What does Jesus' baptism mean?
Commentary
Epiphany. A sudden realization. A new idea. A solution to a problem you’ve been struggling with. An awakening. Enlightenment.
All of us have had an epiphany at some time in our lives. For me, it came as I was preparing for church one Sunday 20 years ago. I walked into the kitchen and opened the bread bag to make some toast. The smell of the bread and plastic made me instantly nauseated. At least, that’s what I thought. I decided to not eat, to just cross the street to the church. But as I approached the three steps down to the door, I knew that I would pass out if I tried. I called over to church for help, and our nurse came to the house. She took one look at me and dialed 911. The next thing I knew, the living room was filled with huge young men and women, and the one in front of me was saying I had to go to the hospital, my blood pressure was 270/120. Way too high -- should have been 120/80. So I gave in and went.
A few weeks later at a pastor’s gathering, I told them this story. “I realize,” I finished, “that if I’m going to be taking a different trip than the one I thought, I need to repack my suitcase.” Every face was serious, as several of them nodded. This was my epiphany. Not that life is short, but that you have plans and then find that your plans have changed.
Is this the meaning of Jesus coming to be baptized by John? Did he have other plans for his life, plans that have abruptly changed? Matthew says that Jesus had his epiphany in the Temple of Jerusalem when he was twelve. His baptism is an epiphany for us. Who is this man? What does he intend to do? And what does that have to do with us?
Isaiah 42:1-9
The second section of Isaiah (chapters 34:1--35:10 and 40--55) contains four “Servant Songs.”1 These songs have been discussed by Jewish and Christian scholars ever since they were first identified by Bernhard Duhm in his 1892 commentary on Isaiah. The songs are four poems written about a certain “servant of YHWH.”2 God calls the servant to lead the nations, but the servant is horribly abused among them. The point of the scholarly discussion is whether the figure of the suffering servant refers to a person or to the entire Jewish population. Those who understand the whole body of Judaism to be the suffering servant say their suffering is on behalf of the rest of the world for the salvation of humankind. On the other side, there is discussion as to whether these passages refer to the messiah or to some other prophet, perhaps someone who is in exile with the people in Babylon.
Among Christians, it is assumed that the person referred to is Jesus and the suffering is his actual suffering, both in his life and in his horrible death on the cross. Among the Jewish scholars, the focus of the discussion has changed since the Holocaust. With the Jewish population decimated and the survivors scattered across the planet, it’s easy today to see the entirety of the Jews as the suffering servant. But to other Jewish scholars, the songs refer to the messiah. The Christian view has grown out of this second school of thought. The fact that Isaiah does not identify this servant in the surrounding text leaves us with grist for the mill of scholarly discussion for foreseeable future.
I am going to take the attitude of G.P. Hugenberger.3 He says that the servant is the expected “prophet like Moses” mentioned in Deuteronomy 18:14ff and 34:10ff, because the New Testament writers clearly considered Jesus to be the suffering servant. Both Matthew and Luke use this first song to illustrate that God the Father was pleased with Jesus as he was coming out of the water of the Jordan at his baptism by his cousin John. Luke likewise references these words as Jesus announces his ministry in the synagogue in Nazareth (Luke 4).
We need not, however, see these words as solely referring to Jesus. The servant of God may, in fact, refer to any of us called to minister in the name of Christ. It is a word of comfort to those who are facing rebellion in the congregation; or the failure of a congregation to reach out to their neighbors, and blaming the pastor for the failure of the church. It is a word of comfort, as well, to those who are grieving their own inability to change these folks.
It is also a word to us about how we are to follow in the example of Christ as we care for the people in our care. Verses 2 and 3 say that we should not shout at those who are not living by Christian principles, that those who are sinning ought not to be cut off from their community of faith. And those whose faith is failing need to be encouraged, not dealt with severely.
We have many examples of Jesus’ ministry to learn from. The woman he sees in the synagogue who is bent over and in pain is called to the front of the room so that he can heal her. The leaders of the synagogue are annoyed at this intrusion (and Jesus, by inference), saying that there are six other days in the week in which they can be healed. At that, Jesus uses a title for this woman that occurs nowhere else in scripture: “This daughter of Abraham” (Luke 13). It is a reminder to those present that God is active in the lives of women as well as men, and the value that God puts on every human life. A man with a withered hand also came to Jesus in a synagogue. Jesus told him to reach out, and as he did he was healed without Jesus even touching him. The Pharisees were so outraged by his defense for doing so that they sought to destroy him (Matthew 12).
