The Waters of Renewal
The Waters of Renewal
The Baptism of the Lord in Matthew
One of my great privileges as a deacon is being able to baptize, bringing new souls into the family of God. In addition, my wife and I also prepare all first-time parents by teaching a brief class in the sacrament. This is a longer theological post, unpacking the dense meanings of Matthew’s account of the Baptism of the Lord.
The Baptism of the Lord in Matthew (3:13-17) shows us in miniature the evangelist’s overriding mission of preaching a profoundly Jewish Jesus. Dense with quotes, allusions, and typology, Matthew’s adaptation of Markan material draws profound meaning from the deep waters of the Old Testament in order to communicate the gospel in a specifically Hebrew idiom.
The scene begins with Jesus traveling from Nazareth to Bethany-Beyond-the-Jordan, where the Jordan River is forded from Jericho, a distance of more than 80 miles that would have taken a journey of several days. At this location in contemporary Jordan, the remains of a Byzantine-era church straddle the waters, its foundation etched with centuries of Christian graffiti. East of the Judean Hills, surrounded by a wilderness, this place has deep associations with transitions and the passing of authority.
In Numbers 27:18ff, Moses has led the people as far as Mt Nebo, overlooking the southern ford of the Jordan. Here, the Lord tells him to bring Joshua, “a man in whom is the spirit,” before the priest Eleazar, to lay hands upon him and commission him in the sight of the congregation. Likewise, Elijah and Elisha come to the ford of the Jordan, where Elijah rolls up his mantle and strikes the waters, causing them to part so he can cross dry-shod (1 Kings 2:8).
Elijah asks Elisha what request he has before the Lord takes him, and Elisha requests a double-portion of the spirit. After the fiery chariot carries his master away, Elisha takes up the mantle, uses it to divide the waters once more, and crosses back to Jericho. Those who greet him on the other side remark that “The spirit of Elijah rests on Elisha.” (15) John has chosen the locus of his ministry well.
The Herald
While Luke describes a Baptist who is explicitly shown as the forerunner from his very conception (Luke 1:5-25), Matthew doesn’t trouble us with these details. John is introduced suddenly as a prophetic figure in the mode of Elijah, a Levite (Luke 1:5) preaching a penitential message. His clothing is a clue to his identity:
Now John wore a garment of camel’s hair, and a leather girdle around his waist; and his food was locusts and wild honey. (Mt 3:4)
Compare with the description of Elijah the Tishbite:
“He wore a garment of haircloth, with a girdle of leather about his loins.” (2 Kings 1:8)
Thus, John is instantly recognizable as a figure of Elijah. Furthermore, Elijah’s return was prophesied:
“Behold, I will send you Elijah the prophet before the great and terrible day of the Lord comes. And he will turn the hearts of fathers to their children and the hearts of children to their fathers, lest I come and smite the land with a curse.” (Malachi 4:5–6)
John eats only food than can be gathered, evoking the years Israel spent wandering in the wilderness. John isn’t just meant to proclaim Isaiah 40:3: “A voice cries: ‘In the wilderness prepare the way of the LORD, make straight in the desert a highway for our God.’” By his manner of dress, his words, the place of his ministry, and his message to repent for the kingdom of heaven is near, he is meant to embody it. “All” Judea and the surrounding regions went out to see him because they had been expecting him.
Baptism in the Jordan is a sign of Israel’s deliverance through water when Moses parted the red sea, and when Noah preserved a faithful remnant. It is a summons to holiness that Jesus will echo (Matthew 4:17). The call to repentance isn’t merely a call to be sorry for sin: it’s a call to live differently and turn to the Lord for guidance. It requires a conversion of the heart.
