June 27, 2000
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Luke 3:21-22 Messiah's Divine Confirmation
The Messiah's Divine Confirmation, Part 1
Luke 3:21-22
"Now it came about when all the people were baptized that Jesus also was baptized and while He was praying heaven was opened and the Holy Spirit descended upon Him in bodily form like a dove and a voice came out of heaven, 'Thou art My beloved Son, in Thee I am well pleased.'"
There's no fanfare. Luke says nothing more than that about the baptism itself. The focus is on what was going on at the baptism. Jesus was praying, heaven was opened, the Holy Spirit came down and the Father's voice came out of heaven saying, "Thou art My beloved Son, in Thee I am well pleased."
These brief verses that I've just read are the final transition from John the Baptist to Jesus. But this event is far more than just a transition. It is the testimony of the Father to the Son. It is the divine confirmation of Jesus as the Messiah. It is the word from heaven, it is the anointing of the Holy Spirit from heaven indicating that this Jesus is in fact the anointed Messiah, Son of God, Savior. He is the One who was promised by the angel Gabriel when he announced that Mary would have a child who would be the Son of the Most High. He is the One who is affirmed by the angels when they said to the shepherds, "Glory to God in the highest, for today was born a Savior, Christ the Lord."
It is thirty years since the birth of Christ. Thirty years and at least nine months later than the annunciation of Gabriel to Mary. And now it is time for the thirty-year-old Jesus, as indicated, by the way, in verse 23, it says, "When He began His ministry He was about thirty years of age," so it is now thirty years that have gone by, it is time for Jesus to be launched into His ministry and the launch has as its most notable feature, a voice out of heaven affirming that He is the Son of the Most High God with whom the Most High God is well pleased.
This baptism, this opening of heaven, this descent of the Holy Spirit, this voice from the Father takes place about six months after John the Baptist had begun his ministry. The time was the summer of the year 26 A.D.
When Jesus comes from Nazareth to Galilee to be baptized at the age of about thirty, He has lived for thirty years in real obscurity. Obscurity as far as the people of Israel knew, He had no ministry, no public persona, no public profile. He was utterly unknown to the people of His own town Nazareth. When He announced Himself to be the Messiah there, they sought to kill Him. There was nothing about Him that would indicate He was God in human flesh. He didn't have a halo around His head and He didn't wear some special heavenly garb. There was no emanating light coming from Him. He was living in obscurity for thirty years, working in the obscure town of Nazareth as a part of His father's business as a carpenter. But it is time now for Him to begin His ministry, time for Him to start His life work and fulfill His divine commission.
He goes down to the Jordan River where John is to be baptized. He meets John. In the first chapter of John's gospel, that's a different John, the apostle John, the apostle John records that John the Baptist didn't recognize Jesus. That's not surprising. They were relatives. Their two mothers, Elizabeth and Mary, were relatives. You remember that they got together early in the gospel of Luke, we read about that. Mary was pregnant and Elizabeth was pregnant with John, the herald of the forerunner of the Messiah who would be born to Mary. Since they were relatives they got together because they had been the recipients of mutual miracles by which they were going to bear a child. Elizabeth was pass childbearing and had been barren all her life. And Mary was a virgin. And in both cases the conception was miraculous. And so they got together as relatives.
It is conceivable that the children, John being about six months older, at least, than Jesus may have gotten together at some time in their childhood. But through their adult life, they lived in two different places. Jesus lived in the town of Nazareth which is on the northern edge of the area of Israel, or Palestine, up in the north part of the Galilee. And John the Baptist lived in the south and the east part, down east of Jerusalem, down into the wilderness of Judea. And according to chapter 1 and the end of the chapter, he lived there for his entire life, living in the deserts until he launched his ministry about six months before Jesus showed up. So they were in two different places.
Nothing indicates to us that John was anywhere but the wilderness, or that Jesus was anywhere but Nazareth. And so, when Jesus first showed up, the gospel of John tells us John didn't recognize Him. Obviously he knew the Messiah was coming, he had certainly been told by his mother that his relative, her relative, Mary, had given birth to the Messiah and that the Messiah was actually a relative of his. His mother, no doubt, had told him the story, but not seeing Jesus in the intervening years, didn't know what He would look like. And so, when you come to John chapter 1 verses 31 to 33, John twice says that he didn't recognize Jesus, because, of course, he didn't know what He looked like.
Eventually he did recognize Jesus at His baptism and later after the baptism, probably the next day when Jesus again came down to where John was baptizing, Jesus pointed to him because he was given the knowledge of who He was and baptized Him the day before, he pointed to Him and said, "Behold, the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world." But they didn't know each other and that's why John didn't recognize Jesus when He came there.
There was a two or three day, probably three days when Jesus...day one, was baptized by John; day two was marked out as the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world; and then on the third day, came to where John was. That would be the only time in their lives when they were actually together. John went on ministering six months longer before he was imprisoned and then was imprisoned up to a year. Jesus' ministry, of course, went on as well. So for six months at least their ministries went on together, but they were in two different locations and they didn't meet. So here you have just the one brief time when they met. And Jesus came for the purpose of being baptized. That was His objective and what was to happen there was critical. Putting Jesus into the water wouldn't necessary signify anything. John was doing that with masses and masses of people. In fact, it tells us in verse 21, "It came about when all the people were baptized that Jesus also was baptized." He was one among many just being baptized there. There was nothing to single Him out unless there was some divine intervention to identify Him, no one watching would know that this was any other than just another Jew coming down wanting to prepare himself for the Messiah by repenting of his sins and going through this baptism of repentance.
When Jesus was baptized, all heaven broke loose because this was not just another baptism, this was a singular event to launch the ministry of the Messiah, the Son of God, the Savior of the world. What John is focusing on in verse 21 and 22 is the voice that comes out of heaven. When you study the Greek language, you learn its grammar, its construction. And what you have here in the Greek construction is the main clause at the end of verse 22, "A voice came out of heaven, 'Thou art My beloved Son, in Thee I am well pleased.'" Here is God, out of heaven proclaiming Jesus as His Son, the Son of the Most High God, as Gabriel had said He was, Immanuel, God with us. And the Father is also proclaiming His perfection saying He is well pleased with everything about Him.
That is the main clause of these two verses and everything else is subordinate to that. What you have here are three infinitive clauses. In the Greek language, some of you who know Greek and even remember your English grammar will remember the words "infinitive" and "participle." Infinitives and participles are verb forms that modify a main verb, they're subordinate, and that's what you have. The focus of what Luke writes is the last statement, the statement of the Father that this is My Son, everything else subordinates that. It was a time when people were being baptized, that Jesus was baptized and He was praying and heaven opened and the Holy Spirit came down and all of that culminated in the voice coming out of heaven which is the main emphasis. So it is the divine testimony of the Father to the Son that Luke is interested in.
Luke doesn't give us any details about the baptism. He doesn't give us anything in terms of meaning of the descent of the Holy Spirit, he just says the Holy Spirit descended in a form that was visible like a dove. But he does give us the very word of the Father which is the main issue.
Thirty years of perfect, sinless growth and maturing are over with. Thirty years in which Jesus has increased in wisdom and stature and favor with God and man, as chapter 1 verse 52 says. All the preparation is passed and now He is ready to begin His ministry. So He leaves Nazareth and takes the 60-70 mile hike down from Nazareth to Judea and out to the Jordan River where John is because there He is to be baptized.
In this two verses we have the trinity. We have the Son being baptized. We have the Holy Spirit descending. And we have the Father speaking out of heaven. All three are present. Here is one of the great trinitarian texts of the New Testament. There is the Father's presence, the Spirit's presence and the Son's presence, and here is the key word, simultaneously. And that is very important because there is a heresy that's been around for a long, long time. It's ancient name is "Sabalianism(?)." It's...another name that was used...it was used to refer to it in the past...is "Modelism(?)". It is the idea, it is the heresy that God is one God who sometimes appears as the Father, sometimes appears as the Son, and sometimes appears as the Spirit...that He has different modes. But He is not three in one simultaneously. He is not eternally three persons. He is eternally one person who puts on different masks at different times.
