Why was the sinless Jesus baptized?

In Matthew 3:13-17, Jesus comes to be baptized by John — though He had no sin to wash away. Dr. Toby Holt explains what Jesus meant by "fulfilling all righteousness." John objected, knowing Jesus needed no repentance, but Jesus insisted it was proper "to fulfill all righteousness." Holt explains our salvation needs both Christ's death and His perfect life: forgiveness makes us "not guilty," but we also need righteousness to stand before God — the obedient life of Christ, credited to us. As Jesus rose from the water, the Spirit descended like a dove and the Father spoke — a clear picture of the Trinity.

Questions this study answers:

1. Why was Jesus baptized if He had no sin? Not to repent, but to "fulfill all righteousness" and identify with the people He came to save. It marked the start of His public ministry.

2. What does "fulfill all righteousness" mean? It points to Christ's perfect obedience, credited to believers. We are saved not only by His death for our sins but by His righteous life counted as ours.

3. How does the baptism show the Trinity? At one moment the Son was baptized, the Spirit descended like a dove, and the Father spoke from heaven — three persons, one God. "And suddenly a voice came from heaven, saying, 'This is My beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased.'" — Matthew 3:17 (NKJV)

Dr. Toby Holt is President of New Geneva Theological Seminary, and his sermons have been downloaded more than 1.9 million times on SermonAudio. Find more verse-by-verse Bible teaching at newgeneva.org; support this ministry at newgeneva.org/give.

In chapter 3 of Matthew, Jesus was baptized.

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The question is, why?

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Why was Jesus baptized?

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If Jesus was the divine, perfect Son of God, and if baptism signifies the washing away

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of sins, then why was it necessary for Him to undergo it?

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We'll consider that question and more in today's study.

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When John the Baptist showed up, it wasn't like, oh, I guess God's got a new plan. Here's John.

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John had been anticipated by those who were looking for him for 400 years.

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What's the last book in the Old Testament? Malachi. Last book of the Old Testament is Malachi. Do you

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know what the very last verses in the book of Malachi, the very last verses in the Old Testament,

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do you know who they speak about? John. If you were to look at the last book in the Old Testament,

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the very last book, the book of Malachi, literally the last four or five verses, it says this.

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It says, Behold, I will send you Elijah the prophet before the coming of the great and

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dreadful day of the Lord. Behold, this is the last verses in the whole Old Testament. Behold,

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Elijah is coming, or at least his spiritual successor. I will send you Elijah the prophet

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before the coming of the day of the Lord, the great and dreadful day of the Lord, and he will

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turn the hearts of the fathers to the children, and the hearts of the children of the fathers

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lest I come to strike the earth with a curse. The last verses in the Old Testament said keep on the

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lookout. Keep on the lookout. There's one coming, and when he comes, he's going to prepare the way,

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which is what Isaiah said too. I'm going to send one. One from the wilderness is going to come to

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prepare the way for the Lord, to prepare the way for the king, which is something they had to do

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back in the days. Literally, if the king was going to visit, they had to clear the street and the

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paths and the like so that the carts or the chariots or whatnot could get down without any

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issues. Whatever the case is, Elijah was anticipated from centuries past to return,

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and he returns in the form of John the Baptist as the spiritual successor. Now, what was John doing

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before we look at verses 13 and 14, before we move into the text really? What is he doing? Well,

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we know he's baptizing. He's baptizing individuals here. So what kind of baptism is this? Did they

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have baptism in the Old Testament? Did they have it? Well, yes, but it was different. They had

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something called proselyte baptism. Let's say that you're a Moabite, and you say, you know,

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I really like Israel. You know, I like the food and the culture, and I love their God. Their God

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seems so much better than the gods we got over here. I think I would like to become Jewish. I'd

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like to convert. So what was the process for that? Well, the process was baptism. It was called

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proselyte baptism. If someone from another culture wanted to convert into Judaism, and God was

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pleased to pull from the nations. If you're a Gentile here this morning, you're an example of

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this. God was pleased to pull from the nations, and when they pulled from the nations, when people

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converted, so to speak, to Judaism, the principal action that they undertook was to be baptized or

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washed as a sign, as a type of washing away their pagan beliefs and their wicked ways and the like.

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So they did have something called baptism, but it wasn't baptism in the sense that we might

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understand it. It was for new converts. Well, this is not what's going on here. John is baptizing

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Jews. See, this is different. Now, some people say, well, what's going on is ceremonial washings.

