20  The Messiah’s  Divine Confirmation  (Luke 3:21–22)

Now when all the people were baptized, Jesus was also baptized, and while He was praying, heaven was opened, and the Holy Spirit descended upon Him in bodily form like a dove, and a voice came out of heaven, “You are My beloved Son, in You I am well-pleased.” (3:21–22)

The central theme of both Old Testament prophecy and New Testament preaching is the Lord Jesus Christ. The Bible, particularly the Gospels, is filled with testimony to Him (Luke 24:44; John 5:39; Rev. 19:10). After her conversation with Jesus in which He revealed Himself to be the Messiah (John 4:26), the Samaritan woman went back to her village “and said to the men, ‘Come, see a man who told me all the things that I have done; this is not the Christ, is it?’” (v. 29). As a result, “From that city many of the Samaritans believed in Him because of the word of the woman who testified, ‘He told me all the things that I have done’” (v. 39). Jesus’ supernatural knowledge of him moved Nathanael to testify, “Rabbi, You are the Son of God; You are the King of Israel” (John 1:49).

Not only His omniscient knowledge, but also His miraculous works testified to Jesus. In John 5:36 Jesus said to His opponents, “The works which the Father has given Me to accomplish—the very works that I do—testify about Me, that the Father has sent Me” (cf. 10:25).

As befitting those chosen to be His witnesses (Acts 1:8), the apostles continually testified about Jesus Christ. In response to the Lord’s query, “Who do you say that I am?” (Matt. 16:15) Peter replied, “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God” (v. 16). The apostle John twice recorded his testimony to Jesus: “And he who has seen has testified, and his testimony is true; and he knows that he is telling the truth, so that you also may believe” (John 19:35); “This is the disciple who is testifying to these things and wrote these things, and we know that his testimony is true” (John 21:24; cf. 1 John 1:2; 4:14; Rev. 1:1–2, 9). Jesus told the apostles, “You will testify … because you have been with Me from the beginning” (John 15:27), and the book of Acts records that they did just that (Acts 4:33; 10:42; 18:5; 20:21).

As has been noted in previous chapters of this volume, it was the mission of John the Baptist, the forerunner of the Messiah, to bear witness to Jesus. John “came as a witness, to testify about the Light” (John 1:7; cf. v. 8); he “testified about Him and cried out, saying, ‘This was He of whom I said, “He who comes after me has a higher rank than I, for He existed before me”’” (v. 15); “Behold, the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world!” … I myself have seen, and have testified that this is the Son of God” (vv. 29, 34). Both John’s disciples (John 3:26) and Jesus (John 5:33) referred to John’s testimony to Jesus.

Holy angels gave testimony to the deity of our Lord (1:35; cf. Matt. 1:23). Even demons gave testimony to the Lord Jesus as God: “I know who You are—the Holy One of God!” said the demon in the synagogue in Capernaum (Mark 1:24; cf. v. 34).

Moving to the Trinity, the Holy Spirit has testified to Jesus. “When the Helper comes, whom I will send to you from the Father,” Jesus told His disciples, “that is the Spirit of truth who proceeds from the Father, He will testify about Me” (John 15:26). In John 16:13–14, He added,

Peter and the apostles declared to the Sanhedrin, “He [Christ] is the one whom God exalted to His right hand as a Prince and a Savior, to grant repentance to Israel, and forgiveness of sins. And we are witnesses of these things; and so is the Holy Spirit, whom God has given to those who obey Him” (Act 5:31–32). Speaking of the Spirit’s testimony to Jesus the apostle John wrote,

But of all the historic New Testament witnesses to Jesus Christ the most significant was God the Father. In John 5:37, Jesus said to the Jewish leaders, “The Father who sent Me, He has testified of Me,” and in 8:18, He added, “the Father who sent Me testifies about Me.” Concerning the Father’s testimony to the Son, the apostle John wrote,

At the transfiguration the terrified disciples heard the Father’s “voice out of the cloud [saying], ‘This is My beloved Son, with whom I am well-pleased; listen to Him!’” (Matt. 17:5).

The Father also testified audibly concerning Jesus at His baptism. That testimony, recorded in verse 22, is the main point of this powerful, majestic passage. Though brief, it opens up a wide panorama of truth, as it reveals the Spirit’s and the Father’s confirmation of Jesus as Messiah and Savior.