A good way to look at the text is to just take it from the viewpoint of the three persons of the trinity. Let's begin with the Son. With the Son the baptism, with the Spirit the anointing, with the Father the testimony...those are the three that we'll look at.
The Son, first of all, verse 21, we'll just get in to this and maybe a mention or so about the Holy Spirit. "It came about when all the people were baptized that Jesus also was baptized and while He was praying heaven was opened."
Now it came about...and then all the infinitive modifying statements...that the Father affirmed or confirmed the identity of Jesus as His Son, the Son of the Most High, the anointed Messiah, Savior of the world. But let's look at some of these infinitive details because they're very important.
The first one has to do with the baptism of Jesus. "When all the people were baptized, Jesus also was baptized..." That just means the crowds. Go back to verse 7, "There were multitudes coming out to be baptized." In fact, Matthew tells us that all Jerusalem and Judea and all the region around the Jordan, Matthew 3:5 I think it is, were coming out to be baptized by him. John was very popular, large crowds were coming day after day after day after day to be baptized by John. John's baptism was the baptism for repentance. The people were told that they could get ready for the Messiah, the Messiah was coming. He was the voice of one crying in the wilderness, fulfilling the prophecy of Isaiah. He was the one coming in the spirit and the power of Elijah, fulfilling the prophecy of Malachi. He was the one announcing the arrival of the Messiah. And if you wanted to be ready for Messiah's arrival, you had to confess your sin, repent of your sin and go through a baptism that outwardly symbolized the recognition that you needed to be cleansed, that you needed to be washed. And so "all" refers to all who were baptized.
Not everybody in the nation was baptized. Not everybody who came to John was baptized. In Luke chapter 7 verse 30 it says, "Pharisees and lawyers rejected God's purpose for them, not having been baptized by John." There were people who weren't baptized, so the "all" doesn't mean the whole nation, it may not even mean everybody who came down to the Jordan to listen. But there were many being baptized and at the time when all who were being baptized were being baptized, Jesus also was baptized. At the peak of John's ministry is the idea, when all the crowds were there so that the baptism of Jesus, listen, is a very public event. I read one commentator who said it was after the baptism of the crowds that Jesus came and had a private baptism. Not the case and that is explicitly indicated in Luke 3:21. It was at the time when everybody was being baptized that Jesus also was baptized.
At the height of John's ministry, people are coming being baptized, Jesus comes. He looks like everybody else. There's no halo. There's no emanating Shekinah glory. There's no special messianic vestments or robe that He wears. He is like everybody else, He comes down and He gets in line with the crowd and John doesn't recognize Him, as the gospel of John tells us, chapter 1 verses 31 to 33. But obviously at the point of His baptism, according to John 1, John is made aware of who He is. John doesn't recognize Him until Jesus comes to John and say, "I want you to baptize Me." And He identifies who He is.
Matthew 3:13 tells us that this is not a private audience, this is when the crowds are there, the place is just stirring. "Jesus arrived from Galilee, verse 13, at the Jordan to John to be baptized by him." When all the people were being baptized, Jesus showed up. The word "arrived" is an interesting word in the Greek, paraginomai. The lexicons say it means "to make a public appearance," technical term, to make a public appearance. That's exactly what Jesus did. He's had 30 years of obscurity, it's now time to make a public appearance. He comes down the 60 or 70 miles from Galilee and He arrives to make that public appearance at the Jordan to John and the Greek construction here "for the purpose of being baptized by him."
He came to John who was His relative, who was His forerunner. They knew each other existed. Jesus knew of John's ministry, of course. His mother would have known of Elizabeth. He would have grown up as a boy knowing about His relative, John, though they did not meet. There's no indication in Scripture they met. John knew, of course, about the Messiah, about Jesus. He knew about His family. He knew He was in Nazareth but he didn't know what He looked like. Here comes Jesus and He's going to be baptized by His relative and forerunner, John. This, as I said, would be their only real meeting. He would baptize Him. The next day Jesus would come again. He would identify Him as the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. And there was probably one more day in which Jesus and John spent some time together. After that, they separated, never...at least indicating in Scripture...never to be together again. John ministering another six months and then being in prison until his death. But Jesus comes to be baptized.
When John finds out who He is and he has to have a discussion with Him to find out this is in fact Jesus, the Messiah, verse 14 says, "John tried to prevent Him..." John tries to stop Him from being baptized. He says this to Him, "I have need to be baptized by You and do you come to me."
This is a wonderful and important testimony. John knows about the Messiah and he knows the Messiah is the Son of the Most High God. Obviously his mother Elizabeth had affirmed that. His father, Zacharias, acknowledge in his great, great praise to God after the birth of John, the greatness of the coming Messiah, recognize that He was divine and heavenly. John knew that the Messiah was the Son of God, that He was holy and pure and sinless, he knew that. And so he says to Him...Look, I am not going to baptize You, You need to baptize me. Why are You coming to Me to baptize You?" This is testimony from John, the great prophet and forerunner of the Messiah, listen, to the Messiah's sinlessness. Here is the greatest man who ever lived up until his time, according to Matthew 11:11, that's what Jesus said, here is the greatest of the prophets therefore, here is the great forerunner of the Messiah, here is the herald of the Messiah, here's the one who introduces the Messiah and the first thing he says about the Messiah is He is sinless and therefore it is impossible that He should go through John's baptism.
Why? Because John's was a baptism of repentance. You go back in Matthew 3 to verse 6, the people who were coming were being baptized by John in the Jordan River as they confessed their sins. In verse 11, "I baptize you with water for repentance." Now do I need to remind you what John's baptism was? It shouldn't be difficult to understand, the Messiah was coming. How do you get ready for the Messiah? How do you get ready to receive the Messiah? How does anybody get ready to receive Christ? By confessing sin, by repenting of sin, that's what John preached...the Messiah's coming, the Messiah's coming, the Kingdom is at hand, you must be ready to receive the Messiah by confessing your sin and repenting of it. And the outward symbol of that is to come down here in the river and let me baptize you.
There was a baptism in Judaism called proselyte baptism, when a Gentile outside the nation of Israel, outside the covenants, as it were, outside the Abrahamic lineage, when a Gentile came and said, "I want to be a part of Judaism, I want to be a part of this people, I want to worship the true God." That's what's called a proselyte, somebody who is an outsider but is entering in. There was a proselyte baptism. It was a symbolic thing that here was a person outside the covenant, outside the promises, here was an alien, here was a stranger, here was an outcast, here was a Gentile, somebody who didn't know God. And they were being introduced into the family of God's people and they needed, therefore, to admit their alienation, admit their sin, admit that they were cut off and that they needed to be washed and cleansed of that. And that's what proselyte baptism did, it was a public demonstration that I confess of my alienation from God, I confess my sin, I confess I'm a stranger to God's law and God's holiness and I want to be cleansed and I want to enter in. So Gentiles would do this.
John was applying Gentile proselyte baptism to Jews which was tough to swallow, because they prided themselves on being the children of Abraham and the sons of the covenant. John is saying if you want to get ready for Messiah, you have to recognize you're no better than a Gentile, you're no better than an outcast, you're no better than a stranger, you're no better than a non-covenant person and you have to confess that to the degree that you'll go through the proselyte baptism, publicly making that confession.
Jesus shows up, first question...You're the Son of the Most High God, You're not alienated from God, You're the sinless one, You're the holy child, remember, the holy child...the angel said...You're holy, You have no sin, You are not alienated from God, You don't need this baptism, in fact the protest...there's a reasonable protest. John may be saying...I need to protect You from somebody drawing the wrong conclusion here. If You come down to the water and I baptize You, somebody may assume by that that You are testifying to being a sinful person. This can't happen. John says...Look, what needs to happen is You need to baptize me, since I'm baptizing everybody else and can't baptize myself, but I'm a sinner, why don't You just do me, that's a better plan? But I can't...I can't...I can't let You be baptized by me.
