Why was Christ baptised by St John the Baptist?
The whole of Christ's public life is founded on the mystery of his baptism by St John the Baptist.
The whole of Christ's public life is founded on the mystery of his baptism by St John the Baptist.
In this piece, Father Coleridge explains…
Why Christ’s Baptism marked a pivotal moment in His public ministry and redemptive mission.
How the manifestations at His Baptism revealed the Triune God and established the foundation of the Sacrament of Baptism.
What spiritual truths underlie Christ’s humility in receiving John’s baptism and His solemn anointing as Mediator and Redeemer.
He shows us that the Baptism of our Lord was not only an act of humility but also the beginning of his mission, unveiling His role as the source of grace, the sanctifier of creation, and the beloved Son of the Eternal Father.
The octave day of Epiphany traditionally emphasised the Baptism of the Lord by St. John the Baptist. In later times, this day—13th January—has come to be treated as the feast (or commemoration) of this event. The Gospel reading at Mass for this day highlights St. John’s direct identification of Christ as the Messias. Here, however, we present Fr. Coleridge’s commentary on the baptism itself.
The links between the Baptism and the Epiphany are illustrated in the Roman Liturgy in an intriguing way. While the octave day is connected to the Baptism of the Lord through the texts of the Divine Office and the Gospel reading about St. John the Baptist, the Mass propers only indirectly reference the baptism, consisting of repetitions from the feast of Epiphany. This seeming omission does not downplay the baptism but rather emphasises its “epiphanic” nature and its liturgical connection with the manifestation of Christ's divinity at Epiphany.
For this reason, the octave day and commemoration of the Baptism liturgically stand as the culmination of the Christmas period and the full inauguration of Epiphanytide.
It is also a fitting thematic conclusion to the Advent-Christmas-Epiphany cycle. The Advent lectionary of the Traditional Latin Mass prominently features St. John the Baptist as the Forerunner, calling for repentance and pointing to the coming Messias. Interestingly, the Advent Gospel readings follow a reverse chronological order:
The last witness of St John the Baptist (and Our Lord’s witness to him)
St John the Baptist’s declaration of his mission under inquiry
At Christ’s Baptism, John’s mission reaches its fulfilment as he identifies Jesus as the Lamb of God. This moment reveals the glory prepared during Advent, manifesting Christ publicly as the Son of God and inaugurating His public mission. Thus, the octave of Epiphany and the Baptism of the Lord fittingly conclude what was begun in Advent and point forward to the coming seasons of Septuagesima, Lent, Passiontide, and Eastertide.
This progression also highlights the central role of the Forerunner, St. John the Baptist, during this sacred period. A deeper appreciation of his role may help rekindle devotion to him, of whom Our Lord said:
“There hath not risen up among them that are born of women a greater than John the Baptist.”
Baptism of our Lord
From
The Ministry of St. John the Baptist
Fr Henry James Coleridge, 1886, Ch. III
St. Matt. iii. 13–17; St. Mark i. 9–11; St. Luke iii. 21–23;
Story of the Gospels, § 17
Expectation created by St John’s preaching
The preaching and baptism of St. John had continued, as it seems, for several months and must have moved a large portion of the Jewish nation, at all events to a temporary return to God from sin, and to a more eager expectation of the coming Messias, of whom the Baptist had spoken so plainly.
Powerful as was the impulse given by St. John to all the better and higher elements in the public mind, he was yet in great measure and professedly only a teacher who was preparing the way for One greater than himself, by the perfect innocence and lofty purity of his example, as well as by his preaching of penance and administration of baptism.
The expectation and longing desire of so many souls was now to be answered, but in the way which characterises the great works of God. There was to be a great manifestation, and yet it was to be a manifestation which it required purity of heart and a discernment of spiritual greatness to recognise: a manifestation which, like those which had preceded it in the economy of the Incarnation, was to be addressed to those only who could, to some extent, weigh things in the scales of heaven.
St. Paul more than once speaks as if it were the counsel of God that the mysteries of our Lord and of His Church should be unfolded before the angels for their wonder and instruction as much as, if not more than, to men,1 and we may certainly believe that the true greatness and magnificence of the manifestation which was now to take place on the banks of Jordan were far more truly understood and adored by the angels who witnessed the mystery than by any others, unless we except the blessed Baptist himself, who was the minister in this great work of God.
