Matthew 3

Division 2. (Matthew 3:1-17; Matthew 4:1-25; Matthew 5:1-48; Matthew 6:1-34; Matthew 7:1-29.)The Announcement of the Kingdom. The King having thus been set before us, the second division of the Gospel presents to us now the Kingdom as announced by the herald of it, and then by the King, heaven opening now more wondrously than at His birth, to proclaim Him as the object of its delight, the Son of the Father, and to anoint Him publicly as the “Christ” of God. There are three subdivisions here: the first of which shows us the King once more identified, as now coming forward, after thirty years’ interval of silence, to take up His public work, and put forth His claim to the Kingdom, already declared to be at hand." The second gives us the King’s own testimony to the Kingdom, with the signs accompanying this - the broad seal of heaven set to that testimony in the sight of all men. The third is the unveiling of the Kingdom in its inner spirit and holiness, as declared by the King Himself, in what is commonly known as “the Sermon on the Mount.” This manifestly completes the announcement. In all this part we find distinctly the Lord as “the Minister of the circumcision for the truth of God to confirm the promises made unto the fathers” (Romans 15:8). The Kingdom as yet declared is in its Jewish and Old Testament form, Israel not having yet rejected Him with whom the fulfilment of all the promises is bound up. It is only after it is clearly seen that they will do this that, in the thirteenth chapter we have the parenthetic form of the Kingdom announced, in the meantime of His rejection by His people; now taking therefore its Gentile or rather its universal, New Testament form. But it must not be imagined, on this account, that our own interest in these chapters will be diminished. Not only is the whole range of Christ’s interests our own as Christians, but also we shall find that there are principles all through most fully applying to us, and not infrequently that their relation to Israel really intensifies their force in relation to ourselves.

But our first consideration must be what is in truth their strict meaning and application; and we need not fear that the truth when we have found it can possibly be less fruitful and profitable than what is not this. It would be disloyalty to God to believe it.

Matthew 3:1-4

Subdivision 1. (Matthew 3:1-17; Matthew 4:1-11.)The King once more identified.

1. At the beginning - as we are now - of the New Testament, it is natural to turn to consider the relation of the Old Testament to it; and this is pressed upon us in an especial manner by the Old Testament apparition which meets us at the threshold of the New in the person of John the Baptist. That he should go before the Lord in the spirit and power of Elias, is declared of him by his father Zacharias; and Christ Himself says of him, “If ye will receive it, this is Elias, which was for to come.” It is not necessary to discuss here his exact relation to Malachi’s closing prophecy. It is at least plain that he reproduced in his character and preaching the typical prophet whom even in his garb he very much resembled; and his call to repentance is only giving voice to what the law and the prophets united to proclaim. It is divinely significant that the long interval of about four centuries should intervene between the two portions of God’s inspired Word - His twofold testimony to man; and it is equally significant that the general character of the last prophecy should be that of lament over the utter failure of the people, their history closing at the same time, as if there were no use in any longer giving record of their doings. This is in fact the final account of man as man, the genealogies of Chronicles also ending, and the New Testament having only one genealogy, as it has practically only the history of One, the Second Man in contrast with the first, and (thank God) He the last Adam of a new creation. The ages up to Christ were ages of probation, the law itself being the typical form of this, and giving character to the whole canon of the Old Testament; but even the Gentiles, left in general, as it might seem, outside of positive direct dealings of God with them, only furnish in this way more perfectly their own contribution to the history of utter ruin. And the verdict of the ages as to these both is given us in Scripture itself in such a way as yet to cover both classes of mankind with this double condemnation. The law tested man - the Jew - as to righteousness: and the verdict of the law as to those under it is (as the apostle declares) that there is none righteous, no, not one (Romans 3:10; Romans 3:19). But the book of Job takes up also the best man of the Gentile world, and outside of law, to make him acknowledge as to himself the self-same condition (Job 42:6). Again, the Gentile was left to his own wisdom - so dearly bought - to find out by searching as to God. But, says the apostle, “when the world by wisdom knew not God, it pleased God by the foolishness of the preaching to save them that believe” (1 Corinthians 1:21). And yet again, the book of Ecclesiastes shows us a Jew - the wisest man on earth - setting himself upon the same quest, to find by wisdom as to God’s ways with man, only in his turn to be utterly baffled (Ecclesiastes 8:16-17). In either case, God’s coming in is man’s only hope; in either case, men are lost utterly: every mode of trial, every assistance that can be given them, short of a salvation all of God, only the more confirms this. The chosen people of God are the signal example of this. After having been in their deliverance from Egypt, and in the early part of their wilderness-journey, signal examples of the grace of God, they choose a legal covenant in self-confidence to their ruin. Their after-history is only that of the successive stages of their descent into it; until in their removal to Babylon the brand of their apostasy is put upon them. And though a remnant returns at the end of the seventy years predicted, the nation is owned no more as the people of God. Our Lord’s own picture of them is but that of a “fig-tree planted in the vineyard,” not of the vine restored. (See Isaiah 5:1-30.) And to this, too, with its plentiful leaves of profession, He comes seeking the fruit which should have accompanied them, and finds none. The causes leading to this are as patent as they are instructive. The remnant returning from the Babylonian captivity find God with them as a remnant, and as far as they have faith to count upon Him; but there is no general return of heart to God even in these, and still less in the nation at large, nor could there be hope or profit in putting them back where they had been before, to follow once more the course that had led them to ruin. No, the only hope is in that ruin itself laid to heart, that it may produce in them that distrust of self in which they shall lay hold of God and find blessing. Accordingly as a people they are not restored. The decree of Lo-ammi is not revoked (Hosea 1:9): the covenant is not renewed. They return under Gentile dominion, to build up again their temple and city; but they cannot bring back again what they have lost - that glorious Presence with them which was the distinctive feature of their national pre-eminence. The glory of God, which. Ezekiel had seen definitely leave its place among them (Ezekiel 11:22-23), never returned; there was no ark of the covenant, and as a consequence no propitiatory mercy-seat to receive on the day of atonement the peace-making blood; there was no Urim and Thummim, the habitual means of consulting with God (Ezra 2:63). While He could speak with them by a prophet, and did, this was an exceptional thing, and itself a sign of changed relationship. Soon even the prophet’s voice closed, and closed in words of sadness and rebuke. They were left with the long story of their past against them, all their hopes now concentrated in the Christ that was to come. The only hope that ever was! the failure of all else would work indeed for blessing, if it only shut them up to that. The law with its condemnation, the types with their spiritual enigmas inviting solution, the prophecies with their clearer light, all alike pointed them forward to but One. Could they now fail to hear the Voice that spake to them? Would they not humbly, gladly accept the grace that was now held out to them? Alas, it was in this interval that Pharisaism arose under the guise of patriotism and a zeal, all too late, for the Word which they had slighted. It took up fanatically the covenant under the condemnation of which they lay - not heeding, not accepting the condemnation. It took up the law to fence it in by fresh prohibitions from the possibility of a breach, but thus turned it into a mere and grievous yoke of ordinances, without life, which they could not deal with, and so ignored. Above all, it built them up in a self-righteousness which made them inaccessible to the grace of Christ, while ignorant and because of their ignorance of the righteousness of God which would have led them to repentance. They became thus the “ninety and nine just persons who needed no repentance,” and who could therefore ask indignantly and decidedly," Which of the Pharisees have believed on Him?" To a nation of legalists thus it was that John the Baptist came. He came as the true voice of the law and the prophets, the spirit of the Old Testament incarnate in him. He came with the sound of his Master’s feet behind him, and the announcement that at last the Kingdom of heaven was at hand. But the years that had passed had brought no recovery, and the promise had to come with a voice of warning in it. Crying in the wilderness, and not in the cities of the land, - there where Jehovah still remembered there had been shown the kindness of her youth, the love of her espousals, when Israel was holiness to the Lord, and the first-fruits of her increase (Jeremiah 2:2-3), and whither again He will have to allure her, in order that He may speak comfortably to her (Hosea 2:14). There the cry of “Repent” was in its place. It was the cry Isaiah had predicted, the voice of the herald before Jehovah Himself, urging them to prepare His way by taking their true place before Him, making His paths straight, as righteousness required. For he was “come in the way of righteousness,” as the Lord afterwards testified of him, and could only “mourn” for a condition of things without God, and from which he must needs stand apart. Apart he is therefore, in the most uncompromising manner. While the son of a priest, he exercises no priestly functions. We never even find him at Jerusalem. His clothing even speaks of the desert, being of camel’s hair, and with a leathern girdle about his loins.