This was His purpose, He came to be baptized by him. That's an infinitive with the word tou in the Greek, t-o-u, that's purpose. I came for this very purpose. And I think John's reaction is reasonable. In fact, one of the fascinating things to do is to read the historical commentaries on the baptism of Jesus and the reasons people give why He did it, all kinds of things. One very ancient writer suggested that Jesus came to be baptized to please His mother and His brothers. This is written in a thing called The Gospel According to Hebrews...The Gospel According to the Hebrews which is an apocryphal non-canonical, non-inspired book. It says, "Behold the mother of the Lord and His brother and said to Him, 'John the Baptist baptizes for the remission of sins, let us go and be baptized by him.' But He said to them, 'What sin have I committed that I should go and be baptized by him.'" So there was this little argument and Jesus finally caved in, even though He was sinless because that's what His mother wanted. That's a spurious source and a rather foolish idea since there's nothing in the Bible to indicate that at all.
There's the Gnostic sort of esoteric, philosophical idea that Jesus was a sinner up until the time of His baptism and He came to be baptized, like all other sinners, because He was a sinner but it was at the moment of His baptism when the deity element called the logos deemed by philosophers, the deity element came down and dwelt in Him, up to then He was a sinner, at that point He gets indwelt, incarnated by the deity element, ceases to be a sinner and this is that cleansing, preparatory act that transitions Him from being a sinner to being a non-sinner. How do you deal with that? You just quote the fact that the child who is going to be born to you, Matthew 1, shall be called Immanuel which is God with us, He was God from the very beginning and also the testimony of the angel Gabriel to Mary, "This holy child." This is not a sinner who became a non-sinner.
He came to be baptized and John, imperfect tense, kept on trying to stop Him. So there must have been a dialogue, all you get is one statement to sort of sum up the dialogue. But it's a compound verb here, trying to hinder Him, or prevent Him, verse 14. The force is intense. John is saying no, and the dialogue goes on...No, I just don't get it, I can't see it, I don't understand it, I'm just not going to do it...it's going to send the wrong message, the wrong signal...
But Jesus said this, verse 15, by the way, this is the first thing Jesus says since He was twelve that's recorded in Scripture. Eighteen years of silence are now broken. And what He says is really amazing. "Permit it at this time for in this way it is fitting for us to fulfill all righteousness." And John gave in and did it, permitted it.
What is Jesus saying here? He's saying He has to do this, He gives you the answer, "To fulfill all righteousness." He has to do it to fulfill all righteousness. What does that mean? In John 1:33, John the Baptist says, "I didn't recognize Him...I didn't recognize Jesus at first...but He who sent me to baptize in water said to me, 'Upon whom you see the Spirit descending and remaining on Him, this is the one who baptizes in the Holy Spirit.'" God told me who this was, God told me that the one that I would see the Holy Spirit come down on and remain on, that would be the one.
"He who sent me to baptize in water said to me..." He who sent John to baptize in water said to him...That's God. And then God said, "The One I send My Spirit on, He's the Messiah, that's how you'll recognize Him, You'll know that." And, of course, Jesus had already revealed Himself to John and they were having the dialogue and heaven was about to confirm it, as God had said. But the point I want you to see is that John had been sent by God to baptize in water. That's very important. God wanted people baptized by John, that was a command, God sent John to baptize people in water. That's what righteous people were to do, okay? That's what God asked of righteous people. You understand that. So Jesus wanted it done to Him, listen carefully, because Jesus needed to fulfill all righteousness. What that's simply saying is that whatever God required, Jesus did because Jesus would live a life of perfect righteousness. There would be no sins of commission, He would never do what He shouldn't have done, and there would be no sins of omission, He would never fail to do what righteous people did.
This is easy to understand. Did Jesus go to the Passover? Did He? Many times. Did He take of the Passover meal? Many times. Well, did He to participate in a meal that commemorated God's deliverance of His people from Egypt and that looked forward to the expiation of sin by the final lamb that would come? Did Jesus have to partake of a Passover meal as testimony to His need to be delivered from sin? No, but righteous people kept the Passover because God instituted it.
There's another incident that helps explain this. In Matthew 17:24-27, there's a little dialogue between Simon Peter and some people from the Israeli IRS, the tax people. The tax people come to Simon and say... Simon, does your master pay taxes, does He pay this two drachma tax, kind of like a poll tax, census tax, does your master pay the tax? And Peter says, "Yeah, He does, He pays the tax." And then Jesus says to him, "Peter, let me explain to you, who pays the tax? Does the king's son pay the tax or do strangers pay the tax?" Peter says, "Ah, that's easy, strangers, the king's son never pays taxes. It's not how the system works. If you're the king's son you don't get taxed. It's all the strangers that get taxed."
"Nevertheless...Jesus says...you go down and throw your little hook in the lake, pull out a fish, you reach in his mouth you'll find a stater there, that's enough to pay both of ours. Go pay the tax." Jesus was saying this, I don't need to pay the tax, I'm the King's Son, but I'm paying it because that's what God requires of righteous people. You render to Caesar what is Caesar's, you render to God what is God's." Now in Jesus' life, if God said this is what I want righteous people to do, Jesus did it. You understand that? And it doesn't necessarily have anything to do with the fact that He was a sinner, it's not a confession that He was a sinner, it's only an acknowledgement that whatever God established as righteous conduct, Jesus did it so that righteousness for Him, listen to this, was not just negative, it wasn't just not doing what you ought not to do, but it was doing everything that God ever required of a righteous person.
I'm sure Jesus ate the Passover meal. I'm sure Jesus ate the part of the offering, the sin offering when it came back to His family, He partook of that. He participated as a family member in the sacrifices that were made by the father for the family. Jesus was a part of all of those things that God had ordained for righteous people to do, and that's why He did what He did.
There's no other way to explain it, that's exactly what He says. I don't know why people get confused. But I'm telling you, everybody you read has a different spin on why Jesus was baptized. And frankly, it's not that difficult. Some say His baptism was an initiatory rite into His ministry. Some say He was really going through proselyte baptism because He wanted to identify with the Gentiles and in order to show the Gentiles that He was identifying with them, He went through Gentile baptism. Well, that...where does it say that? All the Jews were going through that, it doesn't set Him apart.
Some say Jesus was really affirming the ministry of John. Well, why did He need to affirm the ministry of John? John needed to affirm Him. And some even say He was acting like a sinner as a preview of when He would die on the cross bearing sin.
Those are nice suggestions and I think there are some element perhaps of consideration in all of those, but the bottom line is John certainly wouldn't have been...would have had no reluctance for Jesus to have an initiatory rite, no reluctance for Jesus to have identified Himself with affirming John's ministry, etc., etc. But the bottom line is John was reluctant and he was reluctant because he knew what his baptism meant, it meant that you were confessing to be sinner and that's all it meant and he was very concerned that if Christ did this He would be portraying Himself as a sinner and he tried to stop Jesus from doing that. And Jesus turned it around the other way and said, "But, John, on the other hand, this is what God has asked righteous people to do and I'll do it because I do everything that is required by God."
Jesus is not a sinner. Hebrews 4:15 says He is without sin. He's holy, harmless, undefiled. That's why God at the end of His life highly exalted Him and gave Him the name which is above every name. Jesus is not a sinner, but this is a righteous act and Christ would do everything that was right, everything that God required, everything that God defined as righteous.
Jesus needed to live a perfect life so that perfect life could be credited to your account. Remember when we discussed that? You understand the doctrine of imputation, the doctrine of justification, just a brief, a very brief review. When you put your faith in Jesus Christ, you're saved, but that's a simple perspective. What's the grander scheme of things? On the cross, 2 Corinthians 5:21, "God made Him who knew no sin...Jesus the sinless one...God made Him who knew no sin, sin for us." Okay? On the cross God treated Jesus as if He had committed all your sins, right? In other words, God punished Jesus for your sin and my sin, for all the sins of all who would ever believe. God treated Jesus as if He lived your life, as if He lived my life. Then turns around and that same verse says, "That we might be made the righteousness of God in Him."
