Mark 1:9 Commentary and Bible Study

Malachi was the last of the Old Testament prophets. For four hundred years, during the intertestamental period after Malachi, God had sent them no prophet. They had no new revelation, no signs, no wonders, and now some of the people are longing for the power of God to return and for the promised Messiah to come. The people are waiting, and the faithful minority of true believers are pining and longing for Christ. The nation has been touched by the sensational ministry of John the Baptist, and then – just catch the drama of it – ‘And it came to pass in those days, that Jesus came from Nazareth of Galilee, and was baptized of John in Jordan.’ The baptism of Christ was his first public appearance. Why was Christ baptised? A baptism of repentance? He needed no repentance. He was the perfect, holy Son of God. Why then? He was baptised to sanctify or dedicate his life to obedience of the Father. He had humbled himself, and become a man to be our representative, to live a life of perfect obedience on our behalf. To him, baptism was an act of obedience to his Father. It is an act of obedience for us too. He was baptised because he was conscious that in all things he was to be the representative of the people he would save. ‘I haven’t come for myself,’ he says. ‘I have no sin but I have come to have put upon me the sin of all those who will be saved. I now identify with them. I place myself with sinners. I am not a sinner, [he was perfect] but as their representative, I place myself with the sinners and I shall be publicly baptised.’ That is the reason he identified with us. It is to acknowledge the judgment due to the people for whom he would die as their representative. Everything he requires of us he has done himself. He requires us to be baptised, and to make our profession for him, and he succumbed to that himself. We follow the Lamb of God through those waters of baptism. He pictured his death and resurrection. He would die, he would rise from the dead and he pictures that in his baptism.Matthew records that John didn't want to baptise him. ‘How can I do this to you?’, but he insisted. John, of course, obeyed. Mark is being brief. He is writing a tract. He doesn't tell us some of the details. But Christ was baptised to endorse the message of conversion and to be our pattern. What an amazing thing for John the Baptist! This was the privilege of his life! He preached to the crowds; people had responded to him. He had organised baptisms in their thousands and tens of thousands, and now, behold, the Lamb of God, the Son of God is here. He is revealed. ‘I have to baptise him? I cannot do that,’ says John, ‘this is impossible. I should be baptised by him!’ But the Lord, we read in other Gospels, insisted that he was baptised by John.