Matthew 3:13-17
“What Christ’s Baptism Means for You”
1/13/08
I don’t know whether you’re all aware of
this or not, but did you know that there’s a National Sex
Offender Registry that you can go to on-line in order to see who the
registered sex offenders are in your area? Just out of curiosity
I visited this web-site the other day and found that there are several
sex offenders living in Linda Mar Valley, one of them located only a
couple of blocks from my house. Now, suppose you found out that
your neighbor was a sex offender, that he had sexually molested
children in the past. How would you treat that person? I
would guess that most of us wouldn’t want to have anything to do
with such a person, that we’d try to avoid him at all cost,
treating him as if he had some contagious disease. At the very
least, we’d probably treat him as if he were a worse sinner than
ourselves.
But John the Baptist made it clear in his preaching
that we’re all a bunch of vipers, fruitless trees and chaff, good
for nothing but kindling for the fire of God’s wrath. John
even confessed that he himself was not worthy to untie the straps of
Christ’s sandals. He himself was in need of the repentance
that he proclaimed to sinners. You and I and John the Baptist are
all on God’s offenders list, a list that shows us that we are not
only guilty of sexual sins, but the sins of murder, theft, hatred,
greed, disobedience, slander, gossip, and covetousness, just to name a
few. We too are unworthy to remove Christ’s footwear.
You can understand John’s reaction, then, when
Jesus came to him in order to be baptized. John’s Baptism
was for sinners, the people he had just blasted with words of
God’s judgment and wrath. Why on earth, then, would Jesus,
who was not a sinner, come to receive a Baptism for sinners? If
anything, He should be the One doing the baptizing, not receiving
it. In receiving John’s Baptism Jesus was made to look like
a sinner like the rest of us. But in fact this is what He
intended. Unlike you and I who would shun someone if we knew he
were a sex offender, Jesus did not shun us who are just as guilty
before God as any sex offender. Jesus did not stay in heaven and
hold Himself aloof from sinners, considering the fact that He was too
holy to associate with them. Instead, He made Himself one with
us, putting Himself in our place, becoming a sinner like we are by
being loaded down with our sins, so that He might execute God’s
plan of salvation and fulfill all righteousness for us.
This identification of Jesus with us sinners was
made public at His Baptism. Now think again about the sexual
offender that lives next door to you. Would you be willing to
trade places with him and take on both the shame and the punishment
that goes along with being a sexual predator, in order that he might
have a new life free from such a stigma? Hardly! And yet,
that’s just what Jesus did for you. There at His Baptism He
took your place as the sinner, taking both the stigma and the
punishment that go along with such an identification, in order that you
might have a new life free from all such accusation before God.
Jesus identified Himself with you where you are in your sins, so
that you might be identified with Him where He is in His
righteousness. He the righteous One became the sinner so that you
the sinner might become righteous in Him. Thus Jesus fulfilled
all righteousness for you.
We often talk about a sexual offender as having paid
off his debt to society once he served out his sentence, and yet we
continue to treat him as a criminal long after he’s been released
from prison. The fact that Jesus fulfilled all righteousness for
you means that with His perfect, spotless obedience and His innocent
suffering and death on the cross, Jesus has paid in full the debt that
you owed God. He has done everything necessary for your release
from the prison of God’s wrath and judgment. And unlike the
criminal who may always have to bear the stigma of being a convict,
there is now no condemnation for you who are in Christ Jesus. God
does not treat you like a sinner but like a son, like His Son.
Because in your Baptism you have been united with Christ and are
identified with Him, what God the Father said of Jesus at His Baptism
He says of you at your Baptism: “You are my beloved son
with whom I am well-pleased.”
It was with these words that God the Father laid
upon His Son the office of the Suffering Servant of the Lord that God
speaks of in our O.T. lesson for today. There with His words of
delight in His Servant Son the Father tells us what His Son would
do: He would bring forth justice for the nations; He would be a
testament for the people, a light for the nations; He would open the
eyes of the blind and release the prisoners from the dungeon. And
how would He do this? By putting Himself in our place:
“Surely He has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows; yet we
esteemed Him stricken, smitten by God, and afflicted. But He was
wounded for our transgressions; He was crushed for our iniquities; upon
Him was the chastisement that brought us peace, and with His stripes we
are healed.” It was at His Baptism that all of this was
laid upon Jesus to do for you and me. There God made Jesus who
knew no sin to be sin, so that we might become the righteousness of God
in Him and so live under God’s grace and mercy.
Not only, then, did Jesus hang around with sinners
like you and me, but He became one with us and kept God’s Law
perfectly for us. Not only did He take our sins upon Himself as
if they were His own, but He also paid the penalty that we deserve as
breakers of God’s Law. Not only did He give us His
righteousness in our Baptism, but He has identified us with Himself by
giving us His own title “ beloved sons of God” and has
taken us into His Father’s house. Now, what criminal would
you do all this for? Can you imagine adopting one of these sexual
offenders as one of your own and taking him into your own home?
And yet, that’s what God has done for you in Jesus. And the
benefits of Christ’s Baptism for you don’t stop
there. In the book of Ephesians the Apostle Paul writes that God
“being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which He
loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive
together with Christ (by grace you have been saved) and raised us up
with Him and seated us with Him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus,
so that in the coming ages He might show the immeasurable riches of His
grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus.”
Jesus, then, put Himself in your place at His
Baptism, so that you might be put in His place in His kingdom.
Convicted criminals are separated from the rest of society when they go
to prison. Once their sentence is complete, they’re
reunited with society. Once you were separated from God on
account of your sins under the sentence of God’s wrath and
judgment. But since Jesus has paid your debt for you, since He
was sentenced to suffer under God’s wrath and judgment in your
place on the cross, you have been reunited with God and are no longer
separated from Him. Through Christ you now have unlimited access
to God the Father, who on account of your Baptism no longer sees you
covered in your sins, but clothed with Christ and His righteousness.
How are we, then, going to treat our fellow pardoned
sex offenders, murderers, liars, gossips, and thieves when they commit
an offense against us? Are we going to shun them, treat them
badly, and refuse to pardon them? Or are we going to see them the
way God sees us in Christ, forgive them their offenses, and treat them
as the beloved sons of God that they are? Since by His grace our
heavenly Father does not look upon our sins nor on their account deny
our prayers, so we too will heartily forgive and readily do good to
those who sin against us.
What Christ’s Baptism means for you, then, is
forgiveness, identification with Jesus, and adoption into God’s
family. You Barabbases have all been pardoned, set free, and
declared righteous through faith in Jesus, who became the sinner in
your place and went to the cross in your stead. Through His
Baptism Jesus was clothed with your sin, so that you might be clothed
with His righteousness in yours. And since Jesus has paid your
debt to God in full with His shed blood, God has made you His brothers,
adopted you into His family, and made you heirs with Christ of the
resurrection of the body and the life everlasting. Jesus,
God’s Suffering Servant, has fulfilled all righteousness for you
by putting Himself into your place at His Baptism, so that you might be
put into His place at yours. Now you too are God’s beloved
sons with whom He is well-pleased. That’s what
Christ’s Baptism means for you. Amen.