Soaked in Sin
Grace to you and peace from God our Father, and from our Lord
and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.
John the Baptist,
the last of the Old Testament prophets, baptizes Jesus and the Spirit Himself descends
upon Him while the Father expresses His pleasure. It is the anointing of the
Lord. In the watery boundary that separates the wilderness from the Promised
Land, Jesus is chosen and marked as the Messiah, the Anointed One. There He
takes the sins of the world upon Himself. On the cross He will overcome them.
The Father is well pleased in Him because the sacrifice is work of the Messiah,
the will of the Father, the fruit of the Spirit.
The baptism, and
indeed the entire identity of the Christian, flows out of this. By baptism the
believer is joined to the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. That is the
significant thing. Do you not know that you were baptized into Christ’s death? Although
these things are important, the central thing is not faith, ritual, the water,
the Word, or the believer. The central thing is always the grace of God that
steps in and rescues man out of death through the Messiah. When you were
baptized into this faith, you put on Christ. You have been forever joined to
His death and resurrection. You are anointed, marked and named by Him. Christ
is the key thing.
“Repent and be baptized,” says John. To repent means to acknowledge that God is
right and confess that His judgment is true when He says that we are all sinners
worthy of death. Repent: confess that God is right and you are wrong. Then be
baptized. Receive the forgiveness of sins. The Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit
will dwell in you. Faith is certainly part of the equation, but the emphasis is
on work God does in baptism and the promised presence of the Holy Trinity for
the believer. The faith which receives these gracious gifts is itself a gift.
It is not as though we come before God with an empty sack and then He fills it.
We come empty handed. He gives us the sack. Then He fills it.
When Christ was
drowned in baptism, heaven opened. When He died on the cross, graves were
opened and dead men lived. The Father is pleased because satisfaction has been
made. The sins of a thousand worlds have been drowned and destroyed in Christ’s
baptism. Baptism is a washing, but more than that, it is a drowning, and a
death. Our sin and rebellion are a deadly problem. They destroy life. They kill
families. They murder innocence and purity. They require an extreme
solution. And so great is God’s love, so great His desire to forgive, that
He sacrifices His own Son in our place. Nothing will stop Him. Satan will not
win. God will rejoin humanity to Himself without violating His own Law. He will
intervene and make us His. So pleased is the Father with the Son that He and
the Spirit promise to be present with all who are baptized into Christ.
And Christ Himself
is the baptizer. Although this glorious revelation does not now occur visibly,
as it did at that time on the Jordan,
nonetheless it is what occurs. That is the promise. Christ is the baptizer
whether He is seen or not. The Father blesses with His Word. The Spirit makes
the heart His temple. And that is why St. Paul can’t even remember who he baptized,
because he never really baptized anyone. Christ did it all.
All of this means
that the Baptism of Our Lord is the beginning of the great exchange. Christ is
not washed clean; He soaks in our sins. He takes all our filth upon Himself and
leaves the water sparkling clean for us. Our sins wash off of us and onto Him.
His holiness covers us and we are clean. The Father will not forsake us. He
will not send us to a cross. We will not pay for our sins. Heaven is opened.
The Father is well-pleased with us. We are made children and heirs by grace. His
Name is upon us. Our graves will open. We will follow the Lord Jesus out of
death and to Our Father’s home. In the name of the Father and of the Son (+)
and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
The peace of God which passes all
understanding will keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus always. Amen.
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