By Josh Winslett
John 1:6 reads, “There was a man sent from God, whose name was John.” The apostle John uses this language to remind the reader that John the Baptist was not the eternal Word but was simply a man sent from God. John was a very important figure. John the Baptist was one of the few men other than Jesus Christ who was prophesied of in the Old Testament to come in the New Testament age. John was to come directly before Christ showing that the King was soon to come. However, John was still just a man, and not the Christ.
Many would look to John for leadership and direction. His popularity was so strong that he still had disciples many years after his death (Acts 19:3). John was truly an important person in Biblical history. Yet, his job was only to point others to Christ (John 3:30). John could not do what Jesus Christ was sent to do. Only the eternal Son of God could be the Lamb sent to take away the sins of the elect throughout the world (John 1:29). In the same way, no one human can fix your problems. We often look to other people for some type of validation or fulfillment, whether it be our spouse, children, or even your pastor. This will always lead to further discouragement. Why? Because they are broken.
Joshua Winslett is the pastor of Beulah Primitive Baptist Church in Leeds.
Your spouse is broken. Your children are broken. Your pastor is broken. All people are broken and in need of grace. As it has been said in the past, the best of men are men at best. Trying to find happiness in other fallible humans will only bring inevitable emptiness. Until we find peace in Christ, all other relationships will be a futile attempt to distract us from a void that only Christ can fill. In reality, all relationships we have should be a catalyst for us to point everyone we meet to our Savior. We should all adopt John’s mentality and know that life is not about us. We are not the light but are only here to bear witness of the light of the world, Jesus Christ (John 1:8).
We often forget that at the end of the day, even the greatest man “born of women” was still just a man (Matthew 11:11). We all look amazing through the filter of our social media persona, but in reality, each one of us have secret struggles that perpetually haunt our very existence. It is a blessing to know that even John was a man and seemingly subject to internal battles (Luke 7:19). Knowing this, let us trust less in self and more in God. May we like King David be able to say with hopeful confidence, “Although my house be not so with God; yet he hath made with me an everlasting covenant, ordered in all things, and sure: for this is all my salvation, and all my desire, although he make it not to grow” (2 Samuel 23:5). We may only be fallible men and women, but we have a mighty Savior.