His food is locusts and wild honey. He acts in thorough consistency with the word to Jeremiah, “Let them return unto thee, but return not thou to them” (Jeremiah 15:19). His baptism confirms his preaching. He baptizes unto repentance, and in Jordan, the river of death: baptizes thus unto death; as it is also, according to the apostle (Romans 6:3-4), with Christian baptism. But here we have to distinguish: Christian baptism is to Christ’s death, for Christ has come and has died; but this is not true of John’s baptism. His disciples simply take the place for themselves, “confessing their sins,” of which death was the just due: as it is indeed, the stamp upon a fallen creature, as well as the penalty denounced by the law. In the history of the past, the waters of Jordan had been dried up, to give Israel entrance into the land which God had given them. Now that history is traced back to Jordan itself, but this is dried up no longer: they do not pass through it, they are buried in it; their victory, then obtained, has after all ended in shameful defeat. Here, then, we see the repentance that John preaches: not a vain promise of reform, not the reform itself, but what is primary and antecedent to all this, the taking true ground before God as hopeless and undone, with such a man as Job even, who, if the best man of his day, and so pronounced by God, found his place here in self-abhorrence. Were repentance the same as reformation, or “doing better,” as is more vaguely said, we might well despair, if the best man on earth had yet to repent in this sense. On the other hand, it is not hard to realize how the very perfection, comparatively, of his life and ways might hinder the apprehension of the evil in him, till he had measured himself fairly in the presence of God. This is his own account of it, as is evident. He had found in such light, deeper than his outward life, a self from which he turned in shame and loathing. Repentance was, in him, not doing in any shape, but turning from all that he had done and been, to cast himself upon mere mercy. And this mercy in God met him there and then with full deliverance and lifting up out of all his sorrows. Thus, then, was the way of the Lord to be prepared into His Kingdom. As Isaiah states it - though the quotation is to be found in Luke, not here, the mountain was to be leveled, the valley filled, pride abased and lowliness exalted, grace in God realized as needed alike by all, sufficient for any. So would He have His way. John preached, and his word was with power to break through the hollow crust of things and bring men to reality. This man with his strange garment and rough fare, was at all events real. Multitudes from all the country round about poured out to listen to him, and submitted to his baptism. The conditions of it were within easy reach: every convicted sinner had in this his title. 2. But we soon find the opposition of the heart to God revealing itself, even under apparent conformity to such humbling requirements, and John emphasizes therefore the division that would be made among men when the King should come. For now, among the multitude, whether merely to be in the fashion, or else moved by a power to which they would not wholly yield themselves, many Pharisees and Sadducees came to his baptism. They were the religious leaders of the people, though far enough apart from one another, types of the two directions in which men turn away from God. As the Pharisee was the legalist and formalist, so the Sadducee was the rationalist and semi-infidel of his day. Apart as they were from one another, they could yet show their essential oneness by the way in which they could combine against the followers of the Lord; and John treats them as one, essentially. “O brood of vipers,” he exclaims, “who has shown you that ye should flee from the coming wrath?” He could not credit them with having felt the sting of such an incentive.

