Baptism of the Lord
One
Why Did Jesus come to be Baptized?
When Christ came to be Baptized, John the Baptist didn’t get it. “You don’t need to be Baptized by me,” he said. “I need to be Baptized by you.” And John was right.
Baptism does three things: It cleanses you from sin, and Jesus didn’t need to be cleansed from sin. It fills you with the life and holiness of the Holy Spirit, but Christ was already filled with the life and holiness of the Holy Spirit. And it makes you an adopted child of God the Father, but Christ was already the natural and eternal Son of the Father.
So why did He come to be baptized by John? Why was that necessary in order to fulfill all righteousness?
Two
Allowing Us to be Born Again
John’s Baptism was a mere sign of repentance. It was a gesture, an aspiration. But after all, the water he used was just water, and he himself was only a man. It was an expression of people’s desire to become clean, to become pure. But it didn’t have the power to make people clean, pure, holy, a child of God. Neither John nor the water had that power within them.
So the only man who had perfect purity, perfect holiness, and perfect divine Sonship, would have to super-charge the water with His own character. Jesus didn’t come to get something from Baptism. He came to give something to baptism. So that everyone who received Baptism would receive a share in His divine purity, holiness, and Sonship.
Three
The Washing Away of Sin.
That’s why Jesus was washed, to show that baptism will wash away our sins. We are born heading in the wrong direction. Even as tiny children, there are impulses and tendencies within us, that, without grace, will drag us to Hell. St. Paul says we’re born not children of God, but “children of wrath.”
That sounds strange, doesn’t it? After all, when you go to a baby’s baptism, it may look like a sweet, innocent little kid, before and after the water gets poured on its head. And it is a sweet, innocent kid, before and after. But on their own, that sweetness and that innocence will not be able to stand before the terrible onslaught of the world, the flesh, and the devil. That little baby will face a storm of doubts and temptations which are the legacy of Adam’s sin. Without God’s purifying graces, the seeds of sin inside that child will grow and overpower it.
After Baptism, there will still be temptation, but God’s power has gotten the upper hand. The child is on a trajectory towards Heaven. With God’s help and the child’s cooperation, there is nothing Satan can do to conquer that person’s will. The sickness unto death has been washed away.
Four
The Holiness of the Spirit
So too, the Holy Spirit descended on Jesus. Not because Jesus was lacking the Spirit, after all, the Three Persons perfectly, infinitely, and eternally interpenetrate one another. There could never be any distance between the Eternal Son and His Eternal Spirit. But the Spirit came down on Jesus at His baptism to show that the Holy Spirit will come down on us at our own baptism. To live as a Christian is to live a life like Christ lived. A life of faith that moves mountains, a life of confident hope in heaven, a life that we lay down for the Lord and for others.
This is a super-human life and it requires super-human power. That’s what the Spirit gives us. He comes to dwell inside us and galvanize every aspect of our soul so that we can do things that we could never otherwise do. So that we can love heroically. If we’ve been baptized, we should be living differently, more radically. We should be living like saints. Because we can.
Christ promised us His Spirit, He has become our internal generator who supplies us with divine energy to become saints ourselves. So we’d better tap into that. We’d better make use of the Spirit’s grace to live like Christ. We’ve been baptized. We have no excuse not to.
Five
Sonship of the Father
Jesus was the Son of God by nature, from all eternity, before all ages, and from the first moment of His conception in the womb of Mary. Baptism didn’t make Him the Son of the Father. But it does make us the children of the Father.
God always wants to be Our Father. He created us so we could be His children. But we are estranged children, lost children, disconnected and alone children, before our Baptism. When we are baptized, the Creator of the Universe says, with pride in His voice, “This is my beloved son, or daughter, with whom I delight!” Is there any happiness greater than knowing that you make God happy? Is there any pleasure greater than knowing that God is well-pleased with you?
This is the joy, this is the happiness that baptism offers. The assurance that God is delighted because you are His child, and you have been brought back into your inheritance because Christ shared His sonship with you through baptism. And Christ made that possible right here, in the waters of the Jordan. Blessed be God. And that’s why the Father said, “This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased” – to show that baptism makes us the children the Father delights in.