John the Baptist's appearance in Israel at this moment struck them the more, because, in consequence of Daniel's famous prophecy of the seventy weeks, and it may be other scriptures, they were at that very time waiting for the Messiah. The expectation was general over the East, no doubt through the Jews who were scattered abroad. Therefore a man so distinguished as John the Baptist was for righteousness raised the question whether he were the Christ or not. But his answer was always distinct. He pointed to the fact of his own baptizing with water. This was peculiar to him and a sign to Israel. But even his (if I may so say) coming by water gave him the opportunity of contrasting One who had come after a far different sort, even looking at power, not to speak of blood. Jesus “came by water and blood.” The point however that John contrasted with the water is His baptizing with the holy Ghost. It was a person infinitely greater than himself, One whose dignity was such that the tie of His sandals he was not worthy to unloose; One not only mightier and more dignified, but who would be distinguished by baptizing with the Holy Ghost and with fire—baptizing with the Holy Ghost as the fruit of His first advent; and baptizing with fire as the accompaniment of the second. When the Lord Jesus comes again, He will baptize with fire; He will execute the solemn judgment of God upon the world. Baptizing with the Holy Ghost is what makes the Church (that is God's present assembly) separate from the Jew even.
The Acts of the Apostles may serve to make this particularly plain. When the disciples were with the Lord after His resurrection, He spoke to them of the things concerning the kingdom, besides giving them many infallible proofs of His own life in resurrection after His suffering. Among the rest He told them that they were not to depart from Jerusalem, but to wait for the promise of the Father. The Lord therefore distinguished John's from His own mission by this. He baptized with the Holy Ghost, John only with water. Accordingly not many days after this, on the day of Pentecost, the baptism of the Holy Ghost became a fact. The Lord shed forth what was then seen and heard: the Holy Ghost came upon them, and they were thus baptized (as Paul afterward taught—into one body; that is, the Church). Of the baptism with fire, you will observe, the Lord does not speak one word. The reason is that this was not to be accomplished then. When John was looking onwards, he sees both, but when Christ had actually suffered on the cross, He announces the one and not the other. Baptism with fire will take place when the Lord will be revealed from heaven “in flaming fire, taking vengeance on them that know not God, and them that obey not the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ.” This is plain from verse 17.
“Whose fan is in his hand, and he will throughly purge his floor and will gather the wheat into his garner; but the chaff he will burn with fire unquenchable.” This is the baptism with fire. “And many other things in his exhortation preached he unto the people.”
Then we have in Luke's remarkable manner a compendious description of John up to his imprisonment. “But Herod the tetrarch, being reproved by him for Herodias his brother Philip's wife, and for all the evils which Herod had done, added yet this above all, that he shut up John in prison.” The object is to present a full picture of John; and hence Luke does not adhere to mere time any more than Matthew does. Whatever adds to the moral description is Luke's province. John was faithful not only to the lower classes but also to the highest. His testimony to Christ was decisive, making nothing of his own glory in order to exalt the Lord; and he suffered for it too: he was shut up in prison because of righteousness.
And now the door is open for presenting Jesus. “When all the people were baptized, it came to pass, that Jesus also being baptized and praying, the heaven was opened.” How lovely the picture! The Lord, perfect as He was, did not keep Himself aloof from the people. Morally separate from sinners, nevertheless their confession of sin, which was implied in their baptism, attracted the Lord's heart, and He would be with them, though Himself absolutely sinless. The Holy Jesus also being baptized and praying—so thoroughly was He found taking His place as the dependent man upon earth, and while He was praying—the heavens were opened “and the Holy Ghost descended in a bodily shape like a dove upon him, and a voice came from heaven, which said, Thou art my beloved Son; in thee I am well pleased.” The heavens had never been opened before, except in judgment when Ezekiel had seen them. But now there was an object upon earth that even God could look upon with delight. There was none in heaven that was adequate to draw out and fix the attention of God; nothing could elicit His complacency: a creature could not, but Jesus, because He was not only God but perfect man, was precisely what met the love of God—of His heart. It was God's delight to look down and see a Man who could answer to all His affections and nature and mind and judgment about everything. This is beautiful, and shows what the grace of God is in connection with His being baptized when all the people were. Man as such knows nothing of the mind of God. As the heavens are high above the earth, so are His thoughts higher than our thoughts; and the heavens now answer to Jesus on the earth and the Holy Ghost descends upon Him.
