Baptism
If we think of Jesus’ humanity and human life as being nothing more than instrumental, that is, if we think that the only reason that God became a human and lived a perfect human life was because he needed to have a perfect sacrifice to atone for sin, then there are few scenes in the Gospel accounts that are more baffling than Jesus’ baptism. Now, Jesus’ humanity was indeed instrumental, but it was not merely so.
When John the Baptist was baptizing people in the Jordan, it was quite clearly understood as a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. The question that might arise in our minds when we see Jesus going forward for John’s baptism is, “Why would Jesus need to be baptized if he had never sinned?” This is a question we can see that even John was asking, because of what he says to Jesus that day (Matthew 3:13-17). “I have need to be baptized by you, and do you come to me?” John was well aware of the fact that Jesus was greater than him and that he needed the baptism that only Jesus could give, and yet Jesus responds, “Permit it at this time; for in this way it is fitting for us to fulfill all righteousness.” Jesus saw his baptism as being more important than John could imagine.
So, if Jesus had not committed any sins and he underwent a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins, whose sin was he repenting of and confessing that day at the Jordan? If we really take seriously the idea that Jesus took our place in order to offer an appropriate human response to God and that everything he did on earth was done on our behalf and in our place, the answer to that question becomes clear. Jesus was confessing and repenting of our sins. In his baptism, Jesus took our sin and brokenness upon himself and repented on our behalf and in our place because, all too often, we do not even repent appropriately, because we either hold on to our sins or cling to some worthiness of our own instead of relying solely on God’s mercy.
As will be clearer when we consider the role of baptism in the life of a believer, we must think out our understanding of the meaning of baptism in light of what Jesus has done at this point in his life. We are joined to Christ’s repentance and appropriate human response to the realization of our sinfulness.
Another important point that must be observed is that, at his baptism in the Jordan, Jesus received the Holy Spirit, descending on him like a dove. When we remember that Jesus was conceived by the Holy Spirit and had never been without the Spirit, we might wonder what it means for him to receive the Spirit at his baptism. We must always remember the reactions of faithful people when they encountered the Lord in the Old Testament. After coming face to face with God or one of his angels, the response was that of dread. Often, the person would claim that, because they had seen the Lord, they needed to die. When they did not, they were astonished. If this is the response of people who have merely an external encounter with God, we must not underestimate the crisis that would occur if the Holy Spirit simply began to indwell people without any kind of mediation.
When Jesus received the Holy Spirit, he did not do it only for himself, but for us. In Jesus, God invited the Holy Spirit to dwell within our humanity in such a way that it learned to compose itself, so to speak, in our broken humanity without consuming it. Only after Jesus took this Spirit-indwelt humanity through life, death, resurrection and ascension, were the disciples given the Holy Spirit as well. This reception on the part of Christ is absolutely crucial to our reception of the Spirit at Pentecost and ever after. Without Christ mediating the Spirit to us, we would be consumed by the indwelling of God in our lives.
Temptation
Jesus’ temptation, as found early in the Gospels of Matthew and Luke, is an extremely important moment in the life of Christ that is all too often ignored. There is a tendency to trivialize the temptation of Christ, as if the temptation was merely a show and had no actual reality. The concern would seem to be that, if Jesus was really tempted, which carries with it the possibility of committing sin, it would imply that Jesus is less than God. This is a problematic interpretation because it presupposes what can and cannot have taken place based, not on what God has actually done and revealed to us, but on what we assume God can or cannot do. We are presented with an actual assertion that Jesus was indeed tempted. We must deal with it in one way or another.
The key texts that help us to understand the temptation of Christ as having a fundamental soteriological (that is, having to do with salvation) importance are found in the book of Hebrews. In this book, we read statements like (2:17-18), “He had to be made like his brethren in all things, so that he might become a merciful and faithful high priest in things pertaining to God, to make propitiation for the sins of the people. For since he himself was tempted in that which he has suffered, he is able to come to the aid of those who are tempted.” We also read (4:15), “For we do not have a high priest who cannot sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who has been tempted in all thing as we are, yet without sin.” Hebrews interprets Christ’s temptation as being the overcoming of our sin from within our broken humanity.
This is what sets the temptation of Christ apart from the temptation that other human beings endure. When most people are tempted, they give into the temptation; when Jesus is tempted, he endures by applying the very power of God to the temptation from within our humanity. In the person of Jesus Christ, temptation has been overcome and defeated. This is not a promise that ordinary human beings can do what Jesus did, as if Jesus were merely an example and nothing more. What it tells us is that we can also conquer sin and temptation inasmuch as we are united to the victory over sin and temptation of Christ.