The second part of today’s passage is the promise of God to those called as servants. Again, Luke used verses 6 and 7 as the scripture Jesus read to the congregation in his home synagogue before he said, “Today these words have been fulfilled in your hearing” (Luke 4). This was a clear claim that he was the messiah (“Christ” in Greek), and that his mission was to set people free to enjoy a new kind of relationship with God. Luke also uses verse 6 in Simeon’s thanksgiving to God in the story of the Presentation of Jesus in the Temple (Luke 2:22ff).
This passage is one of hope and is filled with the glory of God. It says that no matter how things may be going in our lives or in the world, God is attendant on us and our needs. Isaiah’s prophecy does not ignore the times when we are frightened, devastated, or hopeless. Rather, the promise is that the Spirit of God will be put on us for our comfort as well as for our strength to shine a light to open people’s eyes to injustice in our nation as well as the other nations on earth. It is an announcement of the new things God is going to bring forth.
Acts 10:34-43
This is the result of the story of Peter’s vision of a large cloth being lowered from heaven and “a voice” telling him to get up and kill some of the beasts in it and eat. Peter refuses, because many of the animals he saw in the “sheet” were ritually unclean, and he had never eaten anything profane or unclean and had no intention of doing so. So when a messenger came to the door of the house where he was staying and asked Peter to go with him to the house of Cornelius, a centurion in Caesarea, he not only agreed to go with them as God had directed, but he invited these Gentiles into the house where he was staying! This was utterly without precedent, as Jews not only would not enter the house of a Gentile, they would never invite a Gentile in their homes, because to do so would defile their homes.
But with the strength of the vision God had given him (not just once, but three times) and God’s word that he should go to Cornelius, he went because God had arranged this request. Cornelius, it turned out, had had a vision of an angel telling him to send for Peter. “So talk to us and tell us everything God has told you to say.”
This was a leap in the dark for Cornelius as well as for Peter. Peter has had instructions from God only to go with the messengers. Yet he opens his mouth and says, “I now understand that God shows no partiality, but in every nation, anyone who fears him and does what is right is acceptable to him.”
This is a message we modern Christians have yet to hear. We call people to be born again, but we insist that until our audience believes everything just as we do they are bound for hell. Certainly Peter had much of that belief before God talked to him on the roof of Simon the tanner’s house. God took an extraordinary step to convince Peter to overcome the training of a lifetime in dealing with those who were not part of his faith or nation. But Peter intended to always serve the Lord first and foremost, so when he is given this opportunity he does as he is told. He tells the story of Jesus’ ministry, death, and resurrection. Even as he is saying this, the large group of people gathered began to speak in tongues (the one way the early Christians knew when a person had received the Holy Spirit) (v. 44).
It is important that we read verse 44 along with the selected scripture, because otherwise all we get is Peter’s witness and not the result of it. Peter had just received a new teaching, and he is amazed at the result of his sharing that teaching, as were the believers who had come with him. If only we were open to whatever God tells us to do, and always prepared to witness to the power of God in our own lives, what might we accomplish on God’s behalf? Too often, we are afraid (as Peter was) to take a new teaching to its logical conclusion, and thus miss opportunities to spread the love of God.
A long number of years ago when chatrooms were common on the internet, I said that “God is Love.” A young man replied “I don’t think we can say ‘God is love’ as though that’s all God is.” I paused a minute, trying to decide how to answer him. Since he tended to quote scripture a great deal, I decided to point him to 1 John 4:8 -- “Whoever does not love does not know God, for God is love.” I waited for his response, and it took a few minutes. At last he wrote: “You were very gentle with me, especially considering how wrong I was. I found that statement in four different places.”
We err seriously when we think that God is an angry judge who wants to kill us all, and demanded the death of his son on the cross as a sacrificial offering to wipe away our sins. If we understand the doctrine of the Trinity rightly, Jesus is not the earthly son of God, he is God in Flesh -- not separate from God the Father or God the Spirit. We reject the obvious nature of the sacrifice God made by climbing up on that cross and allowing himself to be impaled. We reject the birth of God that we just celebrated. We reject the idea that God sacrificed a part of himself so that we can forgive God, as well as God forgiving us. We reject the idea that God can love those we do not trust as well as us. And most importantly, we reject the idea that people of other faiths, seeking to please God and living a life as dedicated to doing good as ours is, will be in heaven with us. Yet all of this is bound up in the story of Peter’s preaching in the house of a Gentile and their acceptance of his words.
