#DailyDevotion Jesus Baptizes With The Holy Spirit As He Was Baptized

Mark 1⁷He preached: “The One Who is mightier than I is coming after me. I’m not good enough to bend down and untie His shoe straps.⁸ I have baptized you with water. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit.”

Well no doubt the One Who is mightier than John is coming after him. After all, John is preparing the way for the LORD. It is the way of the LORD John is preparing. The LORD here is the Old Testament Yahweh LORD. That is who is coming after John. Does John realize this? It seems on good days he does and maybe on some bad days, not so much. John does seem to realize at this time it is the LORD incarnate following him. The One is also the son of David promised to come. He is the Blessed Seed of Abraham. This One is Jesus Christ of Nazareth.

John can see him with prophetic vision but as far as we know, he hasn’t seen Jesus yet even though they are cousins. He doesn’t know until Jesus comes to be baptized by him and he sees the dove descend upon him, that Jesus is the One. Though in Matthew’s Gospel it does seem just before he baptizes Jesus he has some clue, when John tells Jesus he needs to be baptized by him. In John’s Gospel, the Baptist says he didn’t know who Jesus was until he saw the dove descend upon him because a voice told him the one the dove descends upon is the One.

If Jesus is the LORD in the flesh, indeed, John is not good enough to bend down and untie his shoe straps. Who is? Yet there will be Roman soldiers who undress Jesus and nail him to the cross. Who would have thought they were worthy? But they were not. They didn’t know what they were doing or who they were doing it to. Just another Jewish rebel as far as they knew. But Jesus was their Maker and Redeemer.

Now John was baptizing with water.  He was baptizing with water for the forgiveness of sins. People were repenting. They are either gaining faith in the LORD or regaining their faith in the LORD. Some were perhaps strengthening their faith in the LORD as they confessed their sins and received baptism. It should be noted this baptism forgave sins. But John says Jesus will baptize with the Holy Spirit. Now this baptism with the Holy Spirit did not come about till Pentecost. Jesus, well at least his disciples baptized people. But they did not receive the outpouring of the Holy Spirit until Pentecost or after that even. Now certainly all of Jesus’ disciples were baptized, mostly by John, then by one another probably. We actually never hear or see Jesus directly baptize someone. That shouldn’t bother us because he still uses his disciples to baptize people to this day.

At Pentecost, Jesus poured forth the Holy Spirit upon the chosen apostles in visible manner. He would later pour out the Holy Spirit upon the Samaritans and then the Gentiles in like manner, showing forth the Holy Spirit is for all nations. Yet it is the normal thing for Jesus to baptize us with the Holy Spirit when he baptizes us with water with the hands of his disciples today. In this the Holy Spirit is not only with us but in us and we are His temples.

Almighty God and Father, you sent your son Jesus Christ, the LORD, to baptize us with your Holy Spirit that we may be your people and your temple. May this baptism of the water and the Spirit give us comfort and strength for every day  of our lives. In Jesus’ name we pray. Amen.