“The next day John saw Jesus coming toward him, and said,
‘Behold! The Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world!
This is he of whom I said, ‘After me comes a man
who is preferred before me, for he was before me.’”
John 1:29-30

Sometimes great things are easily missed when we read the Scriptures too quickly. In this passage, John the Baptist pointed out Jesus, the Lamb of God, and he tells us that “he was before me.” We know from Scripture that John the Baptist was six months OLDER than Jesus, for when Mary the mother of Jesus conceived by the power of the Holy Spirit, she then went to visit her cousin Elizabeth the mother of John, and Elizabeth was already six months pregnant. So John was six months older than Jesus.

“And the angel answered and said to her, (Mary)
‘The Holy Spirit will come upon you,
and the power of the Highest will overshadow you;
therefore, also, that Holy One who is to be born
will be called the Son of God.
Now indeed, Elizabeth your relative (the mother of John the Baptist)
has also conceived a son in her old age,
and this is now the sixth month for her who was called barren.”
Luke 1:35-36

Why is this important for us to know?

Because later, when John was baptizing at the river Jordan and saw Jesus coming, he announced him as the Lamb of God and stated, “he was before me.”

This statement proclaims the deity of Jesus Christ because the only way that Jesus could have been BEFORE John who was six months older than him – was if Jesus is God.