Confrontation In Nazareth (2)

 

 

“Now when all the people were baptized, Jesus was also baptized, and while He was praying, heaven was opened, and the Holy Spirit descended upon Him in bodily form like a dove, and a voice came out of heaven, ‘You are My beloved Son, in You I am well-pleased’” (Luke 3:21 - 22).

 

In Nazareth Jesus will read the words of Isaiah, “The Spirit of the Lord is upon Me, because He has anointed Me…” (Luke 4:18).

 

The baptism of Jesus Christ was not only an expression of the Trinity, but it was an ongoing experience in the life of Jesus Christ. The heavens never ceased to be open for Jesus, other than that holy time when darkness covered the land and He cried, “My God, My God, why have you forsaken Me?” Yet, they were open even then, for then the holy justice and mercy of God met as they consumed the sacrificial Lamb on the Cross, the Lamb bearing our sins and becoming sin for us, that we might be made the righteousness of God in Him (2 Cor. 5:21). The heavens were open even then to Jesus on Golgotha, for the Father was accepting His Son’s holy offering of Himself.

 

Have you considered the similarity of Jesus’ baptism and the Creation account in Genesis Chapter One?

 

In both passages we see water, in both passages God speaks, in both passages we see the Holy Spirit, in both passages a new creation comes up from the water, in both passages we see mankind being formed in the image of God, in both passages we see the Son. In Genesis we see the Son “in the Beginning,” as the “light,” and as the speaking Word (see John 1:1 – 5).

 

When I write that “in both passages we see mankind being formed in the image of God,” I mean that in the Incarnation, in Jesus Christ, a new humanity comes forth – Jesus is the “grain of wheat falling into the ground” (John 12:24), He is the Last Adam and the Second Man into whose image we are formed (1 Cor. 15:45 – 49; Eph. 4:24; 2 Cor. 5:17; Rom. 8:29).

 

In Genesis we see ourselves in Adam, in the Gospels we see ourselves in Jesus Christ (see also Romans 5:12 – 21).

 

Baptism is an ongoing experience for us in Jesus Christ, replete with mystery, filled with wonder. In Christ we find our identity rooted in baptism (Romans Chapter 6; Colossians 2:9 – 19; 1 Corinthians 12:13), we are buried with Christ, raised with Christ, and ascended with Christ.

 

The association of water and the Holy Spirit continues into and beyond the Day of Pentecost when Peter says, “Repent, and each of you be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of sins; and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit” (Acts 2:38).

 

Baptism set the course for Jesus, does baptism set the course for us?

 

Baptism is more than something that occurs at a definite time and place (though it is indeed that), but rather something that continues as our Way of Life in Jesus Christ. In baptism we “consider ourselves dead to sin but alive to God” (Rom. 6:11), in baptism we become members of Christ’s Body (1 Cor. 12:12 – 13), in baptism we are raised from death to life and enter the covenant community through the circumcision of Christ (Colossians 2:11 – 13).

 

Through baptism we pass from belonging to ourselves to belonging to Jesus Christ, ownership to us passes from self and Satan to Jesus Christ who purchased us with His blood (1 Cor. 6:19 – 20; 1 Pt. 1:18 – 19; Rev. 5:9 – 10).

 

Soldiers enter the Army as they speak the oath of induction, from that point forward their lives are not the same. Brides and grooms say wedding vows, from that time forward their lives are not the same. In the case of brides and grooms, they move from being two people to being one person (a mystery indeed – they do not lose their identity, yet they gain a new one). In the instance of the soldier, he no longer belongs to himself, he now belongs to his country.

 

In baptism we become “bone of His bone and flesh of His flesh” (Eph. 5:22 – 33) and “members of one another” (Rom. 12:5 – 6).

 

The state of being of the soldier, the bride, and the bridegroom changes during the oath of induction and the wedding ceremony; how much more does our state of being change when we go down to death in the waters of baptism and rise in newness of life in Jesus Christ? No wonder we are instructed to think about ourselves differently than we did before, to “consider ourselves dead to sin but alive to God in Christ Jesus.”

 

A new creation does indeed rise from the waters of baptism (2 Cor. 5:17); the Holy Spirit hovers over those waters as He did in Genesis, and He descends upon those rising from those waters as He did with Jesus Christ. No wonder Paul evokes Genesis when he writes, “For God, who said, ‘Light shall shine out of darkness,’ is the One who has shone in our hearts to give the Light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ” (2 Cor. 4:6). (In 4:6 Paul anticipates 5:17, and in 5:17 he looks back to 4:6).

 

Well, I suppose we’ve covered a lot of ground, and I hope we are reading these Bible passages and pondering them.  I imagine some of this is new, for we tend to compartmentalize baptism and not think about it very much – it tends to be something we did once upon a time, rather than something we are living today. When we do think about baptism, it is often in terms of what we’ve been taught about it, rather than how baptism is living in us and we are living in it.

 

Some of us can be more concerned about what others believe about baptism, than about its reality in our own lives. Most of our traditions have something valuable to contribute to our understanding and we ought to be careful when we think we know what others believe and why they believe it.

 

My present concern is that we live out our baptism in Jesus Christ, the present is more important to me in Christ than how we got where we are, we must trust Christ for the past.

 

Baptism is an ocean with endless depths and horizons and currents, it simply can’t be measured, it can’t be neatly defined; thankfully it can be experienced in Jesus Christ and its central navigation points entered on our charts.

 

If we return to Nazareth, as Jesus did, we will confront our baptism, our baptism will be there to meet us.

 

How might that be?