“The Case for Christ - His commitment/ Baptism of Repentance” 

Matthew 3:13-17: 'Then cometh Jesus from Galilee to Jordan unto John, to be baptized of him. But John forbad Him, saying, 'I have need to be baptized of Thee, and comest Thou to me?'

Jesus came! At last, Jesus came! He openly faced the public to fulfill the entire work of God’s saving plan.

Jesus came! It was the time now to inaugurate His work and to assume His office, as He, too, joined the others who sought John out for baptism.

But why would He come to John?  Why would Jesus seek out John's baptism as His first work among the people? John’s baptism was the baptism of repentance. Did Jesus need to repent?

John had seen many, many people come to him for baptism - men from all over the countryside - men sent from the Jerusalem headquarters - people from Judea - people from 
many of the regions around the Jordan River - scores and scores of people followed John's teaching and preaching. 

And, in the lives of many of these baptismal converts, John saw their need of repentance - he saw their sinful ways, he saw their need to change certain habits - he saw their need to change their thinking about things. 

But Jesus?  Jesus?  He was God’s Son, the ‘Lamb’ Who God had sent to take away the sin of the world! 

His life was a sinless one, from birth to death. He ‘Who did no sin, neither was guile found in His mouth’ was the One Who was, instead, about to be ‘...made...sin for us...’. 

All the value of His redemption work depended on the sinlessness of His life among men.

And - here - sinful John was facing that perfect One Who was looking at John through absolutely pure and sinless eyes!  Why should He seek out this baptism of repentance when He had nothing to repent of?

It is no wonder John stopped short when he looked into the face of Jesus Who was standing before him asking to be baptized by John!  

'What! - Are You, - the true and real 'Lamb of God Who taketh away the sin of the world' - are You coming for baptism to me?

You are the One Who was before me; You are the One Whose sandal straps I am unworthy to untie; You are the One for Whom this baptism of repentance is preparing the way.

Why - You are the actual salvation of God Who is standing here in front of me and - You are coming to me, a sinner, for baptism!

John was totally overcome with the consciousness of the absolute perfection and sinlessness of this Man standing before him to be baptized. He was checked at once!

There was no way he could lay hands on this Man, Jesus, and immerse him in baptism! He felt so compelled to say to Jesus, ‘I have need to be baptized of Thee and comest Thou to me?’

‘I need You to baptize me - I am the one who needs this baptism - why, then, are You coming to me?’

And, of course, John was right in feeling that way about Jesus - the baptism of repentance definitely had no place in the life of Jesus. He had nothing to repent of, no sin to be put away.

Why, then, did Jesus submit Himself to John's baptism? Why did He come with all of the hundreds and hundreds of people who had come?

Jesus gave the answer to the question. He said, 'Suffer it now: permit it now: for thus it becometh, or it is proper for us to fulfill all righteousness.' (Mt 3:15)

‘Yes, John, this baptism has an exceptional character attached to it. Yes - there seems to be an inconsistency about this request for this baptism of repentance.

You are right! It is different from all the others, but there is a special reason for this to take place. So let it just go on - for this is how we need to fulfill all our duty to God. It is right for us to do everything that God requires!’

Yes - there is the reason! This is why Jesus came to be baptized. This was all in line with fulfilling the righteousness outlined in God’s salvation plan.

Jesus was affirming that it was God's will for John to baptize Him - and John and Jesus were fulfilling that will together - discharging that divine, righteous design - conforming with all that God desired. 

And, in doing this, Jesus was affirming that He was willing to ‘learn obedience’ by suffering the humiliation of identifying with sinners and entering the baptism of repentance with them.

He was affirming that it was His intention to fulfill the Divine Plan, with its divinely-assigned work - to be obedient to His Father’s will right through to the very last and least conceivable part or point, right down to the very last jot and tittle. (Mat 5:18)

He was affirming that He was willing to become its servant unto salvation and finish the assigned role of The Suffering Servant by identifying with man to the fullest measure possible. 

