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Matthew 3.13–17; Mark 1.9–11; Luke 3.21–22

¶ The three accounts of the baptism of Jesus in our gospels provide an opportunity for a critical comparison of the intentions and special concerns of each writer and some conclusions as to how we are to read and interpret their “stories about Jesus.”

If we begin with Mark, which according to many critics is the oldest and most primitive account, we have a rather straightforward narration of this event in the experience of Jesus. Let us note first that the time reference is very indefinite—“in those days.” It may surprise some readers to learn that one of the unanswered problems for New Testament students is a meaningful chronology for the events in Jesus’ life. Our calendar, or method of reckoning time for the Christian era, was designed by Dionysius Exiguus in the sixth century; supposedly he began with the year of Jesus’ birth. But there was obviously an error of some magnitude when he designed our calendar, since Jesus, according to Matthew and Luke, was born when Herod the Great was King of the Jews. Yet Herod died in B.C.E. 4 according to known records. We find that time references throughout the gospels are vague and indefinite. The writers did not have precise information for a chronology of Jesus’ life and deeds. In fact, we do not even know precisely the year of his crucifixion because of contradictory references to the time of that event in our gospels.

The Role of John the Baptist

Mark relates that Jesus came from Nazareth of Galilee and was baptized by John in the Jordan. John the Baptist plays an important role in all gospel accounts as the forerunner, the one who announces the Coming One. In fact, John is mentioned more often than any other person in our gospels after Jesus himself. References to Peter, the leading disciple, are sparse by comparison. A peculiar feature of Luke’s account is that he makes no mention of John in the baptismal account. He has already completed his references to John, since the preceding pericope tells of his death. The author of Luke does refer to John in prison in a later passage (7.19), when he sends disciples to Jesus to inquire whether or not he is the Coming One. Mark and Matthew are more consistent at this point, since they narrate the death of John much later during the ministry of Jesus (Mark 6.14–29; Matthew 14.1–12). This discrepancy in Luke’s account should alert us immediately to a peculiar bias on the part of the author of Luke. He, more than the other gospel writes, wants the reader to focus exclusively upon the ministry of Jesus without the intrusion of a ministry by another.

The Markan Account

The baptismal experience, according to Mark, was a unique and radical event in the life of Jesus. He came as many others in response to the preaching of John and was baptized by him. We should be aware that baptism did not belong to the religious rituals practiced customarily by the Jews of the time. John’s baptism was a radical departure from Jewish practice and was therefore rejected by upper-class Jews and religious leaders (Mark 11.27–33). Baptism was only for proselytes, Gentiles who converted to the Jewish faith, except among a sectarian group known as Essenes where baptism was an initiation ritual for membership. John’s call to baptism was a demand that all Jews become like Gentiles before God. They too must through baptism be washed and cleansed of all sin in preparation for the eschatological judgment that was coming upon the world. The eschatological judgment was the final judgment marking the end of the age and the beginning of the reign of God through his Messiah, according to a current expectation among many Jews of the time. That Jesus accepted baptism by John indicates, according to Mark, that he accepted the premise and the requirements of John’s baptism. That is, he acknowledged his sinfulness before God and accepted God’s requirements for righteousness.

Baptism was a profound mystical and spiritual experience for Jesus. Mark’s statement, “he came up out of the water,” may be a recapitulation of the experience of Israel who had been delivered from destruction by God when he parted the waters of the Reed Sea. There may be some relatedness of ideas in this reference from Jesus’ baptism in Mark to Paul’s reference in First Corinthians, “our fathers were all under the cloud, and all passed through the sea, and all were baptized into Moses in the cloud and in the sea” (10.1–2). Just as the fathers had experienced a baptism of deliverance in preparation for their calling to be the people of God, so Jesus experienced deliverance through baptism from all that oppresses mankind, from all that separates from God, from all that frustrates God’s purpose for his creation. His life events—baptism, wilderness, ministry in the land of promise, death—encapsulate the life experience of Israel as the people of God; but with a difference, since God’s redemptive purpose that began with the patriarch Abraham and continued through Moses and the prophets is now finalized in this chosen one who came up out of the water to make salvation effective for all mankind.

