Jesus' Baptism: Anointing with the Holy Spirit

When you put your faith in the Lord Jesus you receive His baptism: You are also anointed with the Holy Spirit.

The Holy Spirit, the Spirit of Christ, is God’s breath of life, giving you life forever. He is God’s vast power, the kind that raises the dead to life. You receive that same resurrection power, all the power you need to live a holy life.

As the Holy Spirit floods your life with His power, and you cooperate with what God is doing in your life, you begin to see changes in your thinking, your emotions and the way you live. You find that you grow in wisdom and character. You are able to handle whatever comes your way, because you have Jesus.

* The Spirit is connected with God’s work of creation, changing chaos into an ordered and beautiful world, just as you are recreated into the beautiful likeness of Christ.

* The Holy Spirit brings God’s truth, and He gives you the ability to speak God’s truth and to recognize and understand God’s truth. That’s why the apostle John said

Christ has blessed you with the Holy Spirit. Now the Spirit stays in you, and you don't need any teachers. The Spirit is truthful and teaches you everything. So stay one in your heart with Christ, just as the Spirit has taught you to do. [1 John 2:27]

As you study God’s word, begin with just the Bible and the Holy Spirit, asking Him to reveal to you what God is saying. This is how God’s word becomes intensely alive and interesting and effective in your life.

Then gather with other believers and discuss the passage you are studying, to test your insights with what they have learned.

Every word we speak was taught to us by God's Spirit, not by human wisdom. And this same Spirit helps us teach spiritual things to spiritual people. [1 Corinthians 2:13]

Finally, listen to the teaching of one who is a proven teacher, one who has been given the gift of teaching by the Spirit (such as those listed as references in this blog).

Christ chose some of us to be ... teachers [Ephesians 4:11]

Power comes only by The Holy Spirit

The Bible shows the parallel of being under the influence of alcohol, with being under the influence of God’s Holy Spirit. Alcohol is a strong influence, it alters the way you think, the way you feel and the way you act. Everybody else knows when you’re under the influence of alcohol! The apostle Paul said “Don't get drunk on wine, be filled with the Spirit”.

When you are born again then you have the Holy Spirit. Is He flooding your life with His power? If He isn’t, then you need to face the possibility that you have been quenching His work in your life in some way.

It was easy to recognize that John the Baptist was a genuine prophet: he looked like one, he sounded like one, he was powerful like one. But Jesus seemed ordinary, not like what the people thought a Messiah should be like. Jesus had grown up like any other boy, praying, learning and growing on God’s word as every other boy did in school. He became a man, took care of His family, worked as a carpenter, experienced all of life’s ups and downs, learned through suffering.

Yet everything about Jesus was pleasing to God. God approved all that Jesus had done up to that point, the quiet years of living life as an ordinary person in Nazareth. He had grown in God’s wisdom and God’s grace which had kept Him free from sin.

“This is My Son,” God said, a phrase that comes from Psalm 2, which every Jew understood to be a description of Messiah.

“With Whom I AM well-pleased” a phrase that comes from a passage in Isaiah describing the Messiah as the suffering servant.

The gospels give three more credentials to Jesus as the Christ Through John the Baptist:
1) John the Baptist announced Jesus as the Messiah
2) The Holy Spirit visibly anointed Jesus as Messiah
3) God the Father confirmed that Jesus was indeed His Chosen One, and that what lay in front of Him was the way of the cross.

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John the Baptist’s Witness: “Jesus is Christ”

John was by no means a timid man. He was confident in his calling, confident in his message, confident in his methods. But when Jesus came up to be baptized, John suddenly got weak knees:

John kept objecting and said, "I ought to be baptized by you. Why have you come to me?"

Jesus replied

"For now this is how it should be, because we must do all that God wants us to do."

There are several reasons why Jesus humbled Himself in the Jordan. By having John baptize Him, Jesus:

1) Gave approval to John’s preaching and work.

2) Fulfilled all righteousness.

"...we must do all that God wants us to do."

If Jesus was going to bring righteousness to sinners, then He needed to be identified with sinners. Isaiah had prophesied that Messiah would be numbered among the transgressors. Sin was going to be on Jesus. In baptism Jesus identified Himself completely with sinful humankind, even though He Himself had no sin to repent of.

3) Prophesied the cross and His resurrection. Baptism symbolizes death. Whereas in one sense, as John baptized people, he was symbolically cleaning them from all their sin, he was also in a sense symbolically lowering them down into their grave, showing them how they were dying to their old life of sin; and he was raising them up again to a brand new life as a cleansed person, reborn to an eternal life of purity with God. Jesus added reality to this symbolism since He would literally die and literally rise up from the dead, leading the way for everyone else who believes in Him to also literally rise up from the dead on the last day.

4) Was set apart as the ultimate high priest; this was His anointing.

...as soon as he came out of the water, the sky opened, and he saw the Spirit of God coming down on him like a dove.

Every time before, priests, kings and prophets had been anointed with oil, to represent the Holy Spirit. But Jesus was anointed with the Spirit Himself.

5) Jesus’ life paralleled the history of God’s people. Just as the Hebrews had passed first through the waters of the Red Sea, and into the desert for forty years’ of testing, so now Jesus would pass through the Jordan’s waters and into the desert for forty days’ of testing

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Blended Gospels, Jesus' Baptism

In those days, then, Jesus came from Nazareth of 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 came up out of the water, and behold, immediately he saw the heavens being torn open.

Now when all the people were baptized, and when Jesus also had been baptized and was praying, the heavens were opened to him, and he saw the Spirit of God descending on him in bodily form, like a dove, coming to rest on him; and behold, a voice came from heaven and said, "You are my beloved Son; with you I am well pleased. This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased."

Jesus, when he began his ministry, was about thirty years of age

[ESV translation, Matthew 3:13-17, Mark 1:9-11, Luke 3:21-23a]

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