“The Baptism of Jesus Reveals Who He Is”
Mark 1:4-11
1/11/09
The Gospel according to St. Mark begins with the
words, “The beginning of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of
God.” There, in the very first line of his account, Mark
tells us who Jesus is - the Son of God. From then on there are
only three others in Mark’s Gospel who confess this of
Jesus: God the Father, the demons, and the centurion at the foot
of Christ’s cross. Unlike Matthew’s Gospel, Mark
doesn’t record Peter’s confession that Jesus is the Son of
the living God. Why, then, does he choose only these three?
What do Mark and the Holy Spirit intend to teach us here?
We look first at what the Father says of Jesus at
His Baptism. These words are also recorded for us right at the
beginning of Mark’s Gospel account, so that we might know not
only who this Jesus is, but also what the Father sent Him to do.
Jesus’ identity is tied to and inseparable from what He
does. As the Son of God, Jesus is given certain things to do, and
it’s at His Baptism that those things are laid upon Him to
do. They are laid upon Him with His Father’s words,
“You are my beloved Son, with you I am well pleased.”
These words are reiterated at our Lord’s transfiguration, where
the Father again says, “This is my beloved Son; listen to
Him.” With these words the Father draws us back to the
words He spoke through the prophet Isaiah, when He said, “Behold
my Servant, whom I uphold, my chosen One, in whom my soul delights; I
have put my Spirit upon Him; He will bring forth justice to the
nations.” There Jesus is referred to as the Servant of the
LORD. From the book of Isaiah we learn that this Servant would
bring forth justice, not only to the people of Israel, but to the
nations as well. He would do this by bearing our griefs and
carrying our sorrows, by being wounded for our transgressions and
crushed for our iniquities. The punishment that would bring us
peace would be laid upon Him, so that by His wounds we would be
healed. For the Father to say at our Lord’s Baptism that
Jesus is His beloved Son with whom He is well pleased is for Him to say
that Jesus is the Servant of the LORD, spoken of through the prophet
Isaiah, who would work salvation for the world through His suffering,
death, and resurrection.
It was at His Baptism that this work, this office,
was laid upon Jesus to do. It’s not that Jesus became the
Son of God at this point; He was the Son of God from all
eternity. But it was the Father’s announcement that His
only-begotten Son was headed for the cross to atone for our sins.
For this purpose He had come into this world. Through this work
He would not only raise up the tribes of Jacob and bring back the
preserved of Israel, as Isaiah writes, but He would be a light for the
nations, so that God’s salvation might reach to the ends of the
earth, to you and to me. This is also why the Father declares
that He is well pleased with His Son, because Jesus perfectly
accomplished His Father’s will. He did what was given Him
to do at His Baptism. For you this means that you can be sure
that your sins have been atoned for and forgiven, because Jesus did it;
it is finished. And the Father confirmed that He is well pleased
with His Son and His work by raising Him from the dead. This,
then, is what the Father means when He calls Jesus His Son: He is
the Servant of the LORD who comes to reconcile the world to God through
His sacrifice on the cross. The Father speaks these words for our
benefit, so that we might know who Jesus is and what He was sent to do
for us as the Son of God.
But there’s another group of beings in
Mark’s Gospel that also confess Jesus as the Son of God, and
that’s the demons. And here, too, right at the beginning of
this Gospel, just a dozen or so verses following the account of
Christ’s Baptism, Mark writes that Jesus was teaching one day in
a synagogue, and immediately there was a man there with an unclean
spirit, who cried out, “What have you to do with us, Jesus of
Nazareth? Have you come to destroy us? I know who you are -
the Holy One of God.” On another occasion, when Jesus
delivered the Gerasene man from the legion of demons that possessed
him, they cried out, “What have you to do with me, Jesus, Son of
the Most High God? I adjure you by God, do not torment
me.” This happened regularly, whenever Jesus encountered
the demon-possessed. Mark writes that whenever the unclean
spirits saw Him, they fell down before Him and cried out, “You
are the Son of God.” But Jesus would never allow the demons
to proclaim this. He rebuked them and strictly ordered them not
to make Him known. Why? They were correct in their
confession of Him. James even writes, “You believe that God
is one; you do well. Even the demons believe - and
shudder!” The demons know who Jesus is, and they’re
right when they call Him the Son of God. They know what even most
people don’t know about Jesus. But Jesus does not allow
them to proclaim His identity, because they only know Him as their
Judge. For the demons, that Jesus is the Son of God means eternal
torment under God’s wrath in the lake of fire, and that is not
what Jesus wants proclaimed about Him. It is far different from
the Father’s proclamation that Jesus is His beloved Son with whom
He is well pleased. God does not want us to know His Son as our
Judge but as our Savior. If we reject Him as our Savior, then we
put ourselves in the company of the demons and will have no choice but
to receive Him as our Judge - not because that’s what He wants to
be towards us as the Son of God, but because that’s the kind of
Son of God we insist on having.