They must prove, then, the reality of it - must bring forth fruit worthy of repentance. And here self-judgment would show itself first of all, in giving up the false and futile pretensions which they based upon their descent from Abraham, for all the promises to him God could fulfil to a seed raised up to him from what might be to them as it were from the very stones. These pretensions were indeed enormous. “The common notion of the time,” says Edersheim, was that “the vials of wrath were to be poured out only on the Gentiles, while they, as Abraham’s children, were sure of escape - in the words of the Talmud, that the ’night’ (Isaiah 21:12) was ‘only to the nations of the world, but the morning to Israel.’ For no principle was more fully established in the popular conviction, than that all Israel had part in the world to come, and this specifically because of their connection with Abraham. This appears not only from the New Testament, from Philo and Josephus, but from many Rabbinic passages. ‘The merits of the fathers’ is one of the commonest phrases in the mouths of the Rabbis. Abraham was represented as sitting at the gate of Gehenna, to deliver any Israelites who might have been otherwise consigned to its terrors. In fact, by their descent from Abraham, all the children of Israel were nobles, infinitely higher than any proselytes. ‘What,’ exclaims the Talmud, ‘shall the born Israelite stand upon the earth, and the proselyte be in heaven?’ In fact, the ships on the sea were preserved through the merit of Abraham; the rain descended on account of it. For his sake alone had Moses been allowed to ascend into heaven, and to receive the law; for his sake the sin of the golden calf had been forgiven; his righteousness had on many occasions been the support of Israel’s cause; Daniel had been heard for the sake of Abraham; nay, his merit availed even for the wicked. In its extravagance the Midrash thus apostrophizes Abraham: ‘If thy children were even (morally) dead bodies, without blood vessels or bones, thy merits would avail for them.’” So thoroughly had Israel missed the lesson which in Abraham himself God had kept constantly before their eyes, that he was a man justified by faith, and that the circumcision of which they boasted was, in fact but the sign of righteousness by faith (Romans 4:2-5; Romans 4:11). Alas, natural birth, mere outward participation with the people of God, or ceremonial engrafting among them, - it is possible for men even yet, and under a very different dispensation, to attribute to such things an extraordinary importance. For the Jew, it is plain that John’s language assailed his most cherished hopes. It was possible, then, that all upon which he had built should fail him, and God could bring in, in his stead, those who had no natural claim, or birth-relationship at all! To us who enjoy, in fact, a place so given, this is simple; for the Jew it would be an overwhelming thought. It did indeed show that the axe was being laid at the root of the trees.

