Luke 3:21,22

Second Narrative: The Baptism of Jesus, Luke 3:21-22.

The relation between John and Jesus, as described by St. Luke, resembles that of two stars following each other at a short distance, and both passing through a series of similar circumstances. The announcement of the appearing of the one follows close upon that of the appearing of the other. It is the same with their two births. This relation repeats itself in the commencement of their respective ministries; and lastly, in the catastrophes which terminate their lives. And yet, in the whole course of the career of these two men, there was but one personal meeting at the baptism of Jesus. After this moment, when one of these stars rapidly crossed the orbit of the other, they separated, each to follow the path that was marked out for him. It is this moment of their actual contact that the evangelist is about to describe.

Luke 3:21-22.

This narrative of the baptism is the sequel, not to Luke 3:18-19 (the imprisonment of John), which are an anticipation, but to the passage Luke 3:15-17, which describes the expectation of the people, and relates the Messianic prophecy of John. The expression ἅπαντα τὸν λαόν, all the people, Luke 3:21, recalls the crowds and popular feeling described in Luke 3:15. But Meyer is evidently wrong in seeing in these words, “When all the people were baptized,” a proof that all this crowd was present at the baptism of Jesus. The term all the people, in such a connection, would be a strange exaggeration. Luke merely means to indicate the general agreement in time between this movement and the baptism of Jesus; and the expression he uses need not in any way prevent our thinking that Jesus was alone, or almost alone, with the forerunner, when the latter baptized Him. Further, it is highly probable that He would choose a time when the transaction might take place in this manner. But the turn of expression, ἐν τῷ βαπτισθῆναι, expresses more than the simultaneousness of the two facts; it places them in moral connection with each other. In being baptized, Jesus surrenders Himself to the movement which at this time was drawing all the people towards God. Had He acted otherwise, would He not have broken the bond of solidarity which He had contracted, by circumcision, with Israel, and by the incarnation, with all mankind? So far from being relaxed, this bond is to be drawn closer, until at last it involve Him who has entered into it in the full participation of our condemnation and death. This relation of the baptism of the nation to that of Jesus explains also the singular turn of expression which Luke makes use of in mentioning the fact of the baptism. This act, which one would have thought would have been the very pith of the narrative, is indicated by means of a simple participle, and in quite an incidental way: “When all the people were baptized, Jesus also being baptized, and praying...” Luke appears to mean that, granted the national baptism, that of Jesus follows as a matter of course. It is the moral consequence of the former. This turn of thought is not without its importance in explaining the fact which we are now considering.

Luke adds here a detail which is peculiar to him, and which serves to place the miraculous phenomena which follow in their true light. At the time when Jesus, having been baptized, went up out of the water, He was in prayer. The extraordinary manifestations about to be related thus become God's answer to the prayer of Jesus, in which the sighs of His people and of mankind found utterance. The earth is thirsty for the rain of heaven. The Spirit will descend on Him who knows how to ask it effectually; and it will be His office to impart it to all the rest. If, afterwards, we hear Him saying (Luke 11:9), “ Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened to you,” we know from what personal experience He derived this precept: at the Jordan He Himself first asked and received, sought and found, knocked and it was opened to Him.

The heavenly manifestation.

Luke assigns these miraculous facts to the domain of objective reality: the heavens opened, the Spirit descended. Mark makes them a personal intuition of Jesus: And coming up out of the water, He saw the heavens opened, and the Spirit descending (Luke 1:10). Matthew corresponds with Mark; for Bleek is altogether wrong in maintaining that this evangelist makes the whole scene a vision of John the Baptist. The text does not allow of the two verbs, He went up and He saw, which follow each other so closely (Matthew 3:16), having two different subjects. Bleek alleges the narrative of the fourth Gospel, where also the forerunner speaks merely of what he saw himself. But that is natural; for in that passage his object was, not to relate the fact, but simply to justify the testimony which he had just borne. For this purpose he could only mention what he had seen himself. No inference can be drawn from this as to the fact itself, and its relation to Jesus, the other witness. Speaking generally, the scene of the baptism does not fall within the horizon of the fourth Gospel, which starts from a point of time six weeks after this event took place. Keim has no better ground than this for asserting that the accounts of the Syn. on this subject are contradictory to that of John, because the former attribute an external reality to these miraculous phenomena, while the latter treats them as a simple vision of the forerunner, and even, according to him, excludes the reality of the baptism. The true relation of these accounts to each other is this: According to the fourth Gospel, John saw; according to the first and second, Jesus saw. Now, as two persons can hardly be under an hallucination at the same time and in the same manner, this double perception supposes a reality, and this reality is affirmed by Luke: And it came to pass, that...

