Matthew 3 — Fulfill All Righteousness

A voice in the wilderness (3:1–6)

Matthew jumps some thirty years in a single breath — from the child in Nazareth to a grown man in the desert — and the man is not Jesus but his herald. "In those days John the Baptizer came, preaching in the wilderness of Judea, saying, 'Repent, for the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand.'" Everything about John says old prophet returned: the camel's hair and leather belt are Elijah's very wardrobe (2 Kings 1:8), the wilderness is where Israel first met God, and his one-word summons — repent — is the note the prophets always struck. Matthew names him from Isaiah: "the voice of one crying in the wilderness, 'Prepare the way of the Lord'" (Isaiah 40:3). John is the road crew before the King, and the road he builds runs through the human heart.

And the road-work is repentance — in Greek metanoia, a change of mind so deep it turns the whole life around. This is no small ritual; crowds stream out from Jerusalem and all Judea, and they are "baptized by him in the Jordan, confessing their sins." Picture it: a whole people wading into a river to say out loud that they had gone wrong and needed washing. The way is being prepared not by tidying the outside of the nation but by breaking open its conscience.

Fruit, not pedigree (3:7–12)

Then John sees the religious professionals arriving — Pharisees and Sadducees — and his welcome is a slap: "You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come? Bear fruit worthy of repentance." He goes straight for the sin under their religion — presumption: "Do not presume to say to yourselves, 'We have Abraham as our father,' for I tell you, God is able from these stones to raise up children for Abraham." Being born into the right family, holding the right membership, knowing the right words — none of it counts as repentance. God is not impressed by our pedigree; he can make children of Abraham out of the gravel at the river's edge. And the hour is late: "Even now the axe is laid to the root of the trees; every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire."

But John's deepest word is the one that points past himself. "I baptize you with water for repentance, but he who is coming after me is mightier than I, whose sandals I am not worthy to carry. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and with fire." John knows exactly how small he is beside the One he announces — not fit to do a slave's job for him. His whole greatness is that he points away from himself. He can wash the outside with water; only the Coming One can drench a life in the Spirit, sifting it like a farmer with his winnowing fork, gathering wheat and burning chaff. The forerunner's last act is to step aside.

The sinless One in the sinners' river (3:13–15)

And then the One he pointed to walks down to the water. "Then Jesus came from Galilee to the Jordan to John, to be baptized by him." It stops John cold. This was a baptism for the confession of sins — and Jesus had none to confess. "I need to be baptized by you," John protests, "and do you come to me?" Everything in John recoils at the reversal: the sinless Messiah stepping into a rite made for sinners, asking the herald to baptize the King.

Jesus' answer is the hinge of the chapter: "Let it be so now, for thus it is fitting for us to fulfill all righteousness." Calvin weighed why the sinless Son would seek a sinner's baptism and gave two reasons: "The general reason why Christ received baptism was, that he might render full obedience to the Father; and the special reason was, that he might consecrate baptism in his own body, that we might have it in common with him."^* There is the gospel already, at the very threshold of his ministry. Jesus does not stand apart from the confessing crowd; he wades in among them and takes his place in the sinners' line — not because he shares their guilt but because he has come to bear it. His first public act is an act of identification: he steps into our water, so that one day we may step into his righteousness. The baptism at the Jordan and the baptism he later called his death (Luke 12:50) are the same movement — the Righteous One standing where the unrighteous stand, to fulfill all righteousness on their behalf.

Heaven torn open (3:16–17)

"And when Jesus was baptized, immediately he went up from the water, and behold, the heavens were opened to him, and he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove and coming to rest on him; and behold, a voice from heaven said, 'This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased.'" In one moment the whole Trinity is unveiled at the river: the Son standing in the water, the Spirit descending as a dove, the Father speaking from heaven. The ancient church rightly called this the Theophany — the showing of God.

Notice why the Spirit comes as a dove and not, say, as fire. Calvin caught the tenderness of it: because of the "mildness of Christ, by which he kindly and gently calls sinners to the hope of salvation, the Holy Spirit descended upon him in the appearance of a dove," so "that we may not fear to approach to Christ, who meets us, not in the formidable power of the Spirit, but clothed with gentle and lovely grace."^* The King who has come with an axe and a winnowing fork comes also with a dove.

And hear when the Father speaks his approval. "This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased" — spoken before Jesus has preached a sermon, healed a leper, or faced the cross. The words fuse two Scriptures: "You are my Son" (Psalm 2:7), the royal enthronement of the King, and "my chosen, in whom my soul delights" (Isaiah 42:1), the gentle Servant who will be led to slaughter.^* King and Servant, in one beloved Son — and the love is declared at the outset, as gift, not as wages. The Father is not pleased because Jesus has achieved; he is pleased in his beloved Son, and the achievements will flow out of that settled love.

Two things at the Jordan are the whole gospel in seed. First, the sinless One steps into the sinners' place — "to fulfill all righteousness" — and everything from here runs toward the cross, where he will stand in that place completely, "made… to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God" (2 Corinthians 5:21). Second, the word the Father speaks over Jesus is the word he longs to speak over us — beloved… well pleased — and by union with the Son who took our place in the water, it becomes ours. We spend our lives trying to earn a verdict that Jesus receives here as a gift and then hands to us: not "well done, therefore beloved," but "beloved," and out of that, at last, a life that pleases God. The Righteous One got into our river so that we could hear, over our own heads, the words first spoken over his.

:::pastor An illustration. Watch the order at the Jordan: the Father calls Jesus "beloved" and "well pleased" before the first sermon, the first miracle, the first anything. We almost always run it the other way — perform, achieve, and then, maybe, feel approved. The gospel reverses the sequence. In Christ the approval comes first, freely, and the obedient life grows out of it rather than earning it. We do not work in order to be loved; we are loved, and so we work. A great deal of exhausted, anxious religion would quiet down if we heard the voice at the Jordan speaking, in Christ, over us.

From history. The baptism of Jesus is one of the earliest events the whole Christian church celebrated, and the Eastern churches still keep it as Theophany — "the manifestation of God" — on January 6, because it is the first scene in the New Testament where Father, Son, and Spirit are all revealed together in a single moment: the Son in the water, the Spirit as a dove, the Father's voice from heaven. The doctrine of the Trinity is not a later invention pasted onto the Bible; it stands, fully visible, at the riverside on the day Jesus began. source

Worth quoting. "Manifest at Jordan's stream, Prophet, Priest, and King supreme; and at Cana wedding-guest in thy Godhead manifest." — Christopher Wordsworth, "Songs of Thankfulness and Praise" :::