All depended upon the fruit that manifested the tree. If the fruit was bad, what matter though it should be of the finest stock? The sinner, as such, wherever he was, was under the wrath of God. If once the limit of forbearance were reached, the tree cut down was destined for the fire. Very simple truth indeed; but no man loves it. Because he does not love it, he will invent every possible way of escape; or rather, hide from his own eyes that from which there is none. How terrible is the power of self-deceit in all of us; and how great need for the plainest possible speaking, where this is the case! For, thank God, there is a way of escape - not indeed from the need of repentance, but by its means. For repentance is only the backside of faith: he who turns his back on himself finds grace from the One to whom he turns, - who has thus become visible to him. All John’s aim therefore is to bring men to repentance. For this he baptizes “with water:” laying stress upon the “water,” expressly to free them from the idea that there was anything in this, apart from the significance which it had as a baptism to repentance. Water is only water - can only produce a material effect, and not a spiritual. Nor does God ordain it to a magical use, perverting the nature of what He has created. On the contrary, He takes up what is in itself, and manifestly, nothing, in order that men should not lose sight of the spiritual meaning by what might seem to have some inherent virtues. Baptism, with John as with Paul, is simple burial of the dead, not life, not resurrection, but the contrary of this: the confession of need, of sin and death, that Another may be seen and known and trusted in. He turns therefore now to speak of that Other and His baptism, and to put himself in the lowliest attitude at the feet of the One of whom he is but the herald, and unworthy even to bear His sandals - to perform the office of the meanest slave: a strong testimony from one to whom all the nation seemed looking at this time; but what John announces Him as to do speaks more strongly yet: for what must He be who baptizes with the Holy Spirit? No doubt, the Jews were far from having any proper intelligence with regard to the Holy Spirit; yet they knew it was a divine influence that was here spoken of. We ought to have clear knowledge; and yet of few things, perhaps, in Christianity has there been more misunderstanding than of the baptism of the Spirit. Indeed, the very thing with which John contrasts it here, the baptism of water, has been and is by many, nay, by the large number of professing Christians, confounded with it; and as a necessary consequence it has been degraded to mere unreality, subjected to man’s will, made to inflate the pride of a pretentious ecclesiasticism, and to deceive the credulous victims of superstition to their ruin. While, on the other hand, many who have truer knowledge of spiritual things yet reduce the baptism of the Spirit to a temporary, oft-repeated influence, whose significance is in reverse proportion to its ready repetition. It is evident that our Lord is but applying the words here, when He says to the disciples after His resurrection: John truly baptized with water, but ye shall be baptized with the Holy Spirit not many days hence" (Acts 1:5). Here is the same contrast of water with Spirit, yet the same term, “baptism,” applied to each; while the Spirit on the day of Pentecost when these words were fulfilled, did not connect itself with water, nor were those to whom they were spoken baptized with water at that time at all. It is certain, also, that these disciples were born again before Pentecost, and that this baptism, therefore, was not their new birth. Scripture, if we pay the least real heed to it, easily delivers us thus from such strange delusions. On the other hand, clearly at Pentecost the Christian Church began, and this is the “Church which is Christ’s body” (Ephesians 1:22-23); while, in exact agreement with this we are told (1 Corinthians 12:13), that “by one Spirit are we all baptized into one body.” Thus the baptism of the Spirit is not that by which men are new-born, but that by which those already new-born become members of the body of Christ. It is not the beginning of the Spirit’s work in souls, but a further, and yet in an important sense an initial work. It does not follow, however, from the way in which Christianity has fulfilled this prophecy of John, that he knew anything of the Church as the body of Christ. It is certain that this was a revelation of later date, and necessarily hidden from him (Ephesians 3:3-6). It is certain, because Scripture declares it (1 Peter 1:10-12), that prophets might be led of the Spirit to utter what was quite beyond their own intelligence. But more than this, it does not follow, because Christianity has fulfilled this in a certain way, that there may not be another fulfilment of it, Israelitish and not Christian, in those days to which the Baptist seems to point on, when Israel will be God’s threshing-floor and finally purged, according to the Lord’s own prophecy at an after-time. There does not seem, at least, any reason why the outpouring of the Spirit upon Israel and the nations in millennial times, of which Joel and others plainly speak, should not be called a “baptism,” as initiating for them that state of blessing which will then be theirs. Such double accomplishments of prophecy are by no means rare. It agrees with this thought that John puts alongside of this baptism of the Spirit the baptism of fire; which finds its explanation in what directly follows: “He shall burn up the chaff with unquenchable fire.” Many would point us rather to the “cloven tongues like as of fire,” on the day of Pentecost, - a thought natural enough if Christianity were the complete fulfilment of what is here, and such an idea has become fully attached to the expression, a “baptism of fire.” But the tongues of fire convey a different idea - that of a word that shall act upon others, while that of baptism is of something into which the subjects of it are themselves introduced. These things may have easy connection, but they are not the same. Moreover the going forth of the gospel among men of divers tongues does not seem at all in the line of the Baptist’s message here, which is an exhortation to Israel in view of the coming Kingdom and their unpreparedness for it. There would be alternate consequences, according as they repented and received, or else rejected, the coming King: they would either be separated to God by the action of the Spirit of God, or separated to judgment, if they rejected Him. He had just been speaking of the burning of the fruitless tree; he goes on now to speak of the coming of the King under the figure of one who winnows wheat in his threshing-floor. He fans away the chaff to get the wheat, which alone he values; and this is exactly what is necessary for the blessing of Israel, who are to be blessed upon earth. For this the wicked must be severed from among the just, as we find in one of the parables of the Kingdom afterwards (Matthew 13:49): the earth must be freed from the destroyers of it. The saints of the present time are, on the other hand, taken to heaven; and for their blessing no such judgment of the earth is needed. We see that the Baptist goes on to a judgment which is even yet future, and says nothing about the present delay of it in the Lord’s long-suffering. This is quite in the manner of Old Testament prophecy, as in that of Isaiah which the Saviour quoted and appealed to in the synagogue at Nazareth. There He quotes “the Spirit of the Lord is upon Me,” and as far as “to preach the acceptable year of the Lord.” There He stops, though the sentence goes on without a break to “the day of judgment of our God” (Luke 4:19; Isaiah 61:1-2); just as in John’s words also, in connection with the blessing and restoration of Israel, which in Isaiah are then described in glowing terms. We find this as a principle all the way through the Old Testament. Christianity, with all belonging to it, is a “mystery hid in God,” - abundantly spoken of in types and figures throughout, but of course needing the light of the New Testament for its discovery. Even John is not given to see behind the veil, although being brought face to face with Christ, he is “much more than a prophet” of the Old Testament. But John is not at his highest in any of the so-called “synoptic” gospels. It is John the Evangelist who records for us his fullest utterances. In Matthew the herald of the Kingdom has nearly completed his testimony, and is about to pass away. But before doing so he is privileged to baptize the One whose coming he anticipates and welcomes with such fullness of delight; and we are now to stand with him in the presence of the KING. 3. The third section gives us now therefore, in brief but all important words, the manifestation and anointing of the King, who is also, as we have seen, even in that character the Saviour. He now comes forth from His private into His public life, to take up the wondrous work for which He alone is competent. Although not historically so, yet in its significance here, the mission of the Baptist ends where Christ begins His public ministry. “Then cometh Jesus from Galilee to Jordan unto John, to be baptized of him.” There is definite purpose and meaning then, in this baptism; and yet, from what we have seen of its character as John proclaims it, it is the last thing that we should have imagined possible for the Lord, to be baptized of John. John himself thinks so: he is startled, even to refusing it: “but John forbad Him, saying, I have need to be baptized of Thee, and comest Thou to me?” In fact there has been the widest misunderstanding among Christians of this act ever since; and we need to look at it earnestly and reverently, in order (if it may be) to find the track where so many have gone astray. We shall not need, however, to discuss the conflicting views that have been taken. It will be more profitable to enquire directly for ourselves what Scripture may give us with regard to it. There is, it is true, no direct explanation; the Lord’s words in reply to John, “Suffer it to be so now, for thus it becometh us to fulfil all righteousness,” require themselves to be set in the light of related facts, before, as it seems, we shall be able to apprehend them. Let us start with some of the plainest of these, and see what light they may throw upon the matter. It is clear that this baptism of Christ by John lies at the entrance of His public ministry. Before this, with the exception of the notices of His birth, and the one incident of His youth which Luke recalls, the silence of the Gospels with regard to His life up to this time, when He is about thirty years of age, is absolute and profound. So strange has it seemed that this should be, that, as is well-known, the gap has been sought to be filled by apocryphal statements, in which miraculous deeds, as unlike the soberness of Scripture as possible, and as far removed from the character of the “signs” which bore testimony to His divine nature, fill the pages with transparent falsehood. They only have their use in showing us what our Gospels would have been, had they been left merely to human wisdom to provide for us. We have not really a scrap of this apocryphal work which is otherwise worth preserving. The denial of all this invention of the miraculous is found where the turning of water into wine at Cana of Galilee is stated to be the “beginning of miracles” which He did, and which showed forth His glory (John 2:11). And the silence of Scripture otherwise as to all these years of His life regarding which there were, of course, so many witnesses ready to utter all they knew, and so many eager, as we should be, to take it in - this silence can only be accounted for by a Hand controlling, and a divine design. When He comes forth, it is to be proclaimed by John as “the Lamb of God, that taketh away the sin of the world” (John 1:29); and in such a view of Him we shall find the speech of this mysterious silence. The passover lamb was to be “taken” on the tenth day of the first month, and “kept up” until the fourteenth day before being sacrificed. Yet the whole year was changed evidently in view of this, which was in fact the primal deliverance upon which the after-deliverance from Egypt was really based. Why then these unnoticed ten days? Notice, that we are in the midst of the typical shadows of the Old Testament and, according to the symbolic language which these types speak throughout, the number ten is the number of responsibility, as derived from those ten commandments which are its perfect measure according to the law. The lamb was, as we know, to be without blemish - and this means as to the true Lamb a spiritual state. Putting these things together, it is plain that they have connected meaning, and that the ten days of silence, yet of responsibility, answer in fact to the thirty years of silence - a three times ten - in which He was living for Himself His individual life before the eye of God, after this to come forward and be approved of Him as “without blemish and without spot.” In fact, He is then so approved, the Father’s voice giving testimony publicly to Him as His beloved Son, in whom He is well pleased. The typical “four days” of public testing - the meaning again given by the numeral - were still to come before the actual sacrifice should take place. He is immediately led up of the Spirit into the wilderness, for the express purpose of being “tempted by the devil.” And His life afterwards, how different is it from that quiet life at Nazareth in which He had been so long in communion with His own thoughts and with God! This was the fulfilment of His own individual responsibility, having its divine necessity in order that He should be able to give Himself for others, yet on that very account private, and not public. Miracles, as we see at once, would have been quite out of place here. For Himself He never used them, as He had come down to the common lot of men, and was for Himself far beyond need of them. Only God could be the competent witness of such a life, and He it is who must give witness, as He does. It is plain that if it is as the unblemished Lamb He is presenting Himself here, the Lord’s baptism by John at once becomes unmistakable in its significance. In the Gospel of Mark He speaks of His baptism,* with evident reference to His sufferings (Mark 10:38). Christian baptism is also spoken of as “baptism unto death,” and in it we are “baptized unto His death” (Romans 6:3-4). With this John’s baptism in Jordan - the river of death - is in full agreement. The words, “so it becometh us to fulfil all righteousness,” receive also in this way their simplest interpretation. For those who were “confessing their sins” in such a manner, the first step in righteousness of which they were capable was to take openly their place in death, as that which was their due. This is alone the principle according to which He can unite the other recipients of John’s baptism, so different as they were, with Himself: for, for Him also, who having no sins of His own, was yet there for the sins of others, the place of death which it prefigured was no less the requirement of righteousness: the blessed Substitute for sinners had of necessity to take the sinners, place.
Thus all is clear throughout, while as the King we have already seen that the Lord acts as the Representative of His people, who is to save His people from their sins. No Kingdom, such as prophecy had pointed out, apart from this. No possibility could there be of men being “His people,” apart from it. Men are sinners, and a holy God cannot for a moment ignore this. When Israel came of old into relationship with Him, it could be only by the blood of the lamb: redemption could not be by power only, but (and first of all) by blood. He, therefore, who is to be King of God’s Kingdom cannot without preliminary take the throne. He must suffer that He may be glorified: He must come to the throne by the way of the Cross. And so, when the throne is taken, the effect of this and the character it manifests abide. “He shall be a priest upon his throne” (Zechariah 6:13). He still stands before God for the people over whom He reigns; and while He is the true Melchizedek, “king of righteousness,” He is also the true King of Salem, “King of peace.” In Him “righteousness and peace have kissed each other” (Psalms 85:10). For His throne, like the mercy-seat of old, is blood-sprinkled. and the cherubim of judgment gaze upon it from between their covering wings, and are at rest. Here, therefore, the Lord enters not yet upon His Kingship. He is anointed, but not crowned. It is priesthood that must first act and prepare the way. Thus, rising up out of the water, the Spirit of God descends upon Him as a dove: He becomes not simply in title but in fact, the Christ, the “Anointed.” As Aaron of old had by himself received the typical anointing without blood, in order to his exercising the priesthood, so is He now declared fit for and consecrated to His sacrificial work, Priest and Sacrifice as He is in one. His perfection is as needful to the one as to the other. The white linen garments of the day of atonement, and not the robes of glory and beauty, are those in which alone the sacrifice is offered that enters the sanctuary, and in which he enters it to sprinkle the blood before God. It is what He Himself was that prevailed, in the day of unequaled agony, when Aaron’s Antitype offered up to God the only acceptable offering, and was accepted in that glorious “obedience unto death,” by which “the many” for whom He stood “are constituted righteous” (Romans 5:19). What the Father’s voice proclaimed the Spirit seals (John 6:27). He comes to rest where there is a heart - at last, a human heart - in perfect sympathy with His own, to give Him lodgment. Thus, appearing as a dove, He manifests exactly the character of Him upon whom He comes. The dove was one of the sacrificial birds - the symbol of Christ, therefore, in the very attitude in which we find Him here; and all is still in perfection and divine harmony. Father, Son, and Spirit are indeed for the first time openly manifested together in the work of redemption, while it is Christ, in the perfection of manhood reconstituted, and in Him brought nigh to God, to which Father and Spirit witness. The dove, or pigeon, - and the two were almost one, - was in fact the only bird explicitly named for sacrifice. As the “bird of heaven” it has, undoubtedly, its first significance. Heaven itself provides the offering by which heaven is to be appeased and opened over man. The Second Man is from heaven" (1 Corinthians 15:47). He who has sinned, as all mere men have, cannot by that fact provide the unblemished offering that will alone avail. It is God, therefore, who Himself provides it and in this way manifests Himself in unspeakable goodness to win man’s heart to Himself.