Our Lord leaving Nazareth—parting from Our Lady
Holy contemplative souls have often loved to dwell on the leave-taking which passed between our Lord and His Blessed Mother at Nazareth, when the moment had come at which it was the will of the Father that Jesus Christ should take His departure from the home where He had so long dwelt in humility, obedience, and obscurity.
Our Lady was now alone; her Blessed Spouse had some time before breathed out his soul in the arms of Jesus, and with Mary praying by his side, dying the most blessed of deaths, and winning, by his perfect resignation to the sacrifice entailed on him by such a parting, the prerogative which belongs to him in the Church as the patron and father of all holy deaths.
Many of our Lady’s relations lived in Nazareth, and it seems as if that family of cousins of our Lord, who go in the New Testament by the name of His brethren, either now or before this had come to live with her or near her. What we know about her at the departure of our Lord rests upon the pious instincts of the Christian imagination as well as on the theological belief of all ages as to our Blessed Lady’s consummate perfection of sanctity, and the absolute union of her will with that of God.
But on neither ground are we to conclude that the separation was not a matter of intensest pain, or that our Lady’s heart was steeled against the suffering natural on losing the constant companionship of a Son between Whom and herself there was a bond of love, the tenderness of which was in proportion to the sanctity and lovableness of both, or against the apprehension of what might happen when He was exposed to the rude indifference of men who knew Him not.
Now was the time for the fulfilment of Simeon’s prophecy of the sword which should pierce her heart, or rather that prophecy had already had its fulfilment in anticipation when our Lord had remained alone in the Temple.
The three days during which our Lord had left her when He was a lad of twelve years had prepared her for this parting. The three days were to become three years—not indeed of separation, for she was constantly with Him, and her heart was most closely united to His—and then she was to see Him, not in the full beauty and vigour of perfect manhood, passing with grave joy along the path over the hills which led towards the Jordan valley, but hanging in the agony of death and in the extremest dishonour and suffering upon the Cross, which was the instrument of the redemption of the world.
Bethany beyond Jordan
‘Bethany,2 beyond Jordan,’ the spot where St. John was baptising, seems to have been near the fords by which travellers passed from the eastern bank to the neighbourhood of Jericho, on their way to Jerusalem.
As this was the common and easiest route even from Galilee, and much more from Peræa, to Jerusalem, it was a convenient spot for the multitudes who came to St. John from all parts, as we cannot doubt, though the Evangelists speak directly of Jerusalem and the region of Judæa only.
From what we know of the disciples of St. John, among whom were numbered many who had certainly come to him from the distant part of the Holy Land in which Nazareth lies, we gather that the fame of the new preacher had reached Galilee, and that our Lord may not have been alone in the pilgrimage to the Jordan.
The Evangelist speaks as if He approached the Baptist in the midst of the crowd. He presented Himself, like any one else, but the spiritual discernment of St. John at once recognised Him, ‘I have need to be baptised by Thee! and dost Thou come to me?’ But Jesus answering, said to him, ‘Suffer it now; for thus doth it become us to fulfil all justice. Then he suffered Him.’
His modesty and humility
St John’s perfect intelligence concerning the dignity of Him who thus came to receive baptism at his hands cannot be questioned.
The words show that he recognised the universal necessity of the baptism which our Lord was to establish and administer—a necessity arising out of the positive arrangement of God, as well as from the immense spiritual benefits which He had attached to Christian baptism as their ordinary and appointed vehicle.
St. John had been sanctified and filled with the Holy Ghost even in his mother’s womb, but this did not exempt him from the general law as to baptism. We may notice also the modesty and gentleness of his humility, remonstrating with our Lord rather by a simple question than in the abrupt, positive manner afterwards used by St. Peter when he refused to let our Lord wash his feet at the Last Supper.
