The Baptism of Jesus

Edward Irving, a Presbyterian minister in 1830 in London, who many regard as a forerunner of modern Pentecostalism, emphasised the humanity of Christ in a similar way to the Nestorians. He claimed that without the baptism in the Holy Spirit, which he said Jesus received when He was baptized, He could do no miracles nor resist temptation. See Edward Irving's Incarnational Christology by David Dorries.

Pentecostal scholars today often claim that the experience of Jesus at Jordan is a pattern for all Christians. (See Roger Stronstad, The Charismatic Theology of St. Luke.) They claim that all believers need to be filled with the Spirit in a second experience, after being saved and that this filling is to empower them for ministry. This is how they define the term baptism in the Holy Spirit.

However, reading the texts in Luke and John we see quite a different statement of purpose for the Spirit alighting on Jesus like a dove at His water baptism. John, for example, shows how Jesus was the Word with all power well before His baptism, even before birth (John 1).

The reason that Jesus gave why no public miracles were done before His baptism was not that He lacked power, but because His time had not yet come for Him to be revealed (John 2:4). Jesus, as God, could do miracles at any time He pleased. He could have come down off the cross.

The only reason why Jesus did not do miracles at any particular time was because He was submitted to His Father’s programme. His will was in complete subjection to His Father’s will by choice. It was voluntary inability, not a dynamic inability.

At Nazareth He “could” do no miracles because of their unbelief (Matt 13:58). This was not unbelief in miracles, but unbelief in the Son. Because they did not honour the Son, the Father did not lead Christ to show forth His power. This is not inability in terms of lacking power. When He said He could do nothing but by the Spirit, He was not saying that He lacked power. He confessed the opposite, “Before Abraham was I am.” (John 8:58).

Jesus was always filled with the Spirit, because the Spirit proceeds from Him. He did not wait until Jordan to be filled with the Spirit. Jesus is a member of the trinity. There is never a time in which He is not filled with the Godhead. The position of both Roger Stronstrad (referred to above) and Irving seems a little like Nestorianism.

It seems to us that another difficulty with Stronstrad is that in drawing examples for Christians from before Pentecost, he does not acknowledge the distinction between the Old and New Covenants. He claims that Zechariah (John the Baptist’s father) and others in the Old Covenant had the Sprit come upon them, or fill them, for service, which is true.

But saying that a coming on of the Spirit for ministry is a New Testament pattern is comparing apples with oranges. We cannot compare the two covenants. Whereas the Spirit upon was a term used in the Old Covenant for service, in the New Covenant it is used for initial baptism for sonship and service. After that there is a permanent indwelling of the Spirit in believers in the New Covenant.

Jesus ministered in the Old Covenant, fulfilling the law and thereby had the Spirit upon Him in the Old Covenant sense, though He could also have done anything at anytime as the Son of God. So the Spirit anointing Him, after He was about the age 30, could also have been associated with the law and therefore the Father’s time. This is not a New Covenant pattern.