From the very first the Holy Ghost had to do with Jesus as man; we were told so in the first chapter, where it was said (when Mary inquired how she was to be the mother of a child) that the Holy Ghost should come upon her. But Jesus was much more than thus conceived of the Holy Ghost. The Holy Ghost descended upon Him. This is what is called by Luke in Acts 10 His anointing of God; “Now God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Ghost and with power.” The anointing of the Holy Ghost was not to counteract the evil of human nature—this was already secured by His miraculous conception. There was no taint of evil whatever in the humanity of Christ; all was perfectly pure, and there being a total absence of sin, sin in nature as well as in act. But now there was more than this; there was the Spirit of God poured upon Him. Him God the Father sealed, and this when He was baptized, before He enters upon His public service. It was the expression of God's perfect delight in Him, and it was also power for service. He alone of all men needed no blood to fit Him, as it were, to be anointed with the holy oil. I speak now after the language of Exodus and Leviticus. Others of His people would receive the Holy Ghost, but this only in virtue of blood, His atoning blood being put upon them. Where the blood was put, the oil could be. But Jesus as man receives the Holy Ghost without blood shed or sprinkled. The Holy Ghost descended upon Him in a bodily shape like a dove. I do not doubt that the outward form of the Spirit's descent was in relation to the character of Christ, just as the cloven tongues as of fire were in relation to the place and work of the disciples on the day of Pentecost. It was not merely a tongue, but a divided tongue, showing that God was now going out to the Gentiles as well as to the Jews. If it was a tongue of fire, whatever the grace, it was in the divine judgment of all evil. But in Christ's case there was neither one thing nor the other. In bodily shape the Spirit came down like a dove, the emblem of what is proverbially pure and gentle to the last degree. “Holy, harmless, undefiled” —such was Christ.
But more than this, the voice came from heaven which said, “Thou art my beloved Son; in thee I am well pleased.” This voice is of all importance too. It manifested that Jesus was the delight of God as man, not merely in consequence of a work that was going to be done; it was the person that was owned, and His person too after He had identified Himself with the people that were baptized. They must not mistake nor misinterpret His baptism: it was the baptism of repentance for them, but thoroughly in grace for Him. He had nothing to own. He was about to enter upon a great work, but baptism was in no way the expression of need on His part nor to fit Him for what He was entering upon. “Thou art my beloved Son; in thee I am well pleased” —not only I am, but I have been well pleased. It is retrospective and not present merely.
Then we have in a very remarkable manner the genealogy of Jesus introduced. It ought to strike any thoughtful mind that the Spirit of God must have sufficient reason for introducing it here. The natural place we might think for such an account of our Lord's ancestry would be when He was born, or even before His birth, as we have had one in Matthew. A Jew would require it there, and has it there in the first gospel; but here it is introduced when He is baptized. The reason is just this, that the genealogy here is brought in not so much to skew whence Jesus was naturally, or rather legally, to meet the difficulties of a Jew and to prove He was truly the Messiah according to the flesh, but to bring out the person of Jesus on the human side as the Father had just owned Him on the divine. Accordingly the genealogy is very peculiar in this—that it traces Him up to Adam and to God. Why so? Clearly this has nothing to do with His being the Messiah; but it is expressly to manifest One whose heart was toward the whole human race. It is the genealogy of grace as Matthew's is of law. It is not one traced down from the two great fountains of blessing for Israel, Abraham and David, the stock of promise and the line of royalty. Here it is tracing Him up; this wonderful person owned as the Son of God, who is He? So the Spirit of God deigns to show that He was, as it was supposed (He was legitimately counted) the son of Joseph. This implies that the writer of the gospel was perfectly aware that He was not a mere man, that He was not Joseph's son except before the eyes of men. I presume that the genealogy was really Mary's, but (Mary being Joseph's wife) He could be, as was supposed, the son of Joseph and so on. This will accord with the character of the gospel, because the Lord Jesus was not a man in virtue of His connection with Joseph but with Mary. The reality of His manhood depended upon His being the son of Mary; nevertheless He was, as was supposed, the son of Joseph, which was of Heli. Heli, as I take it, was the father of Mary; hence the genealogy here traces Him through Nathan to David; this was His mother's line, as it appears to me. In Matthew He is derived through Solomon, which was Joseph's line. Therefore, as the law required, it was the father who gave Him His title, and thus He had a strict legal title to the throne of David. The great point in the Jewish system was the father. Thus Matthew gives us Joseph's royal genealogy; but Luke furnishes the maternal line through Mary. This indeed was the real one for Christ's humanity; and the object of Luke was to attest the grace of God displayed in the man Christ Jesus. The humanity of Christ has the largest place throughout this gospel.
If we have to bear our own reproach, it is because we were not bearing the reproach of Christ. When the eye is not on Jesus, we are like Samson shorn of his locks, and our weakness as well as folly will come out. Let us remember that our rash words and foolish ways dishonor God in this way—that they stumble those who do not know His grace by giving the appearance, as far as we are concerned, that these things are compatible with the grace of which we talk.