To be a disciple of Christ Jesus is to follow after Him in the Way that He has already gone before you, which is to say, in the Way of His Cross, in the hope and promise of His Resurrection and His Ascension to the Right Hand of His God and Father, where He ever lives as your High Priest.
As disciples are made by Holy Baptism in His Name and by the ongoing catechesis of His Word, so was the Lord Jesus Himself baptized for you and all people, for the repentance and forgiveness of the world, and for the fulfilling of all righteousness, so that you and all the sons and daughters of Adam and Eve might be justified and saved from sin, death, and hell.
Just think of what the Baptism of Jesus signified and meant for Him. In submitting to St. John’s “Baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins,” He took upon Himself the sins of the whole world, including all of your sins of thought, word, and deed, every last one of them. His Baptism did not make Him clean — He was already spotless, pure, and holy. It rather saturated Him with all the dirt of fallen man, with all the filth and stench of sinful unbelief and disobedience.
He took upon Himself and bore in His own Body all your lying and cheating, your covetous lust, your cursing and dirty jokes, your laziness and negligence, your adultery and murder, your stealing, and your gossiping. He took all of your sins — and every other sin from Adam to the close of the age — and He took responsibility for all of it, as though He alone were guilty, sinful, and unclean.
And His reward for this great work of divine and holy love was suffering and death. Submitting to His Baptism meant committing Himself to be crucified, put to death, and buried. Stepping into the water was, for Jesus, a return to the dust of the earth from which the first man had been taken.
For Christ Jesus as for you, His Baptism indicated that He should be drowned and die with all your sinful lusts and evil desires — in the place of your old Adam.
But that is not the whole significance of His Baptism. For He also received the blessing of His Father and the anointing of the Holy Spirit there in the waters of the Jordan River, as the Pledge and Promise that His Father would not abandon Him to the grave nor allow His Flesh to suffer decay, but would pour out the Spirit upon His crucified Body and raise Him again from the dust of the earth. And this Word and promise He received in your place, as your Substitute and Savior.
Of course, the Father and the Holy Spirit and immortal Life belong to the Son of God from all eternity, according to His own divine nature. But in the waters of His Baptism — as the true and perfect Man, yet voluntarily bearing the curse and consequence of sin — He received the blessing of the Father and the anointing of the Holy Spirit as a pledge that in Him all the sons and daughters of Adam and Eve would be redeemed and raised up in righteousness and holiness; that mortal flesh, after returning to the dust, would yet receive the Holy Spirit and rise up again to live forever.
Your dear Lord Jesus thus lived as you are called to live, that is, by faith in the Word and promise of His God and Father. He proceeded from the waters of the Jordan in that holy faith, in love for His Father and in love for you and for all His neighbors of all times and places. Against the devil’s temptations, He relied on God the Father’s sure and certain Word: “You are My beloved Son.”
In such faith and confidence He lived faithfully within His own vocation, and He carried out the works of love that belonged to His own office and station in life. He honored His father and mother and submitted to them. He loved His family and friends. He ate and drank with sinners. He healed the sick, and cast out demons, and raised the dead. He fed the hungry with good food. He taught the Word of God, preached the Gospel, confessed the faith, and prayed without ceasing.
And for this love and faithfulness, for the Name of the Lord that He glorified, He was persecuted, betrayed and arrested, falsely accused and mocked, beaten and blasphemed, unjustly sentenced to death, and crucified in public shame. All of which He bore in peace and patience. He persevered in love for all people, even those who were putting Him to death. He forgave those who trespassed against Him. He turned the other cheek, and He suffered His outer and inner garments to be taken from Him. He did not retaliate, nor did He revile in return, but He relied on His God and Father.
So, if you find that your Christian discipleship is difficult and challenging, do not imagine that Christ Jesus is unaware of or unfamiliar with those challenges and difficulties. Even His family and friends did not know what to make of Him or what to do with Him. They misunderstood Him and wanted all the wrong things from Him. The rulers of the people were jealous and hateful of Him, and conspired against Him, and stirred up the crowds to cry out for His death.
You do not have a Savior and High Priest who is unable to sympathize with you, but One who has been tempted and tormented in all the ways that you are, who has borne all of your sins as though they were His own, and who has shared all your suffering, sorrow, sickness, shame, and death.
Although He is the Son of God from all eternity, nevertheless, in human flesh and blood just like yours He learned the faith and the obedience of sonship through what He suffered in your place.
He learned, not as though He were ever ignorant or naive, but by the way of personal experience, by living your human life as you are called to live, first hand, in His own person. He did so, not out of intellectual curiosity, as though for some kind of experiment or science project, but in order to establish divine sonship for you in human flesh and blood. So did He also receive and bear the Spirit of God in His truly human flesh and blood for you and your salvation, in order that your fallen flesh might receive and bear the same Holy Spirit and be raised up to eternal Life with God.
The Lord Jesus Christ thus lived by faith in the Word and promise of His Father. He lived in the hope of His mercy by the grace and guidance of the Spirit. He did what His Father called Him to do, and He spoke as His Father gave Him to speak. In steadfast faith and flawless love, He was handed over to the Cross by the predetermined plan and foreknowledge of God, and He humbly accepted the same, submitting His human will to the divine Will in the hope of the Resurrection.
