The Baptism of Our
Lord (B)
January 7, 2018
Text: Mark 1:4-11
Christian Baptism is a
declaration of war against the devil and his minions. Christian Baptism enlists
the baptized in spiritual warfare, the raging battle against the old sinful
flesh, against the temptations and allurements of the unbelieving world, and
against the old wily serpent, the devil, and his demons. And it’s dangerous,
because it makes the baptized child of God a target of the evil one. Martin
Luther wrote in his Baptismal Booklet: “Therefore, you have to realize that it
is no joke at all to take action against the devil and not only to drive him
away from the little child but also to hang around the child’s neck such a
mighty, lifelong enemy. Thus it is extremely necessary to stand by the poor
child with all your heart and with a strong faith and to plead with great
devotion that God, in accordance with these prayers, would not only free the
child from the devil’s power but also strengthen the child, so that the child
might resist him valiantly in life and in death. I fear that people turn out so
badly after baptism because we have dealt with them in such a cold and casual
way and have prayed for them at their baptism without any zeal at all.”[1]
Serious
business, Baptism. No joke, no trifling tradition. War is what it is.
But necessary. A matter of life and death, in fact… eternal life and
death. Because in Baptism you become God’s own child. You are snatched from the
yawning jaws of death and the tenacious claws of the devil. You are given the
Holy Spirit, and all your sins are washed away as you are covered by the blood
of Christ. You are Baptized, as we heard in the Epistle (Romans 6:1-11), into
the death and resurrection of Christ, so that they become your own. And everything
that Christ has done, beloved, He has done for you. He became a man for you. He
was obedient to His parents and grew in wisdom and favor with God and men for
you. He learned the Scriptures for you. He fulfilled God’s whole Law for you.
He suffered for you. He died for you. He is risen from the dead for you. He
ascended into heaven and sits at God’s right hand for you. And He comes to you
in His blessed Word and Sacraments, for you, to forgive your sins and to give
you eternal life. He has done and does all of this for you and for your
salvation. He does it in your place. You are baptized into Him. And this is so
powerful, to deliver all these great gifts, because He is first baptized into you… into your sin, into your death, by John
the Baptist in the waters of the Jordan River, where He is anointed by the Holy
Spirit to undertake His divine mission (warfare!), where the Father says to
Him, and to us who are baptized into Him, “You
are my beloved Son; with you I am well pleased” (Mark 1:11; ESV).
The
Good News for us who have been enlisted in the battle by virtue of our Baptism
is that the LORD goes before us, the LORD fights for us, Jesus, God in the
flesh. And though the battle rages, the victory has been won. It was won on the
cross and in the empty tomb. The devil is defeated. So we know the outcome. Our
Lord steps into the waters of the Jordan, and as John baptizes Him with a baptism He does not need, a baptism of
repentance for the forgiveness of sins, like a sponge He
soaks up all the sins of the whole world. Your sin, all of it, the
sinless Son of God took upon Himself, so that He could give you His
righteousness in exchange. “For our sake”
God “made him to be sin who knew no sin,
so that in him we might become the righteousness of God” (2 Cor. 5:21). It
is a great exchange. Jesus gets our sin, we get His righteousness. He dies, we
live. He takes hell, and heaven itself has been rent open for us. He is
baptized into us, that we might be baptized into Him. In the Lord’s Baptism in
the Jordan, He “sanctified and instituted all waters to be a blessed flood and
a lavish washing away of sin.”[2] A great
gift, Baptism is. It is not our action. It is God’s action for us and upon us. It is the source of all our
confidence and all our joy. But it does mean war. No doubt about it. Baptism
makes you a marked man, a marked woman.
How
can it be that the battle still rages if the victory has already been won by
our Lord Jesus? We encounter here the distinction between the objective justification of all people by our Lord’s sin-atoning
work on the one hand, and how that objective justification is applied to each
one of us subjectively on the other.
Now, defining our terms is important here. The word “justification” means
“righteousness,” which is precisely what unrighteous sinners do not have and
desperately need. Jesus wins the objective
justification of the whole world (the outside
of us, reality whether we know or believe it or not justification of the world)
of all people, in His life, death, and resurrection. The war is won. The devil
is defeated. The sins of all people have been paid in full by the suffering and
death of Jesus, and God has declared that payment sufficient by raising Jesus
from the dead.
But
the battle still rages for each one of us in the subjective application of this victory, or in other words, how this
victory is made our own and how we
are kept in our Lord’s victory. You
see, the victory of our Savior is received subjectively
by faith. And faith is itself a gift of God. Yet faith can be prevented and
faith can be lost, which is the aim of our enemy, the devil. He seeks to rob us
of faith in Jesus Christ at every turn. He seeks to kill our faith so that he
can claim us once again for his own. In Baptism, God grants faith in Jesus
Christ His Son by imparting the Holy Spirit. But the devil never tires in
seeking to rob us of that gift. And we are weak. We still have the old sinful
flesh hanging around our necks. We easily fall prey to Satan’s lies. Like our
first parents in the garden. We listen to the serpent. We see that what he
offers is pleasing to the eye, and we think it will satisfy our lustful
appetites. We’re dead meat on our own. If Adam and Eve, who were created
without sin, could fall prey to the devil, we, their sinful progeny, don’t
stand a chance. If we are to be kept in the one true faith of Jesus Christ,
kept in our Baptism, kept for eternal life, God
must do it. God must do it, and God alone. If we are to persevere in the
faith, if we are to survive this war, it must be by grace, it must be His
work. And it is. We are faithless,
but He is faithful. He does it. He brings it to completion.
That
is why He’s given us the means of grace: His holy Word, Baptism, Absolution,
and the Sacrament of Jesus’ body and blood. Many of these are mentioned right
here in our text. John appears baptizing
in the wilderness and proclaiming a baptism
of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. And the people respond to John’s preaching by confessing their sins, being baptized
and absolved. And those are the same
means of grace we have here in the New Testament Church. John’s baptism is the forerunner of our Christian Baptism in the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of
the Holy Spirit. John’s baptism leads
directly to our Baptism, for Jesus
receives John’s baptism, in order that we may be baptized into Christ. And our
Baptism into Christ, too, is a Baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of
sins. And now we live each day in our Baptism, which means we repent daily and we daily receive and rejoice in the forgiveness of the Lord Jesus.
What
makes these gifts so powerful – words, water, bread and wine – is not that they
are anything spectacular in and of themselves. But it’s this: Jesus comes in these means. He comes to
you. He comes for you. He comes to make you one with Him, and so to make you
God’s own child. “In those days,”
namely, the days when John was baptizing and preaching in wilderness, “Jesus came,” says our text (Mark 1:9).
And in Jesus’ coming, John’s baptism receives all its power. For Jesus comes to
use John and his baptism and his preaching as His means of saving humanity. So
also our Baptism, preaching, Scripture reading, Absolution, Communion… What
makes these gifts so powerful is that Jesus
comes and uses them as His means
to save us… to make what is objectively
true for all people on account of Jesus’ saving work, subjectively true for you, for me, for each one of us individually.
And
that is what happens when you are baptized into Christ. All that Jesus is and
does is made yours. Heaven is torn open for you. The Spirit descends upon you.
And the very voice of the Father speaks in the Word that has been joined to the
water: “You… You… You… are my beloved Son; with you I am well
pleased.” Because now, being baptized into Christ, when God looks at you, He
sees Christ. He sees His Son. And our Lord Christ, who has won the war
already, will bring you through the
battle to the Day of Resurrection. In the Name of the Father, and of the Son
(+), and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
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