John refuses to baptize the Pharisees and Sadducees because they are hypocrites. They may profess sorrow for sins, but they neither change their behavior nor amend their lives. This is the key distinction between John’s baptism and that of Jesus and the apostles. John is calling for repentance that will make people worthy of the kingdom. Jesus is bringing that kingdom. John does not have the authority to forgive sins, but Jesus does. John is clearing a path to the door of the kingdom promised by God. Jesus is that door. This is what distinguishes the John’s baptism from Christian baptism.[1]
John’s recognition of this is the reason for his confusion when Jesus appears for baptism. He does not understand that the old law isn’t passing away in Jesus: it is being fulfilled. And to be fulfilled in all righteousness, Jesus will need to submit to the law. This is a foreshadowing of the crucifixion. He who is the Word, He who is the Law and justice, must submit to the law for the sake of justice, as an example and fulfillment of righteousness. Similarly, “Jesus, who is life itself, submit[s] to death so that death may be conquered once and for all.”[2]
John is the last prophet of the old covenant, come to prepare Israel for the coming of the messiah. One striking element of these passages in chapter 3 is a sequence of statements by John that are later repeated verbatim by Jesus. “Repent for the kingdom of heaven is at hand” (Matt 3:2, 4:17), “You brood of vipers….” (Matt 3:7, 23:33), and “Every tree that does not bear good fruit…” (Matt 3:10, 7:19), are all said by John in the passages leading up to the baptism of the Lord. By restating these passages, Jesus shows a continuity between his preaching and John’s, and by extension a continuity with the message of the prophets and an approval of John’s baptismal ministry.
The Spirit
Within this context, John predicts that his baptism “with water for repentance” is about to be superseded by one who will “baptize you with the Holy Spirit and with fire.” (3:11) As the narrative moves into the passage under consideration, the transition from John to Jesus is made particularly explicit by Matthew.
The Baptism of the Lord is a scene in four movements:
13: Jesus comes from Galilee to Jordan to be baptized by John.
14: In a section unique to Matthew, John attempts to prevent this, considering himself unworthy to baptize the Lord.
15: Jesus explains that John’s baptism of Jesus is fitting for the sake of righteousness, and John consents.
16-17: In a revelation of the Trinity, the heavens are opened, and Father, Son, and Holy Spirit manifest, either to Jesus, John, or everyone gathered. The Father calls Jesus his Son.
Is it significant that Jesus comes from Nazareth? In either a pun, a kind of typology, or an example of linguistic confusion, the words Nazarene, meaning someone from Nazareth, and a Nazirite, someone who has dedicated his life to God (Numbers 6:1-21), are conflated. As Solomon says in Judges 16:17: “I have been a Nazirite to God from my mother’s womb.”[3]
Furthermore, Amos says “And I raised up some of your children to be prophets and some of your youths to be Nazirites,” explicitly in the context of the Jews wandering in the desert for 40 years, drawing together the idea of a Nazirite and the crossing of the Jordan. (Amos 2:11-11)
Matthew is by far the longest and most developed baptism account in the synoptics: five verses in Matthew versus three in Mark and two in Luke. Most of the synoptic differences are minor. Matthew and Mark make a point of Jesus coming from Galilee to the Jordan (about 20 miles from Jerusalem), and all three depict the spirit descending upon Jesus “like a dove,” although Luke adds “in bodily form.” The phrase “This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased” also appears in all three accounts. In the Gospel of John, the baptism and descent of the spirit is not shown directly, but rather reported by the Baptist as he sees Jesus.
The most notable distinction is a two verse exchange in which John demurs from baptizing Jesus until persuaded:
14 John would have prevented him, saying, “I need to be baptized by you, and do you come to me?” 15 But Jesus answered him, “Let it be so now; for thus it is fitting for us to fulfil all righteousness.” Then he consented.