Nothing more was required to make him yield to perform an office in itself so repugnant to his knowledge of his own lowliness and of the high dignity of our Lord, than the simple words which the latter addressed to him:
‘Suffer it now! It is true, as thou sayest, that I have to baptize thee, that I am above thee and before thee, that thou art My minister, and that any rite or gift that confers or represents sanctification ought to pass from Me to thee and not from thee to Me. It is true that I am He that baptizeth in the Holy Ghost, and that thou must be made partaker of My baptism. But this which thou art to do is what is becoming and right in order that we may fulfil all justice—that nothing may be omitted which perfect obedience to My Father and the practice of perfect virtue under our circumstances make requisite.’
Our Lord respecting St. John's baptism as an ordinance of His Father
The baptism of St. John was, as we have seen, an ordinance of God, an arrangement of His providence with special reference to the dispensation of the Incarnation and of the redemption of the world thereby.
It was right, therefore, that all reverence should be shown to it, and that as our Lord had humbled Himself to undergo the rite of circumcision, to be presented in the Temple, and there redeemed by an offering, so He should also honour the appointment of the Father by the devout reception of the baptism of St. John. If it had led to nothing and implied nothing but itself, still, as the ordinance of God, it deserved reverence, and it became all to receive it.
When anything of the kind springs up in the Church or in the order of Providence, we are not to inquire whether we ourselves have special need of it, or whether it is a matter of obligation, but only whether the simple truth, that it comes, even indirectly, from God, and has become for the time a part of the system, or at least a thing in accordance with the spirit, of the Church, which is His Spouse, does not make it unfitting for us to hold ourselves aloof from it.
He gave it power by receiving it
In the second place, our Lord, by receiving circumcision, and by the other legal observances and ceremonies which He allowed to be performed in His regard, sanctioned and blessed them, and imparted to them, as it were by His own touch—the touch of the Incarnate Godhead—whatever power of sanctification, of conjunction with God, of remission of sins, and the like, which they possessed.
So also by receiving in His own Person the baptism of St. John, He gave to it from Himself the power, not indeed to act as a Christian sacrament, but to be the occasion of grace, reconciliation, and sanctification to those who had received it, or might receive it, in the dispositions which are the conditions of such spiritual benefits.
In this sense, again, it was a part of the fulfilment of perfect justice that He should receive that baptism, for it was His mission and work to be the source and fountain of all means and occasions of grace to the children of Adam from the beginning to the end of time.
Example of humiliation at the beginning of His course of teaching
In the third place, our Lord was about to begin the work of teaching, and take upon Himself the Evangelical and Apostolical functions of His ministry as the Master as well as the Redeemer of mankind. And it was and is the will and the rule of God that all teaching must be begun and founded in humiliation, as the means and safeguard of that humility, without which no one can be trusted by God with any commission to work for His glory.
But the receiving of the baptism of His Forerunner was a great and further act of humiliation on the part of our Blessed Lord. In His Circumcision and in His Presentation in the Temple He had gone through certain rites and observances, the significance of which was that He was to pay the penalty of original sin, although no such stain could possibly fall upon Him.
But by receiving the baptism of St. John He went still further, because that baptism was a public profession and confession that His state was that of an actual sinner. It implied that He had sins to confess and penance to do, whereas He had indeed penance to do and sins to confess, but they were the sins of the whole world, not His own, and their chastisement and penance were to be upon Him.
And as there is always to be the closest union between our Lord Himself and all those who in any way or measure have to carry on in the Church and to share His holy work of teaching mankind, He was, in this mystery, both setting them the example of the constant uniform practice of self-humiliation as the fit and appointed preparation for the exercise of such functions, and also blessing their humiliations in His own, strengthening them and giving them virtue thereby, making them the occasions and conditions of success and of exaltation to be granted them on the part of His Father, and warning all that they must never shrink from such, as if the authority of a teacher and his fruitfulness in teaching could ever suffer thereby.
These are some of the reasons for this action of our Lord, considered in itself as an act of simple humiliation, in obedience to what at that time was the arrangement of His Father’s Providence.
He was to make Baptism a sacrament
But the Baptism of our Lord had also another aspect. It was not merely that He received the baptism of St. John as He received the rite of circumcision, which was to be entirely done away with under the New Law.
He was to take up the rite which St. John had adopted as the symbol of his mission and as a profession of penitence and faith, and make it into a Christian sacrament, and that sacrament the most fundamental and essential of all. And this was to be done at the moment when He Himself was to be solemnly and manifestly anointed for His own office as Redeemer and Prophet.