Matthew 3:13-17
So, if Jesus is God in Flesh, what is he doing going to the Jordan to be baptized by John?
John himself asks that question: “I need to be baptized by you, and do you come to me?” Jesus’ answer is no clearer: “Let it be so now; for it is proper for us in this way to fulfill all righteousness.” We are not wrong to be confused by Jesus’ words. How does his baptism fulfill righteousness?
To answer that question, we need to know that if a man wanted to go into the Temple courts where the sacrifices were made, he had to go through a ritual bath. There were baths under the Temple, and the men intending to sacrifice would pay to be immersed in these baths before they went upstairs to buy a sacrificial animal and then enter the Court of Men, where his animal would be taken and sacrificed as he watched. A portion of the meat would go to the priests, and the rest would be given to the man for his family to share in a joyous feast.
John was undermining the power of the priests and lawyers (interpreters of God’s Law as found in Torah). He was offering a free bathing away of sins, so that those who could not afford the Temple charges for those baths would still be ritually clean. Along with the free washing away of sins, the people heard John preach a new, subversive approach to life -- being born a Jew was not enough. You’re counting on your birth as a Son of Abraham to get you through life? You think that there is nothing after you die? (The Sadducees believed that this life is all there is.) Well, what if there is life after death? Where will you be then?
People were convicted by John’s preaching, and came forward to be baptized. Even Roman soldiers came for their sins to be washed away. Pharisees and even Sadducees came for the same reason. John did not hold back: “You brood of vipers! Who warned you of the wrath to come?” John is like the beater who makes noise to frighten game animals so they will run toward the hunters who are waiting to kill them. Only he is driving them toward God so they can repent and change their lives.
Jesus comes to the river, and we might ask: was he wanting to wash away whatever sins he might have committed as a child? The sins of his youth? If he is completely human as well as completely divine, he certainly must have sinned: gotten into fights with other boys, talked back to his teacher or parents, done all those things that boys will do. How about that time when he stayed in the Temple, frightening his parents half to death? That’s certainly not the traditional teaching of Christianity. So why did he come?
The commentary in the New Interpreter’s Study Bible says, “Jesus explains his baptism as ‘fulfilling all righteousness/justice’.... Jesus’ baptism expresses his faithfulness to accomplish God’s purposes and commission.” In other words, it is a sign that he accepts his ministry as God has called him. It concentrates on Jesus’ humanity, yet we, listening to Paul, think that he was without sin. How can any human have nothing to ask forgiveness for?
If Jesus was God born in flesh, as the tradition of the Christian church teaches, why the baptism? Perhaps it is a way to announce to the world that his ministry is about to begin. And if even the Pharisees and Sadducees were being baptized, it might be a necessity if he is going to be preaching to these factions of Judaism of his day. It is certainly a declaration of Jesus’ intent to live strictly for the ministry he is undertaking, a sign that he is willing to do battle with evil by the divine power.
His intention is responded to by a vision of God’s blessing. The Spirit of God descends like a dove, which alights on him. The NISB notes that the dove was considered to be a servant of Zeus, the ultimate god of the Greeks. So it may be that Matthew intends for us to know that Jesus came to replace the old gods. Certainly the idea that the world of that time belonged to Rome is being challenged. Jesus comes to establish a new order, a world that is ruled by the God of Israel, not the emperor of Rome.
Might we say this about our own world, our own government, and the governments of the nations? If Jesus is King of kings and Lord of lords, he rules over all the rulers of the earth that people follow. Jesus comes to be baptized so that such claims to power can be washed away. He is ready to do and to be what God planned for the salvation of the world he created. This is the breakpoint; Jesus goes directly from his baptism to the wilderness, where his determination to only serve God will be sorely tempted.
1 Isaiah 42:1-4; 49:1-6; 50:4-9; and 52:13--55:12
2 YHWH is the commonly-used 4-letter representation of the Old Testament name of God, which is an unpronounceable name in Hebrew. Often in Christian churches vowels are added, making it YAWEH, which is pronounceable. However, the original understanding about this name is that humans ought not to say the name of God, except for the high priests under specific circumstances.
3 “The Servant of the Lord in the ‘Servant Songs’ of Isaiah: A Second Moses Figure.” This article is on the web, but was a paper read to the Old Testament Study Group at the meeting of Tyndale Fellowship in Swanwick, Derbyshire, England in 1994. It was included in The Lord’s Anointed: Interpretation of Old Testament Messianic Texts (Baker, 1995), pp. 105-140.