These verses also mark the final transition from the story of John the Baptist to Jesus. Everything up to this point has set the stage for the ministry of Jesus Christ. That ministry, launched here at His baptism, will be the theme and focus of the remainder of Luke’s gospel.

This passage is also one of the most significant Trinitarian texts in the New Testament, as the Father speaks, the Holy Spirit descends, and Jesus is baptized. That all appear simultaneously refutes the heresy known as modalism (or modalistic monarchianism. Modalism is also known as Sabellianism after Sabellius, its most prominent advocate in the early church). In modern times, it is the teaching of the so-called “oneness” groups, the largest of which is the United Pentecostal Church. Modalism denies the biblical teaching that God exists eternally in three persons. It views Him as one person, the Father, who also manifests Himself at various times as the Holy Spirit, and on other occasions as the Son. That view is untenable in light of this and other passages where the members of the Trinity are clearly distinguished from each other (e.g., Matt. 10:32–33; 11:25–27; 17:1–5; 26:39, 42; 28:19; Luke 23:46; John 5:17–26; 11:41; 12:28; 16:28; 17:1–26; 20:17; Acts 7:55–56; Col. 3:1; Heb. 1:3; 8:1; 10:12; 12:2; 1 Peter 3:22; 2 Peter 1:17; 1 John 2:1).

This text may be approached by looking at it in relation to each of the persons of the Godhead: the Son’s baptism, the Spirit’s anointing, and the Father’s testimony.

THE SON’S BAPTISM

Now when all the people were baptized, Jesus was also baptized, and while He was praying, heaven was opened, (3:21)

Jesus’ baptism was not, as some imagine, a private affair; when all the people were baptized, Jesus was also baptized. His thirty years in obscurity were over, and the time had come for Him to publicly launch His ministry. All does not refer to the entire nation of Israel, or even to all who came out to hear John. Not everyone who heard John’s message repented; in 7:30, Luke notes that “the Pharisees and the lawyers rejected God’s purpose for themselves, not having been baptized by John.” But all those who responded to John’s preaching were baptized.

At the height of John’s ministry Jesus came along with the crowds to be baptized. There was nothing to distinguish Him; He had done no miracles, there was no halo around His head, His divine glory was veiled, and He wore no special messianic vestments. Even John did not recognize Him at first (John 1:31); although they were cousins, they had lived in different regions: John in the Judean wilderness (Luke 1:80) and Jesus in Galilee. There is no indication in Scripture that they had ever met before this incident, which would in fact be their only meeting. John’s ministry would continue only for about another six months before his imprisonment and execution (see the discussion in chapter 19 of this volume).

Matthew’s account relates that John was extremely reluctant to baptize Jesus (the verb translated “to prevent” in Matt. 3:14 is an intense, compound verb, and the imperfect tense suggests a dialogue between John and Jesus), and exclaimed, “I have need to be baptized by You, and do You come to me?” (Matt. 3:14). John’s baptism involved a public confession of sin and repentance (see the exposition of 3:3 in chapter 17 of this volume). John was unwilling to baptize Jesus because he knew that He was the holy Son of God, and thus did not need to undergo John’s baptism of repentance. John may have been concerned that people not draw the wrong conclusion about Jesus and assume He was acknowledging Himself to be a sinner. John’s defensiveness was groundless, as would shortly become evident.

Jesus had a specific purpose for being baptized. It was not, as the apocryphal Gospel According to the Hebrews claimed, to please His mother and brothers. Still less was it so that the “Christ spirit” could indwell the purely human Jesus, as the Gnostics falsely taught. Nor was it to affirm John’s ministry, or to act as though He was a sinner to preview His work of sin-bearing on the cross. Jesus plainly stated His purpose in being baptized when He said to John, “Permit it at this time; for in this way it is fitting for us to fulfill all righteousness” (Matt. 3:15).

According to John 1:33, God commanded John the Baptist to baptize. Therefore, He wanted people to be baptized, and it was incumbent on the righteous to do so. And whatever God required the righteous to do, Jesus did—even things He personally did not need to do. For example, Jesus faithfully participated in the Passover celebration, which pictured God’s deliverance of His people from sin. Yet He had no sin to be delivered from. Matthew 17:24–27 provides another illustration:

As the Son of God, Jesus was exempt from paying the temple tax. But to do what righteous people do, He paid it anyway.