A common interpretation of this addition is that it’s meant to paper over the embarrassment of the greater (Jesus) being baptized by the lesser (John), and of one with sin baptizing one without sin. There is no need for convoluted criteria to make sense of this, however, when we consider these lines in the context of John’s primarily Jewish audience, for “righteousness” (Gk: dikaiosunē) has profound significance in the Bible. It denotes the “uprightness and faithfulness of God and his people (Deuteronomy 6:25; Isaiah 48:18).”[4] It is a covenant word, used seven times in Matthew and 85 times in the rest of the New Testament.[5]
Righteousness is a quality of God, who fulfills his covenant promises through mighty deeds in the Old Testament, and is now fulfilling all righteousness through the incarnation. The righteousness of the new covenant is given in baptism. So there is no criterion of embarrassment here: only good covenant theology. If Jesus is to fulfill the law, he must show himself submitting to it. Matthew develops this theme with his additional lines because the precise words he uses have profound meaning for Jews, his primary audience. Jesus is fulfilling all righteousness under the law. Jesus is being a good Jew.
Furthermore, the sacramental sense of baptism does not apply to John’s baptism, because it only becomes a sacrament with the baptism of Jesus. John has already made this clear earlier in the chapter when he says that
I baptize you with water for repentance, but he who is coming after me is mightier than I, whose sandals I am not worthy to carry; he will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and with fire. Matthew 3:11.
Jesus baptizes baptism, sanctifying the waters of the Jordan and the waters of all the Earth for use in the Sacrament by opening the way for the descent of the Holy Spirit. St. Paul makes clear that the baptism of Jesus changes us: “For by one Spirit we were all baptized into one body—Jews or Greeks, slaves or free—and all were made to drink of one Spirit.” (1 Corinthians 12:13) St. Thomas Aquinas looks to Ambrose and Chrysostom when considering this point:
As Ambrose says on Luke 3:21 ‘Our Lord was baptized because He wished, not to be cleansed, but to cleanse the waters, that, being purified by the flesh of Christ that knew no sin, they might have the virtue of baptism;’ and, as Chrysostom says (Hom. iv. in Matth.), ‘that He might bequeath the sanctified waters to those who were to be baptized afterwards.’ (STh., III q.39 a.1 resp.)[6]
Thus, in the waters of the Jordan, a sacrament is initiated, and water becomes the ordinary matter for the transmission of grace.
The Heavens Opened
Immediately after the baptism, “the heavens were opened and he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove, and alighting on him; and lo, a voice from heaven, saying, ‘This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased.’” The passage is explicitly trinitarian: the Son is baptized, the Spirit descends, and the Father speaks. Christ did not need to receive the Holy Spirit in baptism because he “possessed the fullness of the Holy Spirit from the moment of his conception.”[7]
Rather, just as Christ was beginning His mission, so the Holy Spirit was beginning His action in the world through Christ. In the Gospel of John, the Baptist reveals the words God spoke to him: “He on whom you see the Spirit descend and remain, this is he who baptizes with the Holy Spirit.” (John 1:33) Since John is the last prophet of the Old Covenant, this verse takes on the quality of a prophetic utterance announcing the inbreaking of the Spirit through baptism of the only Son of God.
The descent of the Holy Spirit also suggests the anointing of the Jewish Kings, as when Samuel tells Saul that “the spirit of the LORD will come mightily upon you” (1 Samuel 10:6). Likewise, “the Spirit of the LORD came mightily upon David from that day forward” at his anointing (1 Samuel 16:13).[8]
With a vision of the heavens opening, Matthew evokes Ezekiel 1:1-4, where “the heavens were opened” for the call of the prophet, as is appropriate for Christ at the beginning of His mission. The image of the dove is dense with meaning from the very moment of creation, where the Spirit of God moves upon the face of the waters. (Genesis 1:2) The creation account thus “depicts metaphorically God’s loving care for the world and his preparation of it for the living creatures which were to come out of it.”[9]
The Talmud (b. Ḥag. 15a) explicitly links the hovering of the spirit at creation to a dove, saying it is “like a dove that hovers over her young without touching them.”[10] Israel herself is likened to a dove in Hosea 7:11, although not in a flattering way. Most notably, as we’ll see with patristic interpretations, the dove is Noah’s bird in Genesis 8:8–12, signifying the cleansing waters of the flood, renewal, and new life. Finally, according to Bultmann, “in Persia it is a symbol for the divine power that fills the king (Bultmann, History, 248–50).”[11]
The words of God derive from Isaiah:
Behold my servant, whom I uphold,
my chosen, in whom my soul delights
I have put my Spirit upon him,
he will bring forth justice to the nations. (Isaiah 42:1)
Instead of a Servant, however, God is identifying his son, as in Psalm 2:7 “You are my son, today I have begotten you.” God is announcing not merely the fulfilment of a particular passage or prophesy in Jesus, but the fulfillment of the entire word of God in this Word made flesh.