All of us have had an epiphany at some time in our lives. For me, it came as I was preparing for church one Sunday 20 years ago. I walked into the kitchen and opened the bread bag to make some toast. The smell of the bread and plastic made me instantly nauseated. At least, that’s what I thought. I decided to not eat, to just cross the street to the church. But as I approached the three steps down to the door, I knew that I would pass out if I tried. I called over to church for help, and our nurse came to the house. She took one look at me and dialed 911. The next thing I knew, the living room was filled with huge young men and women, and the one in front of me was saying I had to go to the hospital, my blood pressure was 270/120. Way too high -- should have been 120/80. So I gave in and went.
A few weeks later at a pastor’s gathering, I told them this story. “I realize,” I finished, “that if I’m going to be taking a different trip than the one I thought, I need to repack my suitcase.” Every face was serious, as several of them nodded. This was my epiphany. Not that life is short, but that you have plans and then find that your plans have changed.
Is this the meaning of Jesus coming to be baptized by John? Did he have other plans for his life, plans that have abruptly changed? Matthew says that Jesus had his epiphany in the Temple of Jerusalem when he was twelve. His baptism is an epiphany for us. Who is this man? What does he intend to do? And what does that have to do with us?
Isaiah 42:1-9
The second section of Isaiah (chapters 34:1--35:10 and 40--55) contains four “Servant Songs.”1 These songs have been discussed by Jewish and Christian scholars ever since they were first identified by Bernhard Duhm in his 1892 commentary on Isaiah. The songs are four poems written about a certain “servant of YHWH.”2 God calls the servant to lead the nations, but the servant is horribly abused among them. The point of the scholarly discussion is whether the figure of the suffering servant refers to a person or to the entire Jewish population. Those who understand the whole body of Judaism to be the suffering servant say their suffering is on behalf of the rest of the world for the salvation of humankind. On the other side, there is discussion as to whether these passages refer to the messiah or to some other prophet, perhaps someone who is in exile with the people in Babylon.
Among Christians, it is assumed that the person referred to is Jesus and the suffering is his actual suffering, both in his life and in his horrible death on the cross. Among the Jewish scholars, the focus of the discussion has changed since the Holocaust. With the Jewish population decimated and the survivors scattered across the planet, it’s easy today to see the entirety of the Jews as the suffering servant. But to other Jewish scholars, the songs refer to the messiah. The Christian view has grown out of this second school of thought. The fact that Isaiah does not identify this servant in the surrounding text leaves us with grist for the mill of scholarly discussion for foreseeable future.
I am going to take the attitude of G.P. Hugenberger.3 He says that the servant is the expected “prophet like Moses” mentioned in Deuteronomy 18:14ff and 34:10ff, because the New Testament writers clearly considered Jesus to be the suffering servant. Both Matthew and Luke use this first song to illustrate that God the Father was pleased with Jesus as he was coming out of the water of the Jordan at his baptism by his cousin John. Luke likewise references these words as Jesus announces his ministry in the synagogue in Nazareth (Luke 4).
We need not, however, see these words as solely referring to Jesus. The servant of God may, in fact, refer to any of us called to minister in the name of Christ. It is a word of comfort to those who are facing rebellion in the congregation; or the failure of a congregation to reach out to their neighbors, and blaming the pastor for the failure of the church. It is a word of comfort, as well, to those who are grieving their own inability to change these folks.
It is also a word to us about how we are to follow in the example of Christ as we care for the people in our care. Verses 2 and 3 say that we should not shout at those who are not living by Christian principles, that those who are sinning ought not to be cut off from their community of faith. And those whose faith is failing need to be encouraged, not dealt with severely.
We have many examples of Jesus’ ministry to learn from. The woman he sees in the synagogue who is bent over and in pain is called to the front of the room so that he can heal her. The leaders of the synagogue are annoyed at this intrusion (and Jesus, by inference), saying that there are six other days in the week in which they can be healed. At that, Jesus uses a title for this woman that occurs nowhere else in scripture: “This daughter of Abraham” (Luke 13). It is a reminder to those present that God is active in the lives of women as well as men, and the value that God puts on every human life. A man with a withered hand also came to Jesus in a synagogue. Jesus told him to reach out, and as he did he was healed without Jesus even touching him. The Pharisees were so outraged by his defense for doing so that they sought to destroy him (Matthew 12).
