It ia often said that this idea of the descent of the Spirit on Jesus is only a piece of the Christian tra.liti"ii, too fimilv established for the Evangelist to be aM.' to di^.-ml it, hut really inconsistent with the conception of fhti^l in tli-- I'r ilf^^nie. The Word incxrnate (it is ari^ipd) oaiiiioi ii.'ct to 1> ■ 1 ipti/r-d with the Holy Spirit. Tosavsois to ;,<<niii.- 1 h i- v.- I t,..-,., >■, hat ii
logue, the presumption is that he felt no inconsistency between them, and that there is none. His idea may rather be that it is the measureless i^ft of the Spirit in virtue of which Jesus is the Word incarnate. If He had not had this experience at His baptism, and all that flowed from it, He would not lia\e been (or been recognizable as) the Son of God (Jn 1^^*), as tiod mani- fest in the flesh, Immanuel.
Possibly part of the Evangelist's interest in the baptism of Jesus lay in this, that in it the symbol and the thing signified coincided. Ordinarily, in the Baptist's preaching, water and the Spirit are contrasted : here the one accompanies the other. This is the type of the Christian baptism with which the author and his readers are familiar. In it water and the Spirit normally coincide. This may seem a not very real idea to us ; but we have to consider that even wthin the first century Christianity was assuming some of the features of a sacramental system, that much in the mental sympathies of the early centuries found this con- genial, and that it might seem not unimportant to find at the very beginning of its history its fundamental rite undergone by the Founder, and proved to be not only a form, but a power.
The turning of the water into wine is no doubt a symbol of the whole work of Jesus, — the raising of religion to a higher power, or, more specifically, tlie elevation of water-baptism into baptism witli holy spirit. The Spirit, however, is not men- tioned in this connexion, and we get into closer quarters \\\t\\ the subject in cli. 3. There the decisive word is v.'* ' Except a man be born i^ CSoTO! Kal irveiiMTOi, he cannot enter into the king- dom of God.' It is not the mind of Jesus with which we are immediately dealing, but the mind of Jesus as interpreted in the mind of the Evan- gelist and in the circumstances of his time. Granting tliis, it seems to the present \vriter quite impossible to question either a reference to Bap- tism here or one to the Supper in ch. 6. Nor is the meaning of the reference doubtful. As in the baptism of Jesus, so in Christian baptism, water and spirit are not thought of as in contrast, but as in conjunction. No question is raised as to the conditions under which baptism was administeretl — conditions of penitence and of faith in Christ on the part of the baptized. These are assumed as familiar to everyone. But under these conditions the new birth is connected unequivocally ■with the Spirit and with the rite in the administration of which the Spirit is normally present. One of the great words and ideas of" the Gospel is 'life.' Sometimes it is spoken of simply as the gift of God. The Father has given to the Son to have life in Himself, and the Son gives life to whom He will (5-'-=«). Here, licwevcr, the life is con- ceived on the anulooy ,,) natural life, and the entrance into it is by' a birth wliich depends on the act of God tliimigh His Spirit. The life with wliich we are here concerned is nothing less than the eternal life of God Himself (1 Jn P), and only God can beget it in the soul. To be born of Goil and born of the Spirit are the same thing (1 Jn 229 39 518). When Jesus says, ' That whicli is l)orn of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of tlie Spirit is spirit ' (Jn 3*), He means that it is not any- thing we owe to our fathers and mothers, but only something we owe to God, which quickens the life of God in us. Put with this generality, it might seem as though the Spirit here had no connexion, or no particular connexion, with Christ ; it is almost as though we were at the OT stage, at wliich the Spirit is merely a synonym for God acting. But to say this is to forget the connexion here asserted of the Spirit and the Christian sacra- ment of baptism. It is through baptism in tlie name of Jesus that the Spirit is received ; and just as the TTfevna fuoTroiow of St. Paul is tlie Spirit of the Risen Saviour, so here, in the sense of the
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Evangelist, it is the same Spirit, acting in and through tlie ordinance of the Kisen Saviour, that is tlie source of all IJivine life. As the conversa- tion goes on, too, while the water, as merely sym- bolical, drops out {it only appears in v.^), and the Spirit remains by itself (v."), attention is directed to the Son of Man, lifted up as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, that whosoever believes may in Him have eternal life. Here we have the ideas introduced which define the Spirit — the experiences through which the e.xperience of the Spirit comes to us with life-giving power. The new birth is mysterious, indeed, in all its aspects ; it is like the wind which blows where it will. \Ve cannot tell how it originates or in wliat it will end. But it is not blankly inystcriuus, and there is nothing magical in its connexion with the sacra- ment. It comes into experience along with other things which form part of the same system of reality with it, — the sin-bearing death of Christ, the proclamation of that death, sind believing surrender to it. All this is concentrated and symbolized in baptism ; and it is because of this that baptism and being born of the Sjjirit are represented as coincident. Baptism is a kind of focal point in which all the quickening powers of God in Christ crucified tell upon the soul under the conditions of penitence and faith which make them effective. The life that comes to \is in this experience is the life of the Spirit, the Divine life ; but quite deiinitely also it is a life which we owe to the death of Christ. (To apply this con- ception of baptismal regeneration to the case of infants is to desert the ground of experience, on which the Apostle speaks throughout, for what is to us an unconditioned void. In this adventure the NT gives us no assistance whatever).