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Water of Life

JANUARY 13, 2008

Then Jesus came from Galilee to the Jordan to John, to be baptized by him. John would have prevented him, saying, “I need to be baptized by you, and do you come to me?” But Jesus answered him, “Let it be so now, for thus it is fitting for us to fulfill all righteousness.” Then he consented. And when Jesus was baptized, immediately he went up from the water, and behold, the heavens were opened to him, and he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove and coming to rest on him; and behold, a voice from heaven said, “This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased.”
Matthew 3:13–17

After the time of King David and Solomon, we read about a Syrian general named Naaman. He had the dreaded disease of leprosy. He learned that there was a prophet in Samaria whose God could cure him. So he sought the great prophet Elisha.

One day he and his advisers came to the prophet’s house. But Elisha did not even bother to go out and greet him. Instead, he sent word through a messenger, saying to the general, “Go and wash in the Jordan seven times, and your flesh shall be restored, and you shall be clean.”1

When Naaman heard this, he was furious. How, he wondered, could the murky waters of the Jordan cure leprosy? If simple water would do the job there were far cleaner rivers in Syria. So Naaman was filled with rage. But his advisers were wiser than the general. They counseled him and said, “If the prophet had told you to do some great thing, would you not have done it? How much more, then, when he tells you, ‘Wash and be cleansed?’”2 Naaman heeded the advice, washed himself seven times in the Jordan, and, behold, he was cleansed.

For Naaman, the waters of the Jordan could have been both a water of life and a water of death. How so? He looked at the filthy Jordan and reasoned that it had no cleansing properties. And he was right, except for one thing. The water was not simple river water at all. You see, God had attached a promise to it. God’s promise was simply this: If you wash seven times in it you will be healed. Because of God’s promise connected with the water, the ordinary Jordan conveyed extraordinary, yes, miraculous blessings to Naaman. It was a water of life.

But if Naaman had despised and rejected the promise, he would have died an awful death. Without faith in the promise, the cleansing water of life might just as well be on the moon. Unbelief sees the cure as utter foolishness. So it trips and falls all over what God has promised and turns away from it. For those who do not believe the promise and spurn the river water, it becomes a water of death.

But let us now look at our text. John the Baptist had been preaching a “baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins.”3 That is, he baptized penitent sinners and the result was that God forgave their sins. Yes, this baptismal water was a water of life for sinners.

And then, suddenly, Jesus stands before John. He wants John to baptize him. John hesitates. He hesitates because he has been baptizing to cleanse sinners of their sin. But Jesus needs no such baptism, for he is without sin and, thus, without need of forgiveness. If anything, simple logic would dictate that Jesus should baptize John. Yes, the greater should baptize the lesser. Right? Of course. This is what John thinks too, for he says to Jesus, “I have need to be baptized by you, and do you come to me?”4 Our Lord replied, “Permit it to be so now, for thus it is fitting for us to fulfill all righteousness.”5

Let me repeat the last four words: “To fulfill all righteousness.” Now think, Jesus doesn’t need to fulfill any righteousness so far as he himself is concerned, because he is without sin and perfectly righteous.

There is only one other possibility: He has come to fulfill all righteousness for you and me, for all sinners, because we are, by birth and nature, sinful and unclean. So now we understand. Jesus has come to trade places with us, to take our place, to be our substitute. He has come to do for us what we can’t do for ourselves, namely, to satisfy the whole Law of God by living a sinless life in our places.

Jesus wants to trade places with us because he can’t bear the thought of us suffering and dying a sinners’ death. He can’t bear the thought of seeing us weeping and gnashing our teeth forever in the outer darkness. Because of his great love for us, he wants to take our sins upon himself and suffer death and hell for us.

Would I be willing to do that for you? Or you for me? Not a chance! We don’t want to be fried in somebody else’s oil!

But Jesus does! So John stands ready to baptize him, and to baptize him in the same filthy water in which sinners were baptized. Jesus, therefore, stood in the same water as the harlot and the tax collector ... in the same water as the adulterer, the hedonist, and the moneygrubber. Yes, at his baptism he trades places with sinners and becomes one with them. He takes upon himself the sins of us drunkards, us liars, and us non–tithers. Yes, here, at the Jordan he begins to bear our sins in earnest and to take his first public step to the cross.

