Baptism of our Lord

Baptism is central to Christian faith, and for Anglicans a Gospel Sacrament—an outward and visible sign of an inward and spiritual reality. Every Christian, regardless of how or when, ought to be baptized. This should come as no surprise.

What may come as a surprise, however, is that Jesus himself was baptized. It wasn’t just something Jesus commanded his followers to do, but an experience he underwent as well. As familiar as we may be with the Gospel accounts, the fact that Jesus submitted himself to baptism may still strike us as odd.

The plot thickens even more when we consider that the baptism Jesus submitted himself to was John’s baptism, which is described as accompanying “repentance”, in conjunction with people “confessing their sins”, and as the means by which to “flee from the coming wrath”.

It doesn’t take much pondering to realize that this doesn’t seem to fit with the rest of what the New Testament says about Jesus—that he was God’s virgin-born, sinless, perfectly obedient Son, fully pleasing to the Father, who pre-existed as divine but laid aside his glory to take on flesh. 

Yet at the very beginning of Jesus’s public ministry, he walked into the Jordan River to be baptized by John.

So, why did Jesus need to be baptized? That’s a question we’ll explore Sunday.