“Safely through the waters”–A Pastor’s Thoughts on the Gospel of Mark (Matthew Claridge)

The Promise of Christ’s Baptism

[Editor’s note: To read previous articles in this series on the gospel of Mark, click here.]

And he preached, saying, “After me comes he who is mightier than I, the strap of whose sandals I am not worthy to stoop down and untie. I have baptized you with water, but he will baptize you with the Holy Spirit.”

The demands of John’s baptism left people under the impression of impending doom and the need for feverish repentance. Nonetheless, John is a prophet not only of judgment but also of hope, like all the prophets that came before him. As mentioned in the previous post, Mark only records one saying from John, but it is the most essential and most important. It is a promise, pointing away from what the people must do for themselves and instead toward what God will do for them. There are two components to this promise.

First, Israel (including its last prophet) could not live up to their oath of baptism. They desperately needed One who could. John makes this clear when he states, “the strap of whose sandals I am not worthy to unite.” This is the whole message of the OT, summed up in the ministry of John himself. Israel could vow till they were blue in the face, but still fail as they always had. If John himself will not be “worthy” to even approach the King on such servile terms, who else will be able to stand before him?

For all John’s bluster, he himself cannot produce any change in Israel’s heart. He could only baptize with water. John was a weakling, all talk but no ability to follow through. The implication? No one would survive, no one would keep their head above water when the King rode in on the crest of his judgment wave–“who can endure the day of his coming, and who can stand when he appears?” (Mal. 3.2). They would all drown in God’s wrath.

The solution? We need a prize fighter, a Gibraltar, who can take the blows of God’s wrath and remain standing. John promises that there is coming a Stronger, Mightier One than himself. And so, immediately following this promise, Mark brings Jesus onto the stage. Now, Mark does not comment or explain why Jesus is baptized here. Nonetheless, there is something obviously unique and different about Jesus’ baptism as the rest of the account demonstrates. Only Matthew’s Gospel offers us some explicit explanation for the logic of Jesus’ baptism when John balks at the idea and Jesus responds: “Let it be so now, thus it is fitting to fulfill all righteousness” (Mt. 3.15).

What Jesus likely has in mind can be seen in Mark 10.38-39 when he refers to his imminent crucifixion as a “baptism.” The surprising association between these two acts only confirms the conclusions we reached regarding the meaning of baptism in the previous post. It represents a “burial” in the drowning flood of judgment, not primarily a “cleansing” or “washing.” It is a full immersion into sin, death, and hell; not their removal. Put this together and we find that Jesus too is making a covenant vow in his baptism: “Sacrifices and offerings you have not desired, but a body have you prepared for me … I said, ‘Behold, I have come to do your will, O God’” (Heb. 10.7-9). To paraphrase differently: “my people cannot keep their promises, but I can and will. Let the billows of your wrath overwhelm me for their sake.” Thus, Jesus was not baptized for his own sin but, like his crucifixion, he underwent baptism to demonstrate his solidarity and identification with our sin.

Yet Jesus is the only one who can “take it.” All God’s wrath would come crashing down on his head and yet, descending under the flood, he would arise victorious forging a path through the sea for us to follow. In this regard, Ps. 77.16-39 provides us a stunning and evocative image of this great trailblazer:

When the waters saw you, O God, when the waters saw you, they were afraid; indeed, the deep trembled. The clouds poured out water; the skies gave forth thunder; your arrows flashed on every side. The crash of your thunder was in the whirlwind; your lightnings lighted up the world; the earth trembled and shook. Your way was through the sea, your path through the great waters; yet your footprints were unseen. You led your people like a flock by the hand of Moses and Aaron.

For us who face the tsunami of God’s wrath, we rightly quake in our boots. We are confronted with something that no power on earth and no power of the human will can stop. But we do not face this flood alone, God leads the way into the floodwaters. Before Him, this titanic, primeval chaos trembles, quakes, and retreats. For the children of Israel, the footprints of their fearless leader remained unseen. But we have the extraordinary privilege now of seeing the footprints of the man Jesus going before us down into the flood, through it, and up over the other side.

