This history opens with verse 21, and how wonderful and full of grace! “Now when all the people were baptized, it came to pass, that Jesus being also baptized, and praying, the heaven was 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.” One may have looked and listened mournfully as one reads of John Baptist and his testimony. We might have asked, as the dying record of men passed before us, What is man? But now my eye rests on Jesus, I find the Lord from heaven a Man. All is to begin again. Do I ask again, What is man? At once Christ comes out. Do I look at myself? at all around? What do I see? Enough to break my heart, if there is a heart to be broken. The only thing which prevents people being utterly broken down is that they have not a heart to feel things as they are.
But a rest is here! I have got a Man now who satisfied God this blessed Man on earth in the presence of God, looking to God, and an object to God! not Messiah purging His floor, but Him in whom God’s thoughts and purposes are all folded up; not man perishing before the moth, but Jesus the Son of man; not merely coining down from Abraham and David, but traced up, “ which was the son of Adam, which was the Son of God” the second Man, the last Adam, the quickening Spirit. What a relief! for what is man? What one’s self when the heart’s sin is known—giving up God for an apple from the beginning hitherto! But now a Man, a blessed Man, appears, “and praying.” We are not told this elsewhere, and why here? Because Luke presents man in his perfection the dependent Man; for dependence is the essence of a perfect Man. Truly we see God shining all through; but yet in Jesus the dependent Man, in the place and condition of perfectness as Man. The root of sin in us is self-will, independence. Here my heart has rest! A dependent Man in the midst of sorrow, but perfectly with God in all. See Luke’s account of the transfiguration also—in humiliation or in glory, it makes no difference as to this; the perfect is ever the dependent One.
And when that blessed heart thus expressed its dependence, did He get no answer? “The heaven was opened.” Does heaven open thus on me? It is open to me indeed, no doubt; but I pray because it is open; it opened because He prayed. I come and look up because the heavens were opened on Him.
It is indeed a lovely picture of grace, and we may be bold to say that the Father loved to look onto look down, in the midst of all sin, on His beloved Son. Nothing but what was divine could thus awaken God’s heart, and yet it was the lowly perfect Man. He takes not the place of His eternal glory, as the Creator, the Son of God. He stoops and is baptized. (Psalms 16) He says, “In thee do I trust.” He says to Jehovah, “Thou art my Lord; my goodness extendeth not to thee.” He says to the godly remnant in Israel (that is, to the saints that are in the earth, and to the excellent), “All my delight is in them.” He needed no repentance, yet is He baptized with them; just as when, later on, He puts forth His sheep, He goes before them. He identifies Himself in grace with Israel, even with such as were of a clean heart. And the Holy Ghost descends like a dove on Him—fit emblem of that spotless Man! fit resting-place for the Spirit in the deluge of this world! And how sweet, too, that Jesus is pointed out to us as God’s object. I know the way the Father feels about Him. I am made His intimate, and admitted to hear Him expressing His affection for His Son, to see the links reformed between God and man. Heaven is opened, not on something above, but upon a Man on the earth. Thus I get rest, and my heart finds communion with God in His beloved Son. It is only the believer who enjoys it; but the link is there. And if I have that in and about me which distresses the soul, I have that in Him which is unfailing joy and comfort.
The genealogy quite falls in with the thought that God is showing grace in man and to man. Jesus, the beloved Son of God, is traced up to Adam, and to God. Jesus is Son of man; He is heir in this sense. He takes up the inheritance God gave to man. Oh, what a truth! Where could one—turn for rest if it had not Jesus to rest in? With Him let heaven and earth be turned upside down, and still I have a rest. What blessedness for the heart to have the object God Himself is occupied with! May our hearts also be more and more occupied with Him.
J. N. D.