Jesus’ living a perfectly righteous life was not only a demonstration of His deity, but also was absolutely essential to our salvation. In 2 Corinthians 5:21, the apostle Paul explains, “He [the Father] made Him [the Son] who knew no sin to be sin on our behalf, so that we might become the righteousness of God in Him.” God imputed the sins of all who would believe in Jesus to Him on the cross, and imputed Jesus’ perfect righteousness to them. In other words, God treated Jesus as if He had lived believers’ sinful lives and treated them as if they had lived His sinlessly perfect life. Obviously, if He had merely come down from heaven, been crucified, and raised three days later, there would have been no righteous life to impute to believers. It was because He did live such a life that Paul could speak of “not having a righteousness of [his] own derived from the Law, but that which is through faith in Christ, the righteousness which comes from God on the basis of faith” (Phil. 3:9).

Although all three of the Synoptic Gospels record Jesus’ baptism and John refers to it, only Luke notes that Jesus was praying. During His baptism, as was the case throughout His life, Jesus was in unbroken communion with the Father—except for that moment on the cross when He cried out, “My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?” (Matt. 27:46). From beginning to end Jesus’ earthly ministry was marked by frequent times of prayer. He prayed at His baptism (Luke 3:21), during His first preaching tour (Mark 1:35; Luke 5:16), before choosing the twelve apostles (Luke 6:12–13), before feeding the 5,000 (Matt. 14:19), after feeding the 5,000 (Matt. 14:23), before feeding the 4,000 (Matt. 15:36), before Peter’s confession of Him as the Christ (Luke 9:18), at the transfiguration (Luke 9:28–29), for some children brought to Him (Matt. 19:13), after the return of the seventy (Luke 10:21), before giving the Lord’s Prayer (Luke 11:1), before raising Lazarus from the dead (John 11:41–42), as He faced the reality of the cross (John 12:28), at the Last Supper (Matt. 26:26–27), for Peter (Luke 22:31–32), in Gethsemane (Matt. 26:36–44), from the cross (Matt. 27:46; Luke 23:34, 46), with the disciples He encountered on the road to Emmaus (Luke 24:30), at the ascension (Luke 24:50–51) and, supremely, in His high priestly prayer in John 17.

Until this point Jesus’ baptism had been done the same as everyone else’s. But what happened next was utterly transcendent and unlike anything anyone there that day had ever seen. While Jesus was coming up out of the water, still praying, heaven was opened. Whenever that happened in Scripture, either God manifested Himself in some way, spoke, or both. In Ezekiel 1:1, “the heavens were opened and [Ezekiel] saw visions of God.” Stephen “gazed intently into heaven and saw the glory of God, and Jesus standing at the right hand of God” (Acts 7:55), and cried out, “Behold, I see the heavens opened up and the Son of Man standing at the right hand of God” (v. 56). In Revelation 19:11, the apostle John “saw heaven opened, and behold, a white horse, and He who sat on it is called Faithful and True, and in righteousness He judges and wages war.” At Christ’s baptism, as at the transfiguration and in John 12:28, God spoke from heaven. But before He did, another dramatic event occurred.

THE SPIRIT’S ANOINTING

and the Holy Spirit descended upon Him in bodily form like a dove, (3:22a)

That the Holy Spirit descended and remained (John 1:32–33) upon Jesus does not imply that up to this point He did not have the Holy Spirit. The members of the Trinity have been eternally in communion with each other with no breach in their essential unity. Jesus and the Holy Spirit have always been in perfect communion, so much so that Romans 8:9 calls the Holy Spirit the Spirit of Christ (cf. Acts 16:7; Gal. 4:6; Phil. 1:19; 1 Peter 1:11). The Spirit’s descent here was merely a symbolic act, indicating publicly His empowerment for Jesus’ life and ministry.

A way to understand this empowerment is to consider that the Son “emptied Himself” (Phil. 2:7) of the personal prerogative in the use of His divine attributes and allowed Himself to submit to the will of the Father and the power of the Spirit. In effect, the Spirit mediated between our Lord’s divine and human natures.