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If you look in the Old Testament, they were washing all the time, which I guess if I lived

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in the desert, I'd probably want to do that too. They were trying to wash, and some of it was

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probably just for the obvious reasons of getting clean, and then other reasons were ceremonial.

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If you were a priest, and before you put on your tall pointy hat, and you did your priestly duties,

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you might consecrate yourself and wash yourself. So they had ceremonial washings throughout the

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Old Testament, but that's not what this is either. It's not a baptism of converts, and it's not

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ceremonial washings. It's something different, and it's something new. So what is it? Let's look.

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Let's look at verses 13 and 14 now, and then I'll work our way through that smaller balance of

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verses, and we'll try to come away with a better understanding of what baptism is and why Jesus,

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of all people, underwent it. Verse 13, that Jesus came from Galilee to John at the Jordan to be

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baptized by him. And John tried to prevent him, saying, I need to be baptized by you, and are you

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coming to me? All right. As verse 13 begins, there's a reference to two very distinct geographical

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locations. Now, when we read these terms, we just lump them all in together. He went from Galilee

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to the Jordan. When I first used to read that text, I didn't know if that was like, you know,

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four blocks away. I didn't know how to picture this. Having actually been there, I have some

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understanding, and it couldn't be more stark, where Jesus came from to where he was going.

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He went from Galilee, the Sea of Galilee, and everything around the sea is lush and green,

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and there's rolling hillsides, and it's just beautiful. Whatever you picture to be the land

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of milk and honey, that's what Galilee is. However, that's not where John was. John was way

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down to the south. John was to the southeast-ish of Jerusalem, out towards the Dead Sea, and it

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has earned its name. This area is not an area that is attractive. It is not lush. It is not green.

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There's no milk. There's no honey. This is not the area that you would take vacations to. It's not

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an area you would otherwise go. And yet all these people were going there because that's where John

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was. The spiritual successor of Elijah who came out of the wilderness, Elijah the Tishbite. Here

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we have John the Baptist, and God has evidently laid a prophetic mantle upon him. Everyone's coming

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to where he's at, even though otherwise it wouldn't be in a big hurry to go there. Well, Jesus goes

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there too. He goes from Galilee, from where it's lush, and he travels, what was a number of days

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at the least, down to Jordan, down towards near Jericho. Now, why? Why did he do this? Well,

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we see the answer in verse 13. He comes to be baptized. Jesus came from Galilee to John at the

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Jordan to be baptized. Now, as we said before, we have to stop and we have to camp out here for a

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moment. Jesus. Who is Jesus? It starts with a G. He's God. So Jesus is God in the flesh,

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God incarnate, Son of God, one of the members of the Trinity. If you look at Jesus, you're

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looking at God, right? So here we see that God wants to come down and be baptized by

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a fallen man, that God wants to be baptized. What's going on here? Now, if you looked around

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the rest of the crowd, if you looked at everyone else all milling around, they all needed to

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be baptized. They need to be washed clean, and not only be washed clean, but they need to act

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accordingly in the days yet to come, because their past was filthy and sin-written. Everyone there

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had sins. Even John the Baptist had sinned. And so Jesus comes to him, and to John, it's like,

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it does not compute. This doesn't make sense why you are doing this. And so he responds and tells

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Jesus, we're not doing it. I must have misheard you. We're not doing that. You don't need to be

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baptized by me, but clearly I need to be baptized by you. Now, did John know who Jesus was? I think

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there's plenty of reason to suspect that. He at least knew him as a cousin. Did he know him as

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the Messiah? I think the answer to that's clear. I think if you look at Luke and Mary and Elizabeth,

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they were cousins. Mary and Elizabeth were pregnant at the same time. Mary goes to visit

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Elizabeth and Elizabeth is pregnant. The child's a little more advanced in months, but they're both

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pregnant, and what does the child in Elizabeth's womb, what does John the Baptist in the womb do

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just at the proximity to Jesus? He leaps, jumps for joy. I can't imagine that's a lot of fun for

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the mother, but whatever the case is, there's movement, there's jumping, there's leaping,

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there's joy. Somehow, in some way, just by the mere proximity to the Messiah, John the Baptist

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understood, or at least by his nature, reacted to the proximity to this one. Beyond that, he

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identifies even in this text that one is coming that I'm not even worthy to tie his sandals.

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Later, when he sees on the river, he says, behold, the Lamb of God comes to take away the sin of the

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world. There's every reason to believe he knows exactly who this Jesus was. So Jesus approaches

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him here, and the one who he identifies as the Messiah says, I need you to baptize me. So John,

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of course, tries to decline that. Jesus will have none of it. Let's look at verse 15.