On the cross God treated Jesus as if He lived your life and treats you as if you lived His. That is the amazing reality of the imputation of righteousness. Jesus needed to live a perfect life so that perfect life could be credited to your account. He couldn't just come down on Friday, die on Friday, rise on Sunday and go back. There would have been no righteous life. There would have been no righteous childhood, no righteous teen-aged years, no righteous adulthood, no righteous life in which Jesus never did anything wrong and always did everything that God required. That perfect life is what is credited to your account. That's the righteousness of God in Christ credited to you. It's the righteousness of God lived out in the life of Christ and now put to your account so that when God looks at your name in the book and it says "John MacArthur," under it it says "Lived a perfect life."
What happened to your sin? It was placed on Jesus Christ and He was treated by God as if He had committed it all. So on the cross God treats Jesus as if He lived your life, turns right around and treats you as if you lived His. He needed to live a perfect life to be credited to your account. That's the righteousness of God. That's a righteousness Paul talks about in Philippians chapter 3, he says, "A righteousness not of my own, but which comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness which comes from God." God...according to the words of Isaiah...clothes you in righteousness, the righteousness of Christ.
Why did He have to be baptized? To fulfill all righteousness, to do what God required to be done, to do what was right to be done so that that perfectly righteous life would satisfy God and then be credited to your account and to my account. That is, to me, that is really a lost truth in the churches today. We all understand that Jesus died on the cross to bear our sins, very few people understand that God then exchanged for our sins the perfect life of Christ and credited to our account and God treats us as if we lived His perfect life. That is the wondrous reality of grace and imputed righteousness.
With that we can go back to Luke. So there's the dialogue between John and Jesus and finally John caves in and says...Okay, I understand...and baptizes Jesus. Now at that point you might think...Oh boy, now somebody is going to get the wrong idea, somebody is going to think that Jesus is a sinner. But no they're not and I'll tell you why they're not. Because at the very time Jesus is praying and coming up out of the water, the Holy Spirit comes down and out of heaven comes this voice, "This is My beloved Son in whom I am well-pleased," which is a way by which God announces the absolute holy perfection of the one who has just been baptized. John doesn't have to protect Jesus. Jesus will be fine on His own and in the care of His Father, everything will be attended to. So here with the crowd around and John looking and all of this going on, John's worry that Jesus is going to be baptized and people are going to think He's a sinner, but heaven makes sure that nobody gets that idea. In the text of Scripture, John then protects the perfections of Jesus, the Holy Spirit protects the perfections of Jesus, and so does the Father Himself.
There's another interesting thing in Luke 3 that only Luke mentions in verse 21. In the four accounts of the baptism, only Luke says, "While He was praying." The Messiah in the midst of this baptism while John is, you know, putting Him down and bringing Him out, is in perfect holy conversation with God. There is no alienation. This is not a sinner. There is no breach in that relationship. There is no separation. From eternity to eternity, through time in the middle when Jesus was incarnate, there never was a break in communication with the Father except for that moment on the cross when Jesus said, "My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?" when God was executing Jesus for all our sins. But apart from that moment, no alienation existed. And I think Luke is just saying...don't be concerned about whether you might think Jesus would be a sinner at this point, because He unlike the publican beating on his breast, he won't even look to God, "God, be merciful to me, a sinner," Jesus is in perfect communion with the Father. No separation, no alienation, no break, no breach and I think that's what Luke is telling us.
So you have the testimony of John to the perfection of Jesus, He's so perfect he doesn't even want to baptize Him. You have the testimony of Luke to His perfection as in the midst of what would for many be a baptism of repentance when they would feel the alienation, Jesus is in perfect communion with God. And prayer, of course, becomes a critical and a constant part of the life of Jesus. As you go through Luke you see him numerous times emphasizing the prayer life of Jesus, chapter 5, 6, 9, 11, 22, 23.
Even in the gospels, you go through and you see Jesus praying before He chooses the Twelve and praying in connection with and after the miraculous feeding of the 5,000 and praying when He was about to ask His disciples a very important question in Luke 9. Praying on the mountain where He was transfigured. Praying just before that tender invitation in Matthew 11, "Come unto Me, all you who are weary..." and so forth. Praying before He taught the disciples how to pray. Praying at Lazarus' tomb. Praying when He started the Lord's supper. Praying, of course, in Gethsemane, praying on the cross, praying after the resurrection, Luke 24.
Prayer is a critical part of the life of the Son because this is constant communion, inter-trinitarian communion between the Son and the Father. And here it is, this unbroken eternal communion. Mark adds in Mark 1:10 in his account of the baptism that immediately as Jesus was coming up out of the water, so we could combine immediately as He was coming up out of the water, while He was praying, He had been praying, probably, since the thing started and He comes up out of the water, immediately, it says, heaven was opened. Now things begin to become transcendent. Up until this point there's nothing particularly unusual. He appears like anybody else appears. John by now knows who He is, but John hasn't had the confirmation. There's been a discussion, obviously, in which Jesus said, "Go ahead and baptize Me, yes I'm the Messiah." If you are, I'm reluctant to do it...and that little dialogue. John finally says...Okay, I'll do it if You're going to fulfill all righteousness. John hasn't yet seen the confirmation but God told him if He was the Messiah, remember, the Spirit would come down and rest on Him. And exactly that happened, but it all begins when heaven was opened.
Coming up out of the water, Matthew puts it, He went immediately from the water and at that moment heaven was opened. By the way, it indicates that John baptized by immersion, that's what baptized means, to immerse or to dip. Jesus coming up out of the water, and heaven opens up. Now when heaven opens in the Bible, we won't get into this in detail, when heaven opens up, two things happen. God appears in some way. There's a manifest appearance of heavenly beings. Secondly, God speaks. And that is precisely what occurred on this occasion. Heaven opened up to let heaven come down and to let heaven be heard.
In Ezekiel 1:1, Ezekiel was by the river Chebar among the exiles, heaven was opened, I saw visions of God. Jesus in John 1:51 talked about the heaven being opened up and angels of God ascending and descending. Acts 7, Stephen and his execution saw heaven open and there he saw his Lord. Revelation 19 talks about heaven being opened, verse 11, out of heaven comes the Lord Jesus Christ riding on a white horse, coming to conquer and destroy sinners.
Listen to Isaiah 64:1. "O that Thou wouldst rend the heavens and come down." Well that happened at the baptism. The heavens were rent. Heaven was opened and down comes the Holy Spirit and out comes the voice of God. This is critical because this is divine confirmation. This is the other two members of the trinity confirming the messiahship of Jesus, descending on the right man, the right person. This was not missed by John because remember, in the gospel of John, John had said he had been told by God that the one whom he saw the Spirit descending and remaining on was the Messiah. And so this is to make that known to John who will then make it known to all and there were others who had certainly gathered there would have seen it and the voice from heaven would have been unmistakable to all. So this is public confirmation by God that this is the Messiah. This is the launch point of the ministry of Jesus.
Let's just briefly look at verse 22, a comment or two and we'll really get into it next time. We come to the second member of the trinity who is in this event, the Holy Spirit. "And the Holy Spirit descended upon Him in bodily form like a dove." Remember now, John 1 said John the Baptist gave testimony that God said to me that the words of Jesus that He was the Messiah, the claim of Jesus that He was the Messiah would be confirmed to me by the Spirit of God coming down out of heaven and descending and staying, remaining on Him. And that is exactly what happened. Here is the Holy Spirit descending on Him in the form, it says, that is visible, in a visible form and descending on Him like a dove.
