Commentary - Matthew 3:1-6

Bird's-eye view

After the quiet years in Nazareth, the curtain of redemptive history rises again with a sudden and jarring abruptness. A wild man appears out of the wilderness, and his message is as rugged as his attire. John the Baptist is the great hinge between the Old Covenant and the New. He is the last of the Old Testament prophets, and the first to point directly to the Lamb of God. His ministry is not an innovation but a fulfillment, the long-awaited voice of Isaiah 40. The central thrust of his preaching is a non-negotiable demand for repentance, grounded in the staggering announcement that the kingdom of heaven is no longer a distant hope but an imminent reality. It is "at hand." This message created a national spiritual crisis, drawing multitudes from the corrupt religious center in Jerusalem out to the stark honesty of the wilderness to confess their sins and be washed in the Jordan. John's ministry is the great preparation, the bulldozing of a highway in the desert of men's hearts for the arrival of the King, Jesus Christ.

This passage establishes the essential prerequisite for coming to Christ: you must first deal with your sin. There is no entrance into the kingdom of heaven without passing through the gate of repentance. John's baptism was an outward sign of this internal reality, a public declaration that the person being baptized was breaking with their old life and enlisting under the banner of the coming Messiah. The massive popular response demonstrates the deep spiritual hunger in Israel, a hunger that the formal religion of the day could not satisfy. John was the real deal, and the people knew it.

Outline

Context In Matthew

Matthew's gospel has just concluded its opening section, establishing the royal lineage and miraculous birth of Jesus the Messiah. After Jesus' escape to Egypt and return to Nazareth as a boy, Matthew fast-forwards roughly two decades. The narrative stage has been set, the King is waiting in the wings, and now His herald must appear to announce His arrival. John's ministry is the essential prologue to the public ministry of Jesus. He is the transitional figure who prepares the nation for its King. His preaching of repentance and the kingdom creates the theological and spiritual context into which Jesus will step. The baptism Jesus receives from John in the very next section will serve as the King's official anointing and inauguration. Therefore, John's ministry is not a sideshow; it is the divinely ordained preparation for the main event.

Key Issues

The Kingdom is at Hand

The central nerve of John's preaching is found in the phrase, "the kingdom of heaven is at hand." This was not a call to moral self-improvement. It was not a suggestion to try a little harder. It was a thunderous announcement that the world was about to change forever. The verb translated "is at hand" (engiken) means that it has drawn near, that it is imminent, on the very threshold. The long-awaited rule and reign of God was breaking into human history in a definitive and personal way through the arrival of the Messiah.

This is why the call to repent was so urgent. When a king is about to arrive in a rebellious province, the inhabitants have two choices: they can lay down their arms and swear fealty, or they can brace for impact. John's message was a final, gracious call to lay down the arms of rebellion. To repent (metanoeite) means to have a complete change of mind. It is not simply feeling sorry for your sins; it is a fundamental reorientation of your entire life, your thinking, your allegiances, and your loves. It is turning from self-rule to God's rule. The arrival of the kingdom forces a decision. You cannot be neutral about it. John's message was that the time for neutrality was over. The King was at the gate.

Verse by Verse Commentary

1 Now in those days John the Baptist came, preaching in the wilderness of Judea,

"In those days" is a general transition, bridging the long gap from Jesus' childhood. The silence is broken by the arrival of a man defined by his action: John the Baptist. He is not John the Theologian or John the Philosopher, but John the Baptizer. His identity is wrapped up in the rite he performs. And he came "preaching," which means heralding or proclaiming publicly. This is not a quiet conversation but a loud announcement. His location is crucial: "the wilderness of Judea." The wilderness in Scripture is a place of testing, judgment, revelation, and new beginnings. Israel was tested in the wilderness. Elijah fled to the wilderness. The wilderness is outside the corrupt centers of power, both political and religious. John's ministry begins on the margins, a deliberate rebuke to the establishment in Jerusalem.

2 saying, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.”