The divine manifestation comprises three internal facts, and three corresponding sensible phenomena. The three former are the divine communication itself; the three latter are the manifestation of this communication to the consciousness of Jesus and of John. Jesus was a true man, consisting, that is, at once of body and soul. In order, therefore, to take complete possession of Him, God had to speak at once to His outward and inward sense. As to John, he shared, as an official witness of the spiritual fact, the sensible impression which accompanied this communication from on high to the mind of Jesus. The first phenomenon is the opening of the heavens. While Jesus is praying, with His eyes fixed on high, the vault of heaven is rent before His gaze, and His glance penetrates the abode of eternal light. The spiritual fact contained under this sensible phenomenon is the perfect understanding accorded to Jesus of God's plan in the work of salvation. The treasures of divine wisdom are opened to Him, and He may thenceforth obtain at any hour the particular enlightenment He may need. The meaning of this first phenomenon is therefore perfect revelation.

From the measureless heights of heaven above, thus laid open to His gaze, Jesus sees descend a luminous appearance, having the form of a dove. This emblem is taken from a natural symbolism. The fertilizing and persevering incubation of the dove is an admirable type of the life-giving energy whereby the Holy Spirit developes in the human soul the germs of a new life. It is in this way that the new creation, deposited with all its powers in the soul of Jesus, is to extend itself around Him, under the influence of this creative principle (Gen 1:2). By the organic form which invests the luminous ray, the Holy Spirit is here presented in its absolute totality. At Pentecost the Holy Spirit appears under the form of divided (διαμεριζόμεναι) tongues of fire, emblems of special gifts, of particular χαρίσματα, shared among the disciples. But in the baptism of Jesus it is not a portion only, it is the fulness of the Spirit which is given. This idea could only be expressed by a symbol taken from organic life. John the Baptist understood this emblem: “For God giveth not,” he says (John 3:34), “the Spirit by measure unto Him.” The vibration of the luminous ray on the head of Jesus, like the fluttering of the wings of a dove, denotes the permanence of the gift. “I saw,” says John the Baptist (John 1:32), “the Spirit descending from heaven like a dove, and it abode upon Him. ” This luminous appearance, then, represents an inspiration which is neither partial as that of the faithful, nor intermittent as that of the prophets perfect inspiration.

The third phenomenon, that of the divine voice, represents a still more intimate and personal communication. Nothing is a more direct emanation from the personal life than speech, the voice. The voice of God resounds in the ear and heart of Jesus, and reveals to Him all that He is to God the Being most tenderly beloved, beloved as a father's only son; and consequently all that He is called to be to the world the organ of divine love to men, He whose mission it is to raise His brethren to the dignity of sons.

According to Luke, and probably Mark also (in conformity with the reading admitted by Tischendorf), the divine declaration is addressed to Jesus: “ Thou art my Son...; in Thee I am...” In Matthew it has the form of a testimony addressed to a third party touching Jesus: “ This is my Son... in whom...” The first form is that in which God spoke to Jesus; the second, that in which John became conscious of the divine manifestation. This difference attests that the two accounts are derived from different sources, and that the writings in which they are preserved are independent of each other. What writer would have deliberately changed the form of a saying which he attributed to God Himself?

