John 1:32-33

The Gift Made to Jesus in the Baptism.

Vv. 32, 33, suggest an important question: Did Jesus really receive anything at His baptism? Meyer denies this, alleging that this idea has no support in our Gospel, and that, if the Synoptics say more, it is because they contain a tradition which had been already altered. The real fact was solely the vision granted to John in view of the testimony which he was to render to Jesus. This vision was transformed by tradition into the event related by the Synoptics. The idea of the real communication of the Holy Spirit to Jesus would be incompatible with that of the incarnation of the Logos. Lucke and de Wette think, also, that Jesus received nothing new at that moment. John was only instructed, by means of the vision, as to a permanent fact in the life of Jesus, His communion with the Holy Spirit. Neander, Tholuck and Ebrard think that there was simply progress in the consciousness which Jesus had of Himself.

Baumgarten-Crusius, Kahnis Luthardt, Gess, allow a real communication, but only with reference to the task which Jesus had to fulfill, that of His own ministry, and of the communication of the Holy Spirit to other men. The opinion of Meyer, as well as that of Lucke, sacrifices the narrative of the Synoptics, and even that of John to a dogmatic prejudice; for John saw the Spirit not only abiding, but descending, and this last feature must correspond to a reality, as well as the other. The view of Neander is true, but inadequate. There was certainly wrought, at that moment, a decided advance in the consciousness of Jesus, as is indicated by the fact of the divine address: Thou art my Son; but the symbol of the descent of the dove must also correspond to a real fact. Finally, the view which admits an actual gift, but only in relation to the public activity of Jesus, appears to me superficial. In a life so completely one as that of Jesus, where there is nothing purely ritual, where the external is always the manifestation of the internal, the beginning of a new activity supposes a change in His own personal life.

When we lay hold of the idea of the incarnation with the force with which it is apprehended and presented by Paul and John (see John 1:14, and the Appendix to the Prologue), when we recognize the fact that the Logos divested Himself of the divine state, and that He entered into a really human state, in order to accomplish the normal development originally assigned to every man, there is nothing further to prevent us from holding that, after having accomplished the task of the first Adam on the pathway of free obedience, He should have seen opening before Him the sphere of the higher life for which man is destined, and that, as the first among the violent who take the kingdom of heaven by force, He should have forced the entrance into it for Himself and for all.

Undoubtedly, His entire existence had passed on under the constant influence of the Holy Spirit which had presided over his birth. At every moment, He had obeyed this divine guide, and each time this docility had been immediately rewarded by a new impulse. The vessel was filled in proportion as it enlarged, and it enlarged in proportion as it was filled. But to be under the operation of the Spirit is not to possess the Spirit (John 14:17). With the hour of the baptism, the moment came when the previous development was to be transformed into the definite state, that of the perfect stature (Ephesians 4:13). “First, that which is psychical,” says Paul, in 1 Corinthians 15:46, “afterwards that which is spiritual.” If the incarnation is a verity, this law must apply to the development of Jesus, as much as to that of every other man. Till then, the Spirit was upon Him ἑπ᾿ αὐτό [τὸ παιδίον] Luke 2:40; He increased, under this divine influence, in wisdom and grace. From the time of the baptism, the Spirit becomes the principle of His psychical and physical activity, of His whole personal life; He can begin to be called Lord-Spirit (2 Corinthians 3:17-18); life-giving Spirit (1 Corinthians 15:45).

The baptism, therefore, constitutes in His interior life as decisive a crisis as does the ascension in His external state. The open heaven represents His initiation into the consciousness of God and of His designs. The voice: Thou art my Son, indicates the revelation to His inmost consciousness of His personal relation with God, of His eternal dignity as Son, and, at the same time, of the boundlessness of divine love towards Him, and towards humanity on which such a gift is bestowed. He fully apprehends the name of Father as applied to God, and can proclaim it to the world. The Holy Spirit becomes His personal life, makes Him the principle and source of life for all men. Nevertheless, His glorification is not yet; the natural life, whether psychical or physical, still exists in Him, as such. It is after the ascension only that His soul and body will be completely spiritualized (σῶμα πνευματικόν, 1 Corinthians 15:44).

But, it is asked, does not the gift of the Holy Spirit form a needless repetition of the miraculous birth? By no means; for in this latter event the Holy Spirit acts only as a life-giving force in the stead and place of the paternal principle. He wakens into the activity of life the germ of a human existence deposited in the womb of Mary, the organ prepared for the Logos that He may realize there a human development; in the same way as, on the day of creation, the soul of the first man, breath of the creating God, came to dwell in the bodily organ prepared for its abode and for its earthly activity (Gen 2:7).

Some modern theologians, in imitation of some of the Fathers, think that the Logos is confounded by John with the Spirit. But undoubtedly every one will acknowledge the truth of this remark of Lucke : “No more could we say, on the one hand, ‘The Spirit was made flesh,' than we could say, on the other, ‘I have seen the Logos descend upon Jesus.'” The distinction between the Logos and the Spirit, scrupulously observed by John, even in chaps. 14-16, where Reuss thinks it is sometimes wholly effaced (Hist. de la th. chret . ii., p. 533f.), is the following: The Logos is the principle of objective revelation, and, through his incarnation, the culminating point of that revelation, while the Spirit is the principle acting internally by which we assimilate to ourselves that revelation subjectively. Hence it results that, without the Spirit, the revelation remains for us a dead letter, and Jesus a simple historical personage with whom we do not enter into any communion. It is by the Spirit alone that we appropriate to ourselves the revelation contained in the word and person of Jesus. Thus, from the time when the Spirit begins to do His work in us, it is Jesus Himself who begins to live within us. As, through the Spirit, Jesus lived on earth by the Father, so, through the Spirit, the believer lives by Jesus (John 6:57). This distinction of offices between Christ and the Spirit is steadily maintained throughout our whole Gospel.

This solemn testimony being given, the forerunner expresses the feeling of satisfaction with which this grand task accomplished inspires him, yet so as, at the same time, to make his hearers understand that their own task is beginning.