Yonsei University Church (230108)

Son of God Was Baptized!

Matthew 3:13-17

In the new year, many people make new plans and dream of a new future. In fact, every day is a series of days, but humans set the time and time to give a different reason for existence and find a reason to start over. Today, quantum mechanics explains the flow of time differently than we feel it. The concept of time pointed by the clock's second hand is 'collapsed'. Time doesn't flow or point in one direction, it's just vague and blurry, with no attendants.

The Bible often talks about time. It testifies that the Creator of the universe is God and that time has a beginning and an end, which is a relative concept of God's eternity. Man is, as Heidegger put it, 'a being in time', but the Bible implies that man can live against time or transcend the constraints of space. It is not superstition or science, but faith. Perhaps the mysteries of the Christian faith reflect today's cutting-edge quantum mechanics.

It is today like yesterday and tomorrow is just like today. The reason why today is different from yesterday and tomorrow is different from today is not just because of the flow of time, but because of participation in eternity, that is, faith. It is not explained by science, but it is possible in the whole faith in the triune God who created the universe and time. Christians always live beyond time in faith. No. He gets a reason to live beyond time. Today's text shows why.

The text we read together today contains a mysterious scene. According to scholars, it was in the Jordan River near Bethany that Jesus was baptized by John the Baptist. John the Baptist, who called people to repentance in the Jordan River and proclaimed that the Messiah would come as the prophets had said, lived in the wilderness and baptized people with water to repent. And they proclaimed that when Christ comes, he will baptize with the Holy Spirit and with fire.

When the Lord finally comes to John, he stubbornly refuses to baptize the Lord. He did not dare to baptize the Messiah. Then the Lord's answer is very meaningful. He says it is right to do so “to fulfill all righteousness.” In the Bible, 'righteousness', the Greek word 'dikaioshin', shows examples of fairness and justification. It appears in the Sermon on the Mount that this blessing is said. There is also a verse in 6:33, “Seek first his kingdom and his righteousness.”

In Romans 3:17, which is known to have been the driving force of the Reformation, “Righteousness” also appears as a key concept in the phrase, “In the gospel the righteousness of God is revealed, from faith to faith, but the righteous will live by faith.” All of them are related to a thorough faith in God alone. So, wanting to be baptized by John the Baptist is essentially not the Lord's own will or something that is bound by human time, but something that happened within God's eternal plan and will of salvation. It belonged to God's time.

We must pay attention to John the Baptist with the Lord in this amazing scene. Around AD 26, at the time of the replacement of the governor of Judea from Gratus to Pilate, the Israelites desperately wanted this period of intolerable political trouble to end. So, many people went to the wilderness to listen to the prophecies of pious people such as the Essenes or the Qumran community, eager for the coming of the Messiah, and scholars believe that John the Baptist was one of those who did such activities.

According to the report in Luke 1, the birth of John the Baptist was also unusual. Zechariah and his wife Elizabeth, who were of childbearing age, not only were notified by an angel of John's birth, but also knew beforehand that Mary had conceived. The birth of John and the birth of the Messiah were both present events that transcended the passage of time, the old future in which God's covenant would be realized, as the prophets had already predicted.

John the Baptist may have recognized the Lord at once, but according to Luke 7, John sent his disciples to ask Jesus if Jesus was the promised Messiah, so John had no doubt that Jesus was There are many conjectures about whether or not he accepted Christ. However, if we rely only on today's text, we can see that John had clear faith in God's promise, and recognized the one who came as the Messiah among many who came out to be baptized.

His discernment came entirely from his trust in God. The message he exclaimed, “Repent, Heaven is at hand,” had implications not just for personal religious decisions, but also for the political situation at the time. It was not the power of the empire that ruled the world, but the promise of salvation of God the Creator, who created and saved the world, was the proclamation that a new world would be opened. King Herod, the Pharisees, and the scribes, who enjoyed political authority at the time, hated John the Baptist, and eventually they murdered him later.

He never made a claim for political purposes, but his repentance was bound to have political implications. The Messiah that John the Baptist has been waiting for is the one who will lead us to complete freedom and liberation beyond the limitations of time and space. At the same time, the gospel he would proclaim would cause “the liberation of all things (Colossians 1:20), which had been redeemed by human sins and desires within the limits of time and space. The faith of John the Baptist was never confined to human authority and time and space. So he could recognize the Lord walking towards him. If we want to meet the Lord, we too, like John, need the courage to live in eternity beyond the time and space of our desires. Even if it brings revolutions and reforms and lightning and thunder to the world in which we live, we need not fear. Because the one we met is Christ.

Now, we must pay attention to the fellowship of the Trinity God revealed in today's text. We confess God as the Trinity. We confess that the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit have been together since the creation of the heavens and the earth, and have been together in the event of the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus Christ, and from today to eternity, the triune God works together and shares fellowship. Scholars have found traces of the triune God in the Bible and formed so-called orthodox theology.

Our confession of God as the triune God does not merely have a doctrinal meaning. It is most important that God's personal fellowship is an example of the fellowship we share. And it goes beyond doctrine and has a decisive impact on the way of life that those who believe in God must endure. Those who deny the triune God will become heretics, and those who do not follow the relationship of the triune God will live as false believers.

I remember learning about the triune God in church school as a child. For example, it was explained that a person takes on three roles: a father at home, a manager at work, and a deacon at church. There is no relationship and fellowship of the Trinity. The doctrine of the Trinity was established through the ‘Council of Nicaea-Constantine’ in the 2nd and 3rd centuries through the struggle against heresies, and we now confess that Christ is “of the same essence as God” and “truly God and true man.” The most important thing in this confession is the faint fellowship and union of the triune God.

The mysterious scene that appeared in the main gate today is supporting such a confession. According to the word of the covenant, the