The Prophetic Call

When John steps forward from the desert, all four Gospels announce him in the words of one verse: “the voice of one crying in the wilderness, Prepare the way of the Lord” (Isa. 40:3; quoted in Matt. 3:3, Mark 1:3, Luke 3:4, and applied by John to himself in John 1:23). He comes as the messenger of Malachi and the promised Elijah, preaching a baptism of repentance with words that fall like an axe — “You brood of vipers!” and “the axe is laid to the root of the trees” (Matt. 3:7–10) — and giving plain ethical instruction to crowds, tax collectors, and soldiers (Luke 3:10–14). This file treats John’s prophetic identity, the Elijah tension of John 1:21, and his standing as the last of the prophets, the hinge between the Law and the Kingdom (Matt. 11:13; Luke 16:16).

Tradition: Pan-Orthodox (Forerunner)

The Voice in the Wilderness

The defining word for John’s vocation is not his own but Isaiah’s, and the Gospels are unanimous in applying it to him. “For this is he who was spoken of by the prophet Isaiah when he said, ‘The voice of one crying in the wilderness: Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight’” (Matt. 3:3, citing Isa. 40:3). Mark opens his entire Gospel with the same prophecy (Mark 1:3), and so does Luke (Luke 3:4). The agreement of the three Synoptics is striking: before any of them reports John’s preaching, each identifies him by this single verse, as though Isaiah 40:3 were John’s name and office at once. He is “the voice” — not the Word, but the voice that cries the Word’s approach; not the Lord, but the one who prepares His way.

The Fourth Gospel makes the application John’s own. When the priests and Levites sent from Jerusalem ask him directly, “Who are you?… What do you say about yourself?”, John answers in the very words of the prophet: “I am the voice of one crying in the wilderness, ‘Make straight the way of the Lord,’ as the prophet Isaiah said” (John 1:22–23). What the Synoptics say of John, John here says of himself. He claims no greater title; he is content to be a voice that points away from itself. John Chrysostom dwells on this self-effacement, noting that John takes for himself only the name of “voice,” the humblest of the titles the Scriptures might have given him, and so begins at once the work of pointing not to himself but to the One who comes after (John Chrysostom, Homilies on the Gospel of Matthew 10.3–4; NPNF I/10).

Mark, however, opens not with Isaiah alone. “As it is written in Isaiah the prophet, ‘Behold, I send my messenger before thy face, who shall prepare thy way; the voice of one crying in the wilderness…’” (Mark 1:2–3) — and the first half of that quotation is not from Isaiah at all but from Malachi: “Behold, I send my messenger to prepare the way before me” (Mal. 3:1). Mark conflates the two prophets under Isaiah’s name, joining the messenger of Malachi to the voice of Isaiah, because for the Evangelist they are one figure: the herald who goes before the face of the Lord. This brings the second great prophecy into John’s vocation.

The Messenger and the Elijah to Come

Malachi’s “messenger” prophecy stands behind John’s whole office, and Malachi himself identifies the messenger: at the close of his book he promises, “Behold, I will send you Elijah the prophet before the great and terrible day of the Lord comes” (Mal. 4:5). The expectation of a returning Elijah was alive in Israel, and the Gospels apply it directly to John. The Lord says of him to the crowds, “if you are willing to accept it, he is Elijah who is to come” (Matt. 11:14), and again, after the Transfiguration, when the disciples ask why the scribes say that Elijah must come first, He answers that “Elijah has already come, and they did not know him… Then the disciples understood that he was speaking to them of John the Baptist” (Matt. 17:12–13). John, then, is the Elijah of Malachi’s promise, the herald of the great day, the one who comes to “turn the hearts of the fathers to the children” (Mal. 4:6).

Yet there is a real tension in the texts, and it should not be smoothed over. When the priests and Levites ask John outright, “Are you Elijah?”, he says plainly, “I am not” (John 1:21). John denies being Elijah; the Lord affirms that he is. The Church resolves this not by suppressing either word but by reading them together. John denies being Elijah in the sense his questioners meant — he is not the literal Elijah the Tishbite returned in his own person from heaven, the figure of late Jewish expectation. But he is Elijah in the sense the angel Gabriel announced to Zacharias before his birth: he goes before the Lord “in the spirit and power of Elijah, to turn the hearts of the fathers to the children” (Luke 1:17), the very phrase of Malachi. John is Elijah in spirit and office, not in person; he fulfills the Elijah-prophecy without being the returned Elijah of the popular hope. So John can truthfully say “I am not,” and Christ can truthfully say “he is Elijah who is to come” (Matt. 11:14), and both are right (the Elijah typology John wears in his very dress is treated in The Wilderness Years).

