And when Jesus came to the Jordan … then the Holy Spirit descended to him for the sake of humanity, as I already said, in the appearance of a dove. And at the same time a voice came from the heavens which also had been spoken through David, as he spoke in his own persona that which would later be said to Christ by the Father, “You are my son, today I have begotten you.” Thus, we might say that his birth occurred when knowledge of him would be born in people.
—Justin Martyr, Dialogue with Trypho, 88.8 (author’s translation)
In modern, Western celebrations of the Epiphany of our Lord Jesus Christ, our focus remains on the manger. Three wise men from the East join Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, the shepherds, and a few barn animals in the nativity scene. This pause on the nativity at Epiphany emphasizes how Jesus reveals his identity to the nations of the world, represented in these three foreign visitors.
In the Christian East, however, the Epiphany is celebrated as Jesus’ Theophany, his unveiling as God incarnate. This unveiling happens not at the manger, but at his baptism. The Spirit descends and the Father declares Jesus his beloved Son. In the Revised Common Lectionary and many Western eucharistic lectionaries, we celebrate the Baptism of Jesus on the first Sunday after Epiphany. In so doing, we shift the focus away from the manger and nativity scene, and we return to the banks of the Jordan, where John the Baptist had called to us in Advent. This liturgical return reminds us how the unveiling of Jesus’ divine power in the world addresses the longings of Advent as we continue to await his second coming. The epiphany, in other words, continues.
John is known as the baptizer, the Baptist, but he emphasizes another Baptizer, “the thong of whose sandals I am not worthy to untie; he will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and with fire” (Luke 3:16; cf. Matt 3:11; Mark 1:8; John 1:26–27). If Jesus is the one who is coming, if he is in no need of repentance—why would he insist on being baptized?
In Matthew, John poses this question to Jesus (Matt. 3:14), but Luke leaves the question for us to ask. Luke gives us clues that guide us deeper into the mystery of our Lord, the revelation and epiphany of his Triune divinity, and into the mystery of his baptism.
John called Israel to repent and prepare for the coming messiah. It’s an Advent baptism, a baptism of anticipation. Jesus’ baptism, on the other hand, is a baptism of revelation, invitation, and consummation.
At Jesus’ baptism, the heavens open, God’s voice declares Jesus his beloved son, and the Holy Spirit falls on him like a dove. This discloses who Jesus is: not just a man anointed for a special task, but God the Son, the only begotten of the Father. More than this, though, Jesus isn’t just God’s Son, but his “beloved Son” (Matt. 3:17; Mark 1:11; Luke 3:22). The declaration of Jesus’ divine sonship sets him apart as the beloved son of Abraham, like Isaac (Gen. 22:2), who at last would be offered “on the mountain I will show you” (Gen. 22:2).
This is one side of the revelation—the Father’s affirmation in Jesus’ adulthood of the message given by the angel about the child who shall be called Immanuel, God with us. It is also a clarification: This Immanuel, with us in our humanity, has a mission as God’s beloved Son. Like Isaac, he would ascend the mountain, carrying the wood of his offering, in which God would be “well-pleased” (Matt. 3:17; Mark 1:11; Luke 3:22; perhaps echoing Isa. 42:1).
But another part of the revelation is that Jesus’ baptism is one of invitation. Jesus was baptized, just as the others gathered at the Jordan had been. Matthew gives us the voice from heaven in third-person reportage: “This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased” (Matt. 3:17). Mark and Luke present the voice more directly in the second person: “You are my Son, the beloved” (Mark 1:11; Luke 3:22).
This is part of the secret of Jesus’ baptism: He who needed no cleansing comes with us to the cleansing waters of baptism, standing with those who had no cleanness of their own. The way Luke depicts it, Jesus’ baptism connects him with all others who would be baptized. In his baptism, he brings us with him into the waters, that he might bring us with him into that mystery of his life with the Father and the Spirit. In other words, because Jesus was baptized, we can be united with him through baptism. In his baptism, we are invited into union and participation in his life.
Moreover, in this second-person address, Luke and Mark bring us into Jesus’ experience of the baptism. We hear the voice addressed to him and us: “You are my beloved son.” In Justin Martyr’s recounting of the story, emphasizing the echoes of Psalm 2:7 with the voice from heaven (“You are my Son, this day I have begotten you”) Justin attends to how hearing the divine voice in the gospel accounts of Jesus’ baptism not only speaks of Jesus’ identity, but also of ours: Jesus, eternally begotten of the Father, is begotten in us in our baptism and in the eternal “today” of the Psalm. “We might say that his birth occurred when knowledge of him would be born in people” (Justin, Dial. 88.8).
This is the beauty of this divine epiphany. We exiled children of Adam and Eve, more like our earthly father than our heavenly one, are called beloved. We could not give a pure offering with him in his sacrifice on the cross, but we could become beloved in his baptism.
Jesus’ baptism and our baptism are sacramental and physical links to the same event from two different sides. On one side, in the baptism of our Lord, Jesus looks forward to and sacramentally anticipates the cross. Descending into the waters of the Jordan—the ancient barrier between Israel and the promised land—Jesus anticipates his death on the cross, at which point the curtain—the barrier between the Holy of Holies and the people—would be torn from top to bottom, opening God’s presence to us.
So too, at his baptism, the heavens were opened: Our access to God inaugurated. As the voice of the Father and the descent of the Spirit testified to Jesus’ authenticity as the Son, so too the resurrection of our crucified Lord would testify to the sufficiency of his death and the incorruptibility of his life. This is the consummation of his baptism: His baptism prefigures the cross, the place where Jesus cries out at last, “It is finished.” Our salvation, our forgiveness, the cost of our adoption: paid.
Thus, our baptism looks back to Jesus’ baptism and back to the cross. As St. Paul says, “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” (Rom. 6:3–4). In the waters of baptism we share with our Lord, we identify with Jesus’ baptism, death, and resurrection.
And in it we are called, as the path of Epiphanytide gives way to the pilgrimage of Lent, to take up our crosses with Jesus as God’s beloved children. We offer ourselves, our souls, and bodies to be a living sacrifice with Christ. And in such an offering, Jesus, the beloved Son, reveals himself to us and in us, in the eucharistic sacrifice, and by the power of the Holy Spirit in our daily self-offerings. In this Epiphany season, we ask Christ to be revealed in us and through us.
The Rev. Dr. Paul D. Wheatley is assistant professor of New Testament at Nashotah House Theological Seminary.
