No Free Lunch

An economist I read and listen to regularly, David Bahnsen, wrote an excellent book last year entitled, “There's No Free Lunch”. His thesis is straightforward. If we’re going to keep the lights on as a society and advance the cause of human flourishing, there is one overriding reality we must never forget: a “free” lunch is never free…someone always pays.

This is, in fact, a reality so basic and profound that even Almighty God submits to it. Hebrews 9:22 says, “Without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness of sins.” There is no Life without death.

It’s to constantly remind us of this reality that the Lord invites us to feast regularly at his Table. And when we truly consider what Communion models for us, it helps give the incarnation of Jesus meaning.  Someone with actual flesh and blood just like us would have to die. And if things were truly just it would be us. But instead, Jesus chose to take on flesh and blood—to become incarnate—and offer himself as a sacrifice on our behalf. In the mystery of the Eucharist, through the elements of bread and wine, we meet that same self-sacrificing Jesus and are nourished by that gift as we are in no other way.

But that’s that the Gospel Sacraments—Communion and Baptism—do. They’re outward and physical signs of inward and spiritual realities. Something is actually happening in them. Something God does.

Every year on the Sunday following Epiphany (January 6th—the Twelfth Day ofChristmas), we commemorate and contemplate The Baptism of our Lord by John in the Jordan River because it also helps frame the meaning of the incarnation. In fact, neither Jesus’s baptism nor our own makes much sense if not considered in that light.

So, to begin to understand the meaning of the Baptism of Jesus, we must understand the reality, the physicality, of being human and what it means for us to say that God saved us by becoming like us…what it means for Almighty God to have emptied himself and become human.