Beginning with His miraculous conception (Luke 1:35; cf. Matt. 1:18, 20), the Spirit was involved in every aspect of Christ’s life (cf. 4:1, 14; 10:21; Matt. 4:1; 12:28; Acts 10:38; Heb. 9:14). The Old Testament records many instances of the Spirit coming upon individuals to anoint them for special service, including Moses (Num. 11:17), Joshua (Num. 27:18), the seventy elders of Israel (Num. 11:25), Gideon (Judg. 6:34), Jephthah (Judg. 11:29), Samson (Judg. 13:25), Saul (1 Sam. 10:1, 6), David (1 Sam. 16:13), Elijah (1 Kings 18:12; 2 Kings 2:16), Azariah (2 Chron. 15:1), Zechariah (2 Chron. 24:20), Ezekiel (Ezek. 2:1–2), and Micah (Mic. 3:8). All those men, however, were limited in their ability to be empowered by the Spirit by their sinful, fallen human natures. But since Jesus was God in human flesh, God gave Him the Spirit without measure (John 3:34).

The Old Testament also taught that God would give the Spirit to the Messiah. Isaiah 11:1–2 predicted that “the Spirit of the Lord will rest on Him.” In Isaiah 42:1, God said of the Messiah, “Behold, My Servant, whom I uphold; My chosen one in whom My soul delights. I have put My Spirit upon Him,” while in Isaiah 61:1–2 the Messiah says,

Throughout Christ’s entire life, including His development (Luke 2:52), sinless obedience, triumph over temptation, preaching, healing, casting out demons, death (cf. Heb. 9:14), and resurrection (cf. Rom. 1:4), His deity was mediated to His humanity by the Holy Spirit. The Spirit’s power was essential, since in His deity Christ would not have done the miraculous deeds He did, or say the divine words He spoke. The reason for that is found in Philippians 2:6–7, which says that “although [Christ] existed in the form of God, [He] did not regard equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied Himself, taking the form of a bond-servant, and being made in the likeness of men.” Jesus voluntarily surrendered the independent use of His divine power, and submitted Himself completely to the will of the Father. And though His human nature was sinlessly perfect, it nevertheless did not have supernatural power. Thus Christ performed His miraculous deeds through the Spirit’s power, so much so that to attribute His works to Satan is to blaspheme the Holy Spirit (Matt. 12:31–32). It must be stressed that that in no way limits Christ’s full deity and equality with the Father (cf. Col. 2:9). But in the wonder and mystery of the incarnation, He set aside the independent use of His divine attributes.

That the Spirit descended upon Jesus in bodily form like a dove does not, as is commonly assumed, mean that the Spirit appeared in the physical form of a dove. The phrase does not describe a birdlike visible manifestation of the Spirit’s presence, but rather that visible manifestation’s manner of movement as it descended upon Jesus. “What was visible was not a dove, but rather what was seen is compared to a dove, … The manner of the Spirit’s descent was like the way a dove floats gracefully through the air” (Darrell L. Bock, Luke 1:1–9:50, Baker Exegetical Commentary on the New Testament [Grand Rapids: Baker, 1994], 338). The visible reality of the Spirit’s presence indicates His approval of and involvement in the Son’s ministry.

THE FATHER’S TESTIMONY

and a voice came out of heaven, “You are My beloved Son, in You I am well-pleased.” (3:22b)

Grammatically, this is the main clause of the passage, and the ones that have preceded it are subordinate to it. The Father’s testimony to the Son is the primary point of the passage. The Father’s audible voice from heaven expressed His approval of His beloved Son, in whom He is continually well-pleased. The Father’s expression of approval protects Jesus from any misunderstanding as to why He was baptized (see the discussion earlier in this chapter). If Jesus were not sinless, He would not have had God’s approval, since His “eyes are too pure to approve evil, and [He] can not look on wickedness with favor” (Hab. 1:13).

As He did here, the Father would once again audibly state His approval of the holy perfection of Jesus at the transfiguration (Matt. 17:1–5). His reference to Jesus as His Son affirms that Jesus is of the same essence as Himself, and thus fully God (see the discussion of 2:49 in chapter 16 of this volume). It is also the fulfillment of Psalm 2:7, where God says to the Messiah, “You are My Son, today I have begotten You.”

To have the Spirit descend on Him and the Father express love and approval for Him was the most auspicious way for Jesus to launch His public ministry. Their public confirmation should have been more than enough to compel belief in Jesus as the Messiah. Sadly, however, such was not to be the case. In spite of such manifest testimony and all the mighty words and works that followed, most of those there that day, along with the majority of the Jewish people, would ultimately reject Jesus and demand that He be crucified. But His sinless life and sacrificial death brings salvation to “as many as received Him, to [whom] He gave the right to become children of God, even to those who believe in His name” (John 1:12).