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+ + + In Nomine Jesu + + +
Please join me in prayer: May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be pleasing in your sight, O Lord, our Rock and our Redeemer. Amen.
Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ,
Grace to you and peace from God our Father and from the Lord Jesus Christ. (Amen.)
In three striking successive Sundays, we have had Christmas, the celebration of the incarnation of the Son of God in our human flesh; the Circumcision and Name of Jesus, the feast of that Son of God’s being put under the obligation of the Divine Law as we are under the Law; and now the Baptism of Our Lord, the Son of God’s identifying Himself with sinners like you and me. Each of those three is a “birthday” of a sort for Jesus, and so today we consider Jesus’s and our “Baptismal Birthdays”.
With the Epiphany of Our Lord on Friday, and its visit of the wise men to the child Jesus, we moved from the Christmas Season to the Epiphany Season. There reportedly is a tradition that the visit of the wise men and the Baptism of the Lord took place on the same date of the calendar year, only years apart (Luther, AE 58:351-352). But, regardless of their dates, both events are showing-forths of God in the human flesh of Jesus. And, in the case of the Baptism of Our Lord, we also have one of the greatest, if not the greatest, showing-forths of the Holy Trinity.
To be sure, the Divinely-inspired St. Matthew’s account of the Baptism of Our Lord, which we heard as today’s Gospel Reading, is more focused on what happened immediately before and immediately after the Baptism, than the account is focused on the Baptism itself. And, as we discussed in our Adult Bible Class on Christmas Day, what happened immediately before the Baptism, uniquely recorded by St. Matthew, gives us an answer to the question people often have about why Jesus was baptized at all.
John the Baptizer certainly seemed to have had that question about why Jesus was to be baptized. As we heard today, when Jesus came from Galilee to the Jordan to John to be baptized by him, John would have prevented Jesus from being baptized. As we back in Advent heard St. Matthew tell in the preceding verses, John the Baptizer was preaching repentance and baptizing those who were confessing their sins (Matthew 3:1-12). Jesus did not need to repent or confess. Instead, as we heard, John confessed his need to be baptized by Jesus, and John essentially asked the question why sinless Jesus was coming to be baptized by him. And, in His first words that St. Matthew’s Gospel account records, Jesus essentially agreed with John (Lenski, ad loc Matthew 3:14, 15, pp.123, 124), but Jesus told John to permit Jesus’s Baptism in order for them to fulfill all righteousness, arguably both Jesus’s righteousness and so also our righteousness.
You see, unlike righteous Jesus, but like John the Baptizer, you and I are by nature un‑righteous, completely unrighteous. Our sinful nature leads us not to think, say, and do things that we should think say, and do, and our sinful nature leads us to think, say, and do things that we should not think, say, and do. Thus we sin against our fellow human beings and, more importantly, we sin against God. So, apart from repentance and faith, God is not pleased with us, and we deserve not the favor of His gracious baptism of forgiveness, but instead we deserve the temporal death and eternal torment of His righteous wrath, from which wrath baptism is intended to deliver us (confer Stahlin, TDNT 5:436). For, God does not want us so to perish, but, out of His love, mercy, and grace, God calls and thereby enables us to turn in sorrow from our sin, to trust Him to forgive our sin, and at least to want to stop sinning. When we so repent and believe, then God forgives us. God forgives our sinful nature and all of our actual sin, whatever our actual sin might be. God forgives us for the sake of His Son, Jesus Christ, Who in His Baptism took on our sin and so made our baptisms able to give us His righteousness.
On this day of the Baptism of Our Lord, we do well again to ponder that the Almighty God in the Second Person of the Holy Trinity took on human flesh at all, that He then took on our sin, and that He then died on the cross in our place. For, the Baptism was not all that was Divinely necessary in order to fulfill all righteousness, again His righteousness and our righteousness. Conception, birth, death, resurrection—Jesus actively did all that He needed to do, and He passively suffered all that He needed to suffer, all for us! In keeping with prophecy like that of today’s Old Testament Reading (Isaiah 42:1-9), in the Baptism of Our Lord, God the Father both put His Spirit on and declared His delight in His chosen Servant, Who faithfully brings “justice”, or “righteousness”, to the nations of the earth. As we with repentance and faith are in that chosen Servant, we are no longer under God’s wrath, but we are those with whom God is pleased and so have peace with Him (Luke 2:14).
As Jesus was passively baptized by John, so we also are passive in our baptisms, our conversions. God acts through those He calls and ordains to preach His Gospel and administer His Sacraments. Especially as Jesus identified with us in His Baptism, so, the Divinely-inspired St. Paul in today’s Epistle Reading (Romans 6:1-11) says that, in our baptisms, we are connected to Him, to Christ’s death and resurrection for us. So, under normal circumstances, Holy Baptism is in some sense “necessary” for salvation (John 3:3, 5), though not the absence of Baptism or any other Sacrament damns but one’s despising and so not using Baptism or any other Sacrament damns (confer Mark 16:16). At the Font, the Name of the Holy Trinity is put upon us, and the Lord is with us as we pass through the water (Isaiah 43:2; confer Albright and Mann, ad loc Matthew 3:13-17, p.32). The Lord is with us where a penitent and pastor are gathered for private confession and individual Absolution in that same Triune Name (Matthew 18:18-20; confer Smalcald Articles III:iv). And the Lord especially is with us in the Sacrament of the Altar with bread that is Christ’s Body given for us and with wine that is Christ’s Blood shed for us, which thereby also give us forgiveness of sins, life, and salvation (confer Matthew 28:19-20).
Like Jesus, we are baptized once, but that one baptism affects our whole lives. Daily by contrition and repentance our sinful nature is drowned and dies with all sins and evil desires, and daily our redeemed nature emerges and arises to live before God in righteousness and purity forever (Small Catechism, IV:12; confer Scaer, CLD VI:96, who cites Large Catechism IV:65). As we heard in the Epistle Reading, we walk in newness of life, including, when we know and feel sins in our heart, seeking individual absolution and regularly receiving the Sacrament of the Altar, and so we have peace and joy. As we prayed in the Collect of the Day, the Father makes all those who are baptized in Jesus’s Name faithful in their calling as God’s children and inheritors with Jesus of everlasting life. As heaven was opened to Jesus and the Father spoke to Him, in a similar manner heaven is opened to us and the Father speaks to us. And, on the Last Day, our baptized bodies are brought into His nearer presence and thereby glorified for eternity with Him. Until then, we remember our baptisms and live in them.
Do you know the date of your baptism, what, for example, in our frequent petitions of the Prayer of the Church, we call your “baptismal birthday”? Mine is five days after my physical birthday. Today we have considered Jesus’s and our “Baptismal Birthdays”. In Jesus’s baptism, He took on our sin, so that, in our baptism, we can take on His righteousness. Not only on the day that we associate with the Baptism of Our Lord or on our own baptismal birthdays do we remember His and our baptisms, but anytime we gather or are blessed in the Triune Name we remember our Baptisms and trace the sign of the cross, once traced on our foreheads and hearts, in the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit (confer Bertels, CPR 33:1, p.35).
Amen.
The peace of God, which passes all understanding, keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. Amen.
+ + + Soli Deo Gloria + + +