Here is the sermon in summary. It begins with a command: "Repent." This is in the plural; it is a call to the entire nation. It means to change your mind, to turn around, to abandon your current course. This is followed by the reason, the motivation for such a radical turn: "for the kingdom of heaven is at hand." The rule of God is about to manifest in a new and powerful way. "Kingdom of heaven" is Matthew's preferred way of saying "kingdom of God," likely out of a Jewish reverence for the divine name. The nearness of the kingdom is the reason for the urgency of the repentance. You don't tidy up the house when the king is a year away; you panic-clean when you hear his chariot wheels on the gravel outside.

3 For this is the one referred to by Isaiah the prophet, saying, “THE VOICE OF ONE CRYING IN THE WILDERNESS, ‘MAKE READY THE WAY OF THE LORD, MAKE HIS PATHS STRAIGHT!’ ”

Matthew immediately anchors John's ministry in Old Testament prophecy. John is not a self-appointed crank; he is a figure of fulfillment. The quote is from Isaiah 40:3, a passage about God's glorious return to His people after exile. Matthew wants us to understand that what is happening now is a new exodus, a new return from exile, but this time from the exile of sin. And notice who is coming. The prophecy says to prepare the way for "the LORD," which in the Hebrew is Yahweh. John is preparing the way for God Himself to show up. This is one of Matthew's early and powerful testimonies to the deity of Jesus Christ. The "path-straightening" is a metaphor for repentance. It is the work of leveling the mountains of pride and filling in the valleys of despair and unbelief in the human heart so that the King may have a clear road to enter.

4 Now John himself had a garment of camel’s hair and a leather belt around his waist; and his food was locusts and wild honey.

John's appearance was a sermon in itself. This is not a fashion statement; it is a prophetic uniform. The description of a garment of hair and a leather belt is meant to immediately call to mind the prophet Elijah (2 Kings 1:8). The Jews expected Elijah to return before the Messiah came (Mal. 4:5), and John shows up dressed for the part. He is the new Elijah. His diet of locusts (a permissible food under Levitical law) and wild honey reinforces his identity as a man of the wilderness, separate from the corruptions and comforts of civilization. He was sustained directly by God's provision in the wild, not by the tainted food of the establishment.

5 Then Jerusalem was going out to him, and all Judea, and all the district around the Jordan;

The response was nothing short of a national revival. The language is hyperbolic but indicates a massive movement. Notice the direction of travel: "Jerusalem was going out to him." The people were leaving the holy city, the location of the temple and the priesthood, to go to a prophet in the wilderness. This is a profound indictment of the spiritual bankruptcy of the religious establishment. The spiritually hungry were not being fed in the temple, so they went to the desert. The movement was widespread, encompassing the capital city, the broader province of Judea, and the entire region.

6 and they were being baptized by him in the Jordan River, as they confessed their sins.

This verse describes the tangible result of their journey. They submitted to his baptism. This was a radical act. While ritual washings were common in Judaism, John's baptism was different. It was a one-time act of repentance and initiation into the community of those preparing for the Messiah. It was intrinsically linked to an essential condition: "as they confessed their sins." The baptism was the outward sign; the confession was the necessary verbal expression of the inward reality of repentance. This was not a private affair. They were publicly admitting their guilt and their need for cleansing, turning their backs on their old way of life to await the coming King. To be baptized by John was to enlist in the army of the kingdom.

Application

The message of John the Baptist has lost none of its sharp edge. The modern church is always tempted to soften the entryway to the kingdom, to replace the demand for repentance with an invitation to a better life. But John's ministry reminds us that the way of the Lord must still be prepared, and that preparation is called repentance. We cannot come to Jesus for healing if we do not first admit we are sick. We cannot come to Him for forgiveness if we do not first confess our sins.

Like the people of Judea, we must be willing to go "out" from our comfortable places. We must leave the Jerusalem of our self-righteousness and our cultural accommodations and meet God on His terms, in the wilderness of honest self-examination. We must ask if our lives are characterized by straight paths, or if they are cluttered with the crookedness of pride, the boulders of unconfessed sin, and the winding detours of compromise. The kingdom of heaven is still at hand. Christ has come, and He is coming again. The King is on the move. The only sane response is to repent, to confess our sins, and to be washed clean, not in the Jordan, but in the blood of the Lamb to whom John pointed.