Joel Russell-MacLean

Jesus was baptized for our salvation and redemption. John tried to prevent Jesus but Jesus asked him to allow it. John objected because he was washing people who had repented of being at odds with God. But Jesus was right with God. 

This brief conflict between John and Jesus demonstrates that Jesus understood baptism to be more than an object lesson, more than washing away impurity, and more than a divine bureautic hoop that we “have to do”.

In Jesus’ own words, baptism is part of how humans live life if they are seeking to live right with God and with others in the fullest way possible. Jesus argued that his physical body had to be immersed in our material world, in our planet’s water. It was also a decidedly spiritual event: heaven became visible, God spoke audibly, and the Spirit was visible as a dove. In Jesus’ baptism, we are given a glimpse of the union between heaven and earth, the spiritual and the physical. 

Baptism matters. How we live matters. How we treat our bodies matters. How we treat water matters! All of this is caught up in God’s salvation.