Sermon 1-12-25

Pastor Ray Lorthioir

Trinity Lutheran Church

W. Hempstead, NY

Based on the Gospel Lesson for The Baptism of Our Lord, Luke 3:15-22

He Laid Down His Right

The Epiphany of our Lord — His revealing by the coming of the Magi — was this past Monday, January 6th. So, the first Sunday after the Epiphany is always the Baptism of Our Lord. This was the event that kicked off Jesus’ ministry. And the reason it’s included in the season of revealing — Epiphany — is the voice from heaven. Apparently anyone present would have clearly heard Yahweh speak to Jesus “You are my beloved Son.” If that wasn’t a revelation, I don’t know what else is.

Anyway, there’s a detail included in Matthew’s version of Jesus’ baptism that we’re going to consider. We read in Matthew 3:13-15, “13 Then Jesus came from Galilee to the Jordan to John, to be baptized by him. 14 John would have prevented him, saying, ‘I need to be baptized by you, and do you come to me?’ 15 But Jesus answered him, ‘Let it be so now, for thus it is fitting for us to fulfill all righteousness.’ Then he consented.”

John resisted for a reason. For here’s what John had been preaching. Matthew 3:11 “‘I baptize you with water for repentance, but he who is coming after me is mightier than I, whose sandals I am not worthy to carry. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire.’”

What John had been preaching is that Jesus would be far greater than him; that baptism in Jesus would be much more powerful than the baptism of repentance. This is because those who receive baptism in Jesus receive baptism in His Holy Spirit. 

A baptism of repentance works solely on the basis of the Law. The Law crushes us with guilt, fear and remorse. The Law offers us a way of righteousness. But, it gives us no power to walk in that righteousness. For as the Apostle Paul tells us in Romans 8:3 the sinful nature attached to our flesh is more powerful than God’s Law.

It was precisely for this reason that God, the Son, was sent into the world. For our sake, Jesus successfully resisted temptation even unto death on a cross. Resurrected in immortal human flesh and ascended to the right hand of the Father, the Son — with the Father — poured out Lord Holy Spirit upon the earth. The Spirit calls, elects and gathers us into the Church of Jesus Christ.

This is the powerful Gospel into which all those baptized into Jesus are baptized. As Paul tells us in Romans 8:3, Jesus is more powerful than the sinful nature. His Holy Spirit is more powerful than the sinful nature. This is the Holy Gospel. Therefore, a baptism into Jesus and His Holy Spirit is a baptism into God’s power of righteousness. This is the baptism with fire.

So, when Jesus appeared before John, John knew that he needed this promised baptism with the Holy Spirit and fire. And that’s why he attempted to get Jesus to baptize him instead of the other way around. But, it wasn’t time yet. Jesus had to work His way to the cross. And unfortunately, John wouldn’t live even to see the baptism into Christ.

As we just saw at Christmas, the Messiah’s conception and birth were quite irregular. If Jesus had been conceived and born in the normal fashion, He would have inherited Original Sin from Adam, like the rest of us. Therefore, because Jesus was conceived by a work of Lord Holy Spirit upon a virgin woman — Mary — and born of a virgin woman, it’s clear that He did not inherit Original Sin. He was the first human being since Adam to come into this world without Original Sin.

Therefore, without Original Sin, Jesus was able to live flawlessly as a Jew under the Law. Most importantly, He was able to obediently perform all of what Scripture prophesies about Messiah. Like Adam and Eve, Jesus was tempted. He was tempted even more severely than them. However, unlike them, Jesus was not deceived. He drew His dying breath without Original Sin and any sin of His own. He did die with the totality of all human sin of all time upon Him, however. For, as it says in Isaiah 53:5, “. . . he was pierced for our transgressions; he was crushed for our iniquities; upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace, and with his wounds we are healed.”

If He was without sin, why, then, would Jesus need to undergo a baptism of repentance at the beginning of His ministry? That’s what John the Baptist wanted to know. 

There are two reasons that occur to me. First, by undergoing a baptism of repentance, Jesus — the God/man — identified Himself completely with us sinners. For our sake He would become sin and endure punishment for sin in His passion and death. In doing so, Jesus freed us from punishment and justified our lives before God.

