In My Place, Part 4: How Far?

Part 1: Origins | Part 2: What It Takes | Part 3: Why?

I’m going to appear to be changing the subject in this post, but the connection will be clear soon enough.

We all know the story of Jesus’ baptism. He comes to the spot on the Jordan River where John is baptizing. John is puzzled; he is preaching a baptism of repentance, and scores of people are being baptized, repenting of their sins. When John sees Jesus approaching, he says, “You ought to be baptizing me! Why are you coming to me for baptism?” (Mt 3.14).

Jesus replies, in essence, “I want you to go along with what I’m doing; this is appropriate to fulfill all righteousness” (Mt 3.15).

Now, what can that possibly mean? How is Jesus “fulfilling all righteousness” by undergoing a baptism of repentance? Especially if he has nothing for which he needs to repent?

I wonder—and I’m being tentative here—I wonder whether this is part of his larger work of representing us—of coming to earth as a man, living among us, and accomplishing for us what we could not accomplish for ourselves.

You know, I repented of my sin decades ago, and I meant it at the time. But then a funny thing happened: I kept on sinning, even though I had repented. Sixty years later, I still sin.

And I’m not the only one in that boat, am I? Isn’t that the experience of every Christian?

We repent, and we mean it. But somehow the sin doesn’t go away. Repeatedly throughout our lives, we yield to sin, despite our best intentions. We go back on our repentance.

We can’t even repent right. We’re really, really lousy at repenting.

So back to my question. Why would Jesus undergo a baptism of repentance, one that he really didn’t need, in order “to fulfill all righteousness”?

Could it be that this is part of his larger plan to be righteous in our place? Could it be that just as he will eventually die for us, he undergoes a baptism of repentance for us? That he repents perfectly in our place, because we are incapable of repenting perfectly for ourselves?

I don’t know whether that’s what he meant by his words to John. But if it was, it would fit perfectly with the larger scope of his earthly ministry.

• Christ undergoes a baptism of repentance, committing himself perfectly to live free from sin, and that repentance becomes ours when we repent, imperfectly as we do.
• Christ lives a perfect life, fulfilling the Law completely at every moment, and his righteousness is credited to our account (2Co 5.21).
• Christ dies an infinite death, experiencing in a few hours the intensely infinite wrath of God, and his death pays fully the infinite debt we owe (He 9.26).

As Adam, our first father, bequeathed his sinfulness to all of his descendants, even to us, thousands of years later (Ro 5.12, 19), even so Christ, the second Adam, bequeathed his perfect repentance and his perfect sinlessness and his infinitely perfect death to us, taking our place.

Every child in Sunday school learns that “Jesus died for my sins.” And while Jesus’ payment of our penalty is delightful news for anyone a gazillion dollars in debt, the simple truth is that at that moment we’re still broke; our spiritual net worth is zero. That’s a lot better than negative gazillion, but it’s still zero.

But then Jesus’ infinite bank account of righteousness, earned through a life of perfect obedience to the Father, is credited to our account, and we go from broke to infinitely wealthy in an instant.

And despite the imperfection of our repentance, and our consequent ongoing struggle with sin, we find that because we are in Christ, the Father sees his Son when he looks at us.

And in his Son he is well, well pleased.

In our place, from beginning to end.

Photo by James on Unsplash