What
is it to be proper? One way of defining the word is as appropriate,
suitable, or right to a situation. It’s not proper to talk with
food in your mouth. It’s not proper to use that language at the
table. It’s not proper to speak of bodily functions except in a
medical sense. Here proper means social appropriateness. Another
way of defining proper is to say that it is a specific characteristic
of something’s nature. It is proper to zebra’s to have stripes.
Walking upright is proper to humans. Sin (alienation from God and
one another or broken faith) is proper to human nature. There is yet
another way of defining proper; the established or set way to do
something. When making a deposit at the bank it is proper to use a
deposit slip and have it prepared ahead of time. This makes
everybody’s banking experience pleasurable. So there you have it,
three ways to define proper…social appropriateness, specificity to
nature, or a set procedure. Having the dictionary under our belts we
should be more apt to arrive at what Jesus meant when saying about
his baptism “it is proper for us to do this to fulfill all
righteousness” for his doing so would seem improper in every
respect.
John’s
baptism was baptism with water for repentance. It grew out of a
fanaticism with ritual washing as a means to prepare to come before
the Lord that was sweeping his day. As far as the Jerusalem Temple
establishment was concerned John’s baptizing out there in the
wilderness was improper. It was not the proper way to come before
the Lord. The proper way was to come to Jerusalem and offer a
sacrifice. Sacrifice was the way they worshipped. It wasn’t a
sacrifice to appease an offended God. It was an offering up of
thanks for something you were going to have to kill to eat anyway.
The proper way to take life that God had given was to take it to the
priest who took its life in the proper way. He would burn the fat
and the guts, take a portion for the priests, and take the blood into
the temple to sprinkle it on the altar or on the lid of the Ark of
the Covenant otherwise known as the mercy seat where God was supposed
to be. They believed that the blood was the life of the animal. So
in essence the proper way to take life was to give that life back to
God who created it. Moreover, they believed that this life passing
through death (the animal slaughtered and the blood taken) and given
to God covered over the sins of those who brought the sacrifice. The
blood (the life) of the lamb would atone for their sins or cover them
over. The Hebrew word for atone, kophar,
means to cover over. Atonement was how they kept in right
relationship to God. They believed this because that’s what God
told Moses that this sacrifice was how the people should approach and
worship.
Baptism
develops from the OT teaching that one also needed to be clean to go
to the temple to worship. There were certain things and people you
could not touch, if you did you would have death or disease on you
coming into the presence of God. Waiting a period of time and taking
a ritual bath was usually the way to make oneself clean. This making
oneself clean to come into the presence of God is what John was
calling baptism for repentance.
Yet,
this act of repentance was not the proper way. John was conducting a
ritual that was not in accordance with Scripture as the priests knew
it and he was not doing it in Jerusalem, but out in the wilderness.
But, there’s significance to his doing this out in the wilderness.
In Old Testament times, there was a Day of Atonement when the High
priest would offer a sacrifice on behalf of all the people so that
the blood, life that had passed through death, might cover over their
sins. He would also get a male goat and whisper the sins of the
people into its ears and send it out into the wilderness to be
consumed by a demon named Azazel (Lev. 16:8,10,26). This was a
symbolic gesture of sending sin to Hell more or less. This is also
where we get the term scapegoat – “the goat that escapes.”
This
was why John the Baptist was out there in the wilderness in a
figurative Hell baptizing people in water for repentance and it truly
was not proper. Well, in two of the senses of the definition of
proper. It was not proper to the prescribed way. It was not proper
to social appropriateness for i was offensive to the Jerusalem Temple
establishment. But, considering human nature and our bent towards
sin, out there in the wilderness in this figurative Hell baptizing
people who desperately wanted to be righteous was most proper. These
people were desperate. They felt God was coming with a vengeance to
cast out the Romans from Israel, judge the people, and establish his
kingdom. They knew that the proper means in Jerusalem at the temple
was a corrupted farce. The priests had turned worship into big
business. That being the case, they had no hope of being ready for
"The Day of the Lord" other than to go out there where the
scapegoat went and be washed clean by John the Baptist, the only true
prophet of God who was calling them there.
It’s
to these people that Jesus went. Jesus went out there to that
figurative Hell like a scapegoat and had himself baptized in this
improper ministry of John’s saying, “It is proper for us to do
this to fulfil all righteousness.” Now one might think that what
Jesus did was not proper to his nature. That’s what John the
Baptist thought. To him Jesus was the Lamb of God who takes away the
sin of the world and here was Jesus out in the wilderness like the
scapegoat the high priest sent to Azazel. Moreover, Jesus was the
one they were expecting who would baptize them, cleanse them, with
the Holy Spirit, make them righteous in the core with the indwelling
presence of God. It would seem logical and proper that with Jesus’
arrival these desperate people out there in that figurative Hell who
had repented and made themselves clean with baptism were now ready to
receive the Holy Spirit from Jesus.
