1/13/08 - Baptism of Our Lord - Matthew 3:13-17

HERE THE EXCHANGE IS MADE
- Our sins on Christ at his baptism
- His righteousness on us at our baptism

Jesus lived on this earth as a true human being. He breathed the same air you breathe. He slept like you sleep, he ate like you eat, he walked and talked and laughed and cried just like you. But although Jesus had a real human existence on this earth, the life he lived and the life you live are far from similar. You may both have been born, but you certainly were not conceived through the power of the Holy Spirit with a virgin, nor did a myriad of angels announce your entrance into this world. Both you and Jesus grew older and matured, but you certainly were not expounding on the teachings of Scripture to the biblical scholars of the time at the age of 12. You suffer temptations like Jesus did, but you have never had Satan himself physically appear before you and tempt you face to face. You have never fed 5000 people with only enough food for 15, no one has ever been healed from a life-long sickness just by touching your clothes, and (I’m going to go out on a limb here…) you will probably not end your life on a cross because your enemies hate you for what you preach. The life you live and the life Jesus lived are anything but comparable.
Expect here. Except here in Matthew chapter 3 verses 13-17. Here Jesus experienced something just like you: he was baptized. He was baptized by a sinner, he was baptized with water, and he was baptized with the Word. Just like you. And even the miracles that happened to Jesus at his baptism are similar to the miracles surrounding yours. Now the Holy Spirit didn’t come down on you in the form of a dove at your baptism, but Peter says, “Be baptized, every one of you, in the name of Jesus Christ so that your sins may be forgiven. And you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit” (Acts 2:38). And so the Holy Spirit did come down on you at your baptism: he gave you the gift of faith. The Father may have not spoken from heaven at your baptism and announce that you are his child, but he spoke in his Word at your baptism and claimed you as his own son or daughter. The heavens may have not visibly ripped open the moment water was poured on your head and the appropriate words were said. But heaven was opened to you at your baptism because baptism saves you and offers you eternal life above. Your life was never closer to Jesus’ life than it was at baptism.
And that’s nice to know, it’s an interesting comparison, but why does Jesus’ baptism matter? Why would the Holy Spirit include this event in three gospels and mention it in the fourth? Because here is where the exchange is made. Our sins for his righteousness. At Jesus’ baptism he took our sins. That’s why Jesus was baptized! He didn’t need any of the blessings that baptism gives. He didn’t need adoption into God’s family, he was already his Son. He didn’t need to be saved, he is the Savior. He didn’t need the gift of the Holy Spirit, he sends the Holy Spirit. He didn’t need forgiveness, he earned forgiveness! Jesus was baptized not for his sake, but for ours. This is where he, for the first time, visibly takes our sins upon himself. He acts as if he were a sinner weighed down by the guilt. He stands before John the Baptist as a man covered in the slime of wickedness and the crud of immorality. Not because he was wicked or immoral - because we are. He came to John that afternoon because “the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all” (Isaiah 53:6). And Jesus carried those sins not only on the cross, but throughout his life. He carried those sins of the world to the Jordan River. He had to obey his Father’s command, he had to show us how important this sacrament is, and he had to have those sins washed away by the promise of God. That’s why Jesus’ baptism is important: we see him taking our sins. We see him taking the first step in washing them away, finalized by his death on the cross and his resurrection from the tomb.
That is where he was ultimately headed. And so at his baptism he officially began his public ministry, he began his long road to Calvary. Still carrying our sins to the cross - but carrying them perfectly. He lived perfectly with sin. And that’s where our lives veer off in a completely different direction again from the life of Jesus. For how close we were to Jesus’ life at our baptisms, we immediately broke off in the opposite direction before the water even dried on our heads. Because where Jesus lived perfectly carrying our sins, we live sinfully carrying his righteousness. We gained his righteousness, his perfection, at baptism. The order of service in our hymnals even says, “At our baptism he clothes us with the robe of his righteousness and gives us a new life.” We are covered in Christ. Our sins are on him, his righteousness is on us, and we have been given a free pass into heaven!
Not that we usually act like it. We carry Christ’s righteousness with us - a pure robe, blindingly white. And it’s also invisible right now, which is a good thing because I don’t even want to know how many times I’ve stained mine. I was washed clean at baptism, I was given that robe of Christ’s righteousness, but I have wallowed in the devil’s mud many times since then. I have thought things that have contaminated my mind. I have said things that have polluted my mouth. I have done things that have defiled my robe. I don’t want to know what I have done to this precious piece of clothing and I don’t want to know how many times I’ve done it. And I don’t think you’d want to see what you’ve done to your robe either. But I’m sure you have a pretty good idea about what you’ve done to it. You know what you’ve thought and said and done in your life. Now add to that everything that you didn’t know was a sin, everything you’ve forgotten, and everything you will ever do. That makes for one dirty and disgusting robe. Almost as filthy as mine. We may be wearing the robe of Christ’s righteousness that was given to us at baptism, but we sure don’t act like it most of the time.
But that’s why Jesus was baptized in the first place. That’s why the exchange of our sins for Christ’s righteousness had to be made. Because when Jesus was standing in the River Jordan, he was carrying all of our sins of all time. And when we were baptized with the same water and the same Word, all of our sins of all time were forgiven. We gave him our sins and he gave us his righteousness so that whenever we would sin after that event, we could be assured that they were forgiven. Every time we repented, they were washed away. No matter how many times we stained the robe we wear, it will still be pure white because of the power of Christ and his everlasting forgiveness.
And the only reason baptism has the lasting power throughout our lives is because our baptism not only connects us with Jesus’ baptism at the beginning of his ministry, but also with his death at the end. “Don’t you know that all of us who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? We were therefore buried with him through baptism into death, in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of God the Father, we too may live a new life” (Romans 6:3-4). Through baptism we benefit from what Jesus gained by his death: salvation, victory, forgiveness, and resurrection. Paul says it was as if we were actually buried with Christ at our baptism, so that just as he rose from the dead, we will too. What a miraculous thing baptism is! It connects us with our Savior in a more personal way than anything else in our lives! It gives us the rewards of his death on Calvary and the wonderful exchange of our sins for his righteousness. “Is not this a beautiful, glorious exchange,” Luther once preached, “by which Christ, who is wholly innocent and holy, not only takes upon himself another’s sin, that is, my sin and guilt, but also clothes and adorns me, who am nothing but sin, with his own innocence and purity? And then besides dies the shameful death of the Cross for the sake of my sins, through which I have deserved death and condemnation, and grants to me his righteousness, in order that I may live with him eternally in glorious and unspeakable joy. Through this blessed exchange, in which Christ changes places with us (something the heart can grasp only in faith), and through nothing else, are we freed from sin and death and given his righteousness and life as our own.”
We not only exchange our sins for Jesus’ righteousness at baptism, we exchange our death for his life. Because he took our sins - visible for the 1st time at his baptism - he received the punishment for those sins. And because we received Christ’s righteousness, we will one day be rewarded with what Christ’s righteousness deserves. What an exchange! What a deal! How fortunate we are to have our God take our sins that we have committed against him! And he we see him take those sins up at the Jordan. Sins he would ultimately leave nailed to the cross. So that by the time we were baptized 2000 years later, our sins need not bother us any longer. They do not need to concern us because they have been taken up, forgiven, and wiped away. And in place of those sins is the robe of his righteousness. The piece of clothing we will be wearing when we meet our Savior for the first time. A robe that we are already wearing now.
Amen.

“You were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God.” - 1 Cor. 6:11