A New Beginning

The Baptism of Our Lord

January 12, 2025

Luke 3:15-22

 “A New Beginning”

The New Year is all about new beginnings and fresh starts. The snow we received this past week, so early on in this New Year, made the world itself look fresh and clean, at least for a little while. On this second Sunday of the New Year, we celebrate the Baptism of Our Lord. Through all that Jesus has done for us, we have a new beginning in him and through him. The message for this day, based on the Gospel lesson, is entitled “A New Beginning.” We will look at this new beginning through three lenses: 1) John the Baptist’s call to live righteously; 2) Jesus’ coming to fulfill all righteousness; and 3) the righteousness we receive through Jesus and our Baptism into his death and resurrection. May the Lord’s rich and abundant blessing rest upon the preaching, the hearing, and the living of his Word for Jesus’ sake.

Once again today, we encounter that fiery figure from the Advent season, John the Baptist. In fact, most of the Gospel lesson for today revolves around John, rather than Jesus. It’s only the last two verses that finally speak of Jesus and his baptism by John. It’s a very brief account of what happened there at the River Jordan as we see all three Persons of the Holy Trinity: the Father’s voice from heaven, “You are my beloved Son; with you I am well pleased” (Luke 3:22); the beloved Son, standing there in the waters of the Jordan; and the Holy Spirit, descending in bodily form like a dove upon Jesus. Our altar plaques and central cross, suspended high above us point us to this same Triune God. John represented the last of the prophets of old. With Jesus’ baptism and the start of his public ministry, John’s ministry of preparation was coming to a close. And with that came a new beginning.

John’s call to the people of his day was for them to live righteous lives, as we hear in the verses that immediately precede today’s Gospel lesson (Luke 3:7-14). John’s call was for people to bear fruit in their lives that was in sync with the repentance they professed with their lips. Rather than rely on their own heritage through Abraham, John told the people to live upright and godly lives, sharing with those in need and not taking advantage of others by threat or false accusation. John called the people to do all of this, but he was powerless to make them upright and godly. He could not make their hearts or ours clean. John’s ministry was one that pointed ahead to the One who could and did make our hearts clean! He pointed them to that One, he said, “who is mightier than I is coming, the strap of whose sandals I am not worthy to untie. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire” (Luke 3:16). And now here He is!

John called the people to live righteously, but it has only come about because of Jesus who came to fulfill all righteousness. Matthew’s account of Jesus’ baptism makes this point (Matthew 3:13-17). John protested when Jesus came to him, and said that it should be the other way around: John needed to be baptized by Jesus! But Jesus responded by saying: “Let it be so now, for thus it is fitting for us to fulfill all righteousness” (Matthew 3:15). That is exactly what Jesus came to do; namely, to do for us what we could not do for ourselves. Despite our best attempts to live upright and godly lives, it all crumbles to dust. We cannot do this because we are not able to do this, as the Word of God tells us: “For whoever keeps the whole law but fails in one point has become guilty of all of it” (James 2:10). And that is our dilemma. We cannot keep the whole law of God because we cannot keep even one point of that law. This is what Jesus came to do for us. This is the new beginning Jesus came to make for us. Beginning with his baptism by John, Jesus came to live that life of full obedience to the whole law of God; not just in part, but in full. This is what theology calls Jesus’ active obedience – living that life we could not and cannot. But that’s not all. Theology also tells us of Jesus’ passive obedience – dying the death we deserved because of our sin and disobedience to God’s law. Through both his active and passive obedience, Jesus has fulfilled all righteousness in our behalf, as the Word of God reveals: “For our sake [God] made him [Jesus] to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God” (2 Corinthians 5:21).

But how do we receive this? How does it come to us? How do we take possession of it? It comes to us through the cleansing waters of holy Baptism. Jesus’ righteousness becomes ours through this washing of regeneration and this renewal of the Holy Spirit (Titus 3:5). This is the righteousness that we receive as we are baptized into Jesus’ own death and resurrection that we heard in the Epistle lesson for today (Romans 6:1-11). Everything that Jesus has done – his life of perfect obedience and fulfilling all righteousness together with his innocent suffering death as the atoning sacrifice for our sin – it all becomes ours through faith. It comes as God’s gift to us as we are incorporated into Christ through holy Baptism. That word “incorporate” comes from the Latin, incorporare, with its root word, corpus, or body, means to unite as one body. And that’s the new beginning that we are blessed to receive in Baptism: we are incorporated into Christ Jesus himself, and He into us. This actually changes the trajectory of life! For the unbeliever, the unbaptized, life means you are born, you live, and you die. For the believer in Christ, for those baptized into his death and resurrection, life is different. We are born, then we die to sin and death through our Baptism into Christ, and then we live eternally through Christ. Even when we die, we still live (John 11:25). That life begins now, this side of the grave, and continues through all eternity. This is why the words from today’s Epistle lesson are part of our funeral liturgy. They remind us in the face of death, that death is not the final word: “Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? We were buried therefore with him by baptism into death, in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life. For if we have been united with him in a death like his, we shall certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his” (Romans 6:3-5).

The righteousness of God that John the Baptist called for, the righteousness that Christ Jesus has fulfilled for us, the righteousness of Christ that is ours through faith – this is a new beginning. May God help us that we may daily die to sin and rise to new life through Baptism, and so walk in newness of life. Amen.