An Idea Blossoms at the Right Time

Luke 3:1-3

     I was thinking about the part that says, "preaching a baptism for the forgiveness of sins".  This seems to me to be a fairly radical thing to even suggest.  Wasn't blood necessary for the forgiveness of sins?  That's what the temple and all of those sacrifices were for, weren't they?  Sin is a big deal, and under the law given to Moses there was a lot of stuff necessary in order for sins to be forgiven.  The high priest had to make special sacrifices for himself and the people.  Individuals could make sacrifices for themselves. Job, although living before the law was given, he made sacrifices for his children just in case they sinned.

     I don't get the impression that people took the forgiveness of sins very lightly.  Yet, here comes John preaching a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins.  I think we need to look at what baptism and repentance mean.  Baptism was basically like a ritual washing.  It was and is ceremonial.  I suppose sacrifice was also ceremonial as well.  It just seems much more... serious.  What would give people the impression that you could just switch from one to the other?  From what little reading I've done, John didn't invent the idea.  Ritual washings and such were not uncommon in certain quarters at that time.  But it seems like a bit of a jump to get from blood to water without any other reasons to go along with it.   I imagine the key must be the repentance part, but what does it mean exactly?

   Repentance is found all over the Bible before John enters in.  The prophets are constantly calling the people to turn from their sin back to God.  Jonah was sent to Nineveh specifically to tell them to repent.  He didn't want to go because He knew that God would forgive them if they did.  Wow.  That didn't hit me until now.  Repentance wasn't a new thing that John came up with.  People knew how important it was all along.  That's why they latched on to what John was saying.  It was something people already cared about, and here was someone who was putting it into terms they could sink their teeth into.