The pronoun σύ, Thou, as well as the predicate ἀγαπητος, with the article, the well-beloved, invest this filial relation with a character that is altogether unique; comp. Luke 10:22. From this moment Jesus must have felt Himself the supreme object of the love of the infinite God. The unspeakable blessedness with which such an assurance could not fail to fill Him was the source of the witness He bore concerning Himself, a witness borne not for His own glory, but with a view to reveal to the world the love wherewith God loves those to whom He imparts such a gift. From this moment dates the birth of that unique consciousness Jesus had of God as His own Father, the rising of that radiant sun which henceforth illuminates His life, and which since Pentecost has risen upon mankind. Just as, by the instrumentality of His Word and Spirit, God communicates to believers, when the hour has come, the certainty of their adoption, so answering both inwardly and outwardly the prayer of Jesus, He raises Him in His human consciousness to a sense of His dignity as the only-begotten Son. It is on the strength of this revelation that John, who shared it, says afterwards, “The Father loveth the Son, and hath given all things into His hands” (John 3:35). The absence of the title Christ in the divine salutation is remarkable. We see that the principal fact in the development of the consciousness of Jesus was not the feeling of His Messianic dignity, but of His close and personal relation with God (comp. already Luke 2:49), and of His divine origin. On that alone was based His conviction of His Messianic mission. The religious fact was first; the official part was only its corollary. M. Renan has reversed this relation, and it is the capital defect of his work.

The quotation of the words of Psalms 2, “ To-day have I begotten Thee,” which Justin introduces into the divine salutation, is only supported by D. and some Mss. of the Italic. It contrasts with the simplicity of the narrative. God does not quote Himself textually in this way! The Cantabrigiensis swarms with similar interpolations which have not the slightest critical value. It is easy to understand how this quotation, affixed at an early period as a marginal gloss, should have found its way into the text of some documents; but it would be difficult to account for its suppression in such a large number of others, had it originally formed part of the text. Justin furnishes, besides, in this very narrative of the baptism, several apocryphal additions.

By means of a perfect revelation, Jesus contemplates the plan of God. Perfect inspiration gives Him strength to realize it. From the consciousness of His dignity as Son He derives the assurance of His being the supreme ambassador of God, called to accomplish this task. These were the positive conditions of His ministry.

The Baptism of Jesus.

We shall examine 1 st. The baptism itself; 2 d. The marvellous circumstances which accompanied it; 3 d. The different accounts of this fact.

1 st. The Meaning of the Baptism.

Here two closely connected questions present themselves: What was the object of Jesus in seeking baptism? What took place within Him when the rite was performed?

To the former question Strauss boldly replies: The baptism of Jesus was an avowal on His part of defilement, and a means of obtaining divine pardon. This explanation contradicts all the declarations of Jesus respecting Himself. If there is any one feature that marks His life, and completely separates it from all others, it is the entire absence of remorse and of the need of personal forgiveness.

According to Schleiermacher, Jesus desired to endorse the preaching of John, and obtain from him consecration to His Messianic ministry. But there had been no relation indicated beforehand between the baptism of water and the mission of the Messiah, nor was any such known to the people; and since baptism was generally understood as a confession of defilement, it would rather appear incompatible with this supreme theocratic dignity.

Weizsäcker, Keim, and others see in it a personal engagement on the part of Jesus to consecrate Himself to the service of holiness. This is just the previous opinion shorn of the Messianic notion, since these writers shrink from attributing to Jesus, thus early, a fixed idea of His Messianic dignity. It is certain that baptism was a vow of moral purity on the part of him who submitted to it. But the form of the rite implies not only the notion of progress in holiness, but also that of the removal of actual defilement; which is incompatible with the idea which these authors have themselves formed of the person of Jesus.

