The Baptism of Jesus

Today on the Lord's Day edition of Renewing Your Mind… Well, my guess would be this morning that there would be several, perhaps many in this congregation today who have never heard of the idea of the perfect active obedience of Christ. And yet it's an extremely important doctrine in Christian theology. The distinction is made historically between the active obedience of Jesus and the passive obedience of Jesus.

The distinction is this. The passive obedience of Jesus refers to His willingness to acquiesce to the Father's mandate that He offer Himself as a sacrifice and as an atonement for the sins of His people on the cross. Jesus did not resist His executioners. He told them, you have no power over Me, but I lay down My life for My sheep. He was passive in His reception of the penalty for sin as our sin bearer. And in contrast to that action or activity, which really was an action even though it was a passive action, we have what we call the active obedience of Jesus, which refers to His whole life of living under the law in total subjection to the Father, actively and willingly obeying everything that the Lord God commanded Him to do.

It was said of Him that His meat and His drink was to do the will of the Father, and zeal for His Father's house consumed Him. And so this is directly related to the text we read this morning about the baptism of Jesus. Many people are perplexed with the question, why was Jesus baptized at all? Wasn't the baptism of John the Baptist a baptism for repentance of sin? Wasn't the very ritual itself a cleansing rite in which John the Baptist commanded people to come to be cleaned and to repent of their sins? And Jesus had no sins to repent of. He was the Lamb without blemish.

He so far in His life had already lived a life of perfect active obedience without sin. Now, if we're perplexed by why Jesus submitted to baptism, we have to say that nobody on the earth was more perplexed about it than John the Baptist. You know, the people were asking questions among themselves with reference to John. They said, is John the Christ? Is He the Messiah that was to come?

And He put those rumors to rest. He said, no, no, no, no, no. He said, there's one coming after me who's mightier than I am. I baptize you with water, but He'll baptize you with the Holy Spirit and with fire, and He must increase, and I must decrease.

I'm not even worthy to loosen the straps on His sandals. And so He pointed people towards Jesus, and then that day that Jesus came through the crowd and up to the river and presented Himself to John to be baptized. John's shaking his head. What are you doing? I've been announcing to the people that you're the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. I can't baptize you.

You should be baptizing me. And so John begins to protest and tries to engage Jesus in theological argument about this procedure. And finally, Jesus cuts him short, cuts the Gordian knot, and He says, John, look, I don't have all day to engage you in a theological discussion. We can cover these matters later on if you'd like, but suffer it now, John. Just do it.

It has to be done. It's necessary, John, to fulfill all righteousness. Now Jesus could have, and maybe even did, since we don't get all the dialogue for us, but let me speculate for a second that Jesus could have said to John the Baptist, John, look, this is just a covenant ritual that we're going on here, and no harm, no foul.

You just go ahead and baptize me, and I'll explain it later. He could have said that. Or He could have looked John in the eye and said, John, you need to do this because this is a matter of life and death. Now we have no record that Jesus ever said that to John. I just made that up. But the concept that I've just made up is completely sound because whatever else Jesus' baptism was, it was a matter of life and death. Well, how?

Why? Well, I think to understand that, we have to understand something about Jesus' role in His earthly ministry as the new Adam, or as Paul calls them sometimes the second Adam, the one who comes after the first Adam, the father of the human race, who was, we are told, a type of the one who was to come, the greater Adam that would come to bring salvation to the human race. Let me just briefly read a portion of Paul's teaching on this matter in the fifth chapter of the book of Romans. He also covers the same material in 1 Corinthians 15. But briefly, he writes to the Romans these words, therefore, just as through one man sin entered the world and death through sin, and thus death spread to all men because all sin, for until the law, sin was in the world, but sin is not imputed when there is no law. Nevertheless, death reigned from Adam to Moses, even over those who had not sinned according to the likeness of the transgression of Adam, who is a type of Him who was to come. And now the contrast.

But the free gift is not like the offense. For if by one man's offense many died, much more, the grace of God and the gift by that grace of the one man, Jesus Christ, abounded to many. And he goes on to say, for by the one man's offense death reigned through the one, much more, those who received the abundance and grace, and of the gift of righteousness will reign in life through the one, Jesus Christ.