And so we see that, for Jesus, this baptismal water was not a water of life, but a water of death. For the cross he was born and on the cross he must die.

But let’s look a little closer at our text. When Jesus was baptized by John, the heavens were torn asunder. And if the heavens could speak, perhaps they would say, “O world, do you want to know where to look for your Savior and Lord? Then observe what God, the Holy Spirit is about to do. And listen to what God, the Father is about to say.”

The Spirit descended out of the opened heavens, appearing visibly like a dove. When he alighted on Jesus, God anointed him “with the Holy Spirit and with power.”6 Our Lord, then, according to his human nature, received the fullness of knowledge, the boundless treasure of wisdom, and the plenitude of power from on high. In short, he received every gift necessary that he might successfully carry out his Messianic work of seeking and saving lost sinners. And then, the Father revealed the true identity of Jesus, for he says, “This is my beloved Son in whom I am well–pleased.” And, if God is well–pleased with his Son, he is also well–pleased with us who trust in the righteousness of God’s only–begotten Son.

After Jesus had completed the work of our salvation and rose from the dead, he instituted Christian baptism. Jesus said, “Go, therefore, and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit . . .”7 And so, we ask, “What is baptism?” It is not an empty ritual whereby the parents dedicate their children to God. It is a powerful sacrament in which the Holy Spirit not only offers the sinner the benefits of Christ’s saving work, viz., forgiveness and salvation, but also works the faith that trusts in Christ for that very salvation.

There are those who say that ordinary water cannot produce saving faith. Quite true! But baptism is not simple water only, but God’s means through which he himself has promised to work saving faith.8 It is all based on the word and promise of God connected to the water. Think of Naaman. Without the promise, water would, indeed, be simple water only. But with the promise it is a water of life.

Some people believe that little children cannot possess saving faith in Christ because they are too young to understand the Gospel. But Jesus himself taught the opposite. He taught that little children can and do believe. With reference to small children and infants (Greek: paidion)9, Jesus said, “But if anyone causes one of these little ones who believe in me to sin, it would be better for him to have a heavy millstone hung around his neck and to be drowned in the depths of the sea.”10 Jesus, here, clearly says that little children do believe in him. In baptism, it is God who works the miracle of faith. Hence, the apostle Paul calls baptism “the washing of rebirth and renewal by the Holy Spirit.”11 Likewise, Peter declares, “Baptism now saves you.”12 Thus, in baptism, God applies and imputes the entire righteousness of Christ to the sinner. Baptism is pure Gospel. It is the water of life, the water that bestows spiritual and eternal life.

So the Gospel says be baptized and you shall live!

But about two–thirds of all Protestant church bodies keep the water of life away from their children. They teach that children are not accountable for their sins until they reach the so–called “age of accountability” (usually about 11 ± 2–3 years). But the Bible knows of no such doctrine.13 It teaches that little children are sinners from birth such that they need the saving water of baptism just as we do.14 See, then, what great danger awaits their children: If a child should die without baptism, he is without forgiveness and would perish everlastingly. But so strongly do they despise infant baptism, just as Naaman once despised the waters of the Jordan, that they trip, stumble, and deny what great blessings God has provided. They have turned the water of life into a doctrine of death.

The same thing can happen if parents baptize their children but fail to use Luther’s Small Catechism in the home, fail to teach them the Gospel, fail to go to Sunday school and Church, and fail to read the Bible to their children. In such cases, their baptismal faith can, and often does, die of spiritual malnutrition.

We, on the other hand, must regard baptism as God’s great gift to us. Though we may be baptized but once, its benefits last a lifetime. St. Paul writes, “All of you who were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ.”15 That is, Christ’s righteousness is viewed as a garment. Baptism puts that garment on you such that, when God looks at you now, he does not see your sins. He sees Christ’s perfect righteousness. Moreover he declares you “not guilty” in his sight. Christ’s baptism was a water of death for him in that he began to assume our sins in earnest and to take his first public step toward the cross.

Our baptism, however, is a water of life that will take us all the way to the kingdom of glory. This is God’s good news of life in the midst of a culture of sin and death. There is no higher theme in heaven or on earth. Amen.

 

 

 

Soli Deo Gloria!

 

 

Endnotes

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