Lange sees in this act the indication of Jesus' guiltless participation in the collective defilement of mankind, by virtue of the solidarity of the race, and a voluntary engagement to deliver Himself up to death for the salvation of the world. This idea contains substantially the truth. We would express it thus: In presenting Himself for baptism, Jesus had to make, as others did, His ἐξομολόγησις, His confession of sins. Of what sins, if not of those of His people and of the world in general? He placed before John a striking picture of them, not with that pride and scorn with which the Jews spoke of the sins of the heathen, and the Pharisees of the sins of the publicans, but with the humble and compassionate tones of an Isaiah (Isaiah 63), a Daniel (Daniel 9), or a Nehemiah (Nehemiah 9), when they confessed the miseries of their people, as if the burden were their own. He could not have gone down into the water after such an act of communion with our misery, unless resolved to give Himself up entirely to the work of putting an end to the reign of sin. But He did not content Himself with making a vow. He prayed, the text tells us; He besought God for all that He needed for the accomplishment of this great task, to take away the sin of the world. He asked for wisdom, for spiritual strength, and particularly for the solution of the mystery which family records, the Scriptures, and His own holiness had created about His person. We can under stand how John, after hearing Him confess and pray thus, should say, “Behold the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world!” This is what Jesus did by presenting Himself for baptism.

What took place within Him during the performance of the rite? According to Schleiermacher, nothing at all. He knew that He was the Messiah, and, by virtue of His previous development, He already possessed every qualification for His work. John, His forerunner, was merely apprised of his vocation, and rendered capable of proclaiming it. Weizsäcker, Keim, and others admit something more. Jesus became at this time conscious of His redemptive mission. It was on the banks of the Jordan that the grand resolve was formed; there Jesus felt Himself at once the man of God and the man of His age; there John silently shared in His solemn vow; and there the “God wills it” sounded through these two elect souls. Lastly, Gess and several others think they must admit, besides a communication of strength from above, the gift of the Holy Spirit, but solely as a spirit of ministry, in view of the charge He was about to fulfil. These ideas, although just, are insufficient. The texts are clear. If Jesus was revealed to John, it was because He was revealed to Himself; and this revelation could not have taken place without being accompanied by a new gift. This gift could not refer to His work simply; for in an existence such as His, in which all was spirit and life, it was impossible to make a mechanical separation between work and life. The exercise of the functions of His office was an emanation from His life, and in some respects the atmosphere of His very personality. His entrance upon the duties of His office must therefore have coincided with an advance in the development of His personal life. Does not the power of giving imply possession in a different sense from that which holds when this power is as yet unexercised? Further, our documents, accepting the humanity of Jesus more thoroughly than our boldest theologians, overstep the bounds at which they stop. According to them, Jesus really received, not certainly as Certinthus, going beyond the limits of truth, taught, a heavenly Christ who came and united Himself to him for a time, but the Holy Spirit, in the full meaning of the term, by which Jesus became the Lord's anointed, the Christ, the perfect man, the second Adam, capable of begetting a new spiritual humanity. This Spirit no longer acted on Him simply, on His will, as it had done from the beginning; it became His proper nature, His personal life. No mention is ever made of the action of the Holy Spirit on Jesus during the course of His ministry. Jesus was more and better than inspired. Through the Spirit, whose life became His life, God was in Him, and He in God. In order to His being completely glorified as man, there remained but one thing more, that His earthly existence be transformed into the divine state. His transfiguration was the prelude to this transformation. In the development of Jesus, the baptism is therefore the intermediate point between the miraculous birth and the ascension.

But objections are raised against this biblical notion of the baptism of Jesus. Keim maintains that, since Jesus already possessed the Spirit through the divine influence which sanctified His birth, He could not receive it in His baptism. But would he deny that, if there is one act in human life which is free, it is the acquisition of the Spirit? The Spirit's influence is too much of the nature of fellowship to force itself on any one. It must be desired and sought in order to be received; and for it to be desired and sought, it must be in some measure known. Jesus declares (John 14:17), “that the world cannot receive the Holy Spirit, because it seeth Him not, neither knoweth Him.” The possession of the Spirit cannot therefore be the starting-point of moral life; it can only be the term of a more or less lengthened development of the soul's life. The human soul was created as the betrothed of the Spirit; and for the marriage to be consummated, the soul must have beheld her heavenly spouse, and learnt to love Him and accept Him freely. This state of energetic and active receptivity, the condition of every Pentecost, was that of Jesus at His baptism. It was the fruit of His previous pure development, which had simply been rendered possible by the interposition of the Holy Spirit in His birth (p. 94).

