This latter is perhaps the most commonly received theory on the subject. And yet, a more perplexing and unsatisfactory exposition could hardly be devised. According to it Christ’s consecration to the priesthood was a confused imitation of that of Aaron, was partly ritual without meaning, and partly real, and took place, part of it in the beginning of his public ministry, and part at its close, so that until his very death his priesthood was inchoate and incomplete. Upon this explanation, the baptism of Jesus was a mere unmeaning form, in supposed imitation of something in the consecration of Aaron. But Aaron and his consecration and priesthood were, in every part and aspect of them, figures of the true,—of the realities which are in Christ. Aaron’s anointing is admitted to have been a symbol of the real anointing of the Holy Spirit, shed upon Jesus. The sacrifices offered at the consecration of Aaron, although by this theory misconceived, are so far correctly spoken of as that their fulfillment was had in Christ’s one offering of himself. What then could be meant by Aaron’s so called baptism, if its antitype is to be found in the ritual baptism of the Lord Jesus? One rite representing and setting forth another, which is nothing but a defective imitation of the first!
In fact, the washing of Aaron by Moses was not a sacramental baptism at all—a rite, that is, by which blessings of grace are represented and sealed to the recipient. It was as we have already explained a symbolical act setting forth the endowment of the Lord Jesus by the Father with a sinless humanity.
It is not, however, to this washing of Aaron, that reference is usually made by the exponents of this theory. It is said that the priests entered upon their official duties at thirty years of age, and were then set apart by baptism, and that hence Jesus, when “he began to be about thirty years of age,” came to be baptized, and enter upon his official work; and reference is made to Num. iv, 3; viii, 7. But the places thus referred to are directions respecting the Levites, the priest’s servants, and not concerning the priests at all. Moreover, twenty-five years was the ordinary age of entrance upon the Levitical service. (Num. viii, 24.) The age of thirty seems to have been prescribed with reference to the special labor and responsibility incident to the carrying of the tabernacle and its furniture from place to place, during the sojourn in the wilderness. (See the whole of Num. iv.) Upon such slender foundations are theories built. The law set no limitation to the ages of the priests. The rabbins say that they could not enter on the office until twenty years old. But Aristobulus the son of Alexander was high priest when less than seventeen years old.[[75]] On the other hand, while the definition as to the Levites was, “from thirty years old and upward even until fifty years old,”—Eli was high priest when he died at ninety-eight. (1 Sam. iv, 15.)
Christ’s baptism was not his inauguration to the priesthood. His priesthood was neither Aaronic nor earthly. For “if he were on earth, He should not be a priest; seeing that there are priests that offer gifts according to the law; who serve unto the example and shadow of heavenly things.”—Heb. viii, 4, 5. If any part of the ceremonial of Aaron’s investiture was a rule of conformity to Jesus, the whole of it was equally so. But he was made a priest, “not after the law of a carnal commandment, but after the power of an endless life. For he testifieth, Thou art a priest forever after the order of Melchisedec.”—Heb. vii, 16, 17. Christ’s consecration to the priesthood and exercise of its functions belong to that “true tabernacle which the Lord pitched and not man.”—Heb. viii, 2. He was not installed by human hands. “For the law maketh men high priests which have infirmity. But the word of the oath which was since the law, maketh the Son, who is consecrated forevermore.”—Heb. vii, 28.
Dr. Dale understands the Lord Jesus in the above place to mean,—Thus it becomes us, by a united and public act, to announce “my entering upon my covenant work which I now declare, and am ready to begin, ‘to fulfill all righteousness.’” But, in the first place, that was not the time of Jesus’ entering on the work of fulfilling righteousness. Had it been so, it was too late. He was “made of a woman, made under the law.”—Gal. iv, 4, 5. From the hour of his birth, he was fulfilling righteousness,—in the obedience of his childhood, as truly as in the sufferings of the cross. The work on which he entered, after his baptism and anointing by the Spirit, was his prophetic office, in which he announced and offered himself to Israel as her promised King and Savior. So he himself testified in the synagogue in Nazareth. (Luke iv, 18-20.) But this office will not fit into the above exposition. Moreover, it would seem that if any words can express the idea of a thing done as a duty of righteousness those of Jesus do so. Dr. Dale says,—“It can not be claimed that the Lord Jesus was under obligation to undergo this baptism as a part of ‘all righteousness;’ (1) Because there is no righteousness in it; (2) Because what there is in it is just what he did not come to do. He did not come to repent for sinners, nor to exercise faith for sinners.” The latter argument has the fatal fault that it proves too much. Upon the same ground the Lord Jesus should not have been circumcised or purified with his mother. He should not have kept the passover, nor any of the Levitical feasts and ordinances. All these implied and required in others a state of heart and mind and exercises of repentance and faith which were foreign to the holy nature of the Lord Jesus.