This doesn't mean that the Lord didn't know the Holy Spirit up until this point, of course He did. He was a member of the trinity, they were in eternal communion. He was in full communion with the Holy Spirit all the time. This is not Christ without the Holy Spirit getting the Holy Spirit. This is not like a non-believer becoming converted and receiving the Holy Spirit. This is an anointing for special service and power. This is to demonstrate that God has put His power on this individual in a way that all can see. Jesus, of course, as God had limitless power. Jesus was in perfect concert with the Father because He was doing the Father's will and He was in perfect harmony with the Holy Spirit because He had in His humanness yielded Himself up to the operation of the power of the Holy Spirit. This is simply heaven saying, "Here is the official anointing of power on Him as the true Messiah and Savior."
The Spirit descends and remains on Him. It says that twice in John 1:32-33. When you go to the Old Testament, all believers had the Holy Spirit living in them, all believers because they were all converted under New Covenant terms and the New Covenant means "I'll put My Spirit within you." Everybody who was a true believer, belonged to God, had the Spirit. But there was another kind of anointing of the Spirit that you read about a lot in the Old Testament, "The Spirit of God came upon so-and-so and he prophesied...the Spirit of God came on so-and-so and he went over here and did this..." and so forth. That was that special empowerment of the Holy Spirit for unique task and service. The Holy Spirit had been certainly in perfect communion with Jesus for all the thirty years of His life. There was never any time when He wasn't in perfect harmony and communion with the Holy Spirit, but now there was an official anointing and an official empowering for the duties that were His as Messiah.
You see parallels of this in the Old Testament. The Holy Spirit came on Moses for the duty God had for him. The Holy Spirit came on Joshua in Numbers chapter 27. The Holy Spirit descended in Numbers 11 on the seventy elders. You come in to the book of Judges and it says the Holy Spirit came upon Othniel. The Holy Spirit came upon Gideon, in Judges 6:34. The Holy Spirit came on Jephthah. The Holy Spirit came on Samson in Judges 13. And then you come in to Kings and the Holy Spirit came upon Saul, 1 Samuel chapter 10. The Holy Spirit then came upon David, 1 Samuel 16. And then you come to the prophets and the Holy Spirit, according to 1 Kings 18, also 2 Kings, came on Elijah. And the Holy Spirit came on Azariah and Micah and Zechariah. And the Holy Spirit, according to Ezekiel 2, came upon Ezekiel for prophetic ministry. In Daniel 4, came upon Daniel for prophetic ministry.
So this is a special anointing of power from the Holy Spirit connected to ministry. And, of course, this takes us back to two familiar passages in Isaiah. Isaiah 61 where you have a messianic statement, "The Spirit of the Lord God is upon me, because the Lord has anointed me." And by the way, that is referring to Messiah and the Messiah, Jesus, quoted that, as we'll see in Luke 4:21. He said, "Today this has been fulfilled in your ears." So it just says right there the Spirit of the Lord is on me because the Lord has anointed me to bring good news, to preach the gospel. So there was a special anointing on Jesus, a special sort of official authentication and empowerment in a unique way for His messianic ministry of proclaiming salvation.
Isaiah 42:1, "Behold My servant," that's the Messiah, "whom I lift up, My chosen One in whom My soul delights, I have put My Spirit upon Him," and this is again Psalm...or Isaiah 42, it's messianic, it's talking about the coming Christ, the Messiah and it says, "The Spirit will come upon Him and He will bring forth justice and He will not cry out or raise His voice, a bruised reed He will not break, a dimly burning wick He will not extinguish," and that all is quoted in the New Testament in reference to Jesus.
So it was part and parcel that the Messiah be anointed by the Holy Spirit. That was just the launch, the divine affirmation of His being launched into messianic ministry. In the book of Acts it affirms that, Acts tells us, chapter 4 verse 27, where it says, "For truly in this city they were gathered together against Thy holy servant Jesus whom Thou didst anoint." Well He was anointed by the Holy Spirit and everybody recognized that. In Acts 10 also, verse 37, "You yourselves know the thing that took place throughout all Judea starting from Galilee after the baptism with which John proclaimed. You know of Jesus of Nazareth, how God anointed Him with the Holy Spirit...here's the key...and with power and He went about doing good and He went about healing all who were oppressed by the devil, for God was with Him." The anointing then was the anointing that occurred at the baptism of John with the Holy Spirit and it was an anointing to empower Him.
One of the amazing elements of the life of Christ was that when He became incarnate and came into the world and started His ministry, He set aside, listen carefully, the independent use of His divine attributes. He didn't cease to be God, He didn't stop being what He was, He just set aside any independent use of His own attributes and He yielded Himself to the power of the Holy Spirit.
What we know up to now is that this is indeed the Messiah, this is the Christ. John has affirmed it by affirming His sinlessness. Jesus has affirmed it by demanding that He be baptized because He must do whatever is right. And the Holy Spirit has confirmed it by coming down out of heaven and descending and remaining on Him. We'll also see more about the Holy Spirit's role in the life of Jesus and what the words of the Father meant to culminate this event. This is the great launching, the credentials, the confirmation of the Messiah and His ministry.
The Messiah's Divine Confirmation, Part 2
Luke 3:21-22
Now we looked at Jesus and His baptism last time. We looked at it in some detail. It is at that point that we leave that aside and go to the second member of the trinity here, the Holy Spirit. And I want to talk to you about that in some theological and biblical detail this morning. I want to show you the significance of the coming down of the Holy Spirit.
The words of the Father out of heaven are self-evident. They don't need a lot of explanation. You're My beloved Son, we understand that. In whom I am well pleased, we understand that. But what is the significance of the Holy Spirit coming down since there is no commentary on that?
The Son is the first member of the trinity here and we looked at His baptism. The Holy Spirit is the second member of the trinity here, and we look at His anointing. Verse 22, the end of verse 21, "Heaven opened," and when heaven opens, two things happen...you have divine appearance and you have divine revelation...you can see that in other parts of the Bible. Heaven opens and divine beings are revealed and divine words are spoken.
In this case, both happened...the divine revelation of the Holy Spirit and the divine voice of God. But first when heaven was opened, the Holy Spirit descended on Him in bodily form like a dove. Now John 1:32-33 adds that the Holy Spirit descended and remained on Him. The Holy Spirit came down remaining on Him.
This does not mean that up to this point Jesus did not have the Holy Spirit. That is not the case. In fact there are two ways in which I can explain this to you. There is a sense in which Jesus always was in full communion of the Holy Spirit because Jesus is God, right? He is God, 100 percent God, fully God and He is also 100 percent man, fully man. That is the wonder of the incarnation. But as God, the Son, He is always in full communion with God the Father and God the Spirit. There is no breach of the essential relationship, it is still one God, eternally manifest in three persons. Those three persons are indivisible. There never is a time from eternity to eternity that the Son is not in full and complete communion with the Spirit, except for some mysterious moment when He says, "My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?" on the cross. But apart from that, there is constant communion between the divine Son and the divine Spirit and the divine Father. That communion is never interrupted, it is never hindered, it is never mitigated, it is never lessened, it is never increased, it is never decreased.
When the Spirit of God comes down, that is not telling us that up to this point the Son of God was without the Holy Spirit, not at all. This is merely a symbolic act indicating the Spirit's involvement in His life, indicating it publicly so that people will know that His ministry is in the power of the Holy Spirit. But the Holy Spirit is always in perfect communion with the divine nature of Jesus. In fact, the Holy Spirit is called in Romans 8:9 the Spirit of Christ.
The Holy Spirit from the divine side was always involved with the Son of God, always the essential nature of God was unbreakable. But on the human side, in the human nature of Jesus, does this signify that some at this point the Holy Spirit comes in someway on the human Jesus that was not true prior to this? I don't think so. I believe that the Holy Spirit was operative in the human Jesus from the conception of Jesus because, you remember, God said in Luke 1:15 that Mary would conceive and it would be a conception energized, 1:35 rather, energized by the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit will come upon you and the power of the Most High will overshadow you and you'll conceive. So from the very conception you have no human father, so you have the Spirit of God operative in creating the seed that is implanted in Mary, therefore the Holy Spirit overshadowing, the Holy Spirit fully involved in the human nature of the God/Man Jesus Christ.