The second part of today’s passage is the promise of God to those called as servants. Again, Luke used verses 6 and 7 as the scripture Jesus read to the congregation in his home synagogue before he said, “Today these words have been fulfilled in your hearing” (Luke 4). This was a clear claim that he was the messiah (“Christ” in Greek), and that his mission was to set people free to enjoy a new kind of relationship with God. Luke also uses verse 6 in Simeon’s thanksgiving to God in the story of the Presentation of Jesus in the Temple (Luke 2:22ff).
This passage is one of hope and is filled with the glory of God. It says that no matter how things may be going in our lives or in the world, God is attendant on us and our needs. Isaiah’s prophecy does not ignore the times when we are frightened, devastated, or hopeless. Rather, the promise is that the Spirit of God will be put on us for our comfort as well as for our strength to shine a light to open people’s eyes to injustice in our nation as well as the other nations on earth. It is an announcement of the new things God is going to bring forth.
Acts 10:34-43
This is the result of the story of Peter’s vision of a large cloth being lowered from heaven and “a voice” telling him to get up and kill some of the beasts in it and eat. Peter refuses, because many of the animals he saw in the “sheet” were ritually unclean, and he had never eaten anything profane or unclean and had no intention of doing so. So when a messenger came to the door of the house where he was staying and asked Peter to go with him to the house of Cornelius, a centurion in Caesarea, he not only agreed to go with them as God had directed, but he invited these Gentiles into the house where he was staying! This was utterly without precedent, as Jews not only would not enter the house of a Gentile, they would never invite a Gentile in their homes, because to do so would defile their homes.
But with the strength of the vision God had given him (not just once, but three times) and God’s word that he should go to Cornelius, he went because God had arranged this request. Cornelius, it turned out, had had a vision of an angel telling him to send for Peter. “So talk to us and tell us everything God has told you to say.”
This was a leap in the dark for Cornelius as well as for Peter. Peter has had instructions from God only to go with the messengers. Yet he opens his mouth and says, “I now understand that God shows no partiality, but in every nation, anyone who fears him and does what is right is acceptable to him.”
This is a message we modern Christians have yet to hear. We call people to be born again, but we insist that until our audience believes everything just as we do they are bound for hell. Certainly Peter had much of that belief before God talked to him on the roof of Simon the tanner’s house. God took an extraordinary step to convince Peter to overcome the training of a lifetime in dealing with those who were not part of his faith or nation. But Peter intended to always serve the Lord first and foremost, so when he is given this opportunity he does as he is told. He tells the story of Jesus’ ministry, death, and resurrection. Even as he is saying this, the large group of people gathered began to speak in tongues (the one way the early Christians knew when a person had received the Holy Spirit) (v. 44).
It is important that we read verse 44 along with the selected scripture, because otherwise all we get is Peter’s witness and not the result of it. Peter had just received a new teaching, and he is amazed at the result of his sharing that teaching, as were the believers who had come with him. If only we were open to whatever God tells us to do, and always prepared to witness to the power of God in our own lives, what might we accomplish on God’s behalf? Too often, we are afraid (as Peter was) to take a new teaching to its logical conclusion, and thus miss opportunities to spread the love of God.
A long number of years ago when chatrooms were common on the internet, I said that “God is Love.” A young man replied “I don’t think we can say ‘God is love’ as though that’s all God is.” I paused a minute, trying to decide how to answer him. Since he tended to quote scripture a great deal, I decided to point him to 1 John 4:8 -- “Whoever does not love does not know God, for God is love.” I waited for his response, and it took a few minutes. At last he wrote: “You were very gentle with me, especially considering how wrong I was. I found that statement in four different places.”
We err seriously when we think that God is an angry judge who wants to kill us all, and demanded the death of his son on the cross as a sacrificial offering to wipe away our sins. If we understand the doctrine of the Trinity rightly, Jesus is not the earthly son of God, he is God in Flesh -- not separate from God the Father or God the Spirit. We reject the obvious nature of the sacrifice God made by climbing up on that cross and allowing himself to be impaled. We reject the birth of God that we just celebrated. We reject the idea that God sacrificed a part of himself so that we can forgive God, as well as God forgiving us. We reject the idea that God can love those we do not trust as well as us. And most importantly, we reject the idea that people of other faiths, seeking to please God and living a life as dedicated to doing good as ours is, will be in heaven with us. Yet all of this is bound up in the story of Peter’s preaching in the house of a Gentile and their acceptance of his words.
