for a condition of things without God, and from which he must needs stand apart. Apart he is therefore, in the most uncompromising manner. While the son of a priest, he exercises no priestly functions. We never even find him at Jerusalem. His clothing even speaks of the desert, being of camel's hair, and with a leathern girdle about his loins. His food is locusts and wild honey. He acts in thorough consistency with the word to Jeremiah, "Let them return unto thee, but return not thou to them" (Jer. 15:19).