Then Jesus came from Galilee to John at the Jordan to be baptized by him.
He had walked a long way from Nazareth to the River Jordan where His cousin was baptizing. He had gone there completely aware that He would be though one with those professing themselves sinners in need of cleansing.
He joined them because it was time now. Jesus had lived in Nazareth as He had grown to mature manhood, working along with His father Joseph in Sepphoris, the capital city of Galilee that Herod Antipas was rebuilding. He had had to walk more than an hour north to work there, alone once His beloved father Joseph had gone.
One day when Jesus came back from Sepphoris, He told His mother what she already knew: It’s time. Then Jesus walked down to the Jordan river—a good week or ten days’ journey—where John was baptizing and declaring that the Messiah is right at hand. He was.
He had come as just another man who needs to be baptized and purified. So now He stands in a line of those who are publicly professing that they are sinful and need cleansing. He goes down into the river in the line of sinners and John looks at Him, puzzled. You?
John knows that his Cousin is not just another man. No: He is marked by God and He is the One sent, the One to come. John had already had to fight off the mistaken public option that he was the One to come. I’m not even worthy to carry his sandals (Matt.3:11).
John knew significant things about his Cousin and now he’s going to cleanse Him? John did not want to do it. I ought to be baptized by you, and here you are asking me to baptize you? Jesus is not going to discuss this: Let it be now—it’s right to fulfill all righteousness.
John’s whose life of penitence showed that he knew that he need cleansing. So Jesus says, all righteousness and He stands with the whole of us who need to be purified. John sees that his Cousin has chosen to be one of sinful humankind and will not exempt Himself from anything from dungy sandals to oily hair, and John now knows that His Cousin is to be sunk into the baptizing waters.
Jesus came up from the waters and something happened that neither of them caused or even asked for. It happens to all of us that sometimes, Heaven moves in a way we did not anticipate and have to catch our breath and accept. Here, the heavens were opened, and the Spirit of God descended like a dove on Him.
John could not have mistaken Whose voice it was: This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased (Mt. 3:13-17).
Jesus’ experience of the Father’s justice is for us, if we understand. It shows us that Almighty God’s justice is not fierce and humiliating, it does not smack sinners with power and it measures not in anger, with laws and penalties, but with love, mercy, and forgiveness.
His justice breaks down walls between us, gathering us and binding us together with His love. His justice is infinitely deeper than human justice: God does not doll out grace, measuring what we deserve, cup by cup. Instead, the divine justice measuring stick is love, mercy, and forgiveness, and that divine measuring stick heals hearts wounded by sin from within where evil intentions are born, now cleansed. (Mk. 7:1-23). All of this has been true in God from the very beginning. God looked at everything he had made, and found it very good (Gn. 1:31). God has not changed: so when He came, even soaked among sinners, Jesus found everything very good. Think about that.