What Does “He Must Increase But I Must Decrease” Really Mean?

Here is this article in audio form. (If you choose to listen, at a certain point you may still want to look at the diagram below.)

My plan is for this article to eventually be edited into a chapter of Untwisting Scriptures #6, Striving, Dying to Self, and Life. When that book is published, this article will be truncated and will point you to the book. But for now, here it is!

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Matthew 11 tells us that after he was thrown in prison, John the Baptist sent word by his disciples to Jesus to ask, “Are you the one who is to come, or shall we look for another?” By such a question we ponder that he must have felt intense discouragement and begun to second guess his entire ministry. It seems to echo of deep pain.

But it also seemed like a slap in the face to the Lord Jesus Christ, the one John had proclaimed as the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world.

But there was no rebuke from the Lord.

What did Jesus say about John the Baptist?

“Remind him,” the Lord said, “of what you see and hear. The blind receive their sight. The lame walk. Lepers are cleansed. The deaf hear. The dead are raised up, and . . . equally glorious with all those, the poor have the gospel preached to them.”

Yes, John. I am indeed the one who is to come. When you pointed to Me, you pointed correctly.

But after John’s disciples left to take the good news to John, Jesus turned to the crowd to talk to them specifically about John.

“What did you go out to the wilderness to see?” He asked. Everybody had been going out to see John in the wilderness. A more powerful preacher hadn’t been around in, oh, about 400 years.

“Did you go to see a reed shaken by the wind?”

Obviously not. He wouldn’t have been imprisoned if he had been weak enough to cave against Herod’s threats.

“What did you go out to see? A man dressed in soft clothing?”

I picture a chuckle running through the crowd. John had dressed in camel skins, so no.

“What did you go out to see? A prophet?”

Yes. That was it. A murmur ran through the crowd.

“Yes, and more than a prophet,” Jesus continued.

This was the messenger Isaiah talked about! “Look! I send my messenger before you, to prepare the way before you!”

John had the greatest privilege of any prophet, to actually prepare the way for the Lord Jesus Christ, Israel’s Messiah and the Savior of the world.

That is, before he landed in prison—and until his untimely death.

“No one has come who is greater than John the Baptist,” Jesus emphasized.

“And yet . . .

. . . the smallest one who is actually in the kingdom of heaven [the kingdom our Lord had been preaching about and telling parables about] is greater than John.”

Jesus said a few other mysterious things about John before He was done. But let’s imagine Jesus had said one other thing:

“John must decrease. I must increase.”

What would preachers preach about that?

I believe they would put it in context. John went to prison and died. Jesus was just getting started.

What did John the Baptist say about himself?

John the Baptist’s famous words, “He must increase, but I must decrease” have long been applied to us, all the children of God, without a second thought, because of that personal pronoun. “I must decrease.” It must apply directly to me, because it says “I.” Right?

Let’s see what else John the Baptist said “I” about. When the Pharisees asked him, “Who are you,” he replied,

‘“I am the voice of one crying out in the wilderness, ‘Make straight the way of the Lord,’ as the prophet Isaiah said.”

I’ve been to church all my life, but I’ve never heard a preacher or teacher say that you and I, the ones listening to the sermon or reading the book, that we are the voice of one crying out in the wilderness.

Have you ever wondered why not?

How about this one, a few verses later in John 1:26-27.

“I baptize you with water for repentance, but he who is coming after me is mightier than I, whose sandals I am not worthy to carry.”

For some reason, I’ve never heard any preacher or teacher say that you and I, as in WE, the listener/reader, baptizes you with water.

I wonder why not?

In verse 13 of the same chapter, Jesus wanted John to baptize Him. John said,

“I need to be baptized by you, and do you come to me?”

Why do you suppose this saying of John isn’t applied directly to us, telling us all that we need to be baptized directly by Jesus, but Jesus wants us to baptize Him?

Do you understand why not?

Now look at John 3:25-26. It tells us that John’s disciples

came to John and said to him, “Rabbi, he who was with you across the Jordan, to whom you bore witness—look, he is baptizing, and all are going to him.”

