17. Chapter 3: The Baptism Of Jesus.

CHAPTER 3: THE BAPTISM OF JESUS.

Matthew 4:13-17; Mark 1:9-11; Luke 3:21-22. The multitudes were baptized of John in Jordan, “confessing their sins.” His preaching of the terrors of the law revealed the secrets of men’s hearts to themselves, and they were glad, by the word of confession, to exorcise what they felt to be condemning them. Many a confession he heard from lips which had never been opened to confess before; and the sad and bad secrets were made known to him of many a life which in the eyes of the world looked spotless. In such a situation he must have learned to know the weaknesses of the human heart; and it would not surprise him to hear that there were guilty memories gnawing and tormenting many a breast in which the world would never have expected them. But one day there appeared among the applicants for the baptismal rite One who, at the first glance, he was so certain had no sin to confess that he drew back and said, “I have need to be baptized of Thee, and comest Thou to me?” In other cases John may have refused to administer the rite because repentance was not deep enough; in this case he refused because repentance was unnecessary. The task of John was to bring sin home to the consciences of men; but here was One who brought it home to his own conscience. As he looked on Jesus, the baptizer felt that he himself needed to be baptized; as, in comparison with dazzling whiteness, even some kinds of white look grey. John was the boldest of men: Pharisee or priest, soldier or king could not make him quail: but he quailed before this Applicant who sought the benefit of his office.

If John knew Jesus before this there is nothing surprising in the scene. But John is made by one of the Evangelists to state that till this day he had not known Jesus. It has been argued, indeed, that this may only mean that he did not, before he saw the signs vouchsafed on this occasion, know him as he really was—as the Messiah. He must have known him, it is held, as a man, because their families were closely related; and, although the one family lived in Galilee and the other in Judaea, they had opportunities of seeing one another at the feasts in Jerusalem, which both families were sure to attend. These seem cogent arguments; but there may have been many reasons, to us unknown, for their never having seen one another before this day; and the unsocial habits of John, reaching back we know not how far into his early life, suggest a reason which may have been sufficient to keep them apart.

If John never saw Jesus before, the impression made on his mind and conscience by this first encounter is a striking revelation of the character of Jesus. There are rare faces which in some degree make the same impression. There sits on them an air of purity and peace, which, without words, tell its story—the story of a hidden life spent in walking with God—and many people would confess that they have been made more sensible of the coarseness of the fibre of their own nature and the raggedness of their own conduct by being brought casually face to face with such a breathing image of goodness than by the exposure of the most subtle moral analysis or the denunciations of a hundred sermons. In the life of Christ there are numerous instances of the overwhelming effect which the mere aspect of his personality in some of its moods was able to produce. It will be remembered how in the boat St. Peter fell down before him and, grovelling, cried, “Depart from me, for I am a sinful man, O Lord;” how on the last journey to Jerusalem he went on in front of the Twelve and “they were amazed, and as they followed, they were afraid;” and how in Gethsemane the soldiers sent to apprehend him, when they beheld him, started back and fell on their faces to the earth. There can be no doubt that when Jesus came to the baptism of John he was in a state of unusual exaltation, for he was on the eve of entering upon his public work, and this rapt state of mind may have communicated to his appearance an unusual impressiveness; so that, even before ascertaining who he was, John recoiled with a religious dread, as in the presence of a superior being. As in his mother’s womb the babe leaped when the Lord drew near, so now an overpowering instinct impelled him to draw back from assuming towards him a position which seemed to be that of a superior. The first meeting of these two is a unique scene.