The Preaching of Repentance

The content of John’s prophetic cry is repentance under the shadow of judgment. His message is summed in a single sentence: “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand” (Matt. 3:2). This is the same proclamation with which the Lord will open His own ministry (Matt. 4:17), and John is its forerunner here too — the first to cry the nearness of the Kingdom.

His preaching is sharp. When the Pharisees and Sadducees come to his baptism, he turns on them: “You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come? Bear fruit that befits repentance” (Matt. 3:7–8). He cuts off the false security of descent from Abraham: “Do not presume to say to yourselves, ‘We have Abraham as our father’; for I tell you, God is able from these stones to raise up children to Abraham” (Matt. 3:9). And he announces judgment as already begun: “Even now the axe is laid to the root of the trees; every tree therefore that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire” (Matt. 3:10). The figure is one of imminent reckoning — the axe is not being sharpened but already laid against the root, the cut already begun. Chrysostom observes that John’s severity is itself pastoral, meant to break the presumption of those who trusted in their lineage and to drive them to the fruit of a changed life rather than the mere ritual of washing (John Chrysostom, Homilies on the Gospel of Matthew 11.2–3; NPNF I/10).

That this repentance is concrete, and not a feeling only, Luke makes plain. When the crowds, the tax collectors, and the soldiers each ask in turn, “What then shall we do?”, John gives plain and practical answers: to the multitudes, “He who has two coats, let him share with him who has none; and he who has food, let him do likewise”; to the tax collectors, “Collect no more than is appointed you”; to the soldiers, “Rob no one by violence or by false accusation, and be content with your wages” (Luke 3:10–14). The fruit that befits repentance is justice and mercy in the ordinary dealings of life — not flight from one’s station but honesty within it. John’s baptism is bound to this ethical demand; it is “a baptism of repentance” (Mark 1:4), and its meaning as a washing distinct from the Church’s sacrament is taken up in its own place (see The Baptism of John).

The Last of the Prophets

John’s place in the whole sweep of salvation history is given by the Lord Himself in two related sayings. “For all the prophets and the law prophesied until John” (Matt. 11:13); and, in Luke’s form, “The law and the prophets were until John; since then the good news of the kingdom of God is preached” (Luke 16:16). John stands at a seam in time. He is the last of the prophets of the old covenant, the one in whom the whole line of prophecy that ran from Moses comes to its term — and he is, at the same time, the first to point to the Kingdom now present in the person of Christ. The Law and the Prophets reach forward to John; from John onward, the Gospel is preached.

This is why the Church calls him Prodromos, the Forerunner: he is the hinge between the two Testaments, the one who closes the age of promise and opens, by his pointing finger, the age of fulfillment. He is greater than all who went before — “among those born of women there has risen no one greater than John the Baptist” (Matt. 11:11) — precisely because he stands nearest to the One whom all the prophets foretold, near enough to point to Him in the flesh and say, “Behold” (on this greatness and the humility that crowns it, see The Greatest Born of Women). The prophetic call that begins in the desert with Isaiah’s “voice” ends at the Jordan with John’s finger pointing to the Lamb of God — the prophet’s whole office gathered into a single act of witness. The Scriptures in which that office is written are themselves the Church’s first source for him (see Holy Scripture).

References

The Gospel According to Matthew 3:1–10; 4:17; 11:11–14; 17:10–13. Revised Standard Version. (“The voice of one crying in the wilderness” at 3:3; “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand” at 3:2; “You brood of vipers” and “the axe is laid to the root” at 3:7–10; “he is Elijah who is to come” at 11:14 and 17:12–13; “all the prophets and the law prophesied until John” at 11:13.)
The Gospel According to Mark 1:1–4. Revised Standard Version. (The conflated quotation of Malachi 3:1 and Isaiah 40:3 at 1:2–3; “a baptism of repentance” at 1:4.)
The Gospel According to Luke 1:17; 3:1–14; 16:16. Revised Standard Version. (“In the spirit and power of Elijah” at 1:17; the ethical instructions to crowds, tax collectors, and soldiers at 3:10–14; “The law and the prophets were until John” at 16:16.)
The Gospel According to John 1:19–23. Revised Standard Version. (“I am not” Elijah at 1:21; “I am the voice of one crying in the wilderness” at 1:23.)
Isaiah 40:3; Malachi 3:1; 4:5–6. Revised Standard Version. (The voice preparing the way; the messenger before the Lord’s face; the sending of Elijah before the great day.)
John Chrysostom. Homilies on the Gospel of Matthew, Homilies 10.3–4 and 11.2–3. Trans. in Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Series I, Vol. 10. (John as “the voice,” his self-effacement, and the pastoral severity of his preaching to the Pharisees and Sadducees.)