Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4
The first way to submit was to accept John’s baptism, a water ceremony God gave him to perform. God regarded Israelites who underwent it as submissive to the Kingdom. They thereby incurred responsibility, and failure to meet it entailed dire consequences.
To illustrate this, Sellers invoked the military recruitment drive in the United States that began after Pearl Harbor. Millions of civilians became, by a solemn ceremony, oath, and profession of submission, members of the U.S. military. “In this oath there is a promise of submission. So, once a man steps forward, raises his right hand, repeats the oath, he becomes identified with the military, he is no longer a civilian.” Any transgressions he might commit are adjudicated by the system of military, not civilian justice.
Jesus underwent John’s baptism because He wanted to be identified with Israel’s submissive ones: “I do not seek my own will, but the will of him who sent me (John 5:30); “My food is to do the will of Him who sent Me and to accomplish His work (John 4:34). John’s ceremony didn’t add to this submissiveness, but it did identify Him with those who were submissive, thereby “fulfilling all righteousness” (Matthew 3:15).
John the Baptist was a divinely commissioned herald. It was his duty to announce what God told him to announce. He would have been unfaithful if he had changed the message by addition, omission, or alteration. The first word of his proclamation was μετανοεῖτε (metanoeite). This means “be submitting,” and it indicates a state or condition, something that would be true of them every day of their lives.
Submission is an attitude toward God that His Spirit produces in men.