This is the divine power of the gospel in reconciliation. He who requires has fulfilled the requirement. He who is of purer eyes than to behold iniquity has yet devised the wondrous means whereby His banished should be restored to Him. Not only so, but for this restoration the bird of heaven shows us God become man - no temporary condescension, but eternal love made known for eternity, eternally to be enjoyed. Christ is divine love come down, and the dove is the bird of love and sorrow united. The love explains the sorrow: the sorrow the depth of the love. What a world to welcome the Son of God! and what a welcome the world gave Him! “A man of sorrows and acquainted with grief! and we hid, as it were, our faces from Him: He was despised, and we esteemed Him not.” But Scripture is more definite than this as to the dove, for it points us to “its wings covered with silver, and its feathers with yellow gold.” (Psalms 68:13.) And here the reference will be plain to those that are acquainted with the symbolism. “Silver” gets its significance from the money of atonement, and its meaning is well illustrated in passages familiar to us. The wings are silver, for it is in redemption that the activity of divine love has been displayed; while in the feathers is the gleam of gold, the display of divine glory. This is how nature witnesses to Christ. The Father proclaims the Son. The apostle tells us that “no man taketh this honor unto himself” - that of the high priesthood - “but He that was called of God, even as Aaron. So also Christ glorified not Himself to be made a High-priest, but He that said unto Him, “Thou art my Son” (Hebrews 5:4-5). This, then, was the Lord’s induction into His office, as having the relationship which is acknowledged here. Yet it is not as the Only-begotten Son, or in His Deity that He is addressed; for, in that case, it could not be added, as in Hebrews, “today have I begotten Thee.” Nor could His divine glory be the foundation of a priesthood which, of necessity, is human. It must be, therefore, as born into the world by the power of the Holy Ghost, as the angel says to Mary, “therefore that Holy Thing that shall be born of thee shall be called the Son of God.” Here he is Son of God in His human nature, - Man, but a unique Man.

