Readings for today: Matthew 3, Mark 1:1-11, Luke 3, John 1:15-34
Next week, I am taking a group of people to Israel. We will pack a lot in over the course of about eight days. We’ll see three to four sites a day and we’ll literally walk in the footsteps of Jesus. It promises to be a sacred experience. One of the sites we’ll visit is a place called Yardenit. It’s located on the Jordan River and it’s the traditional site where John the Baptist conducted his ministry. Though the Jordan River is nowhere near as impressive as it used to be due to so much of the water being diverted for agriculture, it’s still powerful to wade out into the middle of the river and be immersed and/or baptized. It’s one of the highlights of every trip.
I love how Eugene Peterson describes John’s ministry in the Message version. “I’m baptizing you here in the river, turning your old life in for a kingdom life. The real action comes next: The main character in this drama—compared to him I’m a mere stagehand—will ignite the kingdom life within you, a fire within you, the Holy Spirit within you, changing you from the inside out. He’s going to clean house—make a clean sweep of your lives. He’ll place everything true in its proper place before God; everything false he’ll put out with the trash to be burned.” (Matthew 3:11-12 MSG) The baptism of John was but a foretaste of the baptism to come. His work was a precursor. A prolegomena. The prelude. The prologue to the real story that was to come. John washed people with water as an outward sign of their desire to be clean. Their desire to exchange their old ways for God’s ways. What John couldn’t do, however, was give them the gift of the Holy Spirit. He simply didn’t have the power to ignite the Kingdom life within them.
Sadly, far too many Christians treat their baptism as if it were from John. They treat it as simply an outward sign or symbol of their desire to be faithful to Jesus. And while this has some merit - just as it did in John’s day - it is not Christian baptism. To be baptized as a Christian is to be baptized by the “main character in the drama” who comes to ignite new life within us. He comes to baptize with fire and the Holy Spirit to purify us from within. He comes to give us a new heart and a new spirit and a new life that can only be lived in and through Him. He comes to clean house. To crucify the old life so that we might be raised to new life with Him. This is why we only baptize once. There is no need to receive the Holy Spirit a second time because you never lose Him after the first time. There is no need to ignite the fire a second time because the fire Jesus ignites in us never goes out. There is no need to be washed clean a second time because the blood of Jesus washes us clean once and for all.
Readings for tomorrow: Matthew 4:1-22, 13:54-58, Mark 1:12-20, 6:1-6, Luke 4:1-30, 5:1-11, John 1:35-51, 2:1-12