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but Jesus answered and said to him, permit it to be so. In other words, let's do it. Permit it to

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be so now, for thus it is fitting for us to fulfill all righteousness. And then he allowed him.

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All right. As answers to questions go, what Jesus tells John is both very simple and very confusing.

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Very simple and very confusing. Now, the short answer, John says, all right, Jesus,

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How is this going to work? Why exactly am I going to baptize you? The short answer Jesus tells them

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is just, let's do it. Permit it to be so now. Let's just get this done. The simple answer is,

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because I told you so, is another way to put it. But then he adds one theological component that

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is very helpful and gives us some understanding of what's going on. He says, we're going to do

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this, John, because it's appropriate. It's fitting for us in this action that we're going to do here

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in the Jordan, it's fitting for us to fulfill all righteousness. Now, what does that mean?

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What in the world does that mean? Earlier this morning, I remember in the prayer, I prayed and

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I said, even the word righteousness, we don't necessarily understand in our culture and our age.

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We don't understand, at least in the biblical sense. So what does it mean to fulfill it? What

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does that imply? Well, let me ask you a question in order to kind of help us to get to the answer.

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Which is more important to your salvation?

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Which is more important?

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The life that Jesus lived or the death that Jesus died?

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Which is more necessary?

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Yes.

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Both.

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If I smile, it's a trick question.

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And it's a trick question in this sense.

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They're both necessary.

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It's not either or.

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Both of these are essential to your past, your present, your future, your hope, your salvation.

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The life that he lived and everything that he did, along with the death that he died, are both essential.

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You see, on the one hand, we understand a bit about his death.

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We know that his death is essential.

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I mean, we understand the cross and payment for the price and the wrath of God being poured out on him.

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We understand at a basic level that he died as a substitute for me.

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And so, therefore, I really needed it to happen.

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I really needed him to have done that.

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Otherwise, I'd be the one suffering God's wrath.

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We usually understand that.

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But with that said, is that the only thing we need?

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Well, again, no.

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If all that Jesus had to do was to die on a cross,

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you ever watch Star Trek?

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You know, Scotty, beam me up, beam me down, whatnot.

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He could have beamed down to the cross,

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had it over with, been done,

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and be back in heaven for lunch.

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This could have been an easy process.

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If all he had to do was die,

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if that's it and that's all,

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it could have been comparatively easier.

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He certainly didn't have to wait 33 years to do it.

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If all he had to do was die, it was simple.

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could have been undone in a moment without any need. For his birth, his baptism, his temptation,

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his obedience, the mockery he faced, being spit upon, being rejected, he didn't need all that if

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all he had to do was die, right? If Christ's death accomplished everything, then why bother with the

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rest? Well, here's what we need to recall. It isn't just his death that saves us. We're not only saved

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by the death that he died, but also by the life that he lived. Now, let me explain this. On the

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cross. We believe two theological things happen. So Jesus is on the cross, right? Two imputations,

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like two credits being made. The first, I think we're more aware of. The first is that our sin,

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your sin, my sin, our sin, was placed upon him, was credited to him. Our sin was imputed,

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taken from us in a spiritual sense and placed upon him. So that happened. And most of us,

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again, we get that. We've been told that since we were young. He who had no sins became sin for us.

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so we get that. But that's not the only imputation that happened. At the same time as our sins were

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credited to him, his righteousness was credited to us. You see, it's not simply that your sins

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were removed from you. All that would make you is not guilty, but it wouldn't make you righteous,

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right? If all that had happened was your sin being removed from you, again, you wouldn't be guilty,

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amen and amen, neither would you be righteous. And if you think that you would be, you're conflating

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terms that don't mean the same thing. A court can acquit a criminal from his crimes. He might not

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be guilty, but he's not righteous either. If you had a parking ticket, driving ticket, what have

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you, and it's wiped clean, well, good. But that doesn't necessarily make you a good driver, does

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it? What makes you a good driver? A history of good driving. Actions, choices, decisions that

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are in line with what a good driver is. If all that happened on Calvary was that your sins were

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removed and placed upon him, it makes you not sinful, but it doesn't make you righteous. However,

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if you want to get into heaven, you need more than that. See, it's not just about not being

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guilty in order to get into heaven. And we can sometimes think that because we're not used to

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really peeling back the onion of theology. It's not simply a function of not being guilty that

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allows me to get to heaven. What allows me or you or anybody to get to heaven is that we're

