Theology Thursday: Why was Jesus baptized?

Welcome to Theology Thursday! Theology is the study of God, his relation to the world, and our relation to him. I hope these newsletters help enhance your faith and deepen your love for God and his people, the church.

Today's question:
If baptism is part of the salvation process, why was Jesus baptized?

Pastor Brady’s thoughts:
After my sermon on baptism this past Sunday, I was asked this question: why was Jesus baptized?

It’s a great question, and I love the thoughtfulness behind it. I made the argument in my sermon that believer’s baptism is a part of saving faith; that it is a necessary and required condition of salvation (which is not to say that baptism is a work of the law; the saving effect of baptism is God’s doing, not ours - we are not adding things to the gospel here!).

If that’s the case, why would Jesus need to be baptized? He is the Son of God and lived a sinless life. He didn’t need to be saved from anything, so why would he be baptized?

To begin, we must note that God did save people before the arrival of Christ. Old Testament/old covenant salvation is an interesting topic for another time, but it is not disputed that, before Jesus, God saved those who had faith in his grace and promises and who displayed a repentant heart.

If that was the case before Jesus, why would God add the new condition of baptism for salvation, since that wasn’t required in Old Testament times?  

The salvation process in the new covenant instituted by Jesus on the cross includes three elements that were not present under the old covenant.

First, because of Jesus’s incarnation (his earthly life and ministry - “the Word became flesh,” says John 1:14), we have a more complete revelation of the nature of God, and therefore a superior understanding of the object of our faith. The trinity exists in the pages of the Old Testament, but it comes into much clearer focus in the New; the full and whole nature of God is triune: the Lord God of both the Old and New Testaments is a trinity of Father, Son, and Spirit.

In the Jewish culture Jesus was born into and did most of his ministry in, an action done “in the name” of something was done with a specific purpose and intentionality. The phrase Jesus uses in the Great Commission in Matthew 28 for “in the name,” Matthew translates as a term that in the Greek culture he was writing in actually indicates a business transaction resulting in intimate ownership.

Therefore, when Jesus tells his disciples to baptize “in the name” of the trinity, he’s telling them that Christian baptism enables a specific and special relationship with the trinity, the triune God. When we are baptized “in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit” we become God’s property or possession in a special, relational way.

So, we can say that baptism was established to proclaim this truth and ensure a proper understanding of the God who saves.

A second new covenant element pertinent to salvation is the person of Christ Jesus himself, the reality of his humanity, and the purpose of his sacrifice. The redeeming action of Jesus’s death on the cross and his resurrection from the grave is the literal and ultimate source of our salvation. Jesus’s death and resurrection were prophesied in the Old Testament, but in a way that only became clear after the events of Easter. Remember that his disciples knew the scriptures well, and Jesus spoke to them face-to-face, and they still struggled to grasp the truth that he had to die, but would not stay dead.

So, we can also say that baptism was established to make sure our understanding of salvation would never be separated from the saving death and resurrection of our redeemer. Baptism is intended to focus us on Jesus’s sacrifice - and nothing else - as the work that makes salvation for us possible (Romans 6:3-11; Colossians 2:12).

Third, the role of the Holy Spirit changes post-Jesus’s resurrection. For the Old Testament people of God (the Jews and those who converted to Judaism) the Spirit was present in some Israelites to empower them to courageous acts, faithful leadership, and prophecy, but he did not enter or indwell in the heart of repentant sinners to facilitate personal salvation. This changed with Jesus, who promised the Holy Spirit (John 7:37-39) as a gift given by God to the faithful, a gift initially given to Christ’s apostles at Pentecost (Acts 2:2-4), and then through baptism ever since (Acts 2:38-39).

So, we can also say that baptism was established to provide the gift of the Holy Spirit for the hearts of repentant sinners as the culmination of the justification (salvation) process, and the initiation of the sanctification (holiness) process.

It’s also important to recognize that that the nature of faith itself expanded from merely faith in the supreme lordship of God (including the forsaking of worshiping all other “gods”) and his promised mercy - which was sufficient for salvation for the Old Testament covenant - to include faith specifically in the saving act of Christ’s death and resurrection. Saving faith now required/requires belief in the whole gospel and the whole, full revelation of the trinity.

The definition of saving faith shifted from belief that God would eventually do something to belief that God did indeed do something, through the person of Jesus, dead but alive again.  