Second, Jesus established Himself as the ultimate opponent of Original Sin, and its cure. When we go back to the Garden of Eden, we discover that Eve succumbed to a particular deception from the Serpent. The Serpent said to Eve in Genesis 3:5, “‘For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.’”

Eve was already like God as much as she — a created being — could be. She had been created in the Image of God. Therefore, what was this “like God” business? It’s plain from the text that the likeness of God is associated with discerning good and evil. 

Here, we have to digress to chapter one of Genesis. Either at the end or in the middle of the third through sixth days of creation, this phrase is used: “God saw that it was good.” What does that mean? “Good” means that at each phase of the creation, everything was exactly how Yahweh, the Creator, wanted it. If we understand that, then we can understand what evil is. Evil is anything God doesn’t want in His creation.

So, let’s think this further. How would anything that God doesn’t want in His creation show up in His creation? It could only come from beings God created that would have some similar attributes to His. In particular, these beings would have to be able to imagine multiple possibilities; and be able to make a choice between those possibilities. For this is exactly what Yahweh did trillions of times in His creating.

Think of a tree. It takes water, dirt, light and carbon dioxide and somehow turns them into green leaves and wood. That’s what Yahweh wanted trees to be able to do. Therefore, He designed them that way. Out of all the trillions of other possibilities open to Yahweh, He chose to populate earth with an abundance of trees designed exactly the way He wanted them.

Now, if some being powerful enough to redesign a tree were to come along and do so, that would be against Yahweh’s will. It would be “evil.” Unless Yahweh had commanded that being to redesign trees, it would not be just what He wanted. It would be “evil.” So, in order to do evil in Yahweh’s creation a being has to be sophisticated enough to imagine possibilities. Such a being has to be able to choose possibilities. And there’s one more very important thing. That being has to be able to imagine being “God.”

We don’t know much about the Serpent that tempted Eve. In the New Testament, we refer to him as Satan. But from what he said to Eve, it’s clear that the Serpent could imagine himself being God. He wanted to consider other possibilities than what God had built into him. He want to conceive of his own “righteousness.” And he had done so. But in departing from Yahweh’s righteousness, he had instead become evil. And he deceived Eve into doing the same. Then, having fallen into sin, Eve deceived Adam into doing the same.

The net result is that Adam and Eve became their own gods. Each was able to imagine and define good and evil for themselves. Each was able to act on their own definitions. Each was no longer in tandem with Yahweh under His definitions of good and evil. And most miserable of all, every descendant they biologically produced would be born in their Original Sin. This is why we all play God, defining good and evil for ourselves.

Playing God is unrighteousness. Therefore, the only way back into righteousness and right relationship with Yahweh is to be able to give up playing God. But Original Sin makes it impossible. As the Apostle Paul complained in Romans 7:18-20, “I know that nothing good dwells in me, that is, in my flesh. For I have the desire to do what is right, but not the ability to carry it out. 19 For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I keep on doing. 20 Now if I do what I do not want, it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells within me.” 

If we were truly gods, we’d be able to give up Original Sin. But we’re not. And we can’t. It’s this situation that Jesus came to rectify. To do it for us, Jesus had to voluntarily lay at the Father’s feet the right He had as a human being to play God in the Likeness of God. Of course, Jesus is God, the Son. So, this sounds really weird. But it’s reflected in the words of the hymn St. Paul used in Philippians 2:5-8, “5. . .  Jesus, 6 who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, 7 but emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. 8 And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.”

Even though He is God, Jesus, as a human being, had to give up grasping for equality with Yahweh, our Creator. He had to do it multiple times under temptation by Satan. The last and most fierce temptation was when Jesus’ enemies taunted Him while He hung on the cross saying in Matthew 27:42, “‘He saved others; he cannot save himself. He is the King of Israel; let him come down now from the cross, and we will believe in him.’”

Because Jesus successfully resisted all temptation for our sake, we read in Philippians 2:9-11, “9 Therefore God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name, 10 so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, 11 and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.”

Marvelously, then, it’s a human being at the right hand of God who has this great Name, power and authority. It’s no angel or any other created creature. It’s Jesus, the resurrected human being, the Second Adam, the Son of God. It’s this Jesus who will be returning to judge the earth and claim His own from the grave.

