Jesus At His Baptism And What It Means For Us

The following is an excerpt from 3-2-1 The Story of God, The World and You by Glen Scrivener.

Let’s return to a scene we touched on in the last chapter: Jesus’ baptism. This was his grand unveiling –a public launch event at the Jordan River with hundreds in attendance. The people were there to be washed in a religious ritual. It was a confession to God and the world: ‘I am a mess,’ ‘I’m a failure,’ ‘I’m filthy and I need a bath.’

We all know that there is a mess out there in the world. These people were confessing to a mess in their own hearts. So they came to be washed –that is, to be baptised. Stunningly, while they were all confessing to their filth, the Son of God shows up. And he doesn’t judge them, he joins them. He lines up with the messy people –shoulder to shoulder with all the moral failures –and he gets baptised. What is he doing? He’s joining us in our failure, so we can join him in his family.

 The Gospel-writer Luke describes the scene: When all the people were being baptised, Jesus was baptised too. And as he was praying, heaven was opened and the Holy Spirit descended on him in bodily form like a dove. And a voice came from heaven: ‘You are my Son, whom I love; with you I am well pleased.’ Luke 3:21-22

Normally heaven is closed to us. We don’t naturally have an angle on divine realities but here God is opening up to us and the picture we see is both strange and wonderful. When ‘the Jesus-God’ opens up, we see a loving union of THREE.

Here is the Christian vision of God and it’s utterly unique. For Christians, God is a Father loving his Son (Jesus) and filling him with his Spirit. At first glance we see THREE, but look closer and we understand how completely united they are. We see Jesus, but instantly we see that he is the Son of a Father and filled with his Spirit. We notice the Spirit, but the Spirit seems to be flowing from the Father to the Son. We hear the Father, but the Father is sending his Spirit and rapt in delight for his Son. When we understand each person, we realise how utterly dependent they are on the other two. They are THREE, but these three are one –forever united in love.

At the Jordan River we see what it looks like when heaven is ‘opened’. This is what there has always been. Before there was a world, there were these THREE in perfect harmony.

The night before Jesus died, he prayed publicly. Addressing his Father, he said, ‘you loved me before the creation of the world’.  What’s deeper than the universe? What’s the foundational principle of existence? Jesus says he was there before the universe began. What was it like? According to Jesus it was a Father pouring out love to his Son in the joy of the Holy Spirit. If you could open up heaven and look inside you would see precisely what they saw at the baptism: Jesus the beloved Son of the Father, filled with the Holy Spirit. The deepest reality of all is this union of love.

......The Tri-unity (or Trinity) is the loving unity of these three: the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. The word is not so important; its significance is cosmic: it means that love really is ultimate. The universe has come from love, been shaped by love and is made for love.

.....Jesus is the one from heaven who comes to us with an unparalleled view of God. ‘The Jesus-God’ is not a God we would have imagined by ourselves. No-one would invent ‘the Trinity’ as a religious comfort blanket. Jesus brings to the world the strangest and most surprising vision of God.