Harmony With God: Mark 1:9-11

It is all for you.  Careful, here.  This isn’t meant as permission to be selfish, self-centered, or thinking more highly of yourself than you ought.  God doesn’t call us to change so we can put ourselves back at the center of our universe.  Doesn’t the center of our universe belong to God?

What does this have to do with Jesus’ baptism?  Well, the baptism of Jesus has always struck me as odd.  John baptized people as a sign of repentance.  Did Jesus need to be forgiven?  Why was He baptized?

Jesus is baptized so we get an opportunity to see God in action.  Jesus is baptized for our sake.  I don’t mean this next part sacrilegiously, but the whole event was very much a show put on for our benefit so we humans could get a clue about what God was doing at that moment.  Jesus’ baptism helps us get on the same page with a mind-blowing God as He implements His mind-blowing plan.

God rips apart the heavens in a great foreshadowing of the temple veil being torn in two so we take notice.  He descends from heaven like a dove so we see His hand at work.  He booms a voice from heaven just so we could wonder what He is up to!  This huge spectacle gives us opportunity to lift our eyes to heaven and realize God is getting ready to move mountains.

This should make sense in the greater scheme.  Didn’t Jesus teach for our sake?  Didn’t Jesus perform miracles so we could see God at work?  Wasn’t the point of the death on the cross for our benefit – to give us access to salvation and eternal life in God?  Didn’t Jesus rise from the dead so we could have proof Jesus was right all along?

Don’t get me wrong.  God is God.  He is righteous regardless of whether we understand it or not.  He is love whether we receive it or not.  He doesn’t need us to understand how great He is.  Rather, He wants us to understand how badly He wants relationship with us.

In the end, it was all for us.  There isn’t anything wrong with seeing His baptism as a moment for our benefit.  Jesus came for our benefit in general: to teach us, to save us, to bring us back to God.

How cool is it that a God who is as powerful and all-knowing as He is did it all for us?  Not only did He do it for us, but He did it as a demonstration of how much He wants to come and be among us.  He doesn’t want to be some far-off God who is worshipped from a distance by people who guess at His character.  He wants to dwell with us and live with us in the mess that we make of His creation.

Yes, it is all for us.  God wants relationship with you.  It is all for you.