Musing on the Baptism of Our Lord

The voice from heaven at Jesus’ Baptism provides indisputable proof that Jesus is the Lord’s Anointed, the eternal Son of God, and that there is no other form of religion that can be called legitimate. Only Jesus is the only beloved Son of God, and therefore we are right to reject and condemn every kind of faith that does not affirm this. The Christian faith gains exclusive right to being the true religion which alone can save.

And this is so because of the affirmation of the Father here, not only that Jesus is His Son, but that He is well-pleasing to His Father. This is not merely declaring Him to be the beloved Son of the Father from eternity, but that He as Man has gained the Father’s favor by His perfect obedience in the flesh. This Man is well-pleasing to God, and there is no other man about whom this could be said. His devoted heart of desire to please His Father is precisely what had been the desired condition of Adam in the Garden, a status from which Adam quickly fell. But now, standing in meekness in the Jordan’s crystal flood stands One greater than Adam, and without spot or blemish of unrighteousness. For the Father to say He is well-pleased is to affirm the perfect righteousness of Jesus’ heart, and that He is in a happy state of pure obedience to His Father, which is why the Father is pleased; and thus all righteousness is fulfilled. Here is Man in all the glory intended for Him, perfectly suited to be the very Image of God, in which image Man was originally created.

And this is at His Baptism, in the very same water to which all Jerusalem was coming, confessing their sins. So the water becomes a conduit through which the obedience of the Son of God is transferred to all who are baptized confessing their sins. And the conduit flows both ways, as the sins of those washed in the flood are transferred to Jesus, making Him the sin-bearer, a spotless Lamb to be sacrificed to take away the sin transferred to Him there, a Scapegoat to carry it away, and ultimately to suffer its penalty.

And thus by Baptism, not only are sins washed away, but the status Jesus gained is also transferred to the one baptized. Whoever is baptized in the name of Jesus, may now, calling on His name, gladly claim that the Father’s good pleasure rests on him, the good pleasure that was achieved by Jesus’ perfect and holy life. Back to Eden is such a one bound, to Paradise, to regain what was lost in the beginning, and to have this status into eternity.