Jesus was conceived by the power of the Holy Spirit. Luke 1:15 does say that John the Baptist was filled with the Holy Spirit from his mother's womb. If that is true of John, the human prophet, that would certainly be true of Jesus, the divine Son. So I'm convinced that even as a growing embryo and a growing fetus and then a child in the womb of Mary, this life was being controlled by the Holy Spirit of God, that the Holy Spirit was superintending the physical development of that life so that that child, the Son of God, was also filled with the Holy Spirit from His mother's womb.
I think we can even go beyond that. In John 3:34-35 as we come to an understanding of the nature of Christ. "For He whom God has sent speaks the words of God," this is John the Baptist giving testimony to Jesus, "He has been sent by God, He speaks the words of God for He gives the Spirit without measure." That is a very significant statement, the only statement of its kind in the New Testament. He gives the Spirit without limit, without limitation. And then he reiterates that in verse 35, "Because the Father loves the Son, He's given all things into His hand."
Throughout salvation history, Old Testament and even on into the New Testament, God spoke and He spoke through gifted and accredited preachers and prophets, teachers, the prophets of the Old Testament, the apostles of the New Testament. God chooses His men, His spokesmen and speaks through them. Chooses His writers of Scripture and writes, as it were, through them. Each of those prophets, preachers, teachers, writers of Scripture, were given a measure of the Spirit, a measure of the Spirit that was suited for their ministry. Sometimes you read in the Old Testament the Spirit of God came upon so-and-so and he prophesied. The Spirit of God came upon so-and-so and he went here and did this. The Spirit of God came upon Samson and he did this and he did that. The measure of the Spirit came suitable for the purpose of God in that life so that the long list of prophets, which includes John the Baptist which was filled with the Spirit from his mother's womb and may well have had a greater measure of the Spirit than anybody else before him, and that's why he was the greatest man that ever lived according to the words of Jesus in Matthew 11:11, but everybody in that prophetic line, everybody who was a spokesman for God, everybody who was a writer of Scripture was given a measure of the Spirit empowering them to do the duty they were called to do.
But Jesus was given the Spirit without measure. In other words, without any limit. He was given the Spirit in fullness. From the beginning of His life at conception until the resurrection, His life was under the control of the Holy Spirit. That's why John says He was given the Spirit without measure, without limit or God because He loved Him gave all things to Him. He gave Him everything He needed for a work that was far greater than any work would ever be done by anybody else, far greater than any work done by a prophet, far greater than the work done by the greatest prophet, John, far greater than any work that would ever be done by an apostle, or anybody who was a pastor, teacher, evangelist or anyone else. What Jesus was called to do was infinitely greater than any work ever to be done by any human, by any person and therefore He was given the Spirit without measure. It wasn't measured out or dosed out consistent with the limits of His work because this work was so profound and so far-reaching the Spirit was given without limit or without measure.
That's what's being symbolized at the baptism as the Spirit descends. John, in the gospel of John, John the Baptist says I saw the Spirit come down. And I'm sure people saw the Spirit come down because the Spirit took on some visible form to convey the reality of what was happening.
It was important that the Jewish people see this because according to Isaiah 42:1, which is a messianic prophecy, the Lord was going to send His servant, the Messiah. God said, "I'm going to send My servant, I will put My Spirit upon Him." "You will know the Messiah because I'm going to put My Spirit upon Him." And here He was for all to see, the evidence of that as God symbolically in the view of these people on the day that Jesus is inaugurated into His ministry sends the Holy Spirit who comes upon Him in a form that is visible to all. It is also true in Isaiah 61:1 that the Messiah says, "The Spirit of the Lord God is upon Me because the Lord has anointed Me to bring the gospel, or the good news."
You have the testimony of the Old Testament prophets fulfilled indicating this is the Messiah. You have the testimony of John who says this is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. You have the testimony of the Holy Spirit and you have the testimony of God the Father affirming the messiahship of Jesus. This is clear and complete testimony.
What we understand then is this, that this is not the Holy Spirit's first coming on Jesus, rather as God He was always in perfect communion with the Spirit, as man the Holy Spirit was always operative in His life from the point of conception right on through His life to the very end. Luke 4:1, is the first sort of launch point of Jesus into ministry and it starts with His temptation and it says, "Jesus, full of the Holy Spirit, returned from the Jordan," etc., etc. That indicates that the Spirit of God is empowering Jesus.
Go down to verse 14. "Jesus returned to Galilee in the power of the Spirit." That's the way it is in His life. He is empowered by the Holy Spirit. In Acts chapter 10, a verse that I mentioned last time but it needs to be mentioned in this connection, verse 38, "You know of Jesus of Nazareth how God anointed Him with the Holy Spirit and with power." God anointed Him with the Holy Spirit and with power.
The Holy Spirit was operative in the life of Jesus. On the divine side there was always perfect communion because that was characteristic of the essential nature of the trinity. On the human side from His conception on, the Holy Spirit had been involved in His human life.
When you look at Jesus' life and you see wondrous things, you see a wondrous conception, you see a wondrous childhood, a sinless childhood in which He grows in wisdom and stature and favor with God and man. You see a sinless life. You see miraculous healings. You see miraculous casting out of demons. You hear Him speak divine words from God. All of these things, He goes to the cross, He dies a substitute for sin, He rises from the dead, all of these miraculous events, now listen carefully, all of these miraculous powers, all of these miraculous expressions, who did those? Where did they come from?
Out of His deity, Jesus would not do divine works and He would not say divine words. When Jesus came down into the world, when He condescended, when He thought it not something to hold onto to be equal with God, when He set that aside in the words of Philippians 2, when He humiliated Himself and came all the way down to be a man, He set aside...listen...the independent use of His power. He didn't stop being God. He didn't get rid of His power because He couldn't become...He couldn't un-God Himself, but He set aside the use of His deity and He submitted Himself to the will of the Father. He could have called legions of angels, but He didn't. He could have functioned in the divine power that was His by virtue of His nature but He did not. So I say it this way, out of His deity Jesus would not do divine works and would not say divine words in His incarnation. He would not.
Out of His humanity Jesus could not do divine works and He could not say divine words because that's not possible for flesh and blood, for humanity. Humanity, by definition, is natural. And so, Jesus out of his deity would not do these things because He had submitted Himself to the Father, because He had set aside the independent use of His divine attributes and out of His humanity He could not do those things, the question then is when Jesus did those things and said those things, who was doing it? It was the Holy Spirit acting on His humanity. That is a great distinction to make. It is the Holy Spirit acting on His humanity. Jesus willingly emptied Himself of the independent use of His divine power to do only what the Father willed and only what the Spirit empowered.
That is not to say that Jesus is not God. He is fully God. He chose not to use His divine powers. And He couldn't do what He did, say what He said from the human side because humanity is flesh and blood. If He would not use His divine power, if He could not use His human power, then by what did He accomplish these things? By the power of the Holy Spirit. This is the wonder of the kenosis. This is the wonder of the condescension. When Jesus came down He really did set aside His glory.
He really did humble Himself. And He operated with the Holy Spirit as a bridge between His deity and His humanity. He chose not as a man to draw on His own powers, but rather yielded to the Father's will and allowed the Holy Spirit to empower Him as a man. It wasn't that He wasn't God, He was, He just willingly chose not to use His deity. It's a wondrous thing to consider, but the life of Jesus was the life of a man who was fully God but who didn't use His divine power but His human power, His human ability was energized, empowered, guided, controlled by the Holy Spirit.
