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(1) As a witness to His Sonship it had both a retrospective and a prospective reference. Jesus had left behind all the doings of those quiet, peaceful years, and was at the dividing line between private and public life. He was leaving behind Him the years of His obscurity, and coming out into the fierce light that ever beats upon a public teacher. And there, at the parting of the ways, God lit up all the years that had gone, with the sweet words of approval, " Thou art my beloved Son ; in thee I am well pleased." It could not have been a pronouncement upon the temptation in the wilderness ; that was as yet an untried pathway. It could not have been a declaration of the Divine pleasure with Gethse- mane's garden and Calvary's Cross ; they were still to be reached. No, it must have been a reference to the past, so that whatever else we know, or do not know, about the hidden years of the life of Jesus, this one thing is certain, that through them all He pleased God ; for God put His seal upon them when they were closing behind Him, and the new years were opening before Him, saying, " I am well pleased."
(2) But it was also a prophecy of the future. Our Lord's public ministry lay between two Calvarys : it not only culminated in Calvary, it started from it. The baptism in Jordan was nothing less than an anticipation, a prophecy, of the Cross itself ; it was the deepest act of self-abasement of which our blessed Lord was capable. As the sinner's representative. He felt bound to take the sinner's place, to be treated, in short, as the sinner needed to be treated. Therefore when the Baptist, instinctively recoiling from administering an ordinance emblematic of the washing away of sin to Him who " knew no sin," exclaimed, " I have need to be baptized of thee, and comest thou to me ? " the answer he received was, " Suffer it to be so now ; for thus it becometh us to fulfil all righteousness." As if He would say, " I am in the sinner's place to-day ; I must accept to the full all that that position involves, or I shall fail in that uttermost obedience to the Father's will, apart from which my work of redemption cannot be achieved." We cannot fathom the depth of self- abasement which this descent into Jordan involved to Him who was none other than the brightness of His Father's glory and the express image of His Person ; but we see how God estimated it when we read that, as Jesus came up out of the water, "the
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heavens were opened unto him, and he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove, and lighting upon him."
2. The Baptism was His consecration for His worTc. — The rite of baptism had two significations. In the case of a Gentile it signified the putting away of idolatry, and the acceptance of the worship of Jehovah. In the case of the Jew it signified the removal of his uncleanness. In both these instances the meaning was the washing away of sin. Then the second significance was consecration to office. In our Saviour's case this is at least the chief meaning. We have only to look at His life to see how far this was realized. For righteousness' sake, or fulfilment of a rite which was observed by the nation, the Saviour stood before the multitude and received the ordinance, repeating the prayer usual on such occasions. This was the commencement of a series of acts of consecration which terminated in Gethsemane and on the Cross.
(1) It was a consecration for the conflict that lay before Him. Was it not significant that immediately after the reception of the Holy Spirit He should be brought into a personal encounter with the evil spirit? that immediately after such a manifestation of Divine favour there should be such a manifestation of Satanic power ? that face to face and foot to foot in the solitudes of the wilderness the Second Adam should have to grapple with our Adversary, to fight our battle and win our cause ?
(2) It was a consecration for the service He had to accomplish. This was the opening of Christ's missionary career. Up to this time He had lived a life of obscurity in Nazareth. He was content for thirty out of the thirty-three years He spent on earth to be unknown outside the little circle of His own immediate friends and acquaintances, so unknown that Nathanael said " Can there any good thing come out of Nazareth ? " (John i. 46). Thirty years' preparation for three years' service ! His hour had come, and the Divine voice bade Him enter on His ministry of toil.
(3) It was a consecration to the suffering that He had to undergo. His life henceforth was to be a living martyrdom. Suffering was to be His lot. As has been truly said, " God had one Son without sin, but not one without suffering."
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If The sufferings of Christ were altogether distinct from ours. We suffer, knowing that we have deserved more than we can evei bear. He suffered, knowing that He had deserved nothing. We suffer for others' sin, knowing that even in our purest experience we have some sympathy with sin. He suffered, conscious of no such sympathy. Many a martyr, following his Lord's example, has gone to as bitter a physical death as his Lord, singing as he went. Jesus went to His death, shrinking and sore amazed, and in a horror of fear before it. It was the burden He bore there that broke Him down. It was your sins and mine that bowed Him as they never bowed, never can bow, us down. He was " made sin for us." " This is my body broken for you." " The Son of man giveth his life instead of many." " By his stripes we are healed." " The chastisement of our peace was laid upon him." " We all like sheep had gone astray ; we had turned every one to his own way," and " the Lord hath laid on him the iniquity of us all." That is what takes the sting and curse out of life for me. That uproots the weed ; that repairs the breach ; that sweetens the sour. The fact that there are thistles in this world of God's, and that they have to be taken out of it, is not so difficult to understand when a pierced hand has been pulling up thistles in the heart's acre.^