And the connection of this with His priesthood is not hard to trace. True Man He is, without taint of the fall - the Son of God, as coming (like Adam, but another Adam) fresh from the inspiration of God. Thus He begins another creation, though out of the ruins of the old. In this way He is the Representative Head of a new race of men, standing for them before God, with God, the true Mediator-Priest of the new humanity. No wonder that heaven opens to own and induct into His place this glorious Person! “Therefore doth my Father love Me,” He says elsewhere, “because I lay down my life that I might take it again.” And here, where He is, as it were, pledging Himself to that death for men, the Father’s voice breaks out in all its fullness of joy in Him: “This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well-pleased.” Let us notice before we pass on, how in the meat-offering view of His Person the distinction between His birth of the Spirit and His anointing is kept before us. (See notes on Leviticus 2:1-16.) In the first general view of Christ as given in it, the anointing of the Spirit is what is emphasized, because it is the seal set upon Him, - the Father’s approbation. In the meat-offering bakers in the oven (the sufferings from the mere fact of what the world was, without open persecution) both things are represented but apart; and here the “wafers anointed with oil” show fuller, readier exposure to it after His public coming forward. In that upon the pan (the open persecution) it is the Man born and anointed that brings forth the world’s enmity. His public testimony fanning the necessary opposition to Him into flame. In the meat-offering of the priest on the day of his anointing (Leviticus 6:19-23, see notes) we have, distinctly and necessarily, what He was as presented to God at the very time to which we have reached in the Gospel. Here, therefore, it is prepared with oil, but not anointed. And it all goes up to God as a sweet savor, man having no part in it. It is Christ in the period of His life which closes with His baptism, the years lived to God in retirement, of the sweet savor of which to God He Himself gives testimony. 4. The fourth section follows the third here, as the story of the wilderness in the book of Numbers follows the priestly anointing in the book of Leviticus. The Israelites had forty years of trial in the wilderness, and all through showed how little they had learned the lessons they were placed there to learn. The Lord is there forty days, and tested to the full, approving Himself ever perfect, and beyond the need of learning, - Master and not disciple. He has fulfilled, as we have seen, in the thirty years of His private life at Nazareth, His own responsibility as Man before God. He has now come forth from that retirement to take His public place as Mediator for others. He has been accepted as perfectly pleasing to the Father, the unblemished Lamb of sacrifice, as well as the Priest, able to offer for the sins of men. To this office He is consecrated by the descent of the Spirit upon Him, and is now fully the Christ, the Anointed, openly declared to be this. He is now to be tested as to His ability for the path upon which He has entered. The book of Job shows us Satan allowed of God for this purpose to be the sifter of God’s wheat - the “accuser of the brethren.” He who is to be the First-born among these pleads for Himself no exemption from this trial. He is expressly led up of the Spirit into the wilderness, to be tempted of the devil: designated thus according to the meaning of the term as “the false accuser.” But God has pronounced: is not that enough? Alas, with sin has come in distrust of God Himself: He also is upon trial; and Satan’s reasoning in Job’s case almost openly takes that ground. God pronounces as to Job, and he takes exception to it. “Hast Thou not made a hedge about him, and about his house?” he says; and that means to say, “This sentence is not given upon proper trial.” And God in His very mercy to man, who to his undoing has accepted Satan’s malignity as truth, does not retreat behind His privilege. If He is, and must be, sovereign in His doing, so that “none can stay His hand, or say unto Him, What doest Thou?” yet will He suffer question, and let all be brought into the fullest light. Job’s hedge is taken away, and Satan is allowed large limits within which to deal with him, - the end being, of course, blessing to the sufferer and full vindication of God’s perfect ways. And here now is His own Beloved, and there is no remnant of a hedge about the person of the Christ of God; nor will He use the power that is in His hand against the adversary. In conflict between good and evil, power cannot decide: the good must manifest itself as that, and stand by its own virtue against all odds. The glorious Wrestler is stripped, therefore, for the wrestling. Son of God though He be, He comes into the poverty of the creature, the conditions of humanity, and these in their utmost straitness. Man in Adam in his original perfection had been tempted in a garden specially prepared and furnished for him. But one thing was denied him, and in the denial was contained a blessing, among the chief of all the blessings there.

Real want there was none, and need was in such sort ministered to as to be itself, in every way, the occasion of new delight. The weakness of the creature was owned, but tenderly provided for, so as to witness to the tender arms of love that were about him: he had but to shrink into them to be in perfect safety, beyond all possible reach of harm. But not so sheltered, not so provided for, is the new Adam, the Son of man. The garden is gone; in its stead is the wilderness; nor is there nurture for Him now from nature’s barren breast. For forty days He fasts, and then with the hunger of that forty days upon Him, the tempter comes. It marks the contrast between Him and other men that, whereas a Moses or Elias fasted to meet God, He fasts to meet the devil. There are three forms of the temptation: though, with the first broken we see that victory is gained over them all. Yet for our instruction it is that we are permitted to have all before us, that we may realise the points in which the subtlety perfected by ages of experience finds man to be above all accessible, and learn how Satan is to be resisted still. We shall do well to consider them closely, therefore, and with the closest application to ourselves. The battle-field here may seem to be a narrow one; the points of attack few; the weapons employed against the enemy a scanty armory: but here lies one of the excellences of Scripture, that its principles, while simple, have in them all the depths of divine wisdom, and far-reaching application to the most diverse needs. (1) And when the tempter came unto Him, he said, If Thou be the Son of God, command that these stones be made bread.” Satan would thus act upon Him by the conviction of what He was, and make Him assert Himself, in circumstances which were so unsuited to what He was. The Son of God, the Beloved of the Father, at the extreme point of starvation in a desert! But then this was surely in His own power to set right: He needed not circumstances to be adjusted to Him, who was able so easily to adjust them to Himself. The power surely was His, the need real, the hunger sinless: why, then; should He not put forth His power, and make the stones of the ground minister to His necessities? So simple and plausible is the suggestion, so well it seems to recognize the truth of what He was, so natural is it with us to minister with what power we have to our own requirements, that to any of us naturally, it might seem to be no evil suggestion at all, - no temptation. But it was such; and the Lord’s answer will show us, better than any reasoning of our own; why it was such. It has been noticed by all, - it could hardly escape notice, - that the Lord answers ever by the word of God. This is the sword of the Spirit, the only weapon we have with which to encounter the adversary; but it is striking, and speaks powerfully to us, to find the Lord who could surely have answered from His own mind, using always, and with distinct reference to it as such, the written Word. We see that He takes absolutely the same ground as ourselves, answers as man; is subject, as we are, to the authority of God. And this the passage which He quotes fully proves, - going, indeed, beyond it: “It is written, Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God.” This is from Deuteronomy (Deuteronomy 8:3), the book that sums up the lessons of the wilderness, for those who had been through the wilderness. And the passage shows that the dealings of God with His people had been directly designed to teach them this: “And He humbled thee, and suffered thee to hunger, and fed thee with manna, which thou knewest not, neither did thy fathers know, that He might make thee to know that man liveth not by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of the Lord doth man live.” How important, - how supremely important, therefore, is this principle! Man lives by the word of God, - in obedience to it. The true life of man is nourished and sustained alone by this. Bread will not sustain it: the life of obedience is that which alone is life. In this way we see that though, because of inherent sin everywhere, the legal covenant had no life in it, yet there is another sense wherein “which, if a man do he shall even live in them” is to be understood. There is really a path of life, though grace alone can put us in it or maintain us there. Eternal life and disobedience are in fact opposites. The gospel does not alter this: grace fully affirms it: “Sin shall not have dominion over you, because ye are not under law, but under grace.” All this is in the passage quoted by the Lord; but in His application of it we are made to go further than naturally we should carry it. What principle of disobedience, we might ask, could be contained in the simple suggestion to use power that He really had, to minister to need that was as really His also, and in which, therefore, there could be no evil? Notice, then; that it is as man He speaks: it is of man these things are written. Son of God He was - adoringly we own it; it is this that makes the path we are thinking of so wonderful an one; but it is not in the open glory of the Godhead that He is come to walk upon earth, but to learn obedience in humiliation, - nay, by the things that He suffers. He is come as man to work out redemption for men; and for this to learn all that is proper to man, apart from sin. Thus He cannot put forth divine power to save Himself out of this condition. What He can use freely for others, for Himself He cannot use. It is He of whom it is written in the volume of the book," Lo, I come to do Thy will O God . . .

