Then it happened during that time when everyone else had been baptized that
Jesus came from Nazareth to the Jordan to John to be baptized by him. John
would have stopped him saying, “I need to be baptized by You, and you are
coming to me?” But Jesus replied, “Let it be this way for now; for it is
proper that we should fulfill what is in accord with God’s will.” Then John
acquiesced, and Jesus was baptized by John in the Jordan.
Just as He came up out of the water praying, the heavens opened above Him, and
the Holy Spirit of God descended onto Him in the form of a dove, and rested on
Him; and a Voice came out of the heavens saying, “This is my Beloved Son, in
Whom I am well pleased.”
(Matt. 3:13-17; Mark 1:9-11; Luke 3:21-22)
Earlier, John didn’t want to baptize the Pharisees and the Sadducees because he felt they weren’t worthy of it. Now, John doesn’t feel worthy to baptize Jesus. Remember that John calls his baptism a “…baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins…” If we say that Jesus was fully human in every way except that he was sinless, then we can understand why John would not want to baptize Jesus. Jesus’ reply is that this is the right thing to do right now, for we are doing God’s will. What we might also realize is that by asking John to baptize Him, Jesus is validating John’s ministry. Notice that Jesus uses the word we, meaning He as well as John, should fulfill what is in accord with God’s will.
Scripture doesn’t tell us if Jesus and John spent time together in their youth, however, we remember that John “recognized” Jesus even before either of them were born (Luke 1:41). Even though they probably grew up some distance apart, even of they had never met, surely John would have heard stories from relatives of events surrounding Jesus’ birth, his trip to the temple, and perhaps other extraordinary stories, which are not recorded in the gospels.
In taking this step of baptism, Jesus demonstrates acceptance of God’s plan and purpose for Him. In a way, the ritual of baptism is symbolic of a sort of death–the immersion in the water signifies death to the old way of life–and the coming up out of the water signifies resurrection to a new way of life with God.
That the Holy Spirit descends and rests on Jesus is significant, in that the scene demonstrates the manifestation of the Holy Spirit in the world. Later, we will see Jesus claim this anointing of the Spirit when He is in the synagogue in Nazareth as reported by Luke 4:18, “The Spirit of God is upon Me.”
In various translations, the Holy Spirit is called The Advocate (NRSV), The Counselor (NIV), The Helper (NIJV), and The Comforter (KJV). In the original languages, there were many words for the Spirit. As used here, the word for Holy Spirit is parakletos and means an intercessor, consoler, advocate, and comforter. The Holy Spirit is God’s power in the world accessible to human beings to help them get through their every day. It is the Holy Spirit who is with you at all times to provide strength, courage, and spiritual guidance as asked for. As the Holy Spirit rested on Jesus that day at the Jordan, the Holy Spirit rests on each of us and provides the inner strength to go on when we feel we don’t have anything left.
In Matthew we read, Just as He came up out of the water praying, the heavens opened above Him…. We find similar words in Luke: As Jesus was praying, heaven was opened… while the same verse in Mark says; As Jesus came up out of the water, He saw the heavens open…. It may be interpreted that Mark seems to indicate that perhaps Jesus was the only one to see the heavens open up, while Matthew and Luke leave room for the interpretation that there were others who witnessed this scene.
However, in a peculiar twist, in the next verse, the phraseology of the writers have Mark and Luke indicating that possibly only Jesus could hear God, while in Matthew God seems to address the crowd. Both the gospels of Mark and Luke use the phraseology, “You are my Beloved Son, in Whom I delight,” while in Matthew the verse reads: “This is my Beloved Son, in Whom I am well pleased.”
We should not be too concerned with the differences in wording. Remember that the gospel writers are writing years after the fact and are recording what the witnesses remember. Scholars try to determine if God was speaking directly to Jesus when no one else was around, or was speaking to the crowd who had gathered to be baptized. Since John died not long after Jesus’ ministry began, and since Jesus most likely didn’t sit for an interview, the information presented would lead us to believe there were other witnesses to the event.
