Jesus did not at once answer this question. He acted for a time as though it had not been asked, and left these two men standing, while he turned to the people about him.
Standing beside the dead young man, Jesus said: "Young man, I say unto you, rise up!" Instantly he sat up and began to speak.
At the Saviour's feet were many suffering people—the sick brought upon couches by their friends, the blind crying for sight, the deaf and dumb holding out their hands toward him, the lepers with all their horrible sores, the wild people in whom were evil spirits. Jesus attended to the needs of all these sufferers. He laid his hands upon the sick, and they rose up well; he touched the eyes of the blind and the ears of the deaf, and gave them their sight and hearing; he gave each leper a new, pure, perfect body; and he cast out the evil spirits by his words. Then he went on and made his usual talk to the crowds about the Kingdom of God, and how any man might come into it.
When at last his morning's work of healing and teaching was over, he turned to these two message-bearers from John the Baptist, and said to them:
"Go back and tell John in his prison what you have seen and heard. Here are men once blind who now can see; lame men who now can walk; leprous men who have been made clean; deaf men made to hear; men having in them evil spirits, who are now free from their power. You have heard too of dead men raised to life; and you have listened while the gospel has been preached to the poor. You go and tell John all these things that you have seen and heard. Then let John think about these things and judge whether I am not the One whom he promised should come."
That was a far better way to bring John the Baptist back to believing fully in Jesus as the promised King of Israel and the Saviour of the world than to send the answer back, "Go and tell John that I am the Saviour." For John's faith would be the stronger, because he would now have the proofs that Jesus was the promised Lord.
After these messengers from John the Baptist had left, Jesus began to talk to the people about John. Some may have thought that in sending this question to Jesus, John had showed weakness and a change of his mind. Jesus said to the people:
"What was it that you went out to the desert to see? Was it a reed swayed to and fro by the wind? No, this man John was no weak, wind-shaken reed. Did you go out to look at a man clothed in the robes of a prince, and eating delicate food? No, that skin-clad man in the desert was no such princely person. To see such people you go to the palaces of kings. Come, what did you go out to see? Was it a prophet, a man sent from God? Yes, I tell you, John the Baptist was indeed a prophet, and more than a prophet. He was the King's messenger, to prepare the way for the King himself. Of a truth, I tell you all that no greater man was ever born into this world than John the Baptist. And yet he that is least in the Kingdom of God is higher even than John."
Jesus meant that those who could come into the Kingdom of God, as those who heard the gospel might come, were higher than even the greatest of those who prepare the way for the Kingdom.