This is true of His incarnation. It was the Holy Spirit who moved on Mary. I believe this was true of His early childhood when He grew in wisdom and stature and favor with God and man. I think the Holy Spirit was basically the power of His development. I think it was the Holy Spirit was growing Jesus up. There was no area, I don't think, of the human nature of the divine Son which was not molded and developed and conditioned and guided by the Holy Spirit. It was the Father who sent the Son into the world. It was the Spirit who empowered the Son and assisted Him in every step of His development.
If that sounds like something I might have invented, I'm happy to quote John Owen the great seventeenth century Puritan theologian wrote this. "The only singular immediate act of the person of the Son on His human nature was the assumption of it into subsistence with Himself." What Owen was saying there is the only thing that the divine Son did with His human nature was bring it together with Himself, that's all He did. And what Owen is trying to say is after that, everything was the Holy Spirit.
Owen goes on, "The Holy Spirit is the immediate, peculiar, efficient cause of all external divine operations and hence, He is the immediate operator of all divine acts of the Son Himself, even on His own human nature. Whatever the Son of God wrought in by or upon the human nature, He did it by the Holy Spirit." That's a great statement. Whatever the Son of God wrought in by or upon the human nature, He did it by the Holy Spirit. So He had the divine nature and He doesn't use it. You have the human nature here empowered by the Holy Spirit so that everything He does, the Spirit does. And, of course, the Spirit's in perfect agreement. I can't explain all the details, taking you that far is as far as you probably ought to go. That's as far as theologians go.
The point is this. From His birth...from His conception to His resurrection, everything that goes on in His life, everything, His development, His sinlessness, His triumph over temptation, His perfection, His preaching, teaching, healing, casting out demons, dying on a cross and rising from the dead is all energized by the Holy Spirit. And I showed you that in Luke 4:1, full of the Holy Spirit He goes into temptation with Satan and is victorious. In verse 14 He goes back to Galilee in the power of the Spirit and He starts preaching and teaching. And further down in the fourth chapter He starts healing and casting out demons. And it's all in the power of the Holy Spirit.
Peter Lewis wrote a book called The Glory of Christ and in it he has this statement, "We must realize that although the baby in Egypt and at Nazareth was the eternal logos, the Word of God, the divine Son in human nature, yet that human mind was not aware of all of which the divine person was aware." The point he's making is when Jesus was three, He didn't know everything that the mind of God the Son knew, obviously, or He wouldn't have been able to grow in wisdom. Lewis goes on, "The Son did not live in and through His created human nature in such a way that the human became divine. There was the divine and the human unmixed, bridged by the Holy Spirit. What was finite did not become infinite, what was conditioned by age and circumstances, time and culture did not become at any point totally unconditioned by anything outside itself as the divine nature is totally unaffected by anything outside itself."
He goes on to say, "Here is real incarnation, a true and full entry into our humanity, a profound humiliation in which the creator becomes a creature. Here in Bethlehem we have a baby. There in Nazareth we have a little boy growing up. Not God pretending to be a little boy growing up, but God becoming a little boy growing up. God experiencing through assumed humanity dependence, growth and discovery and the perplexities of ignorance and the joy of learning," end quote.
It is God through the Spirit informing that human nature as it develops. His human nature then was under the full control of the Holy Spirit while He was growing up. And John Owen makes again the point that His divine nature didn't directly communicate anything at all to the human mind of Jesus, everything communicated to the human mind of Jesus came from the Holy Spirit.
Another great theologian, George Smeeton(?) nineteenth century Scottish theologian, writes in his Doctrine of the Holy Spirit, "We must ascribe to the Spirit all the progress in Christ's mental and spiritual development, all His advancement in knowledge and holiness. The Spirit was given to Him in consequence of the personal union in a measure which no mere man could possess, constituting the link between deity and humanity, perpetually imparting the full consciousness of His personality and making Him inwardly aware of the divine Sonship at all times."
hat's as far as I can go, folks, but that's pretty amazing. So that all that Jesus said, all that Jesus did was not done by His deity, could not be done by His humanity, but was done by the Holy Spirit's power energizing through His humanity. Jesus' words and Jesus' works were from the Holy Spirit.
In Matthew 12, the Jewish leaders had heard Jesus and they had seen Him and they watched His miracles and particularly had an interest in the casting out demons. So in verse 22, "There's a demon-possessed man, apparently because of the demons he was blind and dumb. Jesus healed him and so he spoke and saw." This is clear power over physical problems, but power over the kingdom of darkness that's behind the physical problems. So in verse 24 the Pharisees say, "This man casts out demons by Beelzebul," that's an old word for the devil, Satan, "the ruler of the demons."
This is their conclusion. Jesus does what He does by the power of Satan. After all, they're looking at Jesus, they're saying He's just a man, He's just a man and He's doing this. We see it, we saw it, the man who couldn't see and the man who couldn't speak can now see and he can now speak and you can't argue with that. He's got supernatural power but it's the devil. So they see a man but they see a man empowered.
How did Jesus answer their accusation? After a little bit of a dialogue, you come down to verse 31, "And Jesus says, 'Therefore I say to you, any sin and blasphemy shall be forgiven men, but blasphemy against the Spirit shall not be forgiven.'"
Jesus doesn't say you blasphemed Me. He says you blasphemed whom? The Spirit. You didn't blaspheme Me, this is not My deity in action, this is the Spirit, you blasphemed the Spirit. In fact, verse 32, "Whoever shall speak a word against the Son of Man," I mean, you can criticize My humanness, you could say...You know, He's not a very good communicator, we don't like His personality. You could say anything you want. You could accuse Me as a man of anything and that could be forgiven. But when you speak against the Holy Spirit, that will not be forgiven, not in this age or in the ages to come...eternity." We'll get in to that passage later on, just enough to say here, when the Jews attacked the works of Jesus and the words of Jesus, they attacked not Him, but whom? The Spirit. That's how He viewed it and that's because that's the truth of it.
Jesus then was conceived by the power of the Spirit. I believe He was indwelt, as it were, by the power of the Spirit in His mother's womb like John, and certainly He would be as important as John is important to the Kingdom and far more. I believe the childhood of Jesus was superintended by the Holy Spirit and that's why He grew in wisdom and favor with God and man. He wasn't God pretending to be a little boy, He was a real little boy whose humanity was being informed by the Spirit of God who was bridging the deity to that humanity. I believe when Jesus began His ministry to be tempted, He was strengthened through that temptation by the Spirit of God. When He began to teach, He taught by the power of the Spirit, He was full of the Spirit and taught. He healed by the power of the Spirit. He cast out demons by the power of the Spirit. Everything He did was by the power of the Spirit. And if you said it was by anything other than the power of the Spirit, you blasphemed.
All the way down to the cross, when you think about the cross you think...Well, Jesus is on the cross, He's bearing sin, we know the human suffering with the crown of thorns, the nails, the agony, the pain, all of those kinds of things are going on from the human side. What sustained Jesus? Well, you say, He was sustained because He was God. He could go through that and not, you know, wonder why God allowed this, He did for a moment say, "My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?" There was a great moment there of separation, but there was always the commitment, "Nevertheless not My will, but Yours be done." And there was always the sense that He did exactly what the Father wanted Him to do and please the Father. The question is...How could He go through that? How could He go through the garden and say, "Nevertheless not My will but Thine be done," how could He do that? Well, you say, He was sustained because He was God.
The fact of the matter is He was actually sustained by the Holy Spirit because He wasn't using His own independent deity for that sustaining. In Hebrews 9:14, the writer is talking about the blood of Christ, the cross, how much more? A lot more than the blood of bulls and goats, the blood of bulls and goats can't take away sin on the inside, they can just do some things that are external. But verse 14, "How much more will the blood of Christ," now we're at the cross, "the blood of Christ who through the eternal Spirit offered Himself without blemish to God?" It was the eternal Spirit that kept Him without blemish. It was the eternal Spirit who gave Him the strength to be offered as a sacrifice to God. It was the Spirit's power that let Him bear sin and not reject it and run from it. It was the power of the Holy Spirit operating on His humanity that kept Him willing to die, that kept Him on the cross, that caused Him to have the power to be able to offer Himself as a sacrifice to God.