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righteous. Now, can I prove that? Well, yes. In Matthew 5, and we'll see this in a couple weeks,

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Jesus said this to the people in the Sermon on the Mount. He says, unless your righteousness

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exceeds the righteousness of the scribes and the Pharisees, you will by no means enter the kingdom

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of heaven. Do you see that? It's not just about your guilt being assuaged or taken away from you

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or sins removed. That's not the only thing that has to happen. It's not simply that you can no

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longer be sinful or guilty. I mean, again, you need that, but you need something else. You also

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need to be righteous. And Jesus flatly says in the Sermon on the Mount, unless your righteousness

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exceeds that of the scribes and the Pharisees, you will never enter. You will never enter the

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kingdom of heaven. You need to be righteous in order to walk into God's pearly gates,

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walk through them. It's not optional. With that said, the good news of the gospel is that while

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he was on the cross, two imputations happened. One was our sin was placed upon him. The second

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is that his righteousness is granted to us. When we believe in him, when we have faith in him,

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what happens is his righteousness, like a robe, is wrapped around us. And because we're wrapped

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up in a robe of his works, as if we were the ones who did them, as if we were the ones who did these

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works, because we're wrapped up in the white robe of his righteousness, when God looks down at you,

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he sees you through the veneer of his son's own righteousness. He sees you. He sees you as

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righteous in his presence and his standing. And because of that, I don't need the scribe's

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righteousness. I don't need the Pharisee's righteousness. I don't need my self-righteousness.

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When I stand before him, I need him to see me through the lens of his own son's righteousness.

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And the only way I can attain that is through faith. It's through faith. Sometimes we call this

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the active obedience of Christ. The passive obedience was that Christ was willing to die.

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That's the passive obedience.

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He allowed himself to be crucified.

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He allowed all that to go down.

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Didn't have to.

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He said, I lay my own life down.

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No one's going to take it from me.

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But he submitted to that.

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He passively submitted to everything that happened to him on the cross.

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And so we're saved by this, but we're also saved by his active obedience.

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He did all the things that you didn't do.

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This past week, should you have shared the gospel, prayed more?

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Should you have loved your neighbor better than you did?

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Yes, yes, and yes.

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Well, here's the thing.

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Jesus did all that stuff perfectly, and then his work is credited to you.

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That's how your righteousness exceeds Pharisees and scribes and the like.

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Because his actions, his work, his act of obedience on your behalf has been credited to your account.

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And without it, you can't enter into his gates.

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J. Gresham Machen, famous Princeton theologian, fought against liberalism, started Westminster Seminary in Philadelphia.

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Towards the end of his life, he got an upper respiratory infection, very significant, very severe.

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Well, God ultimately called him home from that estate.

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But while he was there, he wrote a letter to a friend named John Murray.

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No, it wasn't a letter. It was a telegram.

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This is how old this is.

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A telegram.

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For young people, it's like a text message from 1920s.

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He sends this telegram, and he says,

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I'm so thankful for the act of obedience of Christ.

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I have no hope without it.

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He understood it wasn't just Jesus' death.

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It was also the life he lived that when J. Gresham Machen stepped into God's golden shores,

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he did so cloud in the righteousness of another man, the vicarious righteousness of Christ alone.

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All right, let's look at verses 16 and 17.

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Verse 16.

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Now when Jesus had been baptized, Jesus came up immediately from the water,

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and behold, the heavens were opened to him, which doesn't happen often in Scripture.

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And he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove and alighting upon him.

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And suddenly a voice came from heaven, saying,

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This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased.

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These verses are some of the most critical verses in all the Scripture.

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If Scripture says that the heavens opened, just spoiler alert,

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what's about to go down is of great significance, because this rarely ever happened.

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It rarely ever happened that the veil was drawn back in order for fallen people

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to look up and see the glory of God, and to see that heavenly kingdom, so to speak. It's like when

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the angels announced Christ's birth, right? Well, we see the same sort of thing here. The heavens are

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pulled back, and there's this great revelation from on high about the events going down in the

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water. Now, at this moment, Jesus has been baptized. He comes out from the water. The spirit comes down

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in the form of a dove, and the Father's voice is heard from on high. Now, one of the things that I

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always stop to admire in this part of scripture is this, that if you ever wonder about the Trinity,

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what is the Trinity? Well, here's the thing. A lot of people confuse in our day and age the Trinity,

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the Father, the Son, the Holy Ghost, as being modes. They see it as God has different modes,

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right? There's the Jesus mode. It's like switching your car into a different gear.