Our English translation does not do justice to the expression, “the heavens opened.” The Greek word is much more dramatic—“the heavens were torn asunder.” In this way the author of Mark dramatizes the radical nature of the event for Jesus. It was indeed a most profound awakening, or awareness, for Jesus of God’s call to become the Messiah, the anointed of God. The authors of Matthew and Luke tone down the expression, since they have a different understanding of Jesus when compared to the author of Mark. For Mark, Jesus is the strong son of God, a man called by God out of his people Israel to be the deliverer and savior of his people. There are few, if any, overtones of divinity associated with the person of Jesus in this gospel. This is no longer true for the authors of Matthew and Luke. Sometimes Jesus is a man; at other times he is invested with divinity in an anachronistic way that belongs rightfully to the resurrected Jesus, as Paul sets forth in Romans 1.3–4: “the gospel concerning his son, who was descended from David according to the flesh and designated son of God in power according to the Spirit of holiness by his resurrection from the dead.” The experience of Jesus at his baptism therefore is perceived differently by these writers, for Jesus, being divine, cannot have had the kind of religious experience suggested by Mark.

The Dove as Symbol

The descent of the Spirit upon Jesus like a dove is symbolic and figurative. There is nothing visible, or audible, for anyone but Jesus. Yet there are profound religious implications in this reference. The author probably had in mind the passage from Genesis where the Spirit of God brooded over the waters in the beginning when the earth was without form and void. God’s Spirit is creative, bringing order out of chaos, not only the chaos and disorder of the earth, but also the chaos and disorder of human life. Man is not genuinely man until he is inbreathed by the Spirit of God and comes alive in a life that is oriented totally to the will and purpose of the Creator God. This was the experience of Jesus at his baptism. His life to this point could reflect many religious hopes and aspirations that were common to the people of Israel. But at this moment through a revelation from God, the call of God and his purpose become clear and decisive for Jesus. From this time on all his energies, his total life, were directed exclusively to the will of God. This, no doubt, is what Paul means when he writes, “he became obedient” (Philippians 2.8). Matthew and Luke are not as clear on this point, since in Matthew the Spirit alights on him and in Luke the Spirit descends upon him in bodily form. That is to say, the dove is no longer symbolic for these writers, since it is in some fashion visible even to others.

The Beloved Son

The clearest distinction is to be seen in the words uttered by the voice from heaven. In Mark the words are, “You are my beloved son, with you I am well pleased.” Luke agrees with Mark at this point, but Matthew alters them as follows, “This is my beloved son, with whom I am well pleased.” What is a personal and private experience for Jesus according to Mark, now becomes a public announcement in Matthew for the benefit of John or for anyone else who happened to be present and especially for the reader. Matthew has surely made the change here, since the words are a composite of two Old Testament passages, Psalm 2.7 and Isaiah 42.l It is important that we consider these passages in their original context, before we discuss them in the context of Jesus’ baptism.

Psalm 2 is identified by critics as an enthronement psalm; that is, a rubric used in the liturgy for the coronation of the king of Israel. God addresses the man to be enthroned at this occasion as his son. There are no implications of divinity in this address, since Israel had rejected the concept of divine kings common in Egypt and Mesopotamia at this period in history. A first rule of interpretation is that we understand New Testament usage according to the Old Testament meaning, unless we have clear indications of a basic change in intention by the writer. There is no valid reason to ascribe to Mark a difference in meaning for this passage. The only point of significance is the Christian interpolation of the word “beloved,” which, of course, gives the passage a Christological connotation. This should be viewed as an addition by Christian theologians and not part of the original citation. This was probably done during the period of oral transmission of the tradition and not an addition by Mark. The problem is why the entire passage was not quoted from the Psalm. The full address to the king in our Psalm is, “You are my son; today I have begotten you.” This may have been the original reading in all the gospels, as we actually find in the Western text (Codex Bezae fifth century) of Luke, but, if so, it was expunged by all scribes and the quotation from Isaiah 42.1 substituted. There arose a teaching among some in the early Christian community at an early date called “the adoption heresy” that Jesus was a man adopted by God to become his son. Since this point of view was declared to be heretical by the orthodox, it could have resulted in the expunging of that part of Psalm 2.7 that was offensive, namely, the phrase “today I have begotten you,” and the substitution of Isaiah 42.1 in this passage.

