Is John right about Jesus coming as judge in Matthew 3?
The lectionary gospel reading for Advent 2 in Year A is Matt 3.1–12, and it contains many foundational themes of eschatology, the coming of God, and judgement, which set us up nicely for thinking about Advent not as the build-up to Christmas, but (as it should be) thinking about the Last Things.
(You can see the video discussion of this passage here, and discussion of the epistle, Rom 15.4–13, here. Both are linked at the end of this article too.)
This is one of those passages where it is particularly informative to compare the gospel accounts side by side; you can do this with a printed text like Throckmorton’s Gospel Parallels, or online using something like this site from the University of Toronto. The online version is convenient, but the print edition highlights differences more clearly in its layout, as you can see here (click to enlarge). Just looking at the shape of the text, you can see the different emphases in the three Synoptic accounts.
We can see immediately the different interests of the gospel writers. Luke locates the beginning of John’s ministry in the larger world of the Roman empire, whilst the Fourth Gospel doesn’t explain either John’s ministry or Jesus’ baptism, but assumes you already know about it from reading the other gospels. There is an interesting contrast between Matthew and Mark’s ordering of elements (which I am not sure commentaries pick up) which is striking since, in other respects, Matthew follows Mark quite closely. Mark introduces John the Baptiser in this order:
OT prophecy—John’s preaching (and baptism)—the people’s response—John’s appearance
but Matthew introduces the elements in this order:
John’s preaching—OT prophecy—John’s appearance—the people’s response (and baptism)