It is there on the Cross — on the one hand enduring the condemnation of the Law that He perfectly fulfilled, and suffering the separation of sin from the Father He loved and trusted, while on the other hand continuing to trust and believe His Father’s steadfast love and faithfulness — it is there that He permanently established divine sonship for you. So that, even in the midst of your sin and in the face of your death, the promise of the Gospel and the Sabbath Rest of Christ remain for you.
He has weathered the perfect storm in order to bring you safely through it in and with Himself. He has endured the inner conflict of the Old Man and the New Man in His own Body, even unto the death of His Cross. And though sin and death were crucified and put to death in Him, He has prevailed in faith and love, and He has been raised up by the Spirit of His Father as the new and better Adam, as the First Fruits of the New Creation, as the Head of His Body and Bride, the holy Christian Church, in order to be the Firstborn of a great multitude of divine sons and daughters — called and gathered from all the nations, from every tribe and tongue and culture and ethnicity.
Having thus received the promised Holy Spirit from the Father in His Resurrection from the dead, He has poured out the same Spirit generously upon you in the waters of your Holy Baptism. Not only that, but He continues to pour out the Spirit upon you in the Absolution of the Gospel, in the Word of forgiveness that is preached to you, and in the Spiritual Food and Drink of His Supper.
He has also given you the Word and promise of His God and Father, that you are a dear son of God in Him, beloved and well-pleasing to the Father; that all of your sins are freely and fully forgiven; that God has reconciled you to Himself in Christ; and that, even though you die, yet shall you live.
In this Gospel of Christ Jesus, the Father moves toward you in love, and He gives Himself to you, and He embraces you to Himself as a beloved child, always raising you up from death to Life, from out of darkness into Light, and from the dust of the earth to be a living creature in His own Image.
You are raised up in and with Christ Jesus to live and move and have your being in Him: To move in love — within Him, and through Him, by the Holy Spirit — unto His God and Father in heaven.
That Life in Christ and in the Holy Spirit — that movement of your body and life toward God your Father in heaven, as a living sacrifice — that true faith and worship of the Father in the Spirit and the Truth — is lived from your Holy Baptism through death and the grave into the Resurrection.
It is by the way of the Cross, not for the sake of gratuitous violence or suffering, but in order to work in you a genuine sacrifice of repentance, faith, and love. So that you, who are a son of God in Christ Jesus by His grace, may learn the faith and obedience of sonship in Him. And so that sin and unbelief and all their deadly fruits may be crucified and put to death in you. And so that you, in bearing the Cross for your neighbor, might love your neighbor as the Lord Jesus loves you.
That way of the Cross — which is the way of Christian discipleship — is difficult and challenging, make no mistake about it. Indeed, it would be utterly impossible for you apart from Christ, if He had not gone before you and established that way in faith and love, in His own flesh and blood.
But now Christ has lived that life for you, and He has gone that way of the Cross for you, and He has died that death for you. He has borne your sins and suffered all their consequences. He has atoned for all your sins and reconciled you to God. This is most certainly true. So God has also raised this same Lord Jesus Christ from the dead, and exalted this beloved Son at His Right Hand, and placed all your enemies beneath His feet, crushed and defeated beneath His wounded heel.
That is how and why He pours out His living and Life-giving Holy Spirit upon you through the Gospel of His Cross, raising you daily from death to Life. It is for this reason that He has called and sent His servants, not only to baptize you in His Name, but to catechize you with His Word, and to commune you with His Body and Blood in remembrance of Him, with His own authority.
These Gifts Christ freely gives are the First Fruits of His Cross and Passion. And the same Tree of the Cross bears good fruits in you after its own kind. The Cross bears such fruits in you, even as it is crushing and killing the old Adam in your heart, mind, body, and soul. Do not suppose that He is out to get rid of you, but remember what His Father has spoken to you in Holy Baptism:
“You are My beloved son! With you I am well-pleased.” I am not angry or upset with you. I am not out to punish you. Your sins are all forgiven. You shall not die forever, for whoever believes and is baptized shall be saved. “This promise is for you and for your children.”
Bind that Word and promise of the Father to yourself — to your heart, mind, body, and soul — by giving attention to the ongoing catechesis of Christ Jesus. Listen to the preaching of His Word, and know that it is preached to you as a sure and certain Word of Life.
Better yet, take to heart that He has bound Himself to you, and that He binds you to Himself, by His Word and Spirit, Flesh and Blood, and by His divine and holy Name. Just as He has promised, He is with you always, even to the close of the age. He shall never leave you nor forsake you.
As He is risen from the dead and lives and reigns forever at the Right Hand of the Father, so does He bear the good fruits of His Cross in you: Forgiveness of sins, received and given; faith and love and self-sacrifice, but also resurrection and newness of life — day after day by His grace, unto the Resurrection of your body and the Life everlasting of your body and soul with the Holy Trinity.
Christ has died, and Christ is risen! He is risen indeed! Alleluia! And by the power of His own indestructible Life, He enlivens you with His Word and Holy Spirit, both now and forevermore.
As you are baptized in the Name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, so surely are you a beloved and well-pleasing son of God in Christ Jesus, by His grace, through faith in Him. His Cross and Resurrection, His Spirit, His Father, His House and Home, and His whole Body and Life are yours. So has He taught you to pray with the confidence of a dear child to your own dear Father. And so does He invite you to recline here at His Table, that He should feed you with His holy Body and His precious Blood, from His own hand, for the forgiveness of your sins and Life and Salvation.
In the Name + of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
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