It was a matter of life and death. Through Adam's offense, the original Adam's transgression, the whole world was plunged into ruin, and death came upon the entire human race. And in contrast, by one man's obedience comes life. Now, without the obedience of Jesus, without His perfect active obedience, He would not have done for us what Adam failed so miserably to accomplish. Now to understand this, we have to go back to the Old Testament and look at it in the context of covenant. There are covenants all through the Bible, but we have the covenant with Noah, the covenant with Abraham, the covenant with Moses, the new covenant that we have with Jesus in the New Testament. We have covenants all the way through the Scriptures. But the first covenant made with human beings was made with Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, and we call that the covenant of creation. And the word Adam means man. He represented the entire human race so that when God entered into a covenant with Adam, He was entering into a covenant with every human being that would ever live. And He promised the benefit and the blessing of this covenant of creation of eternal life. If Adam obeys the provisions and the stipulations of that covenant, but the negative sanction was this. If you disobey the terms of this covenant, you will die. And not only will you die, not only will you die, but the day in which you eat of that fruit, you will surely die.

Well, you know the story. The serpent came into the garden and came first to Eve with a subtle, crafty, leading question. Did God say that you're not allowed to eat of any of the trees in the garden? Well, of course, God didn't say that, and Satan knew perfectly well that God had never said that. But he's subtle.

He's crafty. Because with the implications he might as well have, because if he put any restriction on you, you weren't really free. But initially Eve fights for the angels, and she said, no, God didn't say that. He gave us this wonderful garden. He said, of all these trees in the garden, we could freely eat, but there's this one tree over here, the knowledge of good and evil. And we're not allowed to touch that one, or we'll die.

Now the direct assault. The serpent says, oh no, you won't die, and God knows you won't die. God doesn't want you to touch that tree because He knows that if you eat from that tree, you'll be like Him knowing good and evil. And seeing that the fruit appeared beautiful, Eve ate the fruit from the tree and then encouraged her husband to join her in this rebellion. Now you would expect at the moment they put that fruit in their mouth and tasted it that they would have dropped dead right there.

Well, they did drop dead right there spiritually, but not physically. That was postponed, and God tempered His judgment with mercy and grace. Remember the first experience that Adam and Eve had when they ate of the forbidden fruit was they suddenly became aware of their nakedness, and they were ashamed, and they went and hid themselves. So that when the Lord God came in the cool of the evening, and He said, Adam, where are you? They discovered that they were hiding from Him. Why are you hiding? We're ashamed. Well, why are you ashamed?

Did you eat from the tree? Lord, we're naked. I made you naked, and when I made you naked, you weren't ashamed. You didn't have any guilt. Why all of a sudden do you feel naked? Why do you feel exposed?

Why do you want to hide from Me? And so in this first act of redemption, God condescended to fashion clothes for Adam and Eve to cover their nakedness and their shame, and He made a promise to them. Even by the same time He's cursing the serpent, He's promising that the seed of the woman would crush the head of the serpent. And in that promise, what God was saying is that there will come another Adam, a new Adam, who will do what you failed to do, who will bring life rather than death. Now in recent years, there's been a movement among professing evangelical Christians to reject the doctrine of the perfect act of obedience of Jesus.

And I said, why would they want to do that? Well, the reason is they reject the idea of this first covenant that we call the covenant of works. We distinguish between the covenant that God makes with Adam and call that covenant the covenant of works, and then every covenant after that is the covenant of grace. And these enemies of the idea say, well listen, any covenant that God gives to human beings is an act of grace. They don't deserve to be in the covenant relationship with God. Nobody argues that point. But when we distinguish historically between the covenant of works and the covenant of grace, we know that God never was required to make any covenants with us at all.

We won't argue that point. But those covenants that He did make differ on how the benefits would be received. And in the Garden of Eden, Adam and Eve were on trial.

They were on a period of probation. If they obey and keep the faith, they get life. If they disobey, they get death. In other words, if their works are righteous, they live. If their works are evil, they perish. Well, if there's anyone in this world, I don't know who has labored more in our day on behalf of the Reformed doctrine of justification by faith alone than I have.

I speak as a fool. But as much as I believe in the doctrine of justification by faith alone, I tell people, remember at the end of the day, there's only one way to be justified in the sight of God, and that's by works. You say, well, how can you say that you believe in justification by faith alone and then turn around and say at the end of the day, what have you been drinking at the end of the day so that you say now justification is by works?

And I'll say because. The covenant of works that God gave to Adam and Eve is still in effect. And the only way to satisfy the demands of God is through good works.