Again, it is said that it lessens the moral greatness of Jesus to substitute a sudden and magical illumination, like that of the baptism, for that free acquisition of the Spirit, that spontaneous discovery and conquest of self which are due solely to personal endeavour.

But when God gives a soul the inward assurance of adoption, and reveals to it, as to Jesus at His baptism, the love He has for it, does this gift exclude previous endeavour, moral struggles, even anguish often bordering on despair? No; so far from grace excluding human preparatory labour, it would remain barren without it, just as the human labour would issue in nothing apart from the divine gift. Every schoolmaster has observed marked stages in the development of children, crises in which past growth has found an end, and from which an entirely new era has taken its date. There is nothing, therefore, out of harmony with the laws of psychology in this apparently abrupt leap which the baptism makes in the life of Jesus.

2 d. The Miraculous Circumstances.

Keim denies them altogether. Everything in the baptism, according to him, resolves itself into a heroic decision on the part of Jesus to undertake the salvation of the world. He alleges 1. The numerous differences between the narratives, particularly between that of John and those of the Syn. This objection rests on misapprehensions (see above). 2. The legendary character of the prodigies related. But here one of two things must be true. Either our narratives of the baptism are the reproduction of the original evangelical tradition circulated by the apostles (Luke 1:2), and repeated during many years under their eyes; and in this case, how could they contain statements positively false? Or these accounts are legends of later invention; but if so, how is their all but literal agreement to be accounted for, and the well-defined and fixed type which they exhibit? 3. The internal struggles of Jesus and the doubts of John the Baptist, mentioned in the subsequent history, are not reconcilable with this supernatural revelation, which, according to these accounts, both must have received at the time of the baptism. But it is impossible to instance a single struggle in the ministry of Jesus respecting the reality of His mission; it is to pervert the meaning of the conversation at Caesarea Philippi (see Luke 9:18 et seq.), and of the prayer in Gethsemane, to find such a meaning in them. And as to the doubts of John the Baptist, they certainly did not respect the origin of the mission of Jesus, since it is to none other than Jesus Himself that John applies for their solution, but solely to the nature of this mission. The unostentatious and peaceful pro gress of the work of Jesus, His miracles purely of mercy (“ having heard of the works of Christ,” Matthew 11:2), contrasted so forcibly with the terrible Messianic judgment which he had announced as imminent (Luke 3:9; Luke 3:17), that he was led to ask himself whether, in accordance with a prevalent opinion of Jewish theology, Jesus was not the messenger of grace, the instrument of salvation; whilst another, a second (ἕτερος, Matthew 11:3), to come after Him, would be the agent of divine judgment, and the temporal restorer of the people purified from every corruption. John's doubt therefore respects, not the divinity of Jesus' mission, but the exclusive character of His Messianic dignity. 4. It is asked why John, if he believed in Jesus, did not from the hour of the baptism immediately take his place among His adherents? But had he not a permanent duty to fulfil in regard to Israel? Was he not to continue to act as a mediating agent between this people and Jesus? To abandon his special position, distinct as it was from that of Jesus, in order to rank himself amongst His disciples, would have been to desert his official post, and to cease to be a mediator for Israel between them and their King.

We cannot imagine for a moment, especially looking at the matter from a Jewish point of view, according to which every holy mission proceeds from above, that Jesus would determine to undertake the unheard-of task of the salvation of the world and of the destruction of sin and death, and that John could share this determination, and proclaim it in God's name a heavenly mission, without some positive sign, some sensible manifestation of the divine will. Jesus, says Keim, is not a man of visions; He needs no such signs; there is no need of a dove between God and Him. Has Keim, then, forgotten the real humanity of Jesus? That there were no visions during the course of His ministry, we concede; there was no room for ecstasy in a man whose inward life was henceforth that of the Spirit Himself. But that there had been none in His preceding life up to the very threshold of this new state, is more than any one can assert. Jesus lived over again, if we may venture to say so, the whole life of humanity and the whole life of Israel, so far as these two lives were of a normal character; and this was how it was that He so well understood them. Why should not the preparatory educational method of which God made such frequent use under the old covenant, the vision, have had its place in His inward development, before He reached, physically and spiritually, the stature of complete manhood?