I delight to do Thy will, O my God: yea, Thy law is within my heart." Thus He is here simply subject, and subject in satisfaction and delight, to the will of Another. He has, for His whole course on earth, no other motive. Need may press, appetite may crave: He feels this as other men; did He not feel it, the glory of His humiliation would be dimmed. But while He feels it, it is no motive to Him: there is but one motive - the will of God. To make Himself a motive would destroy that perfection; come to do that will, and nothing else. This is the spirit in which He goes forth to service: the close of it on earth, closing with the deepest humiliation and dreadest shadow of all, affords so beautiful an example of this principle, (even while at first sight it might seem at conflict with it), that one cannot forbear to speak of it here. One of the physical distresses of the agony of the cross is the great thirst produced by it. Almost the last words of the Lord there had reference to this, and gave it expression. His words, “I thirst” are answered by the sponge filled with vinegar, of which He tasted: and they were such as naturally to call forth such an answer. Was this, then; really any seeking of relief in His extremity, even from the hands that had nailed Him there? No: we are carefully guarded from such a thought. There was one Scripture, we are told, that remained to be fulfilled; and of this it was, in all the agony of that hour, that He was thinking: “Jesus, that the Scripture might be fulfilled, saith, I thirst.” This leads to what had been predicted: “in my thirst they gave Me vinegar to drink.” Thus the glorious obedience shines here without a cloud upon it, nay, in surpassing lustre. “Lo, I come to do Thy will” is the principle of His life. But here we are made to realize the wondrous privilege that is ours, - the solemn responsibility that lies upon us. For we are “sanctified unto the obedience of Christ,” and “He has left us an example that we should follow in His steps” (1 Peter 1:2; 1 Peter 2:21). This principle of His life must be, then; the principle of our lives. If with Him the governing motive was to do the will of God, - if He rejected every motive that could be urged from His own necessities - how simple is it that, for us also, the will of God must be our motive for action; apart from this there is no right motive possible. What a world then, is this, in which the mass of men around us have no thought of God, no knowledge of His will, no desire to know it, - men with whom life is little else than the instinctive animal life; disturbed, more or less, by conscience, that is, by the apprehension of God! And as to Christians themselves, how easily are they persuaded, that, with certain exceptions at important crises of their lives, the simple rule of right and wrong - often determined by custom of some kind, rather than the word of God - is sufficient to indicate for them the will of God; their own wills being thus left free within a variously limited area! The law in fact drew such a circle round man; and in mercy, as a sheepfold is the limit for the sheep. A class of actions is defined as evil, and forbidden; within these limits one may please oneself. Nor could law do other than this: for it the rigidity of a fixed code is necessary. But Christ came into the sheepfold to make His sheep hear His voice, and to lead them out: free, but where freedom would be safe as well as blessed, following the living guidance of the Shepherd Himself (John 10:1-42). The rule is at the same time stricter and freer. And the reality transcends the figure, even as the Good Shepherd Himself transcends every other shepherd.