But is it so that there was no righteousness to be accomplished by Jesus in complying with John’s baptism? The answer depends wholly upon the response to be made to the question which Jesus proposed to the Pharisees,—“The baptism of John, was it from heaven; or, of men?” If from heaven, it came with the sanction of the first clause of the Sinai covenant,—“If ye will obey;” and was entitled to obedience from every soul. John’s baptism,—Is it necessary to say it?—washed away no sin. Like all ritual baptisms, of the Old Testament and the New, alike, it affected the ritual and outward status, alone, of the party, as toward the church, and the ordinances. Moreover, his ministry was not addressed to the ungodly only. But, if there were any of the people still looking and praying for the Consolation of Israel, they, as much as others, were called upon, as being defiled by the contact of the unclean nation, to receive this baptismal seal of the covenant renewed, and their acceptance in it with God. Pre-eminently was it true of the Lord Jesus, that he was defiled by contact with the sinful nation. To ritual uncleanness, he was as liable as any man, and became thereby subject to the same obligation of ritual purifying, by which others were bound. Jesus, therefore, as a true Israelite, came to John’s baptism, as being an ordinance of divine authority; and in his answer to John indicates the fact that his omission of the duty thus resting on him as “made under the law,” would have derogated from his perfect righteousness.
Nor is this all. John was the herald of Jesus in his distinctive character as “the Angel of the covenant,”—the Mediator of that “better covenant” which was enclosed in the outward form of that of Sinai. (2 Cor. iii, 3-6.) In that better covenant, and Christ as its Surety, all the transactions relating to the Sinai covenant had their significance and end; as they were also the end of John’s ministry. The repentance which he preached was a call to apostate Israel to return from transgression to the obedience required by the covenant, and his baptism was a seal to its promises, upon that indispensable condition of obedience. In coming to John’s baptism, therefore, Jesus formally and publicly came under the bond of the covenant for obedience, and thus presented himself to Israel as her Surety therein. The baptism which he received from John sealed to him its promises on condition of his obedience, and the descending Spirit and the voice from heaven announced the Father’s approval and acceptance of him as Surety for his people, the true Israel of God. It was with a view to this office of Christ as the Messenger and Surety of the covenant, and to his own relation as the herald of Christ in that capacity, that John says, “That he should be made manifest to Israel, therefore am I come baptizing with water;”—John i, 31—that he should be made manifest to Israel, as her covenant Surety and King; as the Lamb of God and King of Israel.
The distinction drawn between “the baptism of John” and “baptism by John,” overlooks the profounder aspects of the subject here indicated. It is true that John’s baptism addressed to sinners a call to repentance, and announced remission, on that condition. But this special form of its message, is no more than the call to obedience, in terms adapted to the particular case of transgressors. And the significance and propriety of the baptism depended upon its own essential meaning as heretofore unfolded. In the Levitical institutions, the ordinary form of the rite had its primary relation, as we have seen, to a ritual uncleanness by contact with the dead, which symbolized the judicial defilement of the Lord Jesus by contact, through birth of a woman, with our dead nature, and his consequent death under the curse. The baptism symbolized the resurrection of Christ, and of his people with him, in the renewing of their souls, and the final quickening and rising of their bodies. Both of these are identified by Paul with the resurrection of Christ. (Eph. ii, 5; and i, 19-ii, 10; Rom. vi, 2-5; viii, 11, etc.) It is by virtue of union with him, by the baptism of his Spirit, bestowed upon and dwelling in us, that we are enabled to “know the power of his resurrection” (Phil. iii, 10), by our own death to sin and life to holiness. This was the signification of John’s baptism. To the Lord Jesus it was a symbol and pledge of his own triumph over the exhausted power of the curse, in his resurrection; and of the deliverance of his people, in him, from the bondage of sin and death, by his Spirit bestowed and dwelling in them. Through this they receive repentance and remission of sins. The same meaning precisely was signified and sealed to the people by their believing reception of the same rite.
Thus, on the one hand, Jesus, as being the Son of man, one of the family of Israel, was as much bound to come to the baptism which, by the authority of God, John dispensed, as he was to obey or observe any part of the law, ritual or moral; as much as was any true son of Israel. On the other hand, by coming and receiving that baptism, he announced himself, the Surety of the covenant which it sealed, and was so certified and accepted by John, by the descending Spirit and by the Father’s voice.