Thus, in the Christian scheme, our Lord’s Baptism has a twofold character, as it refers to Himself and as it refers to the work which He came to do and the kingdom which He came to found. The description given by the Evangelists refers principally to the first part of this twofold aspect; the writings of the Apostles and the theology of the Church instruct us as to the second.
Mysteries at His Baptism
The accounts given by the Evangelists, when they are put side by side, tell us three principal things concerning this mystery.
In the first place, we are told that at the time of His Baptism (‘while He was praying,’ St. Luke adds, in accordance with one of the leading ideas of his Gospel), our Lord, ‘as He was going up straight out of the water,’ beheld the heavens opened; ‘the heavens were opened unto Him.’
Secondly, ‘He saw the Holy Ghost descending in bodily form like a dove, and abiding on Him.’
Thirdly, a Voice came from heaven, ‘Thou art My Beloved Son, in Thee I am well pleased.’ These, then, are the features in this mystery, on which Christian contemplation must feed itself.
The heavens opened
The opening of the heavens is said by the Evangelists to have been seen by our Lord; but this, as well as the visible descent of the Holy Ghost and the Voice from heaven, may have been perceptible to others also, as we certainly know to have been the case, at least as to the descent of the Holy Ghost, with St. John himself.
The other manifestations must be understood as implying each a particular spiritual truth with regard to our Lord’s office in the kingdom of God. To His beatified Soul, the heavens were always open: He was always living in the full possession of the vision of God, nor could heaven ever have been closed to Him from the moment of the Hypostatic Union.
The opening of the heavens must therefore be considered either as a manifestation of what always had been the case, and of this He Himself, to Whom the manifestation was primarily made, could have had no need; or it must have had reference to some power and privilege conferred upon Him with reference to the office which He was then taking upon Himself, and thus there would be a reason why such a visible declaration should have been made at that time.
His Sacred Humanity was the connecting link between heaven and earth: there could no longer be any division, any shutting out from the earth of the sight of heaven, when God was Incarnate upon earth, and a human soul and body personally united with the Godhead.
Jacob’s vision
There had been a vision of old, of one of the ancestors of our Lord, in which a ladder had been seen reaching from earth to heaven, and making a pathway along which the angels of God passed to and fro, ascending with prayers from earth and descending from heaven with blessings.
Such a ladder our Lord soon after this time declared that He, the Son of Man, was to become: ‘Ye shall see the heavens opened, and the angels of God ascending and descending upon the Son of Man,’ as upon the ladder of Jacob.
This union of the two natures in His Divine Person is the foundation of the other mysteries which were sensibly represented in the further unfolding of this wonderful manifestation. The Humanity of Jesus Christ opens heaven, not to Himself alone, but to all those to whom the fruits of the Incarnation are communicated by the exercise of His Mediatorial Office.
The descent of the Holy Ghost
The descent of the Holy Ghost in a visible shape upon Him was a manifestation of the same kind as the opening of the heavens. From the first moment of the Union, the Soul of Jesus Christ had been filled to overflowing and without measure by the Holy Ghost.
It was not possible that this fulness could be increased at any time, any more than that it could begin at any moment later than that of the Union or ever cease. But here again, without being merely a manifestation symbolising what always had been the rich endowments of His Soul, the visible appearance of the Holy Ghost at this moment signified that the anointing and consecration of our Lord had been for the special purpose of the office of which He was now about to undertake the external functions.
‘Jesus of Nazareth, how God anointed Him with the Holy Ghost and with power,’ were the words in which St. Peter afterwards spoke of our Lord and His work to the first Gentile converts.3
This was the visible fulfilment in Him of the twofold prophecy of Isaias,4 that the ‘Spirit of the Lord should rest upon Him, the spirit of wisdom and understanding, the spirit of counsel and fortitude, the spirit of knowledge and piety, and He shall be filled with the spirit of the fear of the Lord,’ and that other which He Himself quoted in the synagogue at Nazareth, ‘The Spirit of the Lord is upon Me, because the Lord hath anointed Me, He hath sent Me to preach to the meek,’ and the rest.
