Why Was Jesus Baptized and Tempted? (3 of 12)

John was baptising for repentance and the forgiveness of sins. Jesus came and was baptised.

That is a genuine problem and the Gospels know it. Matthew records John trying to stop him.

Who Was John the Baptist?

A prophet in the wilderness, and the first one in roughly four hundred years.

He appears in the Judean wilderness preaching repentance and baptising in the Jordan, dressed in camel hair with a leather belt, living on locusts and wild honey. That clothing description is not colour. It is a deliberate echo of Elijah in 2 Kgs 1:8, and the Gospels lean on the connection.

The crowds came out to him in numbers. Josephus mentions him independently, which matters: John’s ministry and his execution by Herod Antipas are attested outside Christian sources.

The two accounts differ in emphasis rather than in substance. The Gospels attribute the arrest to John’s criticism of Herod’s marriage to Herodias, his brother’s wife, which violated Levitical law. Josephus emphasises that Herod feared John’s hold over crowds might turn into sedition and moved against him pre-emptively.

Those complement each other rather than competing. Public denunciation of a ruler’s marriage was exactly the kind of thing that produced political anxiety, since the expectation that rulers maintain moral standards was current at the time.

Where Josephus differs is in the portrait. He presents John as a popular moral philosopher in the Greco-Roman mode rather than as a Jewish prophet, which fits his habit of playing down apocalyptic material for hellenised readers. On that particular point the Gospel portrait is the more historically plausible of the two.

His message was not comfortable. He tells the crowds coming for baptism not to presume on descent from Abraham, and warns that the axe is already at the root of the trees.

Why Did Jesus Need to Be Baptized?

He did not need forgiveness, and Matthew addresses the difficulty head on.

Matt 3:14-15 has John trying to prevent him, saying he needs to be baptised by Jesus rather than the other way round. Jesus answers: let it be so now, for it is proper for us in this way to fulfil all righteousness.

Several things are happening at once in that scene.

He is identifying with the people he came for, stepping into the water alongside those confessing sin without having any. He is publicly endorsing John’s ministry. And he is being commissioned, since the baptism is the point at which he moves from private life into public ministry.

The phrase about fulfilling all righteousness is doing real work and it is not fully transparent. The scene is a beginning rather than a cleansing.

What Happened at the Baptism?

Heaven opened, the Spirit descended, and a voice spoke.

Mark 1:10-11 has him seeing the heavens torn open and the Spirit descending like a dove, with a voice from heaven saying, you are my Son, whom I love; with you I am well pleased.

That sentence is stitched from Scripture. The language of sonship echoes Ps 2, a royal enthronement psalm. The delight language echoes Isa 42, the first servant song. King and servant, in one declaration, at the start.

All three persons of the Trinity are present in the scene, which is why it has carried so much theological weight since.

What Were the Three Temptations?

Bread, protection, and power, and each one attacks the declaration just made.

Matt 4:1-11 and Luke 4:1-13. Forty days in the wilderness, fasting, and then the tests.

Turn stones into bread. If you are the Son of God, feed yourself, on your own authority, now.

Throw yourself down from the temple, and let the angels catch you as Scripture promises. Force a public demonstration and let God prove the claim.

Worship me, and receive all the kingdoms of the world. Take the authority without the road that leads to it.

Every one of them begins from the sonship just declared at the Jordan, and every one offers a shortcut around the cross.

Why Forty Days in the Wilderness?

Because Israel spent forty years there and failed.

The pattern is exact and deliberate. Israel came out of Egypt, passed through water, went into the wilderness, and was tested. Jesus comes out of Egypt as an infant, passes through water at the Jordan, goes into the wilderness, and is tested.

Then look at the answers. Every reply Jesus gives is quoted from Deuteronomy, the book of Israel’s wilderness instruction. Man shall not live by bread alone. Do not put the Lord your God to the test. Worship the Lord your God and serve him only.

He is fighting the same battle Israel lost, on the same ground, with the text that was given to them for exactly that purpose, and he is winning it.

Does Satan Quote Scripture Accurately?

He quotes it accurately and applies it wrongly, which is the more useful lesson.

The temple temptation uses Ps 91, about angels bearing you up so you do not strike your foot against a stone. That is really in the psalm.

What is wrong is the use. A promise of protection is being turned into a licence to manufacture danger and demand rescue. The words are right and the purpose is corrupt.

That is worth sitting with, because it is the standard shape of misuse. Real text, lifted out of its setting, aimed at something it was never aimed at, and delivered with total confidence.

What Happens After the Temptation?

He returns to Galilee in the power of the Spirit, and the ministry begins.

Luke notes that the devil left him until an opportune time, which is not a permanent departure. The pressure recurs, most obviously at Caesarea Philippi when Peter proposes a path without suffering and receives the harshest rebuke in the Gospels.

The wilderness was the opening engagement rather than the whole war.

Part of a series following the Life of Jesus timeline.

Footnotes2

1. That Josephus mentions John independently, and connects his death to Herod's political fears rather than to the Herodias episode the Gospels emphasise, is a useful case of two sources describing the same man from different angles. Neither account is obviously wrong; they are answering different questions.
2. Every temptation answer comes from Deuteronomy, and specifically from the section dealing with Israel's wilderness testing. That is not a random selection of proof texts. He is answering with the instruction manual Israel was given for the exact situation he is in.

Sources

The biblical texts cited: Matt 3:1-4:11, Mark 1:1-13, Luke 3:1-4:13, John 1:19-34, 2 Kgs 1:8, Ps 2, Ps 91, Isa 42, and the Deuteronomy passages quoted in the temptation.

Josephus, Antiquities of the Jews 18. The independent notice of John the Baptist and his execution by Herod Antipas.

Michael F. Bird, "Josephus and the New Testament," in The World of the New Testament (Baker Academic, 2013), 401. Supports the comparison between Josephus and the Gospels on John's arrest.

S. A. Cummins, "John the Baptist," in Dictionary of Jesus and the Gospels, 2nd ed. (IVP Academic, 2013), 438. Supports the observation that Josephus presents John as a moral philosopher rather than a prophet.

Where the sourcing stops: the reading of the baptism voice as combining Ps 2 and Isa 42 is standard and widely held rather than my own construction. The precise force of fulfilling all righteousness is genuinely debated and I have described the scene rather than resolved the phrase.