He was willing to sustain this life as a man, yet do it without sin - He was going to be faithful to prove Himself as 'the Lord our Righteousness', as the One Who was made unto us...righteousness.’ (Jer 23:6; 2 Cor 5:21)

He was affirming His willingness to make man partaker of His own sinless righteousness - to take man through the change Himself, as we will see in a moment.   

Yes - Jesus knew this was a needful act in order to complete to the very last measure every single bit of the divine will - He was fulfilling all righteousness to be the spotless, perfect Lamb God gave to the world.

He - the Sinless One - identified with every one of those sinners who came to John for baptism - with all sinners for all time - with John - with us all! 

He was going to be made sin so that we might be made the righteousness of God in Him.

Yes - He was putting Himself alongside all of us He had come to save and, thereby, He was symbolizing God’s majestic and remarkable plan of salvation for all sinners.

Imagine - the Son of God - the divine, holy, righteous Son of God - was taking a place right alongside of each one of us.

He - Who knew no sin - had nothing to repent of - took a lowly place among those who did and do have sin to repent of. 

What was He saying to us when He did that?

When He went down into the water, He was saying to every sinner: 'I know - oh, yes, I know how hard it is not to sin - I know what sin does - I know the battle - yes, I know all about it!’

The Scriptures do not tell us of the battles He must have felt within Himself as He had been growing up and maturing the past thirty years of His life!

Can we possibly imagine what it must have been like for Him? I think not!  We really cannot - for one moment - put ourselves in His place to understand it fully. 

We live each day of our lives and, in each one, we are so conscious of ‘...the evil thereof’ and the struggle to end the cycle of sin’s influence upon us.

But Jesus must have felt sin’s sting and its powerful grip far beyond our capacity to grasp its meaning!

Oh - how well He was able to understand the battle of each day’s struggles. Oh, how well He knew - beyond a shadow of a doubt - of the hell men faced each of their living days!

Yes - He could link Himself with man's deepest need - that need to cancel out sin - that hideous, destructive, horrible condition that would always be man's most fatal failure of life. 

So, when He was immersed, He was saying: ‘yes - sin has unbelievable power - it has tenacity - it is an undeniable reality in man's life - but, I pledge to change all that!’ 

He was going to follow through with the entire design set by God - not only to cancel sin out altogether - but to rescue men from the damning plight of sin’s course.

God spoke through John’s prophesy about what that would mean - how it would be carried through to completion.

John told it to the people: ‘I, indeed, baptize you with water; but there cometh He that is mightier than I, the latchet of Whose shoes I am not worthy to unloose; He shall baptize you in the Holy Spirit and fire: Whose fan is in His hand and He will thoroughly purge His floor, and will gather the wheat into the garner: but the chaff He will burn with fire unquenchable.’ 

John was realizing and saying, ‘I can only baptize you in water to get you ready for His baptism - to encourage you to change your mind about your behavior and attitudes of mind - to stop doing those things displeasing to God and to encourage you to bring forth fruit that shows you are repenting.

But, that is as far as I can take you. It does not remit your sins - it does not pardon your sins - it does not change you - it can only change your mind.

It is when you have a mind change, that you will be ready for the One Who can declare you pardoned and Who can change your nature to correspond with that pardon. And He is going to do that with fire and with the Holy Spirit.’

This is what God was promising in His Son - the exchange of His perfect righteousness for the ugliness of sin’s power and grip!  What an exchange!

John knew the fruitlessness of preaching just words - they might have some effect for a little while, perhaps. But - wait until the first upset comes along - and, then, what happens! I cannot tell you how many times my cup got bumped after a good, rousing sermon even before I got home - sometimes even before I got to my car in the parking lot!

John’s baptism could only go so far - he could not save the people by his preaching nor his baptism. 

But Jesus showed His willingness and readiness to negate 
John’s baptism by going through the baptism that He was to be baptized with - through to PARDONING - through to REPLACING - that was the Plan!

What an exchange that was going to be! John’s baptism was absolutely powerless next to that. 

Sin was going to be dealt a death blow, once and for all, and Jesus was going to replace it with His goodness.