Matthew 3:13-17
So, if Jesus is God in Flesh, what is he doing going to the Jordan to be baptized by John?
John himself asks that question: “I need to be baptized by you, and do you come to me?” Jesus’ answer is no clearer: “Let it be so now; for it is proper for us in this way to fulfill all righteousness.” We are not wrong to be confused by Jesus’ words. How does his baptism fulfill righteousness?
To answer that question, we need to know that if a man wanted to go into the Temple courts where the sacrifices were made, he had to go through a ritual bath. There were baths under the Temple, and the men intending to sacrifice would pay to be immersed in these baths before they went upstairs to buy a sacrificial animal and then enter the Court of Men, where his animal would be taken and sacrificed as he watched. A portion of the meat would go to the priests, and the rest would be given to the man for his family to share in a joyous feast.
John was undermining the power of the priests and lawyers (interpreters of God’s Law as found in Torah). He was offering a free bathing away of sins, so that those who could not afford the Temple charges for those baths would still be ritually clean. Along with the free washing away of sins, the people heard John preach a new, subversive approach to life -- being born a Jew was not enough. You’re counting on your birth as a Son of Abraham to get you through life? You think that there is nothing after you die? (The Sadducees believed that this life is all there is.) Well, what if there is life after death? Where will you be then?
People were convicted by John’s preaching, and came forward to be baptized. Even Roman soldiers came for their sins to be washed away. Pharisees and even Sadducees came for the same reason. John did not hold back: “You brood of vipers! Who warned you of the wrath to come?” John is like the beater who makes noise to frighten game animals so they will run toward the hunters who are waiting to kill them. Only he is driving them toward God so they can repent and change their lives.
Jesus comes to the river, and we might ask: was he wanting to wash away whatever sins he might have committed as a child? The sins of his youth? If he is completely human as well as completely divine, he certainly must have sinned: gotten into fights with other boys, talked back to his teacher or parents, done all those things that boys will do. How about that time when he stayed in the Temple, frightening his parents half to death? That’s certainly not the traditional teaching of Christianity. So why did he come?
The commentary in the New Interpreter’s Study Bible says, “Jesus explains his baptism as ‘fulfilling all righteousness/justice’.... Jesus’ baptism expresses his faithfulness to accomplish God’s purposes and commission.” In other words, it is a sign that he accepts his ministry as God has called him. It concentrates on Jesus’ humanity, yet we, listening to Paul, think that he was without sin. How can any human have nothing to ask forgiveness for?
If Jesus was God born in flesh, as the tradition of the Christian church teaches, why the baptism? Perhaps it is a way to announce to the world that his ministry is about to begin. And if even the Pharisees and Sadducees were being baptized, it might be a necessity if he is going to be preaching to these factions of Judaism of his day. It is certainly a declaration of Jesus’ intent to live strictly for the ministry he is undertaking, a sign that he is willing to do battle with evil by the divine power.
His intention is responded to by a vision of God’s blessing. The Spirit of God descends like a dove, which alights on him. The NISB notes that the dove was considered to be a servant of Zeus, the ultimate god of the Greeks. So it may be that Matthew intends for us to know that Jesus came to replace the old gods. Certainly the idea that the world of that time belonged to Rome is being challenged. Jesus comes to establish a new order, a world that is ruled by the God of Israel, not the emperor of Rome.
Might we say this about our own world, our own government, and the governments of the nations? If Jesus is King of kings and Lord of lords, he rules over all the rulers of the earth that people follow. Jesus comes to be baptized so that such claims to power can be washed away. He is ready to do and to be what God planned for the salvation of the world he created. This is the breakpoint; Jesus goes directly from his baptism to the wilderness, where his determination to only serve God will be sorely tempted.
1 Isaiah 42:1-4; 49:1-6; 50:4-9; and 52:13--55:12
2 YHWH is the commonly-used 4-letter representation of the Old Testament name of God, which is an unpronounceable name in Hebrew. Often in Christian churches vowels are added, making it YAWEH, which is pronounceable. However, the original understanding about this name is that humans ought not to say the name of God, except for the high priests under specific circumstances.
3 “The Servant of the Lord in the ‘Servant Songs’ of Isaiah: A Second Moses Figure.” This article is on the web, but was a paper read to the Old Testament Study Group at the meeting of Tyndale Fellowship in Swanwick, Derbyshire, England in 1994. It was included in The Lord’s Anointed: Interpretation of Old Testament Messianic Texts (Baker, 1995), pp. 105-140.
