The Faith Explained with Cale Clarke

On this Feast of the Baptism of the Lord, which marks the official end of the Christmas season, many ask, “Why was Jesus baptized?” After all, he is the sinless, divine Son of God. And the baptism that John the Baptist was administering, which Jesus submitted to, was a “baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins” (Mark 1:4).

Christian baptism is greater than John’s baptism, even as Jesus himself is far greater than John (Matthew 3:14, John 3:30). Christian baptism not only forgives sins, but infuses the life of God into the soul, making us God’s children. And the origin of this sacrament is Jesus’ own baptism. Jesus had no need of being cleansed by the waters of baptism, for he had no sins to be washed away. Rather, he sanctified the waters by his descent into them. Pope Benedict XVI, in his book Jesus of Nazareth, offers some illuminating insights on all this. There’s a whole chapter in the book on Jesus’ baptism, but here are a few key thoughts:

First, water really conjured up two distinct images in the ancient mind: death and life. As the Pope says,

On the one hand, immersion into the waters is a symbol of death, which recalls the death symbolism of the annihilating, destructive power of the ocean flood. The ancient mind perceived the ocean as a permanent threat to the cosmos, to the earth; it was the primeval flood that might submerge all life…But the flowing waters of the river are above all a symbol of life (pp. 15-16).

Even the physical act of baptism represents death and new life, especially baptism by immersion: the descent into the waters is a form of death and burial; the rising to a new life is an icon of resurrection. The Pope also writes that,

Looking at the events (of Christ’s baptism) in light of the Cross and Resurrection, the Christian people realized what happened: Jesus loaded the burden of all mankind’s guilt upon his shoulders; he bore it down into the depths of the Jordan. He inaugurated his public activity by stepping into the place of sinners. His inaugural gesture is an anticipation of the Cross. He is, as it were, the true Jonah who said to the crew of the ship, ‘Take me and throw me into the sea’ (Jon 1:12)…The baptism is an acceptance of death for the sins of humanity, and the voice that calls out “This is my beloved Son” over the baptismal waters is an anticipatory reference to the Resurrection. This also explains why, in his own discourses, Jesus uses the word ‘baptism’ to refer to his death (p. 18).

The Eastern traditions of icons pick up on many of these themes, as the Pontiff notes:

The icon of Jesus’ baptism depicts the water as a liquid tomb having the form of a dark cavern, which is in turn the iconographic sign of Hades, the underworld, or hell. Jesus’ descent into this watery tomb, into this inferno that envelops him from every side, is thus an anticipation of his act of descending into the underworld…John Chrysostom writes: ‘Going down into the water and emerging again are the image of the descent into hell and the Resurrection.’ (p. 19)

The baptism of Jesus also reveals him to be a new and greater Moses. In the Easter Vigil liturgy of the Roman rite, the paschal candle is plunged into the waters of the baptismal font, much as Moses stretched his staff over the waters of the Red Sea, and God parted them (Exodus 14:21-31). This created a means of escape for God’s people from the stampeding armies of Egypt and its Pharaoh, which are types of sin and Satan. Saint Paul, looking back at this event, refers to it as a prefigurement of Christian baptism (1 Corinthians 10:2), which frees us from the rule of sin and death.