Dimensions of Baptism Biblical and Theological Studies

150 Dimensions of Baptism

in the future, and in connection with Spirit-, not water-, baptism (v. 33).^2

As such, it stands outside and beyond the Gospel narrative proper. Only at

the end of the story do we hear of anyone's sins being 'forgiven', when the

risen Jesus breathes on his disciples and tells them, 'Receive the Holy

Spirit. Whosoever sins you forgive, they are forgiven to them; whosoever

sins you retain, they are retained' (20.22-23). Jesus, in the course of his

ministry in John's Gospel, sometimes retains sins (8.21,24; 9.41; 15.22,

24), but is never explicitly said to forgive anyone's sins.^3 Those who come

to Jesus in this Gospel, in fact, do not come as sinners in need of forgive-

ness. Nathanael came not as a sinner but as a 'true Israelite in whom is no

deceit' (1.47). Of the man born blind, Jesus said, 'Neither this man nor his

parents sinned, but it was so that the works of God might be displayed in

him' (9.3). Nicodemus, like everyone else, needed to be 'born from above'

(3.3,5, 7), but nothing is said of any sins of which he must repent and be

forgiven. Jesus, in fact, concludes from his encounter with Nicodemus that

those who 'come to the Light' are not those who 'practice evil things', but

precisely those who 'do the truth' and whose works are 'wrought in God'

(3.21).^4 We do get a glimpse of the Samaritan woman's sinful past (4.16-

18), but only as an example of Jesus' ability to tell her (as she put it)

'everything I ever did' (4.29, 39). Nowhere in the narrative does Jesus

either condemn or forgive her past actions. They are no more directly

relevant to the story than are the particulars of what Nathanael may have

been doing or thinking 'under the fig tree' before Jesus called him (1.48).

At the same time, any Christian reader familiar with the entire New

Testament canon knows full well that the Samaritan woman and Nicode-

mus and the man born blind and Nathanael were in fact all sinners, and

that Jesus in the Gospel of John must have come to redeem them from

their sin. Given Paul's argument in Romans, how could it be otherwise?

This being so, why the apparent disinterest in conversion as forgiveness,

2. The participle identifying Jesus as 'the one baptizing (6 (3ccTrn£cov) in Holy
   Spirit' (1.33) seems to echo and interpret his role as Lamb of God, 'the one taking
   away (6 cupcov) the sin of the world' (1.29).


3. The closest he comes is 5.14, where he warns the sick man of Bethesda, 'See,
   you have been made well; sin no more, so that nothing worse will happen to you' (in
   an account appended later to the Gospel he tells the adulterous woman, 'Nor do I
   condemn you. Go, and from now on sin no more', 8.11).


4. See J.R. Michaels, 'Baptism and Conversion in John: A Particular Baptist
   Reading', in S.E. Porter and A.R. Cross (eds.), Baptism, the New Testament and the
   Church: Historical and Contemporary Studies in Honour ofR.E.O. White (JSNTSup,
   171; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1999), pp. 136-56 (145-46).