The Feast of the Baptism of the Lord is not about Christ being set free from sin, for He is sinless, but about Him setting us free. This moment reveals Him as the promised Messiah of God and marks the beginning of His saving mission.

The prophet Isaiah announces to the people of Israel that the Messiah is coming to liberate them. He is the Chosen One, the Anointed, sent from heaven by the Father. He is the Messiah. “God so loved the world that He gave His only-begotten Son.” The Spirit of the Lord rests upon Him because He has been anointed. At the Jordan, the Father fills the human nature of His Son with the Holy Spirit. What has been true from all eternity is now revealed in time: Jesus is the Anointed One, sent for the salvation of the world.

Because Christ’s baptism is not about the forgiveness of His own sins, it points instead to the Cross. Our Lord submits to a baptism of suffering. His public mission begins here, and that mission leads Him to Calvary. He Himself makes this clear when James and John ask to share in His glory. “You do not know what you are asking. Can you drink the cup that I drink, or be baptized with the baptism with which I am baptized?” The baptism in the Jordan already foreshadows the baptism of blood He will undergo on the Cross.

The Gospel reveals why Christ embraces this suffering. He does so in order to undo the devastation caused by the sin of our first parents. Their disobedience closed the gates of heaven, but Christ’s obedience opens them once again. This is prefigured in His baptism, for when He comes up out of the water, the heavens are opened. The Spirit descends to strengthen His human nature, and the Father speaks in solemn confirmation: “This is My beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased.” The Father is pleased with the perfect obedience and sacrifice of His Son, for Christ alone offers the acceptable sacrifice that reconciles the human race to God.

Our Lord submits to baptism as a sign of His total obedience to the Father’s will. Soon He will be baptized in the blood of the Cross. By His baptism in the waters of the Jordan, He sanctifies the waters so that we might be freed from the ancient curse of sin and given the hope of eternal life in the Kingdom of God.