Baptism For You
Matthew 3:13-17
In the name of the Father and of the + Son and of the Holy Spirit.
St. Matthew 3:16-17 16 When He had been baptized, Jesus came up immediately from the water; and behold, the heavens were opened to Him, and He saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove and alighting upon Him. 17 And suddenly a voice came from heaven, saying, “This is My beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased.”
Dear fellow redeemed in Christ our Lord… As Christians, we point to Jesus’ death on the cross and say, “That’s why I’m saved.” But we could just as easily point to Jesus in the water of the Jordan River and say the same thing: “There is my salvation, there is my forgiveness, ands there is my life!” We can say that because Jesus’ baptism is a death, and His death is a baptism. That’s what Jesus said. Getting ready to die, Jesus said, “I have a baptism to undergo” (Luke 12:50). Jesus called His coming death on the cross a “baptism.”
Why? Jesus didn’t want His disciples to miss the link between baptism and death. Jesus was connecting His death to the baptism that He would soon command pastors in His Church to do. By His own words, Jesus links His death and baptism together.
So, here we are with today’s text, three years before His death. Jesus is coming to John to be baptized, and it seemed pretty strange to John. The sinless Son of God came to receive a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sin at the hands of a sinner.
Did Jesus need to repent? Of course not. Did Jesus need the forgiveness of sins? Of course not. That’s why John objected. John said to Jesus, in effect, “You should baptize me. I’m the sinner; you’re the sinless one. I’m baptizing people to prepare them for You, and You come to me to be baptized? This is backwards!”
But Jesus insisted. “Let it be so now.” You won’t catch what Jesus was doing in our English translations. When Jesus said, “Let it be so,” he was using one of the Greek words for forgiveness, the word ἀφίημι (a-PHEE-ay me), which means to release, let go, leave it behind. Jesus was saying: “Let go of any idea that you have on how you think I’m going to work righteousness. This baptism is proper for us to do to fulfill all righteousness.”
But how could John baptizing Jesus “fulfill all righteousness”? It could only do that if baptism, in some way, was connected to Jesus’ cross, where He died for our sins to give us His righteousness. When Jesus used the same word as “forgive,” He pointed everyone to the righteousness that He would give in the cross-connected waters of holy baptism, which He would soon put in place for our salvation.
When John baptized Jesus, it was a picture of how God pays for the sins of the world. The sinless Son of God becomes the world’s sin. He stands in the water of John’s baptism, alongside sinners, but not because He needs His sins to be washed clean. He steps into the baptismal water for the opposite reason: He steps into the water full of sinners and sin to take it all into Himself. He becomes the world’s sin.
As the second Adam, Jesus embodies all humanity, even the world’s sin, in His sinlessness. He is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world, and He takes away the world’s sin by taking it all into His dark death. He stands in John’s baptismal water, polluted by sin, and He purifies it. He takes John’s baptism and turns it into His own. Imagine that every sin was physically washed into that water. Imagine a bathwater filled not just with dirt and germs, but our sin.
In the Old Testament, during Israel’s wilderness wanderings, God made the bitter waters of Marah sweet when Moses put the wood into the water at God’s command. That wasn’t just a coincidence; it was an event to teach us about Jesus.
In His baptism, Jesus steps into the bitter, polluted water of our sin to make it sweet by the wood of His cross. He purifies our dirty bath water and turns it into a pure baptismal water, “a washing of rebirth and renewal by the Holy Spirit” (Titus 3:4-5). But for that to happen, it will require the wood of the cross and the water of baptism. Just like at Marah, God will use both the wood and the water.
St. Paul wrote in 2 Corinthians 5:21: “For He made Him who knew no sin to be sin for us, that we might become the righteousness of God in Him.” Now that is one heck of a good deal! Christ becomes our sin: He embodies our sin in His own body, baptized in the Jordan, and crucified on Calvary. And we, in Him, become His righteousness, innocence, and blessedness. But it will need both the wood of the cross and the water of baptism.