The important point to remember here is that God speaks! After four hundred years of silence, God speaks! God has broken the silence and once again will be revealed to humankind–through Jesus.
Now Jesus, beginning his ministry at about age thirty, who supposedly was the son of Joseph, was Himself descended from Heli,
|
son of Matthat |
son of Eliezer |
son of Isaac |
Much has been made over the “lost years” of Jesus–why was nothing ever recorded of the intervening years from the age of twelve to thirty. Some say He traveled to Asia, to India, to China, to learn from the Holy People of other cultures, where His whereabouts remained unknown. Along with the assumption that Joseph died when Jesus was still quite young, others say He stayed home and worked in the carpentry business to support His mother and siblings till they were old enough to take over the work, so that there was nothing out of the norm to report. It could also just be that he lived a normal life out of the limelight until it was time to begin His ministry at the same age other rabbis did.
Over the years, there have been many who have asserted that there are so many “discrepancies” in the Bible, that it only proves that the Bible is not true. They point to the differences in the supposed genealogies of Jesus as glaring evidence. For example, Matthew 1:16 identifies Jacob as the father of Joseph, while Luke 3:23 says that Heli was Joseph’s father. The NIV wording for Luke 3:23 reads: Now Jesus himself was about thirty years old when he began his ministry. He was the son, so it was thought, of Joseph, the son of Heli…” while the wording in Matthew 1:16 says, “…and Jacob the father of Joseph, the husband of Mary, of whom was born Jesus who was the Christ.”
Biblical scholar, Walter Liefeld, wrote in the Expositor’s Bible Commentary that there is more than one possibility for differences in the two genealogies. For example:
“1. Joseph’s lineage is given in Matthew, Mary’s in Luke; 2. the legal line is traced in Matthew, the actual line of descent in Luke and/or 3. there was a levirate marriage at one or more points in the line.”
In a levirate marriage, a widow of a childless man could marry his brother. Any child of that marriage could legally be considered the child of the deceased man and perpetuate his name. Then, in a genealogy, the child could be listed under his natural or his legal father. In other words, according to this theory, Joseph’s grandfather Matthan married Estha and fathered Jacob (according to Matthew). After Matthan’s death, an unrelated Melchi married Estha and begat Heli, Joseph’s grandfather on Luke’s list. Jacob and Heli would then have been half-brothers. Heli married and died childless; his half-brother Jacob married the widow in a levirate marriage and fathered Joseph. If this was the case, then Luke provided the legal ancestry, while Matthew provided the physical ancestry of Joseph.
The Bible scholar, Johnston M. Cheney, in his The Life of Christ in Stereo, presents a different theory and offers this reading of the Lukean passage: Now Jesus, making His appearance at about age thirty, being a son, as was supposed, of Joseph, was Himself descended from Heli…, and offers the following justification for this interpretation:
“…this rendering is grammatically sound and clarifies the true intent of the passage. It only involves the addition of two commas in the Greek (which had no punctuation in the original) and a proper recognition of the initial pronoun…(Luke’s) point here is that Jesus was descended not from Joseph but from Heli through Mary.”… “This explains the differing genealogies in Matthew and Luke. Matthew traces the genealogy of Joseph to establish Jesus’ legal right to the throne. He purposely does this through Joseph to Solomon and David, for the kingly line had to come through Solomon, not Nathan, the progenitor of Mary. Luke, on the other hand, emphasizes the true humanity of Jesus, and therefore, traces His physical descent through Mary to Adam.”
It should be noted that this rendering was well received by the Evangelical Theological Society, as well as other competent Greek Scholars.
That the names on this list in Luke contain names different from that in Matthew’s list doesn’t suggest inconsistency. In any genealogical list not every ancestor is mentioned…just those who would have attained some significance to people in the first century, at least to the people compiling the list. It should be noted that Luke’s is the only genealogical list ever found which traces itself back to God.
No conclusive evidence exists as to which interpretation is correct. What is evident, however, is that both genealogies are closely connected with Jewish forms and thought, and both are attempts to express more fully the Christian conviction that Jesus is the fulfillment of the hope of Israel.
This ends our study for today.
Points to Ponder