John Baptizes Jesus

Today I read Matthew 3, most well know for being the chapter where Jesus gets baptized by John the Baptist. John had lived his entire life in the wilderness because he too was caught under the edict to kill all children under the age of 2 years old because as we will learn in Luke, John is only about 6 months older than Jesus.

John had the Aaronic Priesthood and thus had the authority to baptize with water. He had received it from his father, Zacharias who was a priest and was offering sacrifices in the temple when an angel appeared to him to let him know he would have a son. No one was allowed to perform sacrifices unless they had the Priesthood. So it makes perfect sense why Jesus would come to John to be baptized.

We have already talked about why Jesus needed to be baptized when we discussed 2 Nephi 31 but it is good to review. First, it is written in the scriptures that all mankind needs to be baptized before they can enter into the Kingdom of God. Therefore, to not make God a liar, Jesus needed to be baptized. Second, it is a commandment of God that we all be baptized. So even though Jesus did not need a remission of sins because He had none, He needed to fulfill the commandments of God. The final reason was to give us an example to follow. As Nephi puts it, if He being holy had need to be baptized, how much more do we, being unholy, need to be baptized?

Now, John had the Holy Ghost about him and was full of the Spirit. He knew exactly who Jesus was. It is entirely probably that he had met Jesus at some point since they were cousins, but it is also possible that this was their first meeting in the flesh. We just don't know. But it is a fact that the Spirit in him recognized the Savior immediately and he knew Jesus for what he was, whether he also knew Him as his cousin or not.

This chapter is a favorite among missionaries to disprove the idea of the trinity. The trinity is the idea or belief that God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Ghost are the same person, just different forms He can take, similar to water can be a solid, a liquid and a gas. The reason this chapter is such a good one for showing this cannot be is because all 3 of members of the Godhead are present at Jesus' baptism. God the Father speaks and asserts that this is His beloved Son and that we should listen to what He has to say. Jesus is of course present in the flesh. And finally the Holy Ghost descends in the sign of the dove. Now, I personally have never seen water be in all 3 states at the same time. I suppose you could argue that when ice is melting it is in 2 states at once, but really it's not, it's just in the process of changing which state it is in.

One final note about this chapter before we end for the day. The JST adds more to this chapter in several places. In other parts of the New Testament, we find that John had several disciples that followed John, that at one point just up and leave him to follow Jesus only because he tells them to. The JST in this chapter explains why they would do that. In this chapter when Joseph re-translated the Bible he added back several verses that had been removed through some fashion or another and among those was a verse detailing that John explained to his disciples that his baptism was of water and the remission of sins. But Jesus would baptize with fire and the Holy Ghost. John was preparing his congregation to follow Jesus right from the beginning, letting them know that he could only take them so far, but Christ would be able to complete their conversion and give them all they would need to return to live with God some day. Also in this chapter John tried to help the Pharisees understand that their hang up on being the sons of Abraham was unfounded and had become a stumbling block to them. He let them know that if it suited His purposes, God could take stones and raise up children of Abraham. Now, of course the Pharisees did not understand that John was trying to open their minds to the complete Gospel of Christ and that he was truly concerned for their eternal welfare.

John probably had a very hard life, by our standards and what we all think of as comfort. But I'll bet when we have a chance to meet him, if we have a chance, and ask him he would tell us that he would not have changed it for any reason at all. The chance to baptize the Lord Himself and to be the forerunner for the Savior's earthly ministry is a wonderful privilege and one I'll bet many were envious of him for. I'm glad we have a record of Jesus' baptism and starting tomorrow we will be getting into His earthly ministry. Until tomorrow.