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Salvation is like a new creation. In the first creation God spoke His Word into this watery world in the Spirit, and there was light, land, plants, animals, and man. It was a creation through water, Word, and the Spirit. In Jesus’ baptism we see that same creating God at work. But this time, the Son of God, the creative Word in the Flesh is standing in the water, the Father is speaking from heaven, and the Spirit is descending visibly as a dove. At that moment God unveiled a new creation, a new humanity in Christ. It was Father, Son, and Holy Spirit making everything new in the Son, Jesus Christ, the Savior of the world.
But the baptism you received is different from John the Baptizer’s baptism. Your baptism came from Jesus, not from John. Your baptism came with the fiery Pentecost wind of the Holy Spirit that Jesus had sent to His Church from the Father.
When Jesus stood in the water for John to baptize Him, He fulfilled John’s baptism. It was when the heavens opened, the Spirit descended, and the Father said, “This is my beloved Son”; and John said, “Behold, the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.” (Jn 1:29)
The purpose of John’s baptism was to prepare the people for Jesus’ coming as Savior. The purpose of your baptism is also to prepare you; it is to prepare you for Jesus’ coming as Your Savior on the Last Day, when He will raise your body and give You salvation in all its fullness. Baptism joins you with His death to sin AND His resurrection to life; you will rise from death to live forever. Your baptism will reach its fulfillment on the Last Day when you physically rise from the grave, just like Jesus!
Like faith, baptism also needs to come to you individually. We hear again Jesus’ words: “Unless one is born of water and Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God” (John 3:5). Baptism, then, becomes God’s personal word to you that the Father gives, the Son speaks, and the Spirit breathes upon you. It is God saying and applying to you personally, “I died for you, took your sins away, and now you are safe in my death.”
St Paul calls baptism a burial when he says: Don’t you know that all of us who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? Therefore, we were buried with him through baptism into his death, so that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the Father’s glory, we too may live a new life. [Romans 6:3-4]
It all fits so perfectly together. Your sinful nature with all your sin is crucified and buried with Christ. In baptism, God gives you a new identity, a new way of looking at yourself. You are still a sinner, but more importantly a saint, a child of God. Paul says, “Consider yourself dead to sin, but alive to God in Christ Jesus” (Romans 6:11). In yourselves, you are dead. But in Christ Jesus, you are alive as alive you can be.
You are baptized; you have God’s name upon and in you, and you are His. That’s who you are: a baptized child of God. Don’t forget that. Remind yourself of it every day. That is why Luther told parents to teach their children to make the sign of the cross, in order to remind them: “I am baptized. I know who I am and whose I am, to whom I am connected and to whom I belong.” What a wonderful way to live! You are dead to self but alive to God in Christ Jesus.
We worry a lot about dying, but we’re already dead. In baptism, God the Holy Spirit, through the water and the Word, crucified you with Christ, connecting you to His death. And the beauty of being dead is that you have nothing to lose. When you drive home from here, you leave as someone who is dead to sin but alive to God in Christ. And if you die in a car crash, you don’t lose your life in Christ, for Jesus holds your life in Himself. That’s what baptism tells you. You’re in, you’re home, and you’re safe in the death and resurrection of Jesus.
In Jesus’ baptism the heavens opened, the Spirit of God descended like a dove, and the voice of the Father spoke. He said, “This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased.” In Jesus’ baptism, all three persons of the Holy Trinity were there.
It’s the same with you in your baptism. God has opened heaven for you, the Spirit descends on you, and the Father smiles approvingly and says, “This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased.” That is true whether you are male or female. For in baptism you become not just a child of God, but even a son of God, for it is as His son that you inherit all that God has for you in His own dear Son, Jesus Christ.
In baptism, you are born from above, renewed, and resurrected. God keep you in your baptismal grace until He comes again to bring it all to perfect fulfillment.
In the name of the Father and of the + Son and of the Holy Spirit.