But now is the day of salvation. We must
confess that we all deserve the same wrath and torment that the demons
do on account of our sin and rebellion against God. The only
difference between us and the demons is that the Son of God did not
come to save demons. He did not take on the flesh of fallen
angels, but the flesh of fallen human beings. And He did that to
become the sinner that you are in your place, receiving a Baptism of
repentance for the forgiveness of sins, in order to go to the cross to
suffer the wrath and torment you deserve and to atone for your sins
with His blood, so that through faith in Him and the washing of your
own Baptism, you might be cleansed of all sin and live under
God’s grace and mercy, now and forever. That Jesus is Son
of God means hell for the demons, but it means redemption, eternal life
with the Lord, and a new creation for you. As the author of the
book of Hebrews writes, “For surely it is not angels that He
helps, but He helps the offspring of Abraham.” And the
offspring of Abraham are all those who are of the same faith as
Abraham, trusting in Jesus Christ, the Son of God, as their Savior.
And this brings us to the confession of the
centurion at the foot of the cross of Christ. It’s a
confession that’s placed at the end of Mark’s Gospel, so
that the account ends where it began - confessing Jesus to be the Son
of God. At the beginning of this Gospel it is confessed by St.
Mark, the writer of this account, and also by God the Father at
Christ’ Baptism; at the end it’s confessed by the centurion
on Mt. Calvary. The confession of the centurion at the foot of
the cross of Jesus is where Mark and the Holy Spirit want to lead us in
this Gospel; it’s where all the “immediately’s”
in this Gospel are driving us, so that we, too, might confess Jesus as
the Son of God. Although the demons know who Jesus is and confess
Him to be the Son of God, they do not make this confession in faith,
but out of fear. Mark and the Holy Spirit want us to confess
Jesus as the Son of God, not like the demons do, but like the centurion
does - in faith, looking to Jesus crucified for our salvation.
Amazingly, this centurion is the only human being in
Mark’s Gospel (besides Mark himself) who confesses Jesus to be
the Son of God! Again, not even Peter confesses this in
Mark’s Gospel. And this centurion isn’t even a
Jew! He’s a Gentile. It’s really a surprise
that we hear such a confession coming from a pagan. What’s
more, he’s even the one who’s in charge of Christ’s
crucifixion! The centurion is probably one of the last persons
you would expect to confess that Jesus is the Son of God. But
again, this is recorded for our benefit, that we might see ourselves in
the place of this centurion, because we are Gentiles, pagans by nature,
and we are just as responsible for our Lord’s crucifixion as this
centurion. It’s our sins that put the nails into His hands
and feet, crowned His head with a wreath of thorns, shred His back with
a whip, and pierced His side with a sword. And yet, just as He
was on the cross for this centurion, so He was on the cross for you and
for me. What the Father laid upon His Son at His Baptism to do
for this centurion’s salvation, He laid upon Him to do for your
salvation. The Holy Spirit wants to lead you to the foot of
Christ’s cross, because that is where He wants you to most
clearly see Jesus as the Son of God, for that is what was given Him at
His Baptism by His Father to do and it’s where He was doing His
greatest work as the Son of God.
Seeing Jesus doing His Son of God work on the cross,
the centurion, by the power of the Holy Spirit who enlightened him,
then confessed Jesus as the Son of God. He confessed what the
Father said of Him at His Baptism. And this is what the Holy
Spirit leads us to do as well. St. Mark is leading us to do this
with his Gospel account, as he faithfully records the words and works
of Jesus, beginning with His Baptism, taking us through His earthly
ministry towards His cross and His resurrection. But if you read
to the end of Mark’s Gospel, you find that his account has no
ending. It’s an unfinished work. The last thing Mark
writes is that the women to whom the resurrected Lord appeared
“went out and fled from the tomb, for trembling and astonishment
had seized them, and they said nothing to anyone, for they were
afraid.” Years later, someone in the Church added to the
ending of Mark, so that it might not sound so abrupt. But though
Mark begins his account by writing, “The beginning of the Gospel
of Jesus Christ, the Son of God,” he does not finish his account
by writing, “The end of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of
God.” Mark’s Gospel has no ending, because the
proclamation of the good news about Jesus Christ, the Son of God, has
no ending. It still goes on today, as if the Gospel according to
St. Mark were still being written.
His Gospel account was just the beginning of the
good news about Jesus. The Baptism of Jesus was just the
beginning of His work as the Son of God for you. It began with
His being loaded down with your sins. Jesus’ Baptism got
Him dirty, so that your Baptism might get you clean. Having
soaked up your sins in Himself, He carried them with Him to the cross,
where He atoned for them with His shed blood. Along the way He
continued to bear our griefs and carry away our sorrows, as He preached
the Gospel, forgave sins, cast out demons, healed the sick, and raised
the dead. Following His crucifixion He rose again from the dead
on the third day and forty days later ascended into heaven after giving
instructions to His Apostles to “go into all the world and
proclaim the Gospel to the whole creation.” This
proclamation goes on today through the Office of the Holy Ministry,
where Jesus Christ is still being portrayed as crucified before your
eyes, so that you too might look upon Him and confess Him to be the Son
of God, your Savior.
Come with the centurion to the foot of the cross of
Christ again today and see the One who was burdened with your sins at
His Baptism atone for them for His blood. Confess Him as the Son
of God, not as the demons do out of fear, but as the centurion does
from a heart of faith, which trusts in the Father’s words that
Jesus is His beloved Son, the Servant of the LORD, our Savior, with
whom He is well pleased. Amen.