The Holy Spirit, the eternal Spirit was the intermediate divine agent by whom Christ offered Himself as a redemptive sacrifice for our sins. John Wolvord comments in his book on the Holy Spirit, "The work of the Holy Spirit in relation to the sufferings of Christ on the cross consisted then in sustaining the human nature in its love of God, in submission to the will of God and in obedience to His commands and in encouraging and strengthening Christ in the path of duty which led Him to the cross." It was the Holy Spirit who sustained Him all the way to the cross, on the cross and through the cross. The Father didn't die there. The Holy Spirit didn't die there. The Son died there. But having set aside the independent use of His attributes, He had to depend on the Spirit to sustain Him. That is the depth of His condescension and submission.
Look at Romans chapter 1. You come to the resurrection. You say, "Well, Christ rose from the dead because He's God, He's God the Son, He has the power." But I want you to notice Romans 1:4, it says, "The Son of God was declared with power by the resurrection from the dead according to the Spirit of holiness...according to the Spirit of holiness." It was the Spirit, the Holy Spirit.
Now you say, "Well, isn't that a controversial reference to the Holy Spirit?" Well it might be but Romans 8:11 certainly isn't. "But if the Spirit of Him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you..." Here is a title for the Holy Spirit, He's the Spirit who raised Jesus from the dead. He's the Spirit who raised Jesus from the dead.
If you're talking about the conception of Jesus, the Holy Spirit did it. If you're talking about Jesus being preserved in the womb of Mary and the virgin birth, Jesus is energized in all of that by the Spirit. If you're talking about His development as a child, His sinless perfection, being protected from...from any sin or iniquities, it is by the power of the Spirit that He grows in wisdom, stature, favor with God and man. You talk about the power to conquer Satan, you talk about the victory in His temptation, His preaching, His teaching, His healing, His casting out demons, His death on the cross, His resurrection, Scripture says all of that is energized by the Holy Spirit. It's all energized by the Holy Spirit.
The Jewish people knew that the Messiah would have the Holy Spirit upon Him. And here they are standing there at the Jordan River, here comes this man in the middle of the all the other people being baptized and all of a sudden while He's being baptized heaven opens and down comes the Holy Spirit and settles on Him in a form that everybody can see. This is what was promised. Then comes the voice of God out of heaven, "This is My beloved Son," or "Thou art My beloved Son, in Thee I am well pleased." This is is divine inauguration of Jesus into His ministry.
Go back to Luke 3 for a minute. Now let me just kind of straighten you out a little bit on the dove thing. I know a lot of you have got doves on stuff. I just want to say that the Holy Spirit is not a bird, okay? The Holy Spirit didn't come down looking like a bird. The essence of what it's saying here is the Spirit descended in some form, some soma. We don't know what soma. But it descended like a dove. Do you understand that? The dove is not so much the shape as the movement. You remember on the day of Pentecost when it says, "The Spirit of God came down and appeared as if it was cloven tongues of fire," remember that? It looked like flames, there was some manifestation of the Holy Spirit, some shape of the Holy Spirit. There would be no way to know that the Spirit of God was on Jesus unless there was some symbol, some visible symbol, and so God created some soma, that's the word for "form," or "body," some visible form for the otherwise invisible Spirit. And that form, whatever that form was, it may have had...I don't know what the shape was, but it came down and settled on Him the way a dove would flutter down and settle. A dove, according to Matthew 11:16 is the gentleness of all birds. It was intended to convey that there was this very gentle, lovely sort of fluttering down of this soma, this form, whatever it was, and it just landed on Him like a dove might land on its perch.
Somebody was telling me about one of their children who asked them about the duck that came down. And he said, "What do you mean, a duck? You must have seen some Groucho Marx reruns, or something. What do you mean a duck came down?" Well he was talking about the dove. Well, we don't want to have the illusion in our mind that an actual dove came down, but rather that the Spirit in a visible soma, a visible form came down wafting gently and settling and remaining on Jesus. That's the indication of the Spirit's involvement in His life.
That brings us to the end, the words of the Father which is really the culmination of the whole event. Out of heaven comes the voice of God, "Thou art My beloved Son, in Thee I am well pleased." The Son, it was baptism. The Spirit, it was anointing. The Father, it was testimony. And the Father loved to give testimony to the Son. Jesus said in John 8:18 and John 5:37 that, "My Father...the Father bears witness of Me." The Father is the greatest witness of the Son. At His transfiguration, you remember, the Father spoke out of heaven, "And this is My beloved Son in whom I am well pleased, hear Him." The Father gave open testimony to the Son. And here is that open, public, verbal testimony that this is My beloved Son. And I'm not going to go back into what that means because we went into that in tremendous detail at the end of chapter 2, that the Son of God is of the same essence as God. It's to say He's equal with God, He's one with God, He's the same essence and the same nature, just as a son is the same nature, carries the same genetics of his father, so the same nature is conveyed when Jesus is identified as the Son.
The Jews knew this because the Jews said, when He called Himself the Son of God, You're a blasphemer, You're making Yourself equal with God. That's what they said to Him. They knew what that meant. You can find that in John 5:18 and John 10:32. So the Father is saying yes, this is God the Son, yes this is one who is equal to Me, yes this is My beloved Son. By the way, that is taken from Psalm 2:7. In Psalm 2 you have a great messianic Psalm about the Messiah, the Son of God who will come and rule the nations with a rod of iron, etc., etc., and it will be God's Son, God's beloved Son that will come and God is saying Psalm 2:7 is fulfilled right now, this is My Son. This is God the Son. This is the one who is equal to Me.
You have His humanity being noted in the working of the Holy Spirit. You have His deity being affirmed by the Father. So here you have the full picture of God the Son who is both human and His humanity cannot function on its own, but is energized by the third person of the trinity, the Spirit, and He is the Son of God, He is full deity, even though He has willfully set aside the independent use of that.
He is nonetheless the essential nature of God the Son. He is called the Son of God over...well about fifty times, over 40, about 50 times in the gospels by apostles, by people, by Satan, by demons and Son of God always is a title referring to His essential deity and equality with God. It pertains to His eternal nature and attributes as God. He is to the Father not only a Son, but a beloved Son. And the Father loves the Son with a perfect love, read John 17 where, I think it's down in verses 23, 24, 25, the Son celebrates the love that the Father has to Him and now the fact that the Father's love for Him and His love for the Father can be shared with us. There is a supernatural, divine love between the members of the trinity that is celebrated here. And according to Ephesians 1, we are accepted in the beloved One.
This is God's Son, this is God's beloved Son affirming that God loves Him with a perfect love. And this is God's Son whom God loves and with whom God is pleased. He says He is pleased with Him, well pleased with Him. That means simply that He's perfect. That is what we call a timeless aorist. It is a way of stating things that there never was a time when I am not pleased, from eternity to eternity in a constant state of being pleased. So we now know this is God in human flesh who bears the very nature of God as Son, this is the one whom God loves, this is the beloved of God and this is the sinless one with whom God has never found anything to be displeased.
Here is the testimony of God as to the nature of Christ, as to the affection He has for Him, and as to His perfection as the sinless one. Boy, what an inauguration this is, huh? What an event. The ultimate testimony launches Jesus into His ministry. And, you know, John saw it, John heard it, the people saw it, the people heard it, they should have known. It should have been clear. I mean, what more to you need than a visible representation of the Spirit of God, the testimony of the forerunner and the very word of God Himself booming out of heaven attesting to His Son. That should be enough to launch Jesus on a ministry that people responded to. The sad fact of the matter is that's not the way it worked out. This was, however, at this point the official inauguration of the Messiah, God's sinless Son, the Anointed One empowered by the Holy Spirit, God's beloved, the One who shared His very nature, the One who was perfect so that never was God displeased with Him. He had come into the world to save sinners and establish God's Kingdom.