Nothing less will do. But the reason why the covenant of grace is called the covenant of grace is because now God is saying it's not by your good works that you'll be saved, but by somebody else's good works. You perish because of the first Adam's bad works.

Bad works. You'll be saved by the perfect righteousness of the new Adam whose works are without blemish and which works are given to you if you put your trust in Him. Now I know that there are people in this room today who still are believing that their good deeds and their trying to live a good life is going to get them into heaven.

If you walked into this church building this morning with that belief in your head, let me beg you this morning to leave it here and forget it because you have no chance. Only one person who's ever satisfied the law of God, and that's Jesus. And that's why His submission to the baptism of John the Baptist was a matter of life and death. God required it of everyone. And as the new Adam entering into a corporate solidarity with His people, He submitted to that requirement of the law so that His acts of righteousness may be perfect. What I'm saying is you're justified by works, but not your own works, but by the works but by the works of Jesus.

He is our righteousness. You know, a few weeks ago I was in another church performing a funeral memorial service, and before the service the pastor was leading me back to his office where I could get ready for the service. And Bess was with me up to the door, and just as I was ready to go in, she said to me, I'll be here after a while, darling boy.

And the minister turned to me and said, darling boy, what's that? I said, that's just one of those terms of endearment that Vesta uses for me. Don't we all have terms of endearment for our spouses? I hope so.

That's just one of many. But I think her favorite term of endearment, and I'm not really sure it's a term of endearment for me that many of you have never heard her use, she calls me Spot, not named after the dog in Dick and Jane and the C-Spot run and all that stuff. Now, there are other better reasons for her calling me Spot. She calls me Spot because I use blood thinners, and every time I bump my arm against the wall or my dog scratches me in the arm, I bleed like a stuck pig and have spots all over my arms. And so she calls me Spot for that.

But that's not the only reason or even the chief reason. When we go out to eat, she says, I know this is embarrassing, but would you please put your napkin under your collar like the godfather in an Italian restaurant? And then she says, lovingly, Spot, because if I don't put that thing there, I'll come home with spots all over my shirt, all over my tie, because I make a mess of myself, and she has to clean these spots up. So, she sees those blemishes, but there's no napkin in the world that can hide the spots on my soul, the blemishes that are there and would be there indelibly, unless the covenant of grace and the righteousness of Jesus, the Lamb without blemish, could remove those spots from my soul and from yours. And so Jesus went into the water and was baptized by John. And this marked the beginning of His earthly public ministry, the moment where He was anointed and became the Christos, Messiah. When the heavens opened and the Holy Spirit descended on Him like a dove to empower Him for His redemptive mission, and this One who had only known obedience, an act of obedience, a perfect act of obedience in His entire life, heard the voice from heaven, this is my beloved Son in whom I am well pleased. And it is because of the Father's pleasure that we ever escape from the consequences of the sin of Adam who plunged us into ruin. The new Adam, the second Adam is the only one who can help you if you have ever sinned. There's no other name under heaven through which men may be saved.

The name of Jesus. Now I hope you understand what J. Gresham Machen was saying to his colleagues with his telegram, grateful for the perfect act of obedience of Christ. Grateful.

He was restricted by space, and obviously by vocabulary. Are you kidding me? Grateful. Deliriously grateful for the perfect act of obedience of Christ, for without it, we perish. Without it, we have no hope. Because of Jesus' perfect life, His passive and act of obedience, His sacrifice was sufficient for all who believe.

We won't hear better news all day, will we? We're glad you've joined us for this Lord's Day edition of Renewing the Church of Jesus. Dr. R.C. Sproul is taking us through the entire gospel of Luke, and eventually we will make our way through each verse in this book. The careful study we hear from Dr. Sproul each week here on the program can also be found in his commentary on Luke's gospel. Contact us today with a donation of any amount, and we will be happy to provide you with a digital download of this nearly 600-page commentary.

Our offices are closed, of course, on this Lord's Day, but you can give your gift and make your request online at renewingyourmind.org. Our desire here at Ligonier Ministries is to come alongside Christians like you and help you in your study of God's Word. Another great resource for you to explore is our app. Not only will you find articles and blog posts, but you'll also have access to a library of past Renewing Your Mind programs, all of it available for free.

Just search for Ligonier in your app store. Well, in the next section of Luke, we'll learn about the genealogy of Jesus, and we'll understand why it's important to know who his great-great grandparents were. R.C. will tackle that passage from Luke's gospel next Sunday, and we hope you'll join us for Renewing Your Mind.