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Hey Bible Readers! I'm Tara-Leigh Cobble and I'm your host for The Bible Recap.
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Today we covered three accounts of the baptism of Jesus. Anytime we cover different Gospel accounts of the same event, there's a good chance I'll merge all the details into just one collective recap - especially if it's on the same day. So that also means that if we read something and I don't address it in that day's recap - hang in there - because it's probably coming soon.
Today we also read the Gospel of Mark for the first time. As we've discussed, each of the four Gospels has a unique lens on who Jesus is. Mark's lens is "Jesus as Servant". So now we have all four lenses. Those four lenses are: Matthew: "Jesus as King", Mark: "Jesus as Servant", Luke: "Jesus as Man", and John: "Jesus as God". You can see how they present different ideas that seem juxtaposed - king and servant, man and God - but that work together to help us learn how to connect the different aspects of who Jesus is.
We open in the desert with JTB, where he lives on locusts and honey. Gross, right? But the good news is: This maybe wasn't referring to bugs. It's possibly referring to the fruit the carob tree grows in the wilderness. It's a fruit in a bean pod that people call a "locust", and it tastes like cacao; it's kind of chocolatey. So JTB was maybe eating dessert. And I thought I couldn't love him more!
His message to the people starts with a call to to repent. To repent means "to turn and go the other direction, to do a 180", but it's not so much a physical act as an inward turning, and it implies a level of remorse. JTB commands people to repent and be baptized, but then... he rebukes some people for coming to be baptized. So what's going on? Do you want people to be baptized or not?
Here's the thing: The people he rebukes - the Pharisees and the Sadducees - they're part of the ruling class of the Jews in that day. And they are very religious. They are serious about trying to keep all the rules. But also, they're greedy and dishonest and cruel to the poor. This is the same problem we've been dealing with for the past several hundred years with the corrupt leaders of Israel. Just like the prophets before them, both JTB and Jesus save some of their harshest words for their wicked leaders. JTB even calls them a snake pit today - to their faces! Yikes! He also says that just because they're Jews by birth, they're not necessarily true Israelites, true children of Abraham. Lineage does not equal heritage. And JTB makes this distinction clear. He doesn't want them to be baptized, because they haven't repented. He says if they'd repented, it would be evident in their lives - in their fruit. "Bear fruit in keeping with repentance," he says. And until they do, he doesn't want them to set foot in the river for baptism, because it would be a meaningless act.
Two especially interesting things happen as JTB is baptizing people. First, Jesus shows up and asks John to baptize Him. If this is about the forgiveness of sins, then why is Jesus doing it? He doesn't have any sins, He's the one who does the saving from the sins. JTB knows Jesus doesn't need to repent, and it even seems like he wants to refuse to baptize Jesus, just like he did with the Pharisees. So this is all a little puzzling. We'll dig in on this more in a minute.
But the second interesting thing is that in this moment of Jesus baptism we see all three persons of the Trinity show up in one place - just like at creation. God the Son is in the water, God the Spirit descends on Him like a dove, and God the Father's voice booms through the atmosphere, saying, "This is My beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased." The Father marks the Son's identity specifically to JTB. Apparently Jesus and JTB are the only ones present who see and hear what happens in the spiritual realm. We'll talk more about this low-key revelation and why it's important in the days ahead.
Now let's zoom in on baptism in general and Jesus' baptism specifically. There are a lot of different viewpoints on baptism - immersion or sprinkling, babies or believers. We don't have time to dig into every angle here, especially because this doctrine is more nuanced than most things we've covered this year; there are dozens of ways different denominations articulate what baptism is and how and when and where and why and for whom it should be done. I'm going to make my best attempt at addressing the two primary perspectives within orthodox Christianity. Bear with me - I've worked really hard to use inclusive language as much as possible without getting too technical.
View 1 says that baptism is an act of God in absolving your sins. It's God working through the water, like He does through other tangible means, like reading the Word, which comes to us on paper. This view generally says that the reason Jesus is baptized is to make the water perfect for us - to purify it for our baptism. This view typically corresponds to baby baptism, also known as paedobaptism, and is usually done via sprinkling.
