So that took a lot from me to type that last article. I thought I’d save time by going once through all the Scripture I’m supposed to read in a day; I think my mistake here was that I took notes along the way. Maybe hold off on the notes until I finish reading, just to see what sticks and is worthy of pondering?
Something to try next time around, sure, but here I am again, typing on those verses I said I’d throw in to talk about last time. Look, I know I said this takes more time than I expected, but I’m still doing it. Why? Well, in the words of a sobbing (Asian) Raymond K. Hessel in the cinematic rendition of Fight Club, ‘I. Don’t. Knowww.’
“I baptize you with water for repentance, but he who is coming after me is mightier than I, whose sandals I am not worthy to carry. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire. His winnowing fork is in his hand, and he will clear his threshing floor and gather his wheat into the barn, but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire.”
Matthew 3:11-12
While reading I just had to give into the temptation of whipping out the smartphone and googling what a winnowing fork is, and apparently it’s that basket you use to toss wheat, rice, etc. so you catch grain while the husks or the chaff is blown away by the wind.
Here I think we see another aspect to the salvation Christ gives us, for see, through Him we’ve been made new creations: We’ve been re-made from chaff into grain, the same way God spoke light into being – the start of the earth shifting from being ‘without form, and void’, to being without void, by being formed; The same way we’ve been re-born, and held together (Colossians 1:17).
Not only do we have Christ as our Rock of Salvation, but He is also the One who does hold us together – much so, that we hold weight and value, and therefore we are not blown away by the wind. In the first chapter of Matthew we read that the Angel told Joseph that Christ would save us from our sins, and the winnowing fork is another way of seeing it – retaining what is of value, and letting the wind take the rest away to be burned.
Moving on to Matthew 3:13-17, Jesus approaches John the Baptist, who in the literally preceding verses was building Him up so much:
Then Jesus came from Galilee to the Jordan to John, to be baptized by him. John would have prevented him, saying, “I need to be baptized by you, and do you come to me?”
But Jesus answered him, “Let it be so now, for thus it is fitting for us to fulfill all righteousness.” Then he consented.
I know I wrote about those underlined words, or at least heard or read about them somewhere. The One whom John was baptizing and preparing for was now Himself asking to be baptized.
eSword and F.B. Meyer come to the rescue:
While John was denouncing the sins of others, he was very conscious of his own. He melted in holy humility before the one nature in which his keen eye detected no trace of impurity, and he strenuously strove to forbid the incongruity of his polluted hands baptizing so pure a being as he felt Christ to be. Our Lord accepted the disclaimer but overruled it. He alone of all holy men had no consciousness of sin. “He did no sin, neither was guile found in His mouth,” (1 Peter 2:22). As God’s designated Lamb, He was narrowly searched, but those who knew the most about Him were compelled to attest His innocence and purity. Yet He was baptized that He might assume the sinner’s guilt, standing with him and for him and identifying Himself with his lot.
The sinless Christ was baptized by sinful hands to ‘assume the sinner’s guilt’, perhaps His being submerged fully adding value to the Paul’s words, from one of my favorite verses, not merely to take all sin but by immersion ‘becoming’ sin (2 Corinthians 5:21).
And when Jesus was baptized, immediately he went up from the water, and behold, the heavens were opened to him, and he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove and coming to rest on him; and behold, a voice from heaven said, “This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased.” (3:17);and F.B. Meyer continues; After Christ’s ‘assuming of the sinner’s guilt’, ‘Then He was anointed by the Spirit, and attested by the Father’s voice…’
We practice water baptism as a public proclamation of our faith. I remember that we made it as a sort of creed, last year. From memory, let me write it down again:
We believe in God, the Creator of all things seen and unseen.
We believe in Jesus Christ, the only begotten Son of God.
We believe He was born as one of us, and when He died, so our old sinful being died with Him.
We believe He rose from the dead, and when He rose, so we rose again as new, righteous creations.
Indeed, this may be part or all of what I wrote… But what I see here in Christ’s baptism, is a proclamation we also make in our own baptism:
As we are immersed in water, we remember Christ who immersed in water; He who knew no sin became sin for us.
As we are raised out of the water, we remember the Spirit of God descending upon Him as a dove; We remember as Christ was raised, God proclaimed, “This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased.”
And keeping in line which John the Baptist’s words before approached by Jesus, we also proclaim in our baptism, that as we are raised out of the water, we recognize that as the Holy Spirit descended upon Him, so we have also been baptized with the Holy Spirit. Indeed, just as the Spirit as a dove rested on Christ, so tongues of fire rested upon the apostles at Pentecost.
Christ wasn’t kidding when He asked John to baptize Him. As we can see here, it was, indeed, fitting for them to fulfill all righteousness.
Christ’s baptism was a foreshadowing of our own salvation, and a foretaste of our eternal life through Christ’s death and resurrection. It is yet another reason why we ourselves celebrate by way of our own baptism. In water baptism we don’t just remember our own death and resurrection, we also remember Christ’s coming into this world, and completing our salvation by way of His Holy Spirit poured out upon us.
And by the way, I think that was also part of the creed:
We believe that because we have been made righteous by Christ, we have the Holy Spirit, and God loves us and is well pleased with us.
Something like that, anyway. I don’t think I wasted any time here by going through these verses. It’ll all add value, more or less – give us more weight to be caught, even when we are… well, winnowed.
Yes, definitely appreciating how I’m getting a head start to hit 365000 words this year.
Until the next post, God bless us all.
5808/365000
#GospelOfMatthew #Grace #FeaturesOfSalvation #BibleStudy #BibleInOneYear #Reflections #Journalling #JohnTheBaptist #ChristsBaptism #Baptism #OurNewIdentity #NewCreation #HolySpirit
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