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Mat_3:13. Τότε ] at that time, when John thus preached the advent of the Messiah, and baptized the people, Mat_3:1-12.
ἀπὸ τ . Γαλιλ .] See Mat_2:23. It belongs to παραγ . The position is different in Mat_2:1.
τοῦ βαπτισθ . ὑπʼ αὐτοῦ ] Jesus wished to be baptized by John (genitive, as in Mat_2:13), but not in the personal feeling of sinfulness (B. Bauer, Strauss, Pécaut), or as the bearer of the guilt of others (Riggenbach, Krafft); not even because He, through His connection of responsibility with the unclean people, was unclean according to the Levitical law (Lange), or because He believed that He was obliged to regard the collective guilt of the nation as His guilt (Schenkel); just as little in order to separate Himself inwardly from the sins of the nation (Baumgarten), or make it certain that His σὰρξ ἀσθενείας should not be opposed to the life of the Spirit (Hofrnann, Weissag. und Erfüll. II. p. 82), or because the meaning of the baptism is: the declaration that He is subjected to death for the human race (Ebrard); not even to bring in here the divine decision as to His Messiahship (Paulus), or to lay the foundation for the faith of others in Him, so far as baptism is a symbol of the regeneration of those who confess Him (Ammon, L. J. I. p. 268), or in order to honour the baptism of John by His example (Calvin, Kuinoel, Keim), or to bind Himself to the observance of the law (Hofmann, Krabbe, Osiander); or because He had to conduct Himself, before the descent of the Spirit, merely as an Israelite in general. The opinion also of Schleiermacher, that the baptism of Jesus was the symbolical beginning of His announcement of Himself, and, at the same time, a recognition of John’s mission, is foreign to the text. The true meaning appears from Mat_3:15, namely, because Jesus was consciously certain that He must, agreeably to God’s will, subject Himself to the baptism of His forerunner, in order (Mat_3:16-17) to receive the Messianic consecration; that is, the divine declaration that He was the Messiah ( ἵνα ἀναδειχθῇ τῷ λαῷ , Euth. Zigabenus), and thereby to belong from that moment solely and entirely to this great vocation. The Messianic consciousness is not to be regarded as first commencing in Him at the baptism, so that He would be inwardly born, by means of baptism, to be the Messiah, and would become conscious of His divine destination, to full purification and regeneration as the new duty of His life; but the πρέπον ἐστὶν ἡμῖν , Mat_3:15, presupposes a clear certainty regarding His vocation; and John’s relation to the same, as in general the existence of that consciousness, must have been the necessary result of His own consciousness, which had attained the maturity of human development, that He was the Son of God. But that baptism, to which He felt certain that He must submit Himself, was to be for Him the divine ordination to the Messiahship. It is clear, according to this, that His baptism was quite different from that of others, so far as in Him, as a sinless being, there could be no confession of sin; but the lustrative character of the baptism could only have the meaning, that from that moment He was taken away from all His previous relations of life which belonged to the earthly sphere, and became, altogether and exclusively, the Holy One of God, whom the Father consecrated by the Spirit. Although He was this God-sanctified One from the beginning, yet now, as He was aware that this was the will of God, He has, by the assumption of baptism, solemnly bound and devoted Himself to the full execution of His unique destiny,—a devotion which was already more than a vow (Keim), because it was the actual entrance into the Messianic path of life, which was to receive at the very threshold its divine legitimation for all future time. In so doing, He could, without any consciousness of guilt (Mat_11:29), associate Himself, in all humility (Mat_11:29), with the multitude of those whom the feeling of guilt impelled to baptism; because in His own consciousness there was still the negation of absolute moral goodness, to which He, long afterwards, expressly gave so decided expression (Mat_19:17).