Yet,
that’s just not the proper way to come before the Triune God who is
grace. To come running to Jesus saying “baptize me with the Holy
Spirit because I’ve repented and cleaned myself up” would be
improper. It wouldn’t be grace. The proper is for Jesus to meet
us in our Hell of a wilderness and take upon himself our need to be
made clean of our shame and to become himself our desperate attempt
at repentance by and then take it all away with him into his death.
“God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we
might become the righteousness of God (2 Cor. 5:21).” That is the
proper way.
So
what does all this mean? It means we don’t have to try to get
right with God to gain his love. God loves us. Jesus Baptism was
for everyone of us, for all of humanity. His baptism was for the
fulfillment of righteousness. It was the sign of God the Son taking
upon himself every bit of our sin-diseased human state. It is
impossible for us to clean our acts up to the point of where we can
say, “God, I’m clean. Show me your face.” Jesus baptism put an
end to that. It is proper that he would meet us in our living Hells,
take upon himself our need to be clean of shame and our attempts to
be made righteous, and be baptized for us (a foreshadowing of his
death and resurrection), and take it away.
Then,
guess what? He came up from the water and the heavens were opened and
then God revealed himself. Because of what Jesus had done for the
people they saw Jesus God the Son with the Holy Spirit flittering in,
over, and through him, and heard the voice of the Father saying,
“This is my Son, the Beloved, with him I am well pleased.” The
proper way to knowing God is through Jesus Christ doing it all for
us. That’s what grace is all about. Those churches who say you’ve
got to repent of your sins and believe before you can receive, those
churches that don’t accept the baptism of other denominations
simply do not appreciate Jesus Baptism for us to it’s full extent
and are still dealing in John’s baptism. Jesus baptism was our
baptism, our repentance for us. He’s fulfilled righteousness for
us. He who didn’t need it has done for us what we cannot do.
So
then, what about our baptisms? When we were baptized, we were
baptized into Jesus' death that we might be raised with him and live
in his life. Ours was not a baptism for repentance, a way for us to
clean ourselves up for God. Jesus baptism did that for us. As his
baptism foreshadowed his death, resurrection and ascension, so our
baptism signifies our participation in those events in him. We’ve
died with him. We live with him. We are baptized in Christ not into
him. The end result is that freely, on his merit not our own, he
gives us his Spirit who unites us to himself so that we hear the
Father’s voice saying to and in and through and to everyone of us,
“My beloved children. I am well pleased.” Jesus takes us into
himself freely. We are in him whether we want to be or not. The
Holy Spirit is given to us whether we want him or not. The Father
speaks to us personally saying you are my beloved child whether we
what to hear it or not.
The
Triune God of grace has created new reality, the New Creation, new
existence for us through becoming human as Jesus Christ and his
taking our sin upon himself and dying with it and then being bodily
raised and ascending to the Father in our humanity. This new
humanity is humanity in which the image of God has been restored. I
am inclined to say that the moment when Jesus came up from the water
is the moment in which it is fully revealed that the Trinity has
restored his the image to humanity.
Jesus
is the lamb which God has sent who takes away the sin of the world.
He doesn't just cover it over so that God doesn’t have to look at
it. He takes our sin away. He takes it away by the very means of
uniting us and it to his very self. No longer are we nor need we be
alienated from God. He is with us, in us, always. If ever we feel
the fearful need to get ourselves right with God to cure the angst of
shame or feel that God is against us we need only point to Jesus
baptism and say, “He’s done it all. God is for us not against.”
Our
new existence in Christ is that we live in the Communion of love who
is the Trinity. We live in the moment of the opened heavens. Set
your minds on that. The more we live in the new reality the more it
changes us. Worship. Pray. Read the Scriptures. Do kind things.
Sing hymns and psalms to yourself. Live in the new reality. Indeed,
that’s what Jesus meant when he said repent and believe the Good
News that the Kingdom of God is at hand. Faith is not a decision to
believe and repent of our sins so that we can be forgiven and go to
Heaven when we die. Faith is what arises in the wake of the
revelation that as Jesus Christ God has saved humanity from sin and death
and indeed given himself to us in such a way as to take us into the
grace-filled Life of his very self. Invest your life to this new
reality God has brought about through Christ Jesus. It is truly
proper to live in the love of the Father freely given to us through
the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ in the communion of the Holy
Spirit. Amen.
