Matthew 3:13-17 Commentary

Unlike in the other baptism accounts in the gospels, where Jesus is the one who has an epiphany of sorts, Matthew lets us know that John the Baptist witnesses the revelation of heaven. In Mark and Luke, the words that boom down are “You are my Son,” but here John hears along with Jesus, “This is my Son, the Beloved, with whom I am well pleased.”

For the man who had been preparing the way for this Messiah, what a joy that must have been. (Thinking back to just a month or so ago when we sat with John in his prison cell, awaiting death, we are soberly reminded about how difficult it can be to see and understand such truths in reality.) He is right, of course. As he emphatically tells Jesus, “I should be baptised by you!”

So why does Jesus say right now it’s about him being baptised by John? Why is it proper for him to be baptised by John? Jesus makes it a matter of fulfilling righteousness.

John has been calling God’s people back to the ways of God, asking them to commit to living the way God intends: to do justice, to love righteousness, to walk humbly with their God as the prophets had been inviting God’s people to do for hundreds of years. He even symbolically had them do so in the Jordan River, entering through the bush and bramble on the eastern bank and coming up out of the water on the western side: into the promised land. By going through John’s baptism, they symbolically identified with and repeated the people of God’s story—entering into the land flowing with milk and honey with renewed commitment to their God.

It is Jesus’s purpose to be united with God’s (his) people. Jesus represents and identifies with us in every way. Not only that, he will model and show us how to live: how to represent him and identify him in every way. John’s baptism was a call to repentance and righteousness, so for the one who needs no repentance to undergo it, Jesus proves that righteousness goes beyond the “negative” act of repentance and includes the “positive” outworking of faith in doing what is good and right in the eyes of the Lord.

In other words, righteousness is more than what we don’t do, it is also shown in what we do do.

As Jesus comes up from the water, the heavens are opened and the Spirit of God descends upon him. The symbolism cannot be missed: from the prophets like Ezekiel (1.1) to the experience of believers like Stephen in Acts 7.56 or the vision given to Peter in 10.11, when the heavens are ripped open the message that comes is a provision, a comfort, and the presence to see God’s people through what they are facing.

As such, these words of blessing and purpose and pleasure are for Jesus Christ as much as they are for John the Baptist. They are also for us as we now join in witnessing Jesus’s baptism. We continuously look for our revelations of the one whom the Spirit has anointed: Jesus is our Lord and Saviour. We learn to take his yoke upon us as our own baptism by his Spirit, filled with and producing Spirit-fruit. We know what is pleasing to the Lord, we know what the Lord requires of us as righteousness. We have a God who has come down to be with us, as us. God knows what it’s like to be us and has made a way for us to fulfill righteousness through him. Let it be so now.

Textual Point

This is not strictly a note about the biblical text, but one about the lectionary. Rather than the visit of the Magi, in the early third century church, it was this scene, the baptism of Jesus, that focused the Epiphany celebration. In fact, Epiphany was included with Easter and Pentecost as the major Christian festivals marked by the Church (The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church). In the fourth century, Epiphany came to the Western churches, and it was in their midst that the shift from Jesus’s baptism to the visit of the Magi took hold. (Hence most of the focus for our modern churches.) This year of the Lectionary helps us connect with an otherwise unknown part of our heritage.

Illustration Ideas

The exchange between Jesus and John about what is proper reminds me of another scene in the gospels: when Jesus washes his disciples’ feet in John 13. When Jesus gets to Simon Peter, Peter tries to say it should not be so, implying like John the Baptist that their roles should be reversed. In both instances, Jesus says that what he is doing is the way it should be for there is a purpose and meaning here that is not readily understood on the surface. Convinced by Jesus, Peter is as eager as John the Baptist to participate: “Lord, not my feet only but also my hands and my head!” (verse 9)

Have you ever had someone “ruin” something by being overly modest or questioning? Maybe you were the one who did so… the inability to accept a good thing, the need to be in control, or questions of your own worthiness can undermine relationship building. In our text today, Jesus is relationship building not only with the people of God but also with John the Baptist. If John had continued to press the point rather than receive what was being offered to him, imagine how frustrating that could have been.