Pre-incarnation, one became a member of God’s covenantal family through physical birth to Jewish parents and, for male babies, circumcision on the eighth day. But in the new covenant, one becomes a member of God’s family not by a physical birth but by a spiritual re-birth. In this way, baptism is the new circumcision (see Colossians 2:11-13).

You’ve heard me say this before: Jesus changed everything.

I laid all this groundwork before addressing the question of Jesus’s baptism (and, relatedly, all baptism pre-resurrection/Pentecost) because understanding what makes the new covenant new helps explain why the meaning and significance of baptism changed as well.

The practice of baptism first comes to prominence under the ministry of John the Baptist (Jesus’s cousin), and he acknowledges explicitly that the purpose of baptism will change because of Jesus:

I indeed baptize you with water unto repentance, but He who is coming after me is mightier than I, whose sandals I am not worthy to carry. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire (Matthew 3:11).

Baptism under John took place within Old Testament faith, before the three elements noted above changed the reality of faith, salvation, and, thus, baptism. As that verse from Matthew confirms, it was a baptism of repentance, and as we learn from Luke 3:3, it was a baptism for the forgiveness of sins. But the specific relationship with the cross and the blood of Christ was not yet available or applied, and therefore its meaning and significance was only an incomplete precursor to the baptism taught and practiced after Jesus’s resurrection and the arrival of the Holy Spirit in repentant believers’ hearts at Pentecost.  

John the Baptist believed it was his mission to prepare the people for the fulfillment of God’s long-awaited promise for rescuing and redemption, a promise John believed to be manifest in the person of Jesus. He called people to baptism so they could be purified and prepared for the new covenant, ready for God to come and deliver them.

(Interestingly, Peter did not believe that John’s baptism was sufficient for salvation under the new covenant. On the day of Pentecost, when speaking to a Jewish audience - many of whom would have been baptized by John or one of his disciples - Peter did not exempt those who had already been baptized: “Repent and be baptized, every one of you,” (Acts 2:38). Paul seems to agree with this, because he does the same thing in Acts 19:1-6.)

Jesus comes to John to baptize him, and this surprises John.

John tried to deter him, saying, “I need to be baptized by you, and do you come to me?” Jesus replied, “Let it be so now; it is proper for us to do this to fulfill all righteousness.” Then John consented (Matthew 3:14-15).

“...to fulfill all righteousness.” Hmm.

I think we can identify two primary reasons Jesus chose to be baptized, though he had nothing to repent for and no need to be forgiven.

One, Jesus was identifying with those he had come to rescue, fulfilling the covenant plan of his Father. God had often used water to literally and/or symbolically save his chosen people; Noah’s family on the ark, the enslaved Israelites escaping through the parted the Red Sea, and now through the baptismal waters where the dead life is left behind and a new, eternal life is granted. It seems that Jesus saw the true beginning of his kingdom-movement starting with this symbolic new-exodus action of his baptism.

Two, he saw his baptism as pointing to - perhaps foreshadowing - the climactic event of his entire ministry.

N.T. Wright explains: “He spoke on one occasion about having “a baptism to be baptized with” - and it became clear that he was referring to his own death. Jesus’s baptism and his carefully planned Last Supper [on the night of Passover] both point back to the original creation itself, and finally point on to Jesus’s death and resurrection as the new defining reality, the moment of new covenant, new creation. And to achieve that renewal it was necessary to go, not just through the water and out the other side, but through a deeper flood altogether. All the multiple layers of meaning that were already present in baptism were now to be recentered on the event of Jesus’s death and resurrection. Through the water into God’s new world.”

I also don’t want us to miss the trinitarian nature of Jesus’s baptism.

As soon as Jesus was baptized, he went up out of the water. At that moment heaven was opened, and he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove and alighting on him. And a voice from heaven said, “This is my Son, whom I love; with him I am well pleased” (Matthew 3:16-17).

The Christian baptism we teach and experience today is not a new or altogether different thing than what John the Baptism and Jesus himself were doing, it is the expanded and complete fulfillment of the sacred practice they modeled.

Just as Jesus came not to abolish the old covenant law but to fulfill it, baptism now is the total realization of new covenant faith, a faith in the whole person of our triune God: the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.

To know God and make Him known!
- Pastor Brady

Have a question for Theology Thursday? Send an email to office@minierchristian.org and we'll respond, or we'll include in a future Theology Thursday Buffet.