This descent of the Holy Ghost represents that fulness of His of which we have all received, the grace first bestowed upon Him in order that from Him it may overflow to all others who are joined to Him. And the outward form of the dove seems to have represented the tenderness, simplicity, and gentleness which are the characteristic qualities of the dispensation of the Incarnation and of the first advent.
The Voice from heaven
The Voice from heaven which declared our Lord to be the well-beloved Son of the Eternal Father, in Whom He was well pleased, did not, of course, confer any new Sonship or adoption upon our Blessed Lord.
As to this again, all had been perfectly accomplished at the moment of the Hypostatic Union, when the human nature was assumed by the Son of God. What took place now was a solemn declaration of His Sonship, but a solemn declaration which was at the same time the inauguration of His Office as Mediator, whereby He was to be the author and giver of the adoption of sons to those who belong to Him.
‘For to as many as received Him, to them gave He power (authority5) to become the sons of God,’ the Eternal Sonship was communicated to them in such a way as it was possible for it to be communicated. He imparted to them His own relationship to the Father in such a manner as it is possible for sons of adoption to share that filiation.
Thus, to open heaven to mankind by means of His own Humanity, to be anointed with the fulness of the Holy Ghost as the Head of mankind, the new Adam, the source from which the graces of the Holy Ghost were to be communicated to men, and to place them in the dignity of the relation of sons to the Eternal Father, were three prerogatives of His mediatorial office which were solemnly confessed, manifested, and proclaimed in the mystery of His Baptism.
Exaltation after humiliation
This manifestation of the dignity of His Humanity is considered by many holy writers as corresponding to the great humiliation by which our Lord lowered Himself, as has already been said, in submitting to seek baptism at the hands of His Forerunner—as if in this too were fulfilled the saying of St. Paul to the Philippians,6 that inasmuch as ‘He humbled Himself, being made obedient,’ therefore hath God highly exalted Him.
And the Fathers remark both that our Lord always signally humbled Himself before any great stage or act of His Ministry, and that the Father in His Providence always answered such humiliation by a great exaltation.
Sanctification of water
It remains to point out the further significance of the several parts of the mystery of our Lord’s Baptism in relation to the sacrament which He was now to institute as the fundamental source of grace in the Church.
In the first place, the Fathers tell us that in His own Baptism He sanctified the element of water that it might become in His own sacrament the instrument of that regeneration and of that adoption of sons which were to be conferred upon mankind. Thus they say that the old Adam was buried in the waters of His Baptism, which, as Suarez explains, may be understood in three ways. For that mystery was a representation and figure, showing how human nature was to be washed from sin in Christ and through Christ.
Again, the merit of the humiliation which our Lord then underwent was applied to the destruction of the sins of mankind, which were thus, as it were, buried in the waters of Jordan.
Burial of the old Adam
And lastly, as has been said, our Lord then gave to the waters the power of sacramentally healing and cleansing our poor human nature, the old Adam, which is thus buried, as St. Paul says, together with sin by baptism unto death.
Again, the sacrament of regeneration, which by the institution of our Lord is to be accomplished in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost, was founded and instituted at the moment of this great manifestation, in which the Three Persons of the Ever Blessed Trinity were each singly revealed: the Father in the Voice from heaven, the Son in the Person of our Blessed Lord Himself, declared to be so by the Voice of the Father, and the Holy Ghost in the visible appearance of the dove.
Again, the threefold privilege which is attributed in this mystery to the Sacred Humanity of our Lord, as has been pointed out above, is as it were stored up in the Sacrament of Baptism as the means of grace by which that privilege is conveyed.
For in it men are admitted again to have access to heaven, and are indeed made its heirs; they are enriched in their new birth with the gifts and presence of the Holy Ghost, and they are made the children and the sons of God the Father.
Institution of Baptism—in the Name of the Three Divine Persons
Thus, in this mystery we have both the meritorious cause, and the form, and the matter, and the effects and fruits of the great sacrament of regeneration set forth and manifested—that is, the action and Person of our Blessed Lord, the invocation of the Three Divine Persons, the water sanctified by our Lord’s touch, and the threefold privilege which has already been named more than once.