Do you see what was happening here?

John had been the one everyone was coming to hear. HE was the one baptizing. HE was the one saying, “Repent, for the Kingdom of heaven is at hand.”

And now, look! Everyone, it seemed, was leaving John and going to this other one that John’s disciples didn’t even want to name—“the one you bore witness to.”

Listen closely to what John replied. It’s so important.

“A person cannot receive even one thing unless it is given him from heaven. You yourselves bear me witness, that I said, ‘I am not the Christ, but I have been sent before him.’

“The one who has the bride is the bridegroom. The friend of the bridegroom, who stands and hears him, rejoices greatly at the bridegroom’s voice. Therefore this joy of mine is now complete. He must increase, but I must decrease.”

There it is. And I will add, my friend, there it is in context.

What was it about that particular time in history?

In my home, on the end table beside the couch where I sit for our Sunday afternoon Bible studies, sits a small hourglass. As we discuss the timeline of history as presented in the New Testament, I often have occasion to pick it up as an object lesson during our studies.

Here it is.

“The top part,” I say. “That’s the Old Covenant. The bottom part is the New Covenant.

“And the tiny, tiny middle, the neck. That’s the most important time in history.”

That’s the point that all the Old Covenant flowed to and all the New Covenant flowed out of. The neck, the crux. It was THEN that the Lord Jesus was on earth, with His earthly ministry. Explaining the Kingdom of heaven. Warning about the end of the Old and the entrance of the New. Foretelling of His own death and resurrection, as well as the destruction of the temple, which would usher in the New and bring the Old to a complete and final End.

It was when our Lord Jesus died and rose again.

This was the most crucial time in history.

John the Baptist—as well as Jesus and His disciples—straddled the two eras, the Old and the New. Some have called John “the last Old Testament prophet.”

I prefer the term “Old Covenant” for clarity, so I would call him the last Old Covenant prophet. He’s the one who—it’s stated very plainly—was there to point everyone to Jesus. It’s like the harbinger in those days who ran a half mile or mile in front of a Roman Important Person’s chariot to say, “Make way! Make way! The Important Person is coming!”

That’s what John did for Jesus, for long enough that word about “that strange prophet in the wilderness” spread all over Israel, and everyone who could possibly go down there to hear him made that trek. John was the talk of the land.

Until he wasn’t.

There came a time when his work of introducing Jesus was done. Then it was time for Jesus to ascend and for the crowds to follow Him.

John, on the other hand, was imprisoned and then beheaded.

John decreased. Jesus increased.

It’s very plain to see, when you look at the whole thing in context.

The hourglass neck of the most important time in history

We study John’s life as an example of one who faithfully followed through and recognized when his ministry was coming to an end. There is much to learn from the life of John the Baptist.

But a lesson about us becoming spiritually smaller and smaller is not one of those lessons.

That email I sent out

Some months ago I sent an email to my email subscribers about this topic (but shorter, of course, because it was an email, not an article).

Many readers expressed appreciation for it.

But there was also indignation. Rebeca Davis was claiming that “He must increase but I must decrease” doesn’t apply to us.

That is correct, just to make myself completely clear. That is indeed what I’m asserting. We can be free to simply see what John 3:30 says about John and let go of trying to figure out what it says about us. It applied to John the Baptist in context, and it doesn’t apply to us.

Maybe you already know why trying to apply John 3:30 to us is a problem.

This verse is one of those used to get people to try to shrink smaller and smaller. (Something John never did, by the way.) We’re supposed to keep trying to decrease ourselves so that Jesus can increase.

It just doesn’t work, any more than “daily dying to self” works. God never asks it of us or even hints at it in His Word. And it ends up enabling abuse.

For each of us, there will come a time when our earthly ministry is over. Someone else, previously unknown, may get more attention than we do in legitimate ministry. It’s been working that way throughout history.

