To be honest, I don't really know, but then no one else really seems to either. However, Jesus' baptism turned out to be very significant despite that. Clearly the gospel authors thought so, because this is one of the few events that all four mention. If we look at Matthew's account and what John wrote about it, then we see that at first John the Baptist didn't quite recognize Jesus when he turned up in the queue to be baptized. They were cousins, but John had lived in Judea and Jesus grew up in Galilee. John also moved to the desert once he had become an adult. Therefore, it is likely that the two had met only infrequently and probably not very recently - and the last place that John would have expected to find Jesus was in the queue to be baptized to show repentance. He made it very clear to Jesus, once he had worked out who he was, that it should be the other way round, but Jesus insisted that John do this for him.
Jesus explained that it was necessary to fulfil all righteousness and then John relented. This is not an easy phrase to interpret. It could be that in order to embrace our humanity fully Jesus needed to identify with our need to be baptized, but the precise nature of what that means remains a mystery. Obviously Jesus eventually took our sins upon himself on the cross, so perhaps this was a first step to taking responsibility for our guilt, although not personally receiving our sinful nature.
However, baptism clearly was necessary for Jesus: God the Father turned up and spoke to those present, declaring that Jesus was his Son, and the Holy Spirit descended on him like a dove, and remained on him. This latter sign was what John had been told would identify the Messiah definitively, although he wasn't expecting it to be in a baptism ceremony.
In being baptized, Jesus demonstrated the humility, obedience, and dependence upon his Father and the Holy Spirit that was to be the hallmark of his ministry.
Various people had been told that Jesus was the Messiah at his birth, but then things seem to have gone quiet, apart from the incident in the Temple when he was 12. Once Jesus had been baptized and there was an audible and visual coming together of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit, Jesus' ministry began. God the Father launched this for him by making it clear to the relatively few people who were around at the time (compared to the enormous crowds who followed him at the height of his Earthly popularity) who Jesus was. He himself didn't go in for such public announcements to any great degree, so this was a separate initiative of his Father - a third-party endorsement of his ministry at the outset.
However, Jesus didn't capitalize on this: "Did you hear that everyone? I'm the Son of God, so come here and worship me." The important thing was that he had now received the fullness of the Holy Spirit and was ready to do what he was told. The first thing that the Holy Spirit wanted him to do was go into the wilderness on his own. This perhaps seems to be missing a major opportunity to strike while the iron was hot, but we shall see in a later post why the Holy Spirit did this. For now we note that Jesus wasn't too proud to be baptized, he waited until he received the endorsement of his Father and the filling of the Holy Spirit before starting his ministry, and he was then obedient to his Father and the Spirit in all that he did, rather than taking human opportunities to get the crowd on his side. Right at the point when he was starting out, Jesus gave this early example of how we should live: in humility, obedience, in step with the Father and filled with the Spirit.
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