With regard to these questions, let’s first read what the Bible says. It is recorded in Matthew chapter 3 verse 13–17: “Then comes Jesus from Galilee to Jordan to John, to be baptized of him. But John forbade Him, saying, I have need to be baptized of You, and come You to me? And Jesus answering said to him, Suffer it to be so now: for thus it becomes us to fulfill all righteousness. Then he suffered Him. And Jesus, when He was baptized, went up straightway out of the water: and, see, the heavens were opened to Him, and He saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove, and lighting on Him: And see a voice from heaven, saying, This is My beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased.” And another passage of God’s words is: “After Jesus was baptized, the Holy Spirit began His work, but this did not mean that the Holy Spirit had only just descended upon Jesus. The saying that the Holy Spirit descended like a dove upon Him is in reference to the official start of His ministry. The Spirit of God had been within Him before, but He had not yet begun to work, for the time had not arrived, and the Spirit did not begin to work rashly. The Spirit bore testimony to Him through baptism. When He arose from the water, the Spirit began to officially work in Him, which signified that God’s incarnate flesh had begun to fulfill His ministry, and had begun the work of redemption, that is, the Age of Grace had officially begun. … Baptism is merely a ceremony—it is just that baptism was the way to show that it was time to perform His ministry” (“Concerning Appellations and Identity”).
From the scriptures and God’s words, we can see that the Lord Jesus’ baptism has extraordinary significance. The meaning of His baptism is completely different from that of ours, for He is the fleshly incarnation of God’s Spirit. Before baptism, the Lord lived as an ordinary person. He also went to the temple to attend services, listen to sermons, and sing hymns—He did all the activities of a normal person, and He never did the work that was beyond the purview of normal humanity. Therefore, no one knew that the Lord Jesus was the incarnate God. At that time, the Holy Spirit only maintained the Lord Jesus in His life of normal humanity. As it was not the right time for God, the Holy Spirit did not work directly, nor did He reveal the Lord Jesus’ identity.
When the Lord Jesus was baptized, the Holy Spirit began His work and personally testified that the Lord Jesus was His beloved Son to maintain His own work. Through this, the Holy Spirit told people that the Lord Jesus officially took up His position from then on and that the work of the Age of Grace had formally started, and the Lord Jesus’ divine substance was also fully reflected. The Lord Jesus ended the Age of Law and established the Age of Grace; He expressed the truth to redeem the human race and brought the way of “Repent: for the kingdom of heaven is at hand” (Matthew 4:17). He taught man how to be forgiving and tolerant, how to love their enemies and forgive others seventy times seven times. These truths provide for people’s lives and show people the way to practice. And the Lord Jesus’ work and words possessed authority and power. He could calm the wind and sea, resurrect the dead with a word, and feed 5,000 people from five loaves of bread and two fishes. The Lord Jesus could also see deep into the hearts of men, bring their darkest secrets into the light and expose their corruption. Just as the Lord Jesus exposed the Pharisees’ essence of hypocrisy and hatred for the truth and rebuked them, saying they were “generation of vipers” (Matthew 12:34). Finally, the Lord Jesus was nailed to the cross, thus redeeming mankind from sin. It is therefore evident that the Lord Jesus’ work and words directly represented God Himself and that what He did was God’s own work. Therefore, we can see that God used this special method of baptism to tell people that the Lord Jesus was the incarnated flesh of God, was the Messiah whom man had longed for, and was God Himself, and that the Lord Jesus had officially started to perform the ministry. This is the meaning of the Lord Jesus’ baptism.
The fact of the Lord Jesus’ baptism allows us to see that there are laws to God’s work, that the incarnate God does not interrupt the work of the Spirit of God, and that God works and speaks in an orderly way. And even more, it shows us that whatever God does has meaning and contains truth that can be sought. Through the Lord Jesus being baptized and the Holy Spirit bearing witness to Him, people finally knew that the Lord Jesus was God Himself in the flesh. After that, the Lord Jesus officially began to perform His ministry. So, no matter how God works, we as created beings should seek God’s words and work with a heart of reverence to know God’s substance, for this is what sensible people should do.