But there will never be a time when we can legitimately say what John the Baptist said, because we aren’t living in that neck of the hourglass. There will never be a time that we must decrease so that Jesus Christ can increase. It just doesn’t work that way.

You may have experienced some cognitive dissonance about wanting to do something more public for God, but wondering how to do that when you’re supposed to “decrease.”

I’ve been there. I went through that whole struggle myself. What a relief to find that I can proclaim something beautiful for the Lord and about the Lord without feeling like I just need to be small and quiet and try to disappear.

Instead of those who love Jesus constantly thinking “How can I make myself less so I can make Him more”—which, as I said and as many can testify, can end up enabling abuse—a better way to think is one I referred to in my first Untwisting Scriptures book (when I talked about “giving up rights”). Let’s ask Him to help us align our desires with His desires. He will grant us the desires of our hearts and turn our hearts more and more to Him, granting us more wisdom, more grace, more of the attributes of the person He is calling us to be.

You have important work to do. And you don’t have to disappear to do it.

The joyful declaration

I have one more thing to point out. It’s just so beautiful, I don’t want you to miss it.

Look again at John’s statement,

“The one who has the bride is the bridegroom. The friend of the bridegroom, who stands and hears him, rejoices greatly at the bridegroom’s voice. Therefore this joy of mine is now complete. He must increase, but I must decrease.”

John hadn’t yet gone to prison when he said this, and he didn’t know what awaited him. So he didn’t say this in resignation.

Actually, he said it in joy.

Not only was he recognizing his place (the friend of the bridegroom), but he was filled to overflowing with joy that what he had been pointing to was being accomplished. The voice of the bridegroom was beginning to be heard throughout the land!

He had no sense of jealousy that Jesus was proclaiming the same thing he himself had been proclaiming. Instead, he was delighted. He wasn’t concerned about being usurped by the Lord. He was thrilled. His heart poured out in ecstatic emotion and leaped up at the sound and sight of One who takes the breath away.

It was this sense of purpose—to point others to Christ—that gives his famous statement the context it needs: a context of appropriate understanding of his own life and a joyous acknowledgement of a glorious reality. The reality is that the One he pointed to was worthy, worthy, worthy of all glory and honor and praise.

As I pondered this, I couldn’t help but think of the Pharisees.

A recent re-reading of John chapters 11 and 12 reminded me that the Pharisees could have been in a similar position to John. When they saw that Jesus did so many amazing miracles, culminating in the nearly-incredible miracle of raising Lazarus from the dead, they could have pointed their people to Him and said, “Don’t follow us anymore. Follow Him now.”

But instead they said (my paraphrase), “What are we going to do? This man does many miracles. If we don’t intervene, everyone will believe on Him! And then we’ll lose our position. The whole world is going after Him! We’re losing followers!” And they plotted to kill Him.

Their position, which should have been to point people to the Messiah, but which had become to point people to themselves, had become all-important to them. They could hear, they could see, nothing, no one, beyond themselves.

“He’s increasing, and we’re decreasing, and that is completely unacceptable!”

Even though John became very discouraged after he was imprisoned, he did have the appropriate perspective of his life and the appropriate perspective of his Lord.

And again I emphasize something I wrote about in Untwisting Scriptures #2, when I talked about authority. Here is our attitude, inspired by John the Baptist and many others like him throughout history.

“Look, look to Jesus only for all your hope. Do you see how glorious He is? Look again! Can you hear His beautiful voice? Doesn’t it fill you with joy? Rejoice with joy beyond expression!”

“He must increase. I must decrease.” That was reality for John. But in addition, for John, notice that this was not a statement of requisite, purposeful, dutiful humility and resignation.

It was an outpouring of ecstatic emotion, a heart leaping up at the sound and sight of One who takes the breath away.

In seeing John the Baptist as one of our examples, we’ll want to see our own lives in proper perspective, our proper place in history, because the time the Lord has placed us in is no accident.

We don’t need somehow to become spiritually smaller and smaller. But we do want to remember–no matter what the future may hold for us–our desire is always to point others to Him.

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