They were of nearly the same age; they were related according to the flesh; they were both men of prophetic endowment, sent to produce in their native country a religious reformation. Yet, in spite of these and other points of resemblance, there could not have been two characters more absolutely contrasted. Jesus marked the contrast in the broadest way when he subsequently said, “John the Baptist came neither eating bread nor drinking wine; and ye say, He hath a devil: the Son of man is come eating and drinking, and ye say, Behold a gluttonous man and a wine- bibber, a friend of publicans and sinners.” John was the child of the desert, courting solitude and avoiding human society; Jesus followed a homely trade, appeared at marriages and feasts, was a friend of women and children, and was as much at home in the busy city as on the mountain top. John called the multitude out to the desert to hear him and did not condescend to visit the haunts of men; Jesus went to sinners where he could find them, considering it his duty to seek as well as to save that which was lost. John has a seared look; he is a man who, after severe struggles, has obtained the mastery of himself and is holding down a coarse nature by main force; Jesus, on the contrary, is always innocent and spontaneous, genial and serene. John, in short, is the Old Testament personified, Jesus the embodiment of the New; and in John’s shrinking from baptizing Jesus the spirit of the Old Testament—the spirit of law, wrath and austerity—was doing homage to the spirit of the New Testament—the spirit of freedom and of love. The application by Jesus for baptism perplexed John; and we must confess it perplexes us. It is not, indeed, entirely without parallel in the life of Christ; for his circumcision, which took place when he was eight days old, raises the same difficulty. The difficulty is, that he should have participated in an ordinance which symbolized the removal of sin. But in this case it is more urgent, because he made the application himself. Did this betray a consciousness of sin? Such was the meaning of the application when made by others; and certainly this would be the natural construction to put on the conduct of Jesus, if it were not at variance with everything else we know about him. The sinlessness of Jesus is one of the truths to which the Scripture bears the clearest testimony; and it has been believed in by many who have not accepted the testimony of Scripture about him in some other respects. He claimed himself to be without sin; and in the accounts which have come down to us of his prayers there does not occur a single syllable of confession. This is justly accounted one of the most remarkable features of his life. Other religious characters have confessed their own sins; and the profounder their holiness the more frequent and piercing have been their professions. But Jesus, confessedly the most profoundly religious figure that has appeared in human history, made no such acknowledgements. Why? Was this a defect in his religious character, or was the reason, that he had no sin to confess? So the Scriptures say. Not only is the image of Jesus which they present one which breathes out purity from every feature, but they expressly assert, in many different forms of statement, that he was holy and harmless and undefiled and separate from sinners. Even on this occasion the impression which he made on John was that he had no need of baptism to take away sin; and his own statement, “Thus it becometh us to fulfil all righteousness,” seems to imply that up to this point he was conscious of perfectly fulfilling the divine law. Therefore, his application cannot be explained as evidence that he was conscious of sin.

What, then, is the explanation? Why did one who had no sin seek to participate in an ordinance which was expressly called the baptism of repentance? It is by no means easy to answer.

It has often been asserted that the explanation is given in the reply of Jesus to John, “Suffer it to be so now; for thus it becometh us to fulfil all righteousness.” But these words only inform us that he felt it to be his duty to take part in the ordinance; they do not tell us why he considered it obligatory.

Some have dismissed the difficulty by saying that it was a marvellous instance of the Saviour’s humility, that he, the sinless One, should submit to an ordinance intended for sinners. And they have added poetic reflections to the effect that, while the water cleansed others, he cleansed the water, and so on. But this is no explanation. Neither is the suggestion satisfactory, that he took part in it to encourage others. John’s baptism, it is said, was a great religious movement; and Jesus, as a religious character, could not keep out of it. He countenanced all religious services, and was so strict in his attention to those of the synagogue and the temple as to recall to the minds of onlookers the saying, “The zeal of thine house hath eaten me up.” Now, it is true that Christ did give an ever- memorable example of conscientiousness in attendance upon religious services; and this habit may be included in the “all righteousness” which it had ever been his desire to fulfil. But this would not account for, or even justify, his participation in an ordinance which had no meaning for himself. It might account for his baptizing, but not for his being baptized.

Only two explanations seem really to touch the quick. The one is that John’s baptism had a positive as well as a negative side. It was not only the baptism of repentance, but a rite of dedication. It was a renewal of the national covenant, the inauguration of a new era, the gateway of the kingdom of God. Now, although Jesus had no part in the sin from which baptism cleansed, he had part in this positive enthusiasm: he was the very person to lead the way into the new era. The other explanation, which may very easily be combined with this one, is that he received baptism as a representative person. Although sinless himself, he was a member of a sinful nation, of whose sin he was keenly conscious—more so than any other whom John baptized—and he went along with the rest of the nation in making confession. In short, he was in this act rehearsing beforehand the great act of his death, when he bore in his own body on the tree the sins of the world.

