They came to John and said to him, “Rabbi, that man who was with you on the other side of the Jordan—the one you testified about—look, he is baptizing, and everyone is going to him.” To this John replied, “A person can receive only what is given from heaven. You yourselves can testify that I said, ‘I am not the Messiah but am sent ahead of him.’ The bride belongs to the bridegroom. The friend who attends the bridegroom waits and listens for him, and is full of joy when he hears the bridegroom’s voice. That joy is mine, and it is now complete. He must become greater; I must become less.”

The one who comes from above is above all; the one who is from the earth belongs to the earth, and speaks as one from the earth. The one who comes from heaven is above all. He testifies to what he has seen and heard, but no one accepts his testimony. The person who has accepted it has certified that God is truthful. For the one whom God has sent speaks the words of God, for God gives the Spirit without limit. The Father loves the Son and has placed everything in his hands. Whoever believes in the Son has eternal life, but whoever rejects the Son will not see life, for God’s wrath remains on them.

—John 3:26-36 (TNIV)

John the Baptizer points us to an essential truth here. Because we are blessed with free will, we have a choice to believe God’s promise to rescue us from our exile or think him to be a liar. We do that by whether we believe in Jesus. This requires that, like John, we are to live lives that point others to the Living Christ and not to ourselves. We do this by following him to the best of our ability and allowing him to transform us into his likeness by the power of his Spirit living in us. Tangentially, this also means we have no authority to change the meaning of God’s Word in Scripture because when we do, we in effect are saying that we do not believe God, or believe that Scripture really is his word. And as the Baptizer reminds us, the consequences of our decision are, shall we say, significant.