The New Adam

Feast of the Baptism of the Lord Year C

The story of the baptism of the Lord is found in all four gospels with tiny but significant differences. In the Fourth Gospel, the account is reported speech or a hear say account by St John the Baptist, whereas Matthew, Mark and Luke record this event directly as if they had witnessed it or received the testimony of other witnesses. But in all three Synoptic gospels, we see both similarities and differences in the basic order. Matthew, Mark, and Luke all follow the same basic order of events: the appearance of St John the Baptist and an introduction to his ministry followed by the Baptism of the Lord.

Although both Matthew and Mark record that the Lord is baptised by John, Luke remains silent on this. We can only assume as the reader and from comparing this text with the other parallel texts, that our Lord was baptised by John. But this omission may in fact be deliberate. In fact, Luke may have wanted to emphasise that Jesus baptised Himself since no one was worthy to do so: “Jesus after his own baptism.” Unlike us who are adopted children of God through baptism, that is being baptised by another person, Jesus who is already the Son of God by nature had no need of such elevation or coronation. In Matthew and Mark, immediately after hearing the voice of the Father, Jesus is led by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted.

But Luke uniquely breaks the flow by offering us Jesus’ genealogy between the baptism and the temptation. This is a curious placement for a genealogy, and at first pass, it might seem to interrupt the flow of Luke’s narrative. We might expect Luke to place the genealogy at the beginning of his Gospel (such as we find in Matthew), or perhaps at the end of Luke chapter 1, right before Jesus’ birth. Yet Luke strategically places it here, just after our Lord’s baptism and prior to the episode on how the Lord endured temptations in the wilderness.

The key to understanding the placement of the genealogy is found within the genealogy itself. Unlike Luke, Matthew’s gospel is written to the Jewish community. As such, Matthew’s genealogy (presumably following Joseph’s line) links Jesus to King David, the greatest of the Jewish Kings, and then to Abraham, the father of the Jewish people. And there Matthew’s genealogy stops. But Luke’s gospel is written to a non-Jewish audience, and his genealogy does not focus on Jesus’ relation to Abraham. Instead, Luke (presumably following Mary’s line) traces Jesus all the way back to Adam, and then ultimately to God.

Matthew’s genealogy presents Jesus as the second David, a son of Abraham. Luke’s genealogy presents Jesus as the second Adam, a son of God. This should not come as a surprise to any reader of the Gospel of St Luke, as the angel had already announced to Mary at the Annunciation: “He will be great and will be called Son of the Most High.” But what is more surprising, unlike Matthew, Luke begins his genealogy with Jesus who is described as the Son of God and then traces it back to Adam, another son of God. In fact, the last name in the genealogy is not even Adam, it is God: “Adam, the son of God.” That this genealogy terminates with God Himself is a feature unparalleled in the ancient world, including the Old Testament. Having begun his genealogy with Jesus instead of Adam, Luke wishes to emphasise that Jesus’ identity had no need of validation by tracing his lineage back to Adam. On the contrary, it is Adam who is being validated and confirmed by his ancestor, Jesus, the Son of Mary and the only begotten and Beloved Son of God.

And thus, Luke offers us the genealogy — linking Jesus to Adam, and ultimately to God — as a means of introducing Jesus’ temptation. With the placement and nature of his genealogy, Luke intends us to see Jesus’ wilderness temptation as a recapitulation of Adam’s garden temptation. It is Jesus — the descendent of Adam and the Son of God — who will overthrow the devil. Where Adam failed the test, Jesus will endure Satan’s temptations and remain faithful to the Father. Where the first Adam failed, the Second Adam would succeed.

So, what our Lord accomplished by nature, we enjoy through the grace, especially the grace of baptism. Most people often believe that baptism serves as a means of washing away our sins. It does. Others believe that it is a rite of passage which incorporates us into the “club,” the Church. That too happens. But most importantly, baptism incorporates us into the life of Christ. We follow Him into the waters of baptism to partake of His death and to die to our old selves but we also rise from the waters of baptism as a new creation, a Christian, in other words, a little Christ, as we now share in the graces of His resurrection. We cast aside our fallen nature which we inherited from the old Adam so that we may now be adorned with Christ, the new Adam, and because of this ontological or substantial change in us, we have now become sons and daughters of God. As the Catechism teaches: “Baptism not only purifies from all sins, but also makes the neophyte "a new creature," an adopted son of God, who has become a "partaker of the divine nature,” member of Christ and coheir with him, and a temple of the Holy Spirit” (CCC 1265).

Herein lies the deepest mysteries of the Sacraments instituted by Christ for our salvation and growth in holiness. The Sacraments are not just “things” that we do, archaic ceremonies that are performed to appease God. Our Lord Jesus did not come into the world merely to do things for us, but rather He came to open up through His humanity a way to participate in His divinity, to graft ourselves into His very life. So, today as we celebrate the Feast of the Baptism of our Lord, let us remember with ever greater certitude that the heavenly voice that spoke “my Beloved” that day was referring no less to us than to Christ, that it applies in equal measure and with equal intensity to all of you who have been incorporated into Him “through the bath of rebirth.”