Patristics
Patristic interpretations of the baptism of the Lord focus on a variety of issues, beginning with why the greater one allowed himself to be baptized by the lesser, and why one without sin needed to subject himself to a rite intended to wash away sin. Jerome outlined three reasons for the baptism in his Commentary on Matthew:
An act of humility to show submission to the law
A confirmation of the validity of John’s ministry in general and baptism with water in particular.
The sanctification of the rite itself in the descent of the spirit, which makes holy the waters of baptism and shows “forth the coming of the Holy Spirit in the [baptismal] bath of believers.”[12]
Origin argued that Jesus submitted to John’s baptism as a sign that Jesus was “meek and lowly in heart,” quoting Jesus’s own injunction in Matthew 11:29 (Origen, Fragment 52)[13]. St. John Chrysostom follows a similar line of thought, connecting the baptism to the incarnation and passion as examples of his descent to humanity from his divinity, “for in these humiliations His exaltation doth most shine forth.”[14] John’s attempt to demur from the baptism is seen as a clear indication of this, since John acknowledges Jesus to be without sin and thus not in need of baptism.
When Jesus answers that it is fitting for now to fulfill all righteousness, Chrysostom sees this as an indication all the commandments must be acknowledged and performed. In this interpretation, Jesus must submit to the law in order to deliver us from it. He imagines Jesus saying,
“I am come to do away the curse that is appointed for the transgression of the law. I must therefore first fulfill it all, and having delivered you from its condemnation, in this way bring it to an end. It becometh me therefore to fulfill the whole law, by the same rule that it becometh me to do away the curse that is written against you in the law: this being the very purpose of my assuming flesh, and coming hither.”[15]
Theodore of Mopsuestia expands on this idea, calling the baptism of John at once
“perfect and imperfect. It was perfect according to the precept of the law, but it was imperfect in that it did not supply remission of sins but merely made people fit for receiving the perfect one.” (Fragment 13.25[16])
The descent of the Holy Spirit and the voice of God has fairly uniform interpretations in the Patristic era. The form of the dove, according to Origin, recalls Noah’s Ark, “since wherever there is reconciliation with God there is a dove.”[17] St. Hilary noted that Jesus is revealed by the dove and the voice, and thus “God’s Son is manifested both by hearing and by sight.”[18] St. Augustine, exhibiting a more fully developed sense of the trinitarian implications of this passage, writes that it presents the Trinity “in a clear way: the Father in the voice, the Son in the man, the Holy Spirit in the dove.”[19] (Sermon 2.1-2)
Conclusion
Jesus inaugurates his public life by submitting to the water baptism of John, making it a spirit baptism and thus sanctifying it. Dense with meaning for the Jews gathered at the Jordan and, later, those listening to the carefully-shaped account of Matthew, this event is both sign and sacrament. It is a sign because, as we’ve seen, the location, actions, words, visions, matter (water), and even the clothing carried extremely specific meanings for a first-century Jewish audience. It looks both backwards and forward: backwards to the salvation history of the Israelites and their encounters with the divine power and meaning of waters, and forward to the crucifixion, and the “‘baptism of his bloody death.” (CCC 535)[20]
In the waters of Jordan, Jesus submitted not because he had sin to wash away, but to “fulfill all righteousness.” He submits to the law because it is the will of the Father that all men do so. It is an act of love in which he who will conquer death on the cross submits to the penalty for Adam’s sin in order to reverse it. “The heavens that Adam’s sin had closed,” are opened, allowing the Holy Spirit to break through and sanctify the waters as “a prelude to the new creation.” (CCC 536)
We follow Jesus down into the waters of baptism, and rise along with him. Everything is changed. The old life is washed away, the former man drowned. We die to live again. In the Jordan, Christ drew all history into himself, from the waters of creation to the waters of destruction, from the waters of purification to the waters that sustain us. These are the waters that flow from Eden (Genesis 2:10) and the threshold of the temple (Ezekiel 47:1). They are the water the Lord will turn wine to bring joy (John 2:1-10), and the water that flowed from his pierced side to bring us freedom (John 19:34). They are the waters of new life.