Thus, the first component of  John’s promises was that a “stronger one” is coming—stronger than Israel’s best efforts at moral reformation, stronger than the pent up rage of God’s wrath against our deep-seated rebellion. The second component promises that we too will become stronger on account of His strength; we will receive a radically different kind of baptism, the baptism of the Spirit.

This reference to the Spirit is brimming with redemptive-historical significance. It encompasses a range of connections spanning both creation and redemption. In light of all we’ve said about the significance of John’s baptism as a pointer back to the chaos flood of Genesis, its only understandable that a reference to the “Spirit” would likewise take us back to the primeval world. The Spirit mentioned here is the same Spirit that brooded over the watery chaos of creation and forged a new world. This Spirit also stands behind the symbolism of the brooding dove that discovered land on the other side of the global flood. At its simplest, the promise of the Spirit represents not only the promise of a new creation but a new deliverance, a new “ark” (1Pet. 3.20-21) that will carry us over the edge of the world into the “land of the Emperor beyond the Sea.”

The difference between John’s baptism in ‘water’ and the Messiah’s baptism with the ‘Spirit’ couldn’t be greater. In the former, the suffocating water is a grave, a dark, confounding, death that clings and covers. In the latter, the exhilarating Spirit is a fullness, a radiant, verdant life that “consists in the enveloping, circumambient, one might almost say atmospheric character of the Spirit’s working” (G. Vos, The Pauline Eschatology). The radical discontinuity between John’s baptism and Christian baptism is evident in that curious episode of Acts 19.1-7. For those disciples in Ephesus, undergoing baptism “in the name of Jesus” made all the difference.

Now, what new life is this? Essentially, a new heart and a new world to inhabit in which not merely the intention but the motivation to find in God all our good, strength, hope, joy, and love is made blindingly clear to us. In the trajectory of the OT, this would be the chief promise of the Spirit (Ezek. 36.25-33). In this text from Ezekiel God promises that he will remove the idols of our hearts (cf. Ezek. 14.14) which, like the idols we worship, has become lifeless, hard, and impenetrable. In its place, he will put a living heart, a heart of flesh that is responsive and sensitive to God as God intended it. Consistent with the order of events John describes—first the “baptism” of the stronger one in God’s wrath, then our “baptism” by the stronger one into God’s life. Ezekiel records that this transformation is not automatic or a given: “It is not for your sake that I will act, declares the Lord GOD; let that be known to you. Be ashamed and confounded for your ways, O house of Israel” (v. 32). In the scope of NT history, we know that God’s ability to act for our sake is only the result of God’s willingness to act for his Son’s sake.

Under John’s ministry, the people were obligated to “produce the fruit of repentance” for themselves, but in Christ it is the Spirit that creates the “fruit of the lips” (Isa. 57.18-19). Ultimately, what this means in the day-to-day is a constant and unvaried look at the Son to whom the Spirit directs our gaze. This is the significance of Paul’s words in Rom. 8 regarding the role of the Spirit. Indeed, if God can only bestow His Spirit on us by looking at the Son, in the same way we can only receive and benefit from the Spirit by looking to the Son, and getting our eyes off ourselves. The metaphor of sanctification is an organic one—abide in the vine. We must beware of getting caught in the trap of saying, “ I must work harder.” Rather we must confess “I must rest harder” in Christ. How do we do that? By daily thriving, dwelling, singing, creating, reading, contemplating the richness, glory, and grace of our Atlas who bore the heaving weight of our sin and raises up a new world out of the ashes of the old.

Matthew Claridge is an editor for Credo Magazine and is Senior Pastor of Mt. Idaho Baptist Church in Grangeville, ID. He has earned degrees from Trinity Evangelical Divinity School and the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. He is married to Cassandra and has two children, Alec and Nora.