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PotOnWheel
Registered Member
Date Joined Jul 2001
Total Posts : 9890
| Posted 9/17/2007 11:42 AM (GMT -6) |   | |
Why was Jesus Baptized?
http://pastorzip.blogspot.com/2007_01_01_archive.html
Then I read this from Cyril of Alexandria (375-444):
But how then, they object, was he baptized and received the Spirit? We reply that he had no need of holy baptism. He was wholly pure and spotless, and the holiest of the holy. He did not need the Holy Spirit, for the Spirit that proceeds from God the Father is from him and equal to him in substance. Now, at last, we must explain God's plan of salvation. God, in his love of humankind, provided for us a way of salvation and of life. Believing in the Father, Son and Holy Spirit, and making this confession before many witnesses, we wash away all the filth of sin. The communication of the Holy Spirit enriched us, made us partakers of the divine nature and gained for us the grace of adoption as God's children. It was necessary, therefore, that the Word of the Father become for our sakes the pattern and way of every good work when he humbled himself to emptiness and deigned to assume our likeness. For it follows that he who is first in everything must set the example in this too. He commences the work himself in order that we may learn about the power of holy baptism and learn how much we gain by approaching so great a grace. Having been baptized, he prays that you, my beloved, may learn that never-ceasing prayer is a thing most fitting for those who have one been counted worthy of holy baptism.
From Cyril's "Commentary of Luke, Homily 11, as found in The Ancient Christian Commentary on Scripture, OT III: Luke (pp. 66-67).
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Starkman
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Date Joined Oct 2001
Total Posts : 1747
| Posted 9/19/2007 10:54 AM (GMT -6) | | When Jesus said that one must be "born again" (literally born from above), the commencement of that event is in the Spirit coming upon someone; the salvation experience; being born from "above" and not from "below" (this earth and its ways).
When Jesus was baptized in the Spirit, the commencement of His ministry is able to then take place; for He had done things according to the manner in which God required: be born from the sphere of the above. It isn't that Jesus was neither the Son of God nor born from above before He was baptized with the Spirit, but Jesus was the One to set the course, pave the way, and initiate His Headship by demonstrating the process by which man would be able to come into harmony with God.
We may object to the idea that Jesus was "born again," but we do so only because we fail to realize what it means to be born again; to be born from above, born anew. Did not Jesus say that He was from above (Jn 8:23)? Was not Jesus born not from our sphere of sin but from the sphere of purity, perfection and unbroken relationship with the Father? We must experience a re-birth, but Jesus, however, was already in that precious state of harmony with the Father.
Hence, Jesus' baptism could neither add nor take away from whom and what Jesus was while He dwelt with us as a man. His baptisim did, however, confirm the qualification of His position; the One who could author our salvation and captain His host unto unbroken fellowship with the Father. Jesus' baptism, then, is the most intimate manner of Jesus presenting Himself to the Father and of the Father presenting Jesus to us.
Starkman
Post Edited (Starkman) : 9/19/2007 1:26:07 PM (GMT-5) | | Back to Top | | |
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PotOnWheel
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Date Joined Jul 2001
Total Posts : 9890
| Posted 9/19/2007 1:13 PM (GMT -6) | | | | |
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