John may not as yet have understood why Jesus wished to be baptized; but, with the same reverence with which he had shrunk from administering the rite, he yielded when Jesus repeated his request. The manner in which this mysterious candidate received the rite must still further have heightened John’s respect and awe. St. Luke informs us that Jesus came up from the water praying. This is a solemn hint as to the spirit in which all divine ordinances ought to be received. When we come to the font seeking baptism either for ourselves or others, when we sit at the Lord’s Table, when we are on our way to church, when we open God’s holy word— as we take part in every such ordinance—we may learn from Jesus how to conduct ourselves: the best state of mind is, to be engaged in prayer.

What may we suppose he was praying for? If we remember the nature of the ordinance in which he was participating and the stage of his own development which he had reached, can we doubt that he was praying for the coming of the kingdom of God and for strength to play his own part in its inauguration? The answer to his prayer came suddenly and impressively. While he was yet speaking his Father in heaven heard, and three wonders happened: first, the heavens were opened; secondly, the Holy Spirit, in the form of a dove, descended on him; and, thirdly, a voice came from heaven, saying, “This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased.” At this point many questions arise. First, what is meant by the heavens opening^-? The language used in the Evangelists is very graphic, suggesting that the appearance occurred of a rent being made in the blue vault, by which the invisible things which lie within were disclosed. But what does this mean to us, who are well aware that the visible heaven is not what it was thought to be by the infant mind of the race—the floor of a celestial palace, the occupants and furnishings of which might be seen if an opening were made in the ceiling of our earthly abode?

Then, what was the dove which descended on Jesus? Was there a real dove, which, attracted by his gentleness, alighted on him, as such creatures, when domesticated, will sometimes do on persons to whom they are drawn by kindness and amiability? Or was the dove a form of light which glided, with dovelike motion, down on his head, to point him out, as at Saul’s conversion a light above the brightness of the sun shone round about him? An ancient legend says that the whole valley of the Jordan was illuminated. And what was the voice? Was it thunder, which in Scripture is frequently called the voice of God? There were other scenes in the life of Christ when divine voices from heaven were heard for his benefit, and on at least one of these occasions the bystanders heard thunder and nothing more, whilst in the ears of those more directly concerned the sound shaped itself into an articulate divine message; and it seems a reasonable inference that the other divine voices—the present one among them—were of the same description. This raises the question whether the multitude, on this occasion, or only Jesus and John, heard the divine voice. Some devout interpreters have held that all three signs took place in the consciousness of Jesus and John alone, and had no place in the world of the senses. But judgments on such a point are largely subjective, and it is not for one Christian to impose his opinions on another. At all events, the signs were of divine origin; and both to Jesus and John they were of the utmost value. For Jesus this was a transfiguring moment—one of the cardinal points in the development of his humanity, marking his transition from the life of a private man to the career of a public teacher. Some suppose that it was at this point he became fully conscious of his unique relationship to God and grasped in all its majesty the plan of his subsequent career. There is more unanimity in the belief that it was now he was endowed with the miraculous powers of which he was to make use in his ministry. In the gospels his miracles are ascribed to the Holy Spirit. This does not mean that his own divine power was not at work in them, but that his human nature required to be potentiated by special gifts of the Holy Spirit, in order to be a fit organ through which his divinity might act. And perhaps it was at this time that these gifts were conferred. Such questions belong, however, rather to the life of Christ; and at present we are concerned with the life of the Baptist. To John this was a moment big with destiny. Before this, in his secret intercourse with God—but at what exact date and in what exact manner we know not—he had received a premonition to this effect: “Upon whom thou shalt see the Spirit descending, and remaining on him, the same is he which baptizeth with the Holy Ghost.” This, then, was the sign for which he had been waiting; this was the day for which he had been born. The appearance of the sign was the assurance that all the revelations of his desert experience and all the words he had ventured to utter in the name of God were true. The new era which he had announced was no mirage which would disappear, as the visions of enthusiasts have often done. Here, under his very eyes and in his very hands, was the King, to whom it belonged to set up and to establish the kingdom of God.