A voice from heaven said, “This is my beloved Son, and I am fully pleased with him.”Matthew 3:17
People were coming to John to repent and be baptized. This baptism was different from Christian baptism. Its purpose was to wash away sin and allow the person to start over with a clean slate. Since people kept sinning, they had to keep coming back to be rebaptized—to start over and try to get their lives right. John’s religion was not complicated. He claimed, “It is up to you to clean up your life and get right with God. If you do, you will be spared when judgment comes.”
We don’t quite get it, either—especially those of us who are hardworking and achievement oriented. We like John’s message. Or at least we understand it. It’s a religion that says, “Try harder. It’s all up to you.” That is the same religion we find at work and school, and maybe even at home. It’s the same religion we may find, more subtly conveyed, at church. We like that message because it appeals to something heroic in us. We like to think that if we work hard enough, we will get life right.
So we understand why John was confused the day Jesus Christ showed up in the wilderness asking to be baptized. “Jesus, you haven’t failed. Jesus, you’re the standard we are trying to meet.” But Jesus said his baptism was necessary “to fulfill all righteousness.” In other words, this is the only way everyone will be made right—if he, the sinless One and the Judge, comes to us who are lost in a sea of good intentions.
In his coming to be baptized, Jesus changed everything. When the Son of God identified himself with us in that way, the heavenly Father was so excited, he ripped back the skies. The Spirit of God descended like a dove, and a voice said, “This is my beloved Son, and I am fully pleased with him.”
Nowhere in the Bible are we told that God is impressed by how hard someone is trying. Instead, what pleases God is that in Jesus Christ, God has found you. To be found in Christ means we can hear God saying, “You, too, are my son, my daughter, with whom I am pleased.”
When we are baptized, we who follow Jesus do not try to wash away sins. That’s hopeless, and we know it because we just keep sinning. We are baptized to identify ourselves with Jesus and to mark ourselves as a people who will live only by his loving grace—not by our own efforts or accomplishments.
—M. Craig Barnes
Reflection
How comfortable am I with the idea that I don’t have to do anything to be loved by God?
Prayer
Give me, Lord, the courage to accept the freedom offered in my baptism. For I know the only way to miss the future you have for me is to cling to the judgment of the past.
“Baptism points back to the work of God, and forward to the life of faith.”” —J. Alec Motyer
Leadership DevotionsCopyright © Tyndale House Publishers.Used by permission.