The citation of Isaiah 42.1 is an adaptation of that passage to make it appropriate Christian tradition. This is one of the “suffering servant” passages found in Second Isaiah, the best known of which is Isaiah 53. It is strange that Jesus did not use this concept as descriptive of his own understanding of his mission, since the early Christian community interpreted and applied the title to Jesus, as is amply demonstrated in a number of passages in the Book of the Acts of the Apostles (compare Acts 3.13; 4.27; 8.30–35) and in numerous references by Paul to the death of Jesus as a vicarious and atoning sacrifice (Romans 4.25; 5.8; 1 Corinthians 15.3 et al.). Mark and the other gospel writers either borrowed this concept from the prophet and applied it to Jesus as the seal of God’s approval upon him at his baptism, or they are simply reporting an interpretation and application that was already widely used in the early Christian community; or, if our comments on Psalm 2.7 above are to the point, scribes expunged the offending portion of the passage from the Psalm that may have been the original text in gospel accounts of the baptism and replaced it with this citation from the prophet Isaiah. However the process by which this passage from Isaiah comes to be used in the baptism pericope, it is now interpreted and applied to Jesus as the one who is chosen and commissioned by God to be the Messiah.

Jesus’ Understanding of Messiahship

The concept of Messiah, according to Jesus’ understanding of his mission and the current view embraced by his contemporaries, was radically different. The current view was of an exalted figure modeled after the great King David and descending from the one who would bring victory to Israel over all her enemies and establish an earthly and worldwide kingdom. At the opposite pole from this secular and political view was Jesus’ self-understanding of his mission as a total commitment to God’s purpose and will, a life of humiliation and rejection ending in death. His contemporaries, even his disciples, were so conditioned by the former view of the Messiah as this exalted figure of power and majesty that they either rejected the person of Jesus and his message completely or totally misunderstood him until after his death and resurrection. It should be clear to us that there is a fundamental difference between the two images and that our own understanding or, more correctly, our misunderstanding of Jesus’ Messiahship is the result of our failure to make this distinction.

Matthew’s Radical Departure

Matthew has radically altered the baptismal account in his introductory remarks. Jesus came to John to be baptized; John protests, since it is more proper for Jesus to be the baptizer. However, Jesus encourages him to proceed, since it is proper that he fulfill all righteousness. It is evident that problems have surfaced about the baptism of Jesus in the early community and the author seeks to address them. A reconstruction of the background suggests that Jews, who were the objects of the community’s evangelism effort, had raised questions about the propriety of Jesus’ Messiahship. He could not be Messiah because he had been crucified and the scripture says, “Cursed is everyone who is hanged upon a tree” (Deuteronomy 21.22–23). Furthermore, they may have asked, “You say that Jesus was sinless. Why then was he baptized by John, since John’s baptism was for the remission of sins?” And again, “Why did Jesus accept baptism from John, since you say he was the greater, the Messiah?” There are similar indicators in non-canonical writings of this same difficulty that the author of Matthew addresses here. For example, in the Gospel to the Hebrews, cited by Jerome in his Against Pelagius, we find this testimony, “The mother of the Lord and his brothers said to him, ‘John the Baptist baptizes for the forgiveness of sin; let us go and be baptized by him.’ But he said to them, ‘In what have I sinned that I should go and be baptized by him? Unless, perhaps, what I have just said is a sin of ignorance’.” This effort on the part of the author of Matthew, suggesting that John recognized Jesus to be the Messiah when he came for baptism, is a kind of an apology, a defense of the community’s interpretation of Jesus’ baptism, and is in contradiction with another passage where John does not know Jesus to be the Coming One (Matthew 11.2–3). As the passage stands in Matthew, John becomes the first professing Christian in a pre-Christian era and reflects therefore an addition either by the author or an outgrowth of tradition from the community of which he was a member.

Lukan Additions

Luke has altered the baptism account by omitting any reference to the Baptist, as noted earlier, and by relating that Jesus’ experience is the result of prayer. This is in character with one of the particular interests of this writer, since he always describes Jesus at prayer before the critical and decisive decisions of his ministry (cf. 6.12; 9.18; 22.41). The opening of the heavens and the descent of the Spirit become responses to Jesus’ prayer and to his openness to God, rather than a sudden, unexpected and spontaneous inbreaking of the Spirit into his consciousness.

Conclusions

Thus the intentions and concerns of each gospel writer become evident to the reader through a careful and critical examination of the baptism pericope. The most consistent account, in the opinion of this writer, is found in the Gospel of Mark. There is no ambiguity, but rather a clear and incisive depiction of Jesus as a man without any supernatural or divine qualifications who is chosen by God from the community of humanity as represented by Israel, anointed with the Spirit, and commissioned to be the deliverer of God’s people and all people from the destructive bondage to sin, death, and evil to which every human being is enslaved. The Markan account is most consonant with the Pauline poetic paean,

“Therefore God also highly exalted him

and gave him the name that is above every name,

so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bend.

in heaven and on earth and under the earth,

and every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord,

to the glory of God the Father.”