Verses 22-36 introduce a scene change,
as Jesus and his disciples leave Jerusalem for the Judean countryside (v. 22). Here
we are introduced for the first time to the fact that Jesus, too, had people
baptized. For those already familiar with the main contents of the four
Gospels, this comes as a surprise because the Synoptics never even hint at such
a ministry, and John makes nothing more of it after 4:3. However, given the
identical call to repentance in view of the arriving kingdom that Matthew
assigns both the Baptist and Jesus (Matt. 3:2; 4:17), if the one man baptized,
it would have been natural for the other one to do so too. Since, in the Fourth
Gospel, Jesus’s first disciples come out of John’s orbit of followers, their
continuing to baptize would be even more natural. Yet the very fact that Jesus
is assembling followers separate from John’s disciples leads to the two having separate
ministries (v. 23), and there are changes ahead. (Craig L. Blomberg, Jesus
the Purifier: John’s Gospel and the Fourth Quest for the Historical Jesus [Grand
Rapids, Mich.: Baker Academic, 2023], 247)