View 2 says baptism is a symbolic act where we demonstrate what God has already done for us. It's an outward sign of an inward reality - kind of like the New Testament version of circumcision. This view tends to believe that there's a two-fold purpose in the baptism of Jesus: First, it's a means of proving that baptism is symbolic, not salvific, because like we said, Jesus doesn't need to be saved. And second, His baptism was, like ours, a means of publicly identifying Himself as one submitted to the Kingdom of God. This view corresponds to believer's baptism, also known as credobaptism, and is usually done via immersion.
These two views may sound like they're worlds apart, but here's the one major and vital thing they have in common: neither viewpoint believes baptism is something man does as a means of achieving salvation or righteousness by his own works. View 1 believes it's an act of God demonstrated through natural means, and View 2 believes it's an act of man symbolizing the saving work God has already done. Either way, God does the doing. The reason that's so important is because scripture repeatedly says we're saved by grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone, not by our works. We are saved entirely and eternally by His works, not our own.
I aim to be objective and open-handed with things as much as possible, because as we say around here: "Don't scream where scripture whispers, and don't whisper where scripture screams". But I will say this, "salvation by grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone" is one of the places where scripture screams. If you want a greater understanding of these positions on baptism, or if you have a position and you just want to challenge yourself by reading some persuasive arguments from the other vantage point check out the five - yes, five - articles that we've linked in today's description box. By no means do they cover everything, but it's a start.
After Jesus is baptized, God the Spirit leads Him into the wilderness. He's there for 40 days fasting, being tempted by Satan. And we'll dig into that more tomorrow.
After roughly six weeks in the desert, Jesus comes back to start His ministry. He's around 30 years old when this happens. Just as things are kicking off, JTB is arrested because he rebukes the new king for having an affair with his sister-in-law. By the way, the new king is Herod Antipas, one of the surviving sons of the fearful Herod the Great.
When Jesus begins preaching, His message mirrors JTB's. His first command is "repent and believe the good news". His ministry covers a very small area. It's centered around a little freshwater lake called the Sea of Galilee. It's about 13-miles long and 8-miles wide. You can hold all of it in your field of vision at once.
Jesus runs into Simon-Peter and Andrew again, the guys He met earlier with JTB. Now that JTB's in prison, they go back to working in their dad's fishing business. So Jesus invites them to follow Him instead. Immediately they do, and they pick up two other fishermen while they're at it: James and John. These guys have no idea what they're in for.
Within a few days, they see Jesus preach the best sermon they've ever heard, be recognized by a demon, silence the demon, heal the man with the demon, and even heal Peter's mother-in-law who was just regular-sick, not demon-sick. He has an obvious, unique power that they've never seen before. He preaches with more authority than the Torah scholars. Demons recognize Him, are afraid of Him, and obey Him without Him even so much as breaking a sweat. Bodies do what He commands them to. These guys must be awestruck. And they're probably also really grateful that He chose them to follow Him. He hand-picked them.
Today my GOD SHOT was in Luke's genealogy of all places! You may have noticed that it's a little broader than Matthew's and it goes further back. There are a lot of theories on why these two genealogies vary, but one theory that lots of commentators share has to do with the lineage of the authors. Matthew was a Jew and his lineage traces the Jewish line back to Abraham, naturally. Abraham was the beginning of the people of Israel, so that's a logical place for him to stop. Luke, on the other hand, was probably a Gentile, and he took the extra time to trace the line of Jesus all the way back to the beginning, to show that Jesus has a connection throughout history - even pre-Abraham, before God invented the Israelites.
Just like Matthew and Luke, we each bring our own unique lens to the table here. We each have blind spots and that's why we need each other - which shows me how very generous God is in giving us each other, to help us see what our blind spots might be. In His great generosity, God has adopted kids into His family who have different histories, different experiences, different races and languages and giftings and weaknesses, and even different ways of practicing baptism, like we talked about today. And in each of us with His Spirit, He continues to open our eyes to who He is, to correct us and broaden our understanding, so that we can know Him better and see more clearly that He's where the joy is!
If you never got around to watching our six prep episodes for this Bible reading and recapping plan, I'd encourage you to take some time to do that today. You can watch all six episodes in a little more than an hour and they'll really help you out. We've linked to all six episodes in the description box below, so you can easily access them.
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