3 d. The Narratives of the Baptism.

Before we pronounce an opinion on the origin of our synoptical narratives, it is important to compare the apocryphal narrations. In the Gospel of the Nazarenes, which Jerome had translated, the mother and brethren of Jesus invite Him to go and be baptized by John. He answers: “Wherein have I sinned, and why should I go to be baptized by him, unless, perhaps, this speech which I have just uttered be [a sin of] ignorance?” Afterwards, a heavenly voice addresses these words to Him: “My Son, in all the prophets I have waited for Thy coming, in order to take my rest in Thee: for it is Thou who art my rest; Thou art my first-born Son, and Thou shalt reign eternally.”

In the Preaching of Paul, Jesus actually confesses His sins to John the Baptist, just as all the others.

In the Ebionitish recension of the Gospel of the Hebrews, cited by Epiphanius, a great light surrounds the place where Jesus has just been baptized: then the plenitude of the Holy Spirit enters into Jesus under the form of a dove, and a divine voice says to Him: “Thou art my well-beloved Son; on Thee I have bestowed my good pleasure.” It resumes: “To-day have I begotten Thee.” In this Gospel also, the dialogue between Jesus and John, which Matthew relates before the baptism, is placed after it. John, after having seen the miraculous signs, says to Jesus, “Who then art Thou?” The divine voice replies, “This is my beloved Son, on whom I have bestowed my good pleasure.” John falls at His feet, and says to Him, “Baptize me!” and Jesus answers him, “Cease from that.”

Justin Martyr relates, that when Jesus had gone down into the water, a fire blazed up in the Jordan; next, that when He came out of the water, the Holy Spirit, like a dove, descended upon Him; lastly, that when He had ascended from the river, the voice said to Him, “Thou art my Son; to-day have I begotten Thee.”

Who cannot feel the difference between prodigies of this kind between these theological and amplified discourses attributed to God and the holy sobriety of our biblical narratives? The latter are the text; the apocryphal writings give the human paraphrase.

The comparison of these two kinds of narrative proves that the type of the apostolic tradition has been preserved pure, as the impress of a medal, in the common tenor of our synoptical narratives.

As to the difference between these narratives, they are not without importance. The principal differences are these: Matthew has, over and above the two others, the dialogue between Jesus and John which preceded the baptism, and which was only a continuation of the act of confession which Jesus had just made. The Ebionite Gospel places it after, because it did not understand this connection. The prayer of Jesus is peculiar to Luke, and he differs from the other two in the remarkable turn of the participle applied to the fact of the baptism of Jesus, and in the more objective form in which the miraculous facts are mentioned. Mark differs from the others only in the form of certain phrases, and in the expression, “He saw the heavens open. ” Holtzmann derives the accounts of Matthew and Luke from that of the alleged original Mark, which was very nearly an exact fac-simile of our canonical Mark. But whence did the other two derive what is peculiar to them? Not from their imagination, for an earnest writer does not treat a subject which he regards as sacred in this way. Either, then, from a document or from tradition? But this document or tradition could not contain merely the detail peculiar to each evangelist; the detail implies the complete narrative. If the evangelist drew the detail from it, he most probably took from it the narrative also. Whence it seems to us to follow, that at the basis of our Syn. we must place certain documents or oral narrations, emanating from the primitive tradition (in this way their common general tenor is explained), but differing in some details, either because in the oral tradition the secondary features of the narrative naturally underwent some modification, or because the private documents underwent some alterations, owing to additional oral information, or to writings which might be accessible.