Why Jesus Wanted to Be Baptized

Jesus’s Particular person and Work

How vital was it that Jesus was baptized? My hunch is that the majority of us would say “not very.” Actually, it doesn’t appear as clearly vital as his demise and resurrection. And but every of the 4 Gospels thinks that it’s important. The Synoptic Gospels all narrate his baptism (Matthew 3:13–17; Mark 1:9–11; Luke 3:21–22), and John alludes to it (John 1:31–34).

The baptism of Jesus is a vital occasion in his life that helps us perceive his individual and his work. In reality, John the Baptist summarized the rationale that he baptized by way of revealing Jesus: “I personally didn’t know him [sc. Jesus], however for this goal I got here baptizing with water, that he is perhaps revealed to Israel” (John 1:31). John baptized individuals, together with Jesus, in order that Jesus is perhaps revealed. In the remainder of this text, I wish to take into account how the baptism of Jesus, as offered in Matthew and Mark (with some assist from Paul and Luke), deepens our understanding of his individual and his work.

In Matthew’s Gospel, we learn of John hesitating to baptize Jesus (Matt. 3:14–15). He tries to refuse him and means that it might be extra applicable if the baptism occurred the opposite manner spherical—and Jesus baptized John! That is comprehensible since individuals confessed their sins as they had been baptized by him (Matt. 3:6). How may it’s applicable for Jesus to be baptized if baptism someway symbolized forgiveness of and cleaning from sin? Jesus insists that John ought to baptize him, “for thus it’s becoming for us to satisfy all righteousness” (Matt. 3:15).¹ What does this imply? Basically, it signifies that for God’s plan to be fulfilled, Jesus wanted to undergo John’s baptism. God’s plan for Jesus was that by him he would “save his individuals from their sins” (Matt 1:21). As such, Jesus’s submitting to John’s baptism anticipates and factors to his work on the cross when he gave “his life as a ransom for a lot of” (Matt. 20:28). Jesus took upon himself the sins of his individuals—he paid the worth for his or her sins. As Isaiah prophesied, he “was numbered with the transgressors; but he bore the sin of many” (Isa. 53:12).

Though Mark’s Gospel offers us the shortest account of the baptism of Jesus, he connects it together with his demise in a profound manner.² At Jesus’s baptism, three issues occur: the heavens are “torn open” (Mark 1:10); the Spirit descends on him “like a dove” (Mark 1:10); and a voice from heaven states, “You might be my beloved Son; with you I’m nicely happy” (Mark 1:11).

The voice of God from heaven connects Jesus’s baptism together with his demise. God tells Jesus, “You might be my beloved Son; with you I’m nicely happy”. This language echoes Genesis 22 the place God tells Abraham to sacrifice “your solely son Isaac, whom you like” (Gen. 22:2; cf. Gen 22:12, 16). The same description of Jesus in Mark 1:11 suggests an allusion to Jesus’s sacrificial demise. The baptism of Jesus anticipates God is not going to “spare his personal Son however gave him up for us all” (Rom. 8:32).³

The one being baptized is the Spirit-anointed Son of God who will die for his individuals to realize their salvation.

Jesus really undergoes one other baptism in Mark’s Gospel. In chapter 10, James and John, the sons of Zebedee, ask Jesus for the respect of sitting “one at your proper hand and one at your left, in your glory” (Mark 10:37). He tells them they’re blind to what they ask: “Can you drink the cup that I drink, or to be baptized with the baptism with which I’m baptized?” (Mark 10:38). They reply that they’re ready. Jesus tells them that whereas he can not determine who will sit at his proper or his left, they may certainly drink the identical cup and be baptized with the baptism that he himself will endure. In utilizing the imagery of the “cup” and his “baptism,” Jesus refers once more to his demise (which he has addressed in Mark 10:33–34). If Mark right here associates baptism with Jesus’s demise, it appears cheap to see the sooner account of his baptism as anticipating that subsequent occasion.

The tearing open of the heavens (Mark 1:10) anticipates the later tearing of the curtain within the temple (Mark 15:38) and serves as a achievement of Isaiah 64:1, the place the prophet prays, “Oh that you’d rend the heavens and are available down”. There, as right here, God’s in-breaking presence is related to the presence of the Holy Spirit (Isa. 63:10, 14). The Spirit’s descent is narrated with much less commentary than in different Gospels (cf. the statement in John 1:32 that the Spirit remained on Jesus). Right here, the emphasis falls on the easy truth of his being anointed with the Spirit. The one who will baptize with the Spirit receives an anointing with the Spirit at his personal baptism. It’s not that the Spirit was absent from Jesus earlier than this level. Luke reveals us that the Spirit was current with Jesus from his conception (Luke 1:35). Nonetheless, at his baptism, the Spirit anoints Jesus for his activity of salvation (Luke 4:18, “to set at liberty those that are oppressed”). The one being baptized is the Spirit-anointed Son of God who will die for his individuals to realize their salvation.

Baptism in Mark, then, speaks of Jesus’s demise and the reward of the Spirit. In Jesus’s “first” baptism (by John), he receives the Spirit. This anticipates his “second” baptism (his demise) when he offers the Spirit (i.e., baptizes with the Spirit). Mark’s theology right here corresponds to Paul’s in Galatians 3: Christ died (Gal. 3:13 being “hanged on a tree”) in order that “we’d obtain the promised Spirit by religion” (Gal. 3:14). Christ’s demise secures the reward of the Spirit.

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Jesus’s baptism thus anticipates his demise and secures the Spirit in order that he can accomplish his sin-bearing demise and saving reward of the Spirit, thus fulfilling God’s plan.

Peter Orr is the creator of The Starting of the Gospel: A Theology of Mark.

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