Do you understand that exchange?

It is such a tremendous and extraordinary divine work - only superlatives could begin to reach the peak of what this means to us today!

John was using agricultural language when he prophesied this.  As you may know, to clean and refine the grain, it  was tossed into the air with a tool called a winnowing fork over and over and over again.

The process separated the outer husks, called the chaff, from the kernel of wheat inside. The wheat would fall on the threshing floor and - when all the chaff was cleaned from it - the grain would be gathered up and stored into barns and then the threshing floor would be swept clean.

So what did John mean when he used this example to illustrate the effect of Jesus’ saving work?

Jesus was going to destroy - but He would create again; He was going to burn up and sweep clean - but He would raise up again - that would be the nature of His saving work.

He will judge sin for what it is: its power to hold fast to man’s inner being would be broken;  it would start with the axe at the root of the tree - get rid of the tree - settle the whole sin problem - pardon man’s sin once and for all!

But God did not leave man hanging there - He would create something new in its place - His Son’s work was going to guarantee the replacement!

It was going to be with His own perfect Self in His own perfect righteousness!

Now - do not think that this is a magical potent that we are able to pack together into a carrying bag and travel blissfully through life with.

Oh no! Here is where the winnowing fan comes in - this, too, would be part of Christ’s work - His work of washing, of cleansing, of refining, of purifying, of refreshing, and of energizing - that is a monstrous, humongous task for Him to complete.

This new tree is so tremendous - so gargantuan - so absolutely stupendous - it needs the winnowing process outlined by God to establish the good, solid root system to support it!

It means that the wheat of His Person must work its way through from the inside to the outside under His divine Hand!

That process would need nothing less than the divine fire and the divine Holy Spirit to carry it out! And, that is an amazing feat - to say the very least! 

Do you catch a little something of that invaluable exchange of man’s life for Christ’s life that is represented in the picture of John’s prophecy?

The threshing floor of a man’s heart will get cleaned up with the garnering and the gathering of the wheat after the sin problem has been settled in his heart.

And this was not going to take place without a great price that God’s Son would pay.

Jesus later said of Himself, ‘I have a baptism to be baptized with; and how am I straightened till it be accomplished.'

It was not going to be a ‘road of ease’ for Him, neither a ‘bed of roses’ to accomplish this for man - Jesus had no grandiose ideas about that! 

He could not baptize with fire, until He Himself had been baptized in the baptism of His death, a baptism far greater than John’s could have ever been. 

Jesus knew the issue of sin. He knew these people on the banks of the Jordan were making His death necessary.

He knew their need - and our need - He knew what sin really is - He knew the only way by which men would be rescued from it - He knew God's full and perfect plan of redemption!

So - Jesus started publicly with His consent to identify with man, by committing Himself to man for pardoning man’s sin - and by committing Himself to the purposes of God for changing man’s condition - His righteousness replacing man’s sinful way!  

It was a commitment that only God could carry out - no man could master such an assignment! 

This is how He began His public ministry toward God's way of saving men. 

And God was well pleased with Him as He sent His Spirit to light upon Him with the message: 'This is My beloved Son in Whom I am well pleased.'

Lord willing, we will continue with this the next time.

In the meantime, will you consider seriously all of these thoughts. Let them settle deep within each of us as the Lord’s winnowing fan does its work.

He has graciously identified Himself with us in this supreme way. Can we do any less than identify ourselves with Him in just yielding to His perfect way?

Meditate on this - ponder it each day of this new week.  

Let us pray together: ‘Our Father, which art in heaven, hallowed by Thy Name! thy kingdom come, Thy will be done, on earth, as it is in heaven. give us this day, our daily bread, and forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil - for Thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory forever and ever. Amen!’

Song: ‘Thou art worthy, Thou are worthy, Thou art worthy, O Lord. Thou art worthy to receive glory, glory and honor and power. For Thou hast created - hast all things created - 
for Thou hast created all things. And for Thy pleasure, they are created, Thou art worthy, O Lord.’  

The Lord bless you in the Name of Jesus! Amen.