It’s an interesting little fact that the baptism of Jesus is one of the few events in his life that is recorded by all four evangelists. Sure, each Gospel writer records this event in slightly different ways, some in more detail than others, but they all include it in some shape or form. What is noteworthy about our text from Luke, though, is that here Jesus’ baptism is spoken of only in the most superficial way. Now this is noteworthy, because it’s not what we would normally expect from Luke. Luke was the first ‘Church historian’. He wrote a two-volume account of the early Church’s story; his Gospel being the first part, and the Book of Acts being the sequel. And at the start of his Gospel, Luke states quite explicitly that his aim is to write a careful, orderly account of Jesus’ life and ministry. And yet when it comes to the baptism, we don’t come close to any sort of detailed historical description of what happened between Jesus and John on the banks of the Jordan. Matthew is much more detailed.
There is no mention in Luke, for example, of the baptismal method. Nor, unlike Matthew, is he interested in the exchange that took place between John and Jesus before the baptism; he’s not interested in the fact that John initially refused to baptize Jesus. In fact, Luke’s record of Jesus’ baptism is over and done with in half a verse! All he says about is this; that when everyone else was getting baptized, Jesus got baptized too. For Luke, allegedly our first Church historian, at least in this instance, the details of what actually took place are not what’s most important. The important thing is simply this: that Jesus was baptized. That is to say, Luke’s aim here is to present a theological message, not an historical one.
So what is the theological point of Luke’s account, and what does it have to say to us today? In order to answer that, we have to first answer the question, why was Jesus baptized? Specifically, why, when he was the Son of God, did Jesus submit to a baptism of repentance, which was what John was performing? Surely, he had no need to repent of anything?
In Matthew 3, Mark 1, and Luke 3:3, we read that John was an itinerant prophet who went throughout Judea preaching a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. His whole message was one of impending judgment, of the need for the people to turn their lives around and to get themselves ready for the coming of God’s kingdom. And, like the Old Testament prophets before him, he proclaimed the coming of this kingdom in language that was harsh, that was black-and-white, and that offered people a choice between returning to the path of righteousness or facing the imminent judgment of God.
That is to say, John’s message, and his baptism, were for sinners; for those who were facing judgment.
Strangely, this message is said to have been ‘good news.’ When Luke says (v.18) that John exhorted the people and preached to them the good news, the word he uses is the same word from which we get ‘gospel’. It’s not often that we take kindly to someone telling us to mend our ways or face the consequences. Our tendency is to get defensive, to make excuses for our behaviour, or even to flat-out deny that we have done anything wrong in the first place. We don’t often rush to hear the rebuke, or to think of it as ‘good news’ when we do hear it. And yet it’s clear that John’s audience took it in exactly that way. Crowds from all over the countryside—according to Matthew, from Jerusalem, Judea, and the whole region of the Jordan—came to hear him. They rushed to hear John’s message. They even thought that this ‘fire-and-brimstone’ preacher might be the long-awaited Messiah. It was what we would call these days a ‘revival’. And it’s into this scene that Jesus too arrives and asks to be baptized. Why? What need did Jesus have of participating in a religious revival? It’s easy to imagine him starting one, but why would he join in with a revival that had begun with someone else?
The key lies in John’s record of Jesus’ baptism. In 1:29 of John’s Gospel we read of much the same scenario that Luke presents: John the Baptist is baptizing the people in the Jordan and then, as he sees Jesus approaching him, he says to everyone who is gathered around, ‘Look, the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.’ What is the Baptist saying here? He’s drawing on Old Testament imagery, whereby an unblemished sheep was understood fundamentally to be the thing you would offer to God as a sin or guilt-offering, in order to make restitution and to be forgiven. In other words, the man who comes to John asking to be baptized for repentance and the forgiveness of sins, the man whose sandals John is unworthy to untie, is the very one who, according to John the Baptist, is in fact going to take away the sins of the world; he is the one who is going to make restitution for the people and to win for them forgiveness for their faults and failings.
So we’re back to the same old question…Why was he baptized? Because he wasn’t doing it for himself, but for us. Like the lamb by which he is symbolized, Jesus is our representative before God. He carries the penalty for our sin and guilt, so that we don’t have to. But he can only do this if he also identifies with us. That’s why the Son of God had to become human, so as to carry the burden of humanity’s guilt; that’s why in the Letter to the Hebrews we read that Jesus was ‘tempted in every way, just as we are…’ And that’s why he received a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. By standing in solidarity with us; by identifying with us in our weaknesses (Heb.4:15); by joining the crowds in John’s baptism of repentance, Jesus was identifying with us so that he could then represent us, so that he could then stand in our place, taking our judgment upon himself.
In other words, when John the Baptist preaches an imminent judgment, he’s right; it comes, and it comes with Jesus. But, what John’s audience didn’t at first understand, and what we still often fail to understand, is that the judgment of God didn’t just come with Jesus but, more importantly, it fell on him. By combining the fact of Jesus’ baptism with the image of him as the redemptive lamb that pays the penalty for our sin and guilt, we can understand finally what Jesus’ baptism means.
It means that Jesus stands with us in our sin and guilt. Just as he entered into the waters of the Jordan, he also enters into our world of sin and pain.
I suspect that most of us have an image of God that goes something like this: that when we are doing the right thing, God is happy to be with us. When we have done something wrong and then confess it and ask for forgiveness, God is happy to hear from us—but only from a distance, and only after we have asked his forgiveness is he happy for us to join him again. But when we do the wrong thing, God abandons us. He moves away from us. His holiness can’t stand to be in the presence of sin or of sinners.
And yet the baptism of Jesus shows us precisely the opposite. The miracle of the Incarnation is not just that he entered our earthly, historical world. The greater miracle is that he came and stood in solidarity with us in all the darkness and mess of our sinful, mixed-up lives. Water, in the ancient world, usually represented chaos. And when Jesus entered into the waters of Jordan, that’s what he was entering into: he was entering with us into the chaotic and painful world of our own making.
That’s the miracle and the magnitude of God’s grace: that while we were still sinners, Christ came to die in our place; to join us, to stand by our side, in confession and repentance. Not because he had to, but because in his grace and mercy he chose to be there with us, and for us.
And he still chooses to be there with us. Most of us live our lives desperately trying to do the right thing, because we’re terrified that if we don’t, if we somehow fail, then God abandons us. He leaves us to our own devices. He leaves us to wallow, sad and sorry, in our sin.
That’s not what this text from Luke teaches us. The message of Jesus’ baptism is that God stays with us even in those messy places. More than that, he deliberately chooses to enter into those places to be with us. He would much prefer we didn’t go to those places of darkness, despair and death. But when we do, he walks there with us, to be with us, and to rescue us.
Amen
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