So, it was at the Jordan River that Jesus first laid down His right to play God. He laid down any right He had to be Messiah on His own terms. Having done so, He obediently took up the yoke of being Messiah according to the Word of God, as prophesied through Moses and the Prophets. He did this by taking upon Himself the baptism of repentance proclaimed by John. Therefore, it would be right on this holy day in which we commemorate the Baptism of our Lord to give holy thanks to our Savior for His great Love and devotion to us. It would be right to receive in joy the Father’s great Word spoken over Jesus in Luke 3:22, “. . . ‘You are my beloved Son; with you I am well pleased.’”

Now, two things before we close. First, there’s a theological problem that comes out of Jesus’ baptism. It’s caused by an improper understanding of the Holy Spirit coming down on Jesus at His baptism. It’s a heresy known by the technical name of Kenoticism.

Kenoticism is the idea that when Jesus became incarnate by the Holy Spirit in the Virgin Mary, He left all His God powers behind in heaven, becoming just an ordinary man. Therefore, when Jesus performed miracles and mighty deeds, He didn’t do them. It was the Holy Spirit at work in Him who performed the mighty works.

A very erroneous teaching can arise from Kenoticism. It goes like this: If Jesus was just an ordinary man who performed mighty works by the power of Lord Holy Spirit, then any of us ordinary people who have the Holy Spirit ought to be able to do identical works — even raise the dead. This idea has caused various abuses in the present time, some of them quite disturbing.

On the other hand, Lutherans have long had the following proper understanding of Messiah’s two natures as God and man. First, each nature is separate. There is no mixture. Jesus isn’t a smoothy. However, in the person of Jesus each of His natures is connected to the other in such a way that His two natures are indivisible as one. In addition, the two natures of Christ are not like two boards nailed together. Rather, they are like two cell phones connected by a cable, each communicating with the other. For instance, Jesus’ divine nature tasted death connected to His human nature. Jesus’ human nature was able to do miraculous works connected to His divine nature.

While Jesus did not leave His divine nature behind when He became incarnate in human flesh, He often hid His divine nature, as we pointed out last week. Indeed, for the first twenty-nine years of His life He looked like an ordinary day laborer from Nazareth. But His divine nature was present from conception. And when the time was right, Jesus began to manifest it. Indeed, from the time of His baptism forward, Jesus openly manifested His divine nature.

One last thing, then. Our second lesson this morning defines our baptism into Messiah Jesus. In Romans 6 verses one through eleven we’re told that our physical water baptism intimately connects us with Jesus’ sacrificial death and His victorious resurrection. Thus, in our own baptism we participate with Jesus, as He surrendered at the Father’s feet the right to be His own God. And in our own baptism we participate with Jesus as He took up the resurrected life in righteousness, having freed us from Original Sin and God-playing. Thus, Paul concludes in Romans 6:11,  “So you also must consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus.”

By faith we have to believe this Word and reckon ourselves dead to sin and alive to God because as long as we live in these bodies, it will seem otherwise. Paul’s complaint that we saw in Romans 7 will continue to be with us. The sinful nature will continue to be a problem. 

But, the post-resurrection future is another matter. For in our resurrected, immortal bodies we will be entirely free of the sinful nature forever. There will be no more combat with demonic forces. No more secret evil thoughts. No more ungodly dreams or desires. We will have Yahweh’s holy righteousness written within our beings. And so the glory of our Lord Jesus Christ will be in us forever. Our Creator will be able to delight in us forever. We’ll be able to delight in Him forever. Such a life is what our baptism has destined us for.

Therefore, as long as we continue to live in this flesh, we need to reckon ourselves destined for that eternity through our baptism because Yahweh says so in His Word. And keeping our eternal destiny in mind aids us tremendously in our present warfare with sin and the devil. For, John the Baptist wasn’t kidding about Jesus. He has baptized us with His Holy Spirit and with fire. His Spirit dwelling in us through our baptism is what keeps us on the path of righteousness in this life. The Spirit’s fire is what keeps us headed for eternal righteousness with our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. The Spirit is the one who rescues us from temptation and evil. He is the One who brings us the forgiveness of sins that enables us to stand righteous before our Creator. Amen.

All Bible quotes are from the ESV.