[1] This paragraph is informed by Stanley Hauerwas, Matthew, Brazos Theological Commentary on the Bible (Grand Rapids, MI: Brazos Press, 2006), 45
[2] Hauerwas, 48.
[3] Stephen Goranson, “Nazarenes,” ed. David Noel Freedman, The Anchor Yale Bible Dictionary (New York: Doubleday, 1992), 1049.
[4] Curtis Mitch, “Introduction to the Gospels,” in The Ignatius Catholic Study Bible: The New Testament (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2010), 12.
[5] Ibid.
[6] Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica, trans. Fathers of the English Dominican Province (London: Burns Oates & Washbourne, n.d.).
[7] Saint Matthew’s Gospel, The Navarre Bible (Dublin; New York: Four Courts Press; Scepter Publishers, 2005), 40.
[8] Edward P. Sri, Mystery of the Kingdom: On the Gospel of Matthew (Steubenville, OH: Emmaus Road Publishing, 1999), 36–37.
[9] E. F. Sutcliffe, “Genesis,” in A Catholic Commentary on Holy Scripture, ed. Bernard Orchard and Edmund F. Sutcliffe (Toronto; New York; Edinburgh: Thomas Nelson, 1953), 182.
[10] Marcus Jastrow, A Dictionary of the Targumim, the Talmud Babli and Yerushalmi, and the Midrashic Literature and II (London; New York: Luzac & Co.; G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1903), 1468.
[11] Ulrich Luz, Matthew 1–7: A Commentary on Matthew 1–7, ed. Helmut Koester, Rev. ed., Hermeneia—a Critical and Historical Commentary on the Bible (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2007).
[12] Jerome, Commentary on Matthew, ed. Thomas P. Halton, trans. Thomas P. Scheck, vol. 117, The Fathers of the Church (Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America Press, 2008), 70.
[13] Manlio Simonetti, ed., Matthew 1–13, Ancient Christian Commentary on Scripture (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2001), 50–51.
[14] John Chrysostom, “Homilies of St. John Chrysostom, Archbishop of Constantinople on the Gospel according to St. Matthew,” in Saint Chrysostom: Homilies on the Gospel of Saint Matthew, ed. Philip Schaff, trans. George Prevost and M. B. Riddle, vol. 10, A Select Library of the Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers of the Christian Church, First Series (New York: Christian Literature Company, 1888), 75.
[15] John Chrysostom, 76.
[16] Simonetti, 52–53.
[17] Simonetti, 53.
[18] Ibid.
[19] Augustine of Hippo, “Sermons on Selected Lessons of the New Testament,” in Saint Augustine: Sermon on the Mount, Harmony of the Gospels, Homilies on the Gospels, ed. Philip Schaff, trans. R. G. MacMullen, vol. 6, A Select Library of the Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers of the Christian Church, First Series (New York: Christian Literature Company, 1888), 259.
[20] Catholic Church, Catechism of the Catholic Church, 2nd Ed. (Washington, DC: United States Catholic Conference, 2000), 136–137.