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There is nothing in the immediate context of this saying, which is found only in Luke's Gospel, to throw light on its meaning. It must be read in the wider context of Jesus' whole teaching and ministry. In form it resembles the saying which precedes it, in which Jesus longs that the fire which he came to start were already kindled, but in sense it has much in common with those sayings in which the kingdom of God is seen to be subject to temporary limitations until something happens to unleash its full power. Here it is Jesus himself who is subject to a temporary limitation. As the NEB renders the saying: "I have a baptism to undergo, and what constraint I am under until the ordeal is over!"
Two questions are raised by the saying: (1) What was the baptism Jesus had to undergo? (2) What was the constraint under which he had to work until this baptism had taken place?
First, there is little doubt that by his baptism Jesus meant his impending death. This is confirmed by the record of another occasion on which he used similar language. On Jesus' last journey to Jerusalem, Mark tells us, he was approached by James and John, the two sons of Zebedee, who asked that they might be given the two positions of chief honor when his kingdom was established--the one at his right hand and the other at his left. Their request betrayed an almost ludicrous misconception of the nature of the kingdom of which Jesus spoke, but he began to set them right by asking a question which at first did not seem to have much bearing on what they had said. "Tell me this," he replied: "Are you able to drink from my cup and be baptized with my baptism?" When they said, "We are," he replied, "You shall--but even so that will not guarantee you the two chief places for which you ask." When he asked, "Can you drink the cup I drink or be baptized with the baptism I am baptized with?" (Mk 10:38), he meant, simply, "Are you able to share my suffering and death?" In fact, they did not share his suffering and death--not, at least, at the time when he was crucified. If things had turned out otherwise, if the crosses which flanked the cross of Jesus had been occupied not by the two robbers but by James and John, would they not have secured there and then the two positions of chief honor--the one at his right hand and the other at his left? In all subsequent Christian memory this high glory would have been exclusively theirs.
For our present purpose, however, we note that Jesus spoke then of his impending suffering and death as his "baptism," and that supports the suggestion that the baptism to which he looked forward in the saying now under consideration bears the same meaning. If that is so, a further question arises: Why did he speak of his suffering and death as a baptism? He had undergone one baptism at the beginning of his ministry, his baptism in the Jordan. Was there some feature of that baptism, administered by John the Baptist, which lent itself to this figurative use?
John's baptism is said to have been "a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins" (Mk 1:4). That is to say, people who were convicted of sin under John's preaching were invited to give public proof of their repentance by accepting baptism at his hands. Thus their sins would be forgiven and they would be "a people prepared for the Lord" (Lk 1:17), ready for the moment when he would begin to execute his judgment through the agency of a person whom John denoted as the "Coming One." Jesus recognized John's ministry to be a work of God and associated himself with it publicly by asking John to baptize him. True, Jesus at no time betrays any awareness of sin, any sense of repentance, any need for forgiveness. Yet he was never unwilling to associate with sinners; indeed, he was written off by some godly people as a "friend of sinners" (and therefore, by implication, no better than the company he kept). So his association with repentant sinners in receiving John's baptism was in keeping with his later practice.
Even so, some difficulty was felt about Jesus' undergoing a "baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins." Matthew in his account tells how John himself demurred at Jesus' request, saying, "It would be more fitting that I should be baptized by you; why do you come to me?" Jesus' response to John's protest is excellently rendered in the NEB: "Let it be so for the present; we do well to conform in this way with all that God requires" (Mt 3:15). These words are recorded by Matthew only, but they express perfectly the spirit in which Jesus sought and received John's baptism. That this is so is confirmed by his experience when he came up from the river: he saw heaven split in two and the Spirit of God descending on him in the form of a dove, while a voice addressed him from heaven: "You are my Son, whom I love; with you I am well pleased" (Mk 1:10-11). It was as though God said to him, "You dedicate yourself to the doing of my will? You conform in this way with all that I require? I tell you this, then: you are my Son, my chosen one, the one in whom I delight." Jesus' period of testing in the wilderness, which followed immediately after his baptism, reinforced the strength of his commitment to do the will of God without deviation.
But what did this have to do with the baptism to which he looked forward? He could, no doubt, have referred to his death, with the events leading up to it, as his baptism in the sense of a sea of troubles that threatened to overwhelm him. But in the light of the baptism which inaugurated his public ministry, we can see more in his language than that. His baptism in the Jordan gave visible expression to his resolution to fulfill the will of God, and it involved at least a token identification of himself with sinners. The ministry thus inaugurated manifested his constant devotion to the will of God and was marked by unaffected friendship with sinners. His death, which crowned that ministry, consummated his embracing of the will of God as the rule for his life, and it involved a real and personal identification of himself with sinners, on the part of One sinless himself. In this way he embodied the Old Testament picture of the obedient and suffering Servant of the Lord who "bore the sin of many, and made intercession for the transgressors" (Is 53:12).
It is not for nothing that one of the latest New Testament documents voices the Christian confession in these words: "This is the one who came by water and blood--Jesus Christ. He did not come by water only, but by water and blood" (1 Jn 5:6)--or, as we might say, not only with the baptism of water, but with the baptism of water and the baptism of death. The baptism of water, which inaugurated his ministry, was a faint anticipation of the baptism of death, which crowned his ministry.
What, then, was the constraint to which he was subject until he underwent this impending baptism? The answer to this part of our question is closely bound up with the meaning of another of Jesus' hard sayings--that about the kingdom of God coming with power (Mk 9:1). While Jesus was amply endowed with the Spirit of God for the messianic ministry that began at his baptism in the Jordan and continued until his death, his death and resurrection unleashed a power that was previously unparalleled. The limitation of which he was conscious during his ministry was due to the fact that, as it is put in the Fourth Gospel, "Up to that time the Spirit had not been given, since Jesus had not yet been glorified" (Jn 7:39).
I have spoken of Jesus' messianic ministry as lasting from his baptism in the Jordan to his death on the cross, but it would be more accurate to speak of that as the first phase of his ministry. His ministry did not come to an end with his death; he resumed it when he rose again, and continues it until now, no longer in visible presence on earth but by his Spirit in his followers. We should not think of the apostles as taking up the task which Jesus left unfinished at his death; we should think of them rather as called to share in his still very personal ongoing ministry. This is the perspective of the New Testament writers. Luke, for example, opens the second volume of his history of Christian beginnings--the volume we call the Acts of the Apostles--by referring back to the first volume as the record of "all that Jesus began to do and to teach until the day he was taken up" (Acts 1:1-2). The implication is that the new volume is going to tell of what Jesus continued to do and teach from the day in which he was taken up. To the same effect Paul, looking back on the major phase of his apostolic career, speaks of its very considerable achievements as "what Christ has accomplished through me in leading the Gentiles to obey God by what I have said and done--by the power of signs and miracles, through the power of the Spirit" (Rom 15:18-19).
The scale of the Christian achievement within a few years from the death and resurrection of Christ was out of all proportion to that of his personal achievement during his Palestinian ministry. The limitation was removed by the outpouring of the Spirit as the sequel to Christ's saving work. But without the Palestinian ministry, crowned by his death and resurrection, there would have been no such sequel, and the achievement that followed the outpouring of the Spirit was still Christ's personal achievement. He had undergone his baptism of death, and now worked on free of all restraint.
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