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You know, it's a Jesus mode or the Father mode or the Son mode or what have you. That's not what

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we're seeing here. What we're seeing here is three persons distinctly obvious to the senses of

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everyone who was gathered and we know as evan to the senses because it was meant to be the heavens

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open jesus the sun comes out from the water the spirit comes down the form of a devil lights upon

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him and then the voice of the father is heard from on high if you were flying the wall there if you

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were sitting on the hillside watching this you would have seen sensibly you would have perceived

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with your eyes and your ears all three persons of the trinity in action the economic trinity in

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action there at this moment. Now, that doesn't happen all the time. So, why here? What about

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that, this event, is so significant that the Father's voice booms from heaven after literally

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pulling the clouds back? What is going down here that is that significant? Because there's a lot

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of other significant things in Scripture that didn't have this sort of heavenly display of

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force. What's going on here? Well, we'll consider this with our remaining moments here this morning.

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In order to ask why the heavenly show of force, it's helpful to remember where are we at in Jesus' ministry at this point?

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The beginning.

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We're at the start.

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In fact, just moments before the start.

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If you remember, how old do we believe Jesus was roughly when he died?

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33-ish.

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Well, his public ministry, such as it was, didn't begin until he was roughly 30 right here in Matthew 3.

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And what we see at this moment is a commissioning, a commissioning of sorts.

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You know, in our denomination, when a pastor is called, when Pastor Fish is an example,

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I can pick on him because he's not here this morning, but when Pastor Fish was called,

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and we were all very happy he was, when he was called to our church, he was also installed

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within our body, and he had been ordained as a Baptist minister in times past.

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Now, ordination, ordination, I remember when I underwent it, it's a fascinating thing because

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what happens is that the other men, spirit-filled men, come and alight upon you with their hands.

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Their hands come down upon you, and then you are verbally called by these men to the very office

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that you are being ordained and installed to. So the ordination of a pastor is a public

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bearing witness to the commissioning to the job that you have, okay? The same is true right here

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in the ministry of Jesus. Jesus had a mission. He came to this world with a purpose, and this

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moment has been commissioned unto this end visibly before all those gathered. In verse 17,

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the father is inaugurating and validating the ministry of his son when he says,

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This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased.

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His transfiguration, he says, is roughly the same thing.

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This is my Son, and well, please listen to him.

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This is my Son.

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You want to profit my people for 400 years?

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You haven't had profits?

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Well, here's the thing.

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This is my Son.

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I've done you one better.

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I've done you infinitely better.

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I've given you not just a prophet, not just a good, godly, pious man

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who has the same flesh and blood as you do,

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but I have given you the divine incarnate Son of God.

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He's standing right before you.

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Listen to him.

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When the voice of God says, this is my Son,

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and when the Spirit alights upon him,

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this board witnesses that this is the one.

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This is the Messiah.

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This is the one who has come for the salvation of his people.

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Now, I guess I'll ask you a final question as we wrap up.

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How do the people respond?

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Well, I don't know about the people on the particular hillside,

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but across the course of Christ's ministry, there was ups and downs.

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you know the funny thing was that they routinely loved the stuff that he did

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if jesus ministry was limited to the things he did they would have loved him he healed people

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you know he fed them five thousand at a time they're on the hillsides he fed them he healed

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them there was miracles all sorts of neat things like that if that's all he did he'd be fine but

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he didn't just do miracles he did something else he spoke it is what he said that drove the people

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crazy, especially the religious leadership. So the irony is that God would send the divine emissary,

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the Messiah they'd been waiting for since the dawn of time itself. He was now standing in front of

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them. He could reach out and touch God. He was standing there. And yet, across the course of

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his ministry, he would be ridiculed and mocked by many, and ultimately he'd be nailed to a cross.

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Within three years, within three years, he would be every bit as polarizing as Simeon told his

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mother he would be when he held her in his arms. Every bit is polarizing, and then some. So when

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Jesus came to earth, he was commissioned, as we saw this morning. He was sent out into the world.

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He had a mission. He had a mandate, and it was not equally well received. Well, here's the thing.

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Just as he came on time, on schedule, according to God's prophecies, according to all that God

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had said, just as he came, scripture also tells us that he's coming back. And if John the Baptist

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was sent to prepare the way for him ahead of time, who is he sent to prepare the way now?

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I'm looking at them. Jesus will return. And none of us are Elijah, none of us are John the Baptist,

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and yet, in a sense, we are also emissaries. Prepare the way of the Lord, for he will return.

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Let's pray for the grace to do so.