Something we learn from the gospels about the nature of temptation and the triumph of grace over sin is found in the garden of Gethsemane. In one account (Luke 22:39-44), we read that, while Jesus was preparing to go to the cross, he was being tempted to abandon his mission, which included his death. We read, “Being in agony he was praying very fervently; and his sweat became like drops of blood, falling down upon the ground.” We learn from this that Jesus experiences temptation in a more intense way than we often do, precisely because we often give into the temptation before it comes to its full strength. It also shows us that temptation has incredible power that would crush us if we were not united to the victory of Christ through the power of the Holy Spirit. It shows us that any attempt to resist temptation while somehow bypassing the life, death and resurrection of Christ and the outpouring of the Spirit is futile at best.
Teaching
It might be argued that the teaching ministry of Christ is primarily an example of God condescending to humanity and teaching us the truths of God. This is indeed an important dimension of this idea, but it is by no means the only one. Equally important is the part it plays in Jesus fulfillment of the obligations of humanity. In many ways, the teaching ministry of Christ forms the basis on which we trust that God can use human words to communicate his truth to us. We also, because of the unique nature of Christ, can trust that, when Jesus teaches something, it is God teaching it. Though God indeed spoke through the Old Testament prophets, those prophets were not hypostatically united to the being of God. They were messengers; they were not also, simultaneously, the message.
It is also through the teaching ministry of Jesus that the actual activity of God is interpreted to human beings. Surely human words cannot capture the depth and richness of the divine will and mission, but they point beyond themselves to indicate far more than they can fully articulate. Again, the fact that Jesus is indeed fully God and fully man comes into play in a strong way. When we encounter the teaching of Christ, we do not have to do with a merely human interpretation of God’s activity in our midst, but a fully divine interpretation spoken by human lips and articulated with human language.
Further, if Jesus was able to articulate and interpret God’s will and mission among humanity in human language, he must have been able to comprehend these same things within his human mind. Again, this is not to say that there is nothing that is true of God that cannot be comprehended by the human mind, but rather, because Jesus understood the gospel and taught the gospel, the gospel is indeed understandable within humanity and our humanity is not intrinsically a barrier that inhibits us from understanding it.
We must be ever aware of the danger of thinking that Jesus is simply a teacher of truths and not also the very Truth of God in his own Person. Thomas F. Torrance put it extremely well. “He [Jesus] is Truth communicating himself in and through truths, who does not communicate himself apart from truths, and who does not communicate truths apart from himself.”
Prayer
The prayer of Jesus is also important both to our understanding of God and of our own prayer. The first thing we see is that Jesus, as one who is fully God, prays at all. What is further, when Jesus prays, we do not get the sense that he is praying to himself, but to the God he calls Father. This prayer has been an argument against the divinity of Christ, but there are many places in the Gospel accounts that point to the unique union that Jesus has with his Father. Indeed, “Father” was a term that was only ever used in the Old Testament to say that God is the Father of the nation of Israel, but never as the Father of individual faithful people. Jesus’ use of Father to speak of God was interpreted by the Jewish leaders as him considering himself to be equal to God and it nearly got him killed on the spot (John 10:30-36).
There are a few moments of prayer that are particularly illuminating. In the Garden of Gethsemane, as referenced above, Jesus prayed that God would take the “cup” away from him and was in great agony of soul. On the cross, Jesus cries out, “Eloi eloi lama sabachthani,” “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” By taking these and other prayers onto his own divine-human lips, he truly enters into our brokenness and takes even our god-forsaken cry onto his lips. In light of these things, we can be confident that our prayers, which are often not as faithful as they ought to be and sometimes quite faithless, are taken up by Christ and redeemed. God is not afraid of even our faithlessness.
The connection between our prayer and the prayer of Christ is extremely important. This entire section has been about how Jesus takes our humanity from us and lives out a fully obedient life to God from within our very humanity. Indeed, this is the same way we should understand Christ’s prayer. Our prayer is often weak and not what it should be. If the efficacy of our prayer is dependent on our ability to find the right words and to pray with the right attitudes, we would have little hope to ever have our prayers heard. However, our prayers are taken by the Spirit and united to the perfect prayer of Christ and presented before God. This is why we pray in Jesus’ name. It is not just a convenient way to end our prayer, nor is it simply a way to remember Jesus when we pray. It is an acknowledgement that our prayers are not our own. We are saying to God, “We know our prayers are not good enough, we know that we are weak and broken and not worthy to come before you, but we come not on our own authority but on that of Jesus Christ, the Son of God, who died, rose again, ascended to heaven and lives forever to intercede on our behalf. Hear our prayers, not for our own sake, but for his.”
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