The Baptism of Jesus
This Sunday, the first Sunday after the feast of the Epiphany, we celebrate the baptism of Jesus. Jesus’ baptism has often puzzled Christians. Jesus was baptized by John, and John’s baptism was “a baptism of repentance.” For what did Jesus need to repent?
The answer, I believe, comes in Jesus taking on himself the identity of Israel. Matthew, Mark, and Luke each tell the story of Jesus’ baptism similarly: Jesus is baptized, a voice from heaven names Jesus as God’s Son, and then Jesus goes into the wilderness for 40 days to be tempted by the devil (Mark 1:9-13, Luke 3:21-22, 4:1-11, Matthew 3:17-4:11).
Throughout the Old Testament, Israel, collectively, is often identified as God’s chosen people. However, the prophet Hosea uses father-son imagery to describe God’s relationship with Israel, and speaks of the exodus from Egypt as somehow connected to Israel’s identity as God’s child. “When Israel was a child, I loved him, and out of Egypt I called my son” (Hosea 11:1).
The parallels, then, become clear. Israel, moving through the water of the Red Sea, was called God’s Son. Jesus, emerging from the water of baptism, was called God’s Son. After the exodus from Egypt, Israel wandered in the wilderness for 40 years. After Jesus’ baptism, he was in the wilderness for 40 days. Here is the key difference: Israel failed in the wilderness, giving in to the temptation of idolatry and refusing to embrace God’s salvation, while Jesus successfully resisted the temptations of the devil, emerging from the wilderness deeply convicted of his calling and empowered for his mission.
In taking on the identity of Israel, Jesus repented on Israel’s behalf, and then went about living the life that God had intended his people to live: a life of obedience, as of a light pointing all the people of the earth to the one true God.
Ideally, all people – Jews and Gentiles alike – would have responded favorably to Jesus’ message, both his words and his deeds. However, as we know, Jesus went to the cross, completely rejected by those he came to save. The power of sin and death that kept Israel from living in the way that God intended also led the people of the world to reject Jesus, condemning him to death.
Jesus’ suffering on the cross is deeply connected to his baptism, as in identifying with Israel in baptism, he became the Servant spoken of by the prophet Isaiah, the Servant who, on one hand, would be a light to the nations (Isaiah 42:1-9), while on the other hand would suffer on behalf of the people (Isaiah 53). The full consequences of human sin were absorbed by Jesus on the cross, disarming the power of sin, evil, and death.
In the resurrection, Jesus offers forgiveness and new life to all who come to him in faith, acknowledging their helpless, broken state, and receiving the free gift of new and abundant life in him.
It is in this that our own baptism connects with the baptism of Jesus. Just as Jesus identified himself with Israel in receiving the baptism of John, we identify ourselves with Jesus as we are baptized. As Paul writes in Romans 6:3-4, we are baptized into his death, and raised with him into new life.
So, because Jesus identified himself with Israel in his baptism, he heard God’s voice name him as God’s beloved Son, and experienced the Spirit, empowering him for his vocation as the Servant. In the same way, when we are baptized, and thus identify with Jesus, we, too, hear God’s voice naming us as his beloved children, and, we, too, are empowered by the Spirit to live out our vocation of service to the world. Because Jesus identified with rebellious and broken Israel in his baptism and on the cross, every human person, rebellious and broken, Jew and Gentile, is offered the gift of forgiveness and new life, life as God’s beloved child, empowered by the Spirit to serve the world.
As we celebrate Jesus’ baptism on Sunday, let us rejoice that, through him, we, too – broken and rebellious as we are – are Sons and Daughters of God, empowered for service to this broken, rebellious, yet deeply loved world.
Peace,
Chris