It is, moreover, the doctrine of many of the Fathers that the great Sacrament of Baptism was at this time not only virtually and meritoriously established, but also positively instituted by our Lord.
For, they say, a sacrament may be established by act as well as by word, and there is a clear analogy between this mystery and that of the Last Supper in this respect, that in each our Lord did two things: first, He approved and sanctioned what was old and figurative, that is, the legal Paschal supper in the one case and the baptism of St. John in the other; and, secondly, He established what was new and true and far more perfect, that is, in the one case, the Sacrament of His own Precious Body and Blood, and in the other, the Sacrament of Baptism.
Moreover, it seems clear that Christian baptism began to be administered very early in our Lord’s teaching, and indeed soon after this, and from this it is gathered that it must have been already instituted. And it could at no time have been more fittingly instituted than at this.
It must, however, be understood, that the obligation to Baptism as the door to the kingdom of heaven and the means of admission to the blessings of the Christian covenant, and of regeneration in particular, did not become obligatory on men until after our Lord’s Ascension into heaven and the descent of the Holy Ghost on the Day of Pentecost.
Significance of this manifestation
It is clear from the words of the Baptist to his disciples shortly after this, that he at least, as has been said, saw the visible sign of the descent of the Holy Ghost upon our Lord in the form of a dove, and we may thus fairly presume that he heard the Voice of the Father, and saw the heavens opened.
And yet it seems also to be the truth, that these marvellous signs were lost upon the great mass of the bystanders, and the whole manifestation passed away without leaving any great impression upon the multitude to whom it yet was of so transcendent an importance.
The silence and outward hiddenness which shroud so many of the great acts of God, had their place in some measure here, although the whole scene was essentially a manifestation, and a manifestation which was the object and end of the baptism of St. John, as he said himself, ‘that He may be made manifest in Israel, therefore am I come baptizing in water.’7
And yet we cannot contemplate the Baptism of our Lord without being struck with the magnificence and grandeur of the manifestation. It was no longer a star in heaven, testifying to the homage which the visible creation owed to its Master, Who had now become a creature, nor were the voices of the angels heard, to show that they too owned allegiance to the Child of Bethlehem.
The shepherds and kings, who were His earliest earthly visitors, the ancient oracles of the prophecies which were consulted and gave so true an answer as to the place of His Birth, were as nothing compared to the witnesses who here testified to the dignity of the Lord of the new Creation.
The scene was thronged with penitent crowds, the saint higher in office than all the prophets of the Old Testament stood by our Lord’s side, the appointed minister of the holy rite which was made the occasion of so great a display of supernatural majesty.
Never since the beginning of time had the Three Divine Persons manifested themselves so clearly, never had Man been so solemnly proclaimed as the beloved Son of God, never had benefits so immense been conferred on the human race as those which, as has been seen, were then granted to it through and in Jesus Christ, and represented by the circumstances of the manifestation itself.
Influence on our Lord’s life
Henceforth the earthly Life of our Blessed Lord becomes distinctly the Life of the Anointed One, the Messias, the Christ. Mystery after mystery is now to succeed, manifesting and exercising the attributes and prerogatives which belong to Him by virtue of that unction which is here sensibly represented.
The whole Public Life is founded on the mystery of the Baptism. Its culminating point, in which it issues in the foundation of the Church, which, in a certain sense, is a continuation of our Lord’s Life on earth, is the confession by St. Peter of his faith in that declaration concerning our Lord which is here made by the Voice of the Father, and in which St. Peter answers in the name of all, ‘Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God.’
And the final act of our Lord, in regard to the application to the world of all that He had done and suffered, is His commission to the Apostles to ‘go and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost.’
From Fr Henry James Coleridge, The Ministry of St. John the Baptist
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Tim. iii. 16 (ὤφθη ἀγγέλοις). Eph. iii. 10.
Bethany, the reading of the Vulgate, is now generally received as the better reading on the authority of the uncial manuscripts. The meanings of Bethany and Bethabara—which used to be the received name—apply equally well to the place, as the first is ‘the house of the ship,’ or ferry-boat, the other ‘the house of the ford.’
Acts x. 38.
Isaias xi and lxi.
ἐξουσίαν, St. John i. 12.
Phil. ii. 9.
St. John i. 31.