To a love like His, united to a wisdom absolutely perfect, no detail of our lives can be unimportant, as (in the connection of these throughout, and of one life with another, none can be insignificant. Could it be imagined that any were so, yet which of us is competent to discern this, in any instance? “Behold how great a matter a little fire kindleth” is but the utterance of the common experience. Who, then; that has learned to distrust himself at all, but must welcome deliverance from such an uncertainty, and find it joy to be guided at all times by a higher wisdom? Nothing makes this appear severe, nothing difficult, except the love of our own way, and the unbelief which, having given up confidence in God, first sent man out from the bountiful garden, to toil and strive for himself in the world outside. But the divine love which has purchased us here, and given us Bethlehem for our “house of bread,” should suffice to heal that insane suspicion, and close up the fountain of self-will within us. “He who spared not His own Son; but delivered Him up for us all, how shall He not, with Him also, freely gives us all things?” The path ordained for us has, no doubt, its roughness, and the cloud hangs over it; but He makes the cloud. His tabernacle, and just in the very night it brightens into manifest glory. All differences are in the interests of the journey itself, as was said of Israel, that they might “go by, day and by night.” The record of experience adds to this the assurance, they go from strength to strength." No wonder! if “by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God doth man live.” What a sustenance of the true life within us to be thus, day by day, receiving the messages of His will, guided by that wondrous Voice, learning continually more the tenderness of His love for us: “He wakeneth morning by morning; He wakeneth mine ear to hear as the learner” (Isaiah 50:4). This is the utterance prophetically of the Lord Himself: how blessed to be able to make it our own, and thus to have the fulfilment of those words: “I will instruct thee and teach thee in the way in which thou shalt go: I will guide thee with mine eye.” So then the first temptation is met and conquered; and with this, in fact, is conquered every after-one; for he who, walking with God, waits upon God, what shall ensnare him? what enemy shall prevail against him? It is plain that Satan has been hinting again here the lie with which of old he seduced the woman. And that, as in her case “the lust of the flesh and the lust of the eye and the pride of life” came in through the door so opened, they were now effectually shut out. Satan might repeat and vary his efforts; but to one cleaving fast to God, God will be a shield against which every shaft shall be broken to pieces. How great, then; the importance for us of such a lesson! (2) But if we are to listen for the word of God, and our lives are to be shaped by it, we are called next to guard against the misuse of the Word itself. This is Satan’s next attempt: “Then the devil taketh Him into the holy city, and setteth Him on a pinnacle of the temple, and saith unto Him, If Thou be the Son of God, cast Thyself down: for it is written, He shall give His angels charge concerning Thee; and in their hands they shall bear Thee up, lest haply Thou dash Thy foot against a stone.” How careful should we be as to quotations from Scripture! how little in fact we often are! Scripture twisted but a little awry, the authority of God is put upon a lie, and our very faith in it may betray us to the enemy. How important, too, in this view of it, becomes the complete verbal inspiration of Scripture. If only the thought meant to be conveyed is guaranteed to us, but the wording left to the choice of imperfect wisdom, then (unless words mean nothing) we can never settle what the thought precisely is. If the words are possibly faulty, who can assure me of the exact truth hid under this faulty expression? Satan does but leave out two or three words of the original: “to keep Thee in all Thy ways” (Psalms 91:1-16 : The “ways” of Him who in the same psalm says of Jehovah, “In Him will I trust” will be God’s ways, and He will wait upon God for the fulfilment of His word, and not impatiently grasp at it before the time. This is evidently Satan’s effort now; and since the Lord will not move without the word of God, here is now the word to lead Him in that path of the miraculous which He has just refused. The psalm surely refers to Messiah: would it not be simply becoming confidence in God, boldly to claim and act on it? The place was favorable for such a venture. The miracle would be right before the eyes of the many worshipers - of a people always seeking after signs, and who, having shown themselves ready to go after impostors, would be brought now to the feet of the true Messiah. The word could not fail: was it not for Him to answer the desire of the people, stop with the right hand of power the confusion and misrule, and fulfil the glowing pictures which the prophets had drawn; and take the Kingdom already proclaimed to be at hand by one whose call of God he had Himself acknowledged? This seems to be the line and power of the temptation here. It appeals to Jesus as the Messiah, as the former one had done to Him as Man. It takes advantage of the Lord’s answer given to that, and would with devilish cunning turn that victory into a defeat. How would He refuse to take His predestined place, when the word of God itself beckoned Him into it? But the “ways” of the blessed “Author and Finisher of faith” lie elsewhere than in this direction. Of these Satan has not dared to remind Him. He has come into the wilderness from Jordan; from the place of death, to which He had freely stooped as what “righteousness” required from the Representative of His people, and has been consecrated as the Priest to offer the needed sacrifice. Power could be found for men only in the path of humiliation; and out of this He could not raise Himself, nor put forth a hand to lay hold of that which must come to Him from God alone, vindicated and glorified. He would not be slow to put forth power, when this was accomplished, and in this alone all blessing lay. He that believed could not anticipate this: we see that it is the Lord’s first answer which has essentially answered all, and which reveals the secret of victory over all temptation.

He has come to do the will of God and not His own. In Him patience will have its perfect work, and thus He will be perfect and entire, living by His word, suffering only, putting forth no hand in His own behalf. Anything else would really be to tempt God," - to question as they questioned at Massah (Deuteronomy 6:16), where in their need He seemed not to come forward. They “tempted,” tried Him by His providences, found Him to come short. This question still connects in this way with the first temptation; but Israel had no power in themselves to fall back upon as He had: would He use it? Nay, when God had pledged Himself to Him in His word, would He not put it to the proof, let it be seen openly that God was with Him?

Nay, He will not; nor take the short road, as if God’s way were too long. This is to tempt Him then: to try Him by our thoughts, - alas, by our impatience, that cannot wait for His due time, nor take the path of humiliation He prescribes; that will in self-will reach out its hand and take, as Christ would not. He to whom all power belonged moved on as if in weakness, leaving it for God to vindicate and appear for Him, as and where and when He would. (3) In the third temptation Satan shifts his ground completely. He is seeking the same thing of course; and shows himself more openly than he has done before; but he could not say, “If Thou be the Son of God, fall down and worship me!” He suddenly seems to realize so the truth of His humanity, that he will adventure fully upon it. If this be indeed One who is Son of man; shut off as it were from the claims and conditions of Deity; - if He has come in; in the very weakness of manhood itself to work the work committed to Him, then he will boldly test Him as mere man. All the kingdoms of the world and the glory of them, can they have no attraction for this poor Nazarene? It is a desperate game indeed, and to us cannot but seem like the mere raving of insanity to propose to Christ to do homage to him for their possession! But, however it may seem to be no longer temptation; but a mere awful insult to the divine glory veiled in humanity before him, it does not seem to be given us as this.

The Lord answers it, as He does the rest, from Scripture, though with an indignation which He has not shown before. Satan has disclosed himself, and can be called by his name and bidden to be off. Yet the whole reads as if he had as much confidence in this attack as in the other. The change of address, no longer “If Thou be the Son of God,” with the boldness of his proposition; seems to say that he has now discovered and accepts the fact that his conflict is with One who, whatever He may be more than this, had indeed come to meet him as man only. And man - what had he not proved as to him? From Adam in the beauty of his Maker’s handiwork, through the many generations since - he had not encountered yet a second man. And he, the prince of this world, had he not wrested from man the sovereignty of earth, the inheritance for which God had destined him, God not interfering? might it not seem to him as if evil were stronger than good, as he realized the 4,000 years of his triumph, the generations of men that had conspired to lift him to his throne, - surely, an easy thing to do him homage! In result, he has disclosed himself and is defeated. He has met, at last, the second Man. It is truly so: there is no display of deity, no outburst of divine judgment or of power he is answered, still and always by the Word its sufficiency as a divine weapon is seen all through: how great an encouragement for us in the irrepressible conflict which we all have to maintain. Through all He is the perfect example of faith, the Man Christ Jesus. We hear throughout the One who in the 16th psalm declares as the principle of His life: “the Lord is the measure of my portion and of my cup: . . . I have set the Lord always before me because He is at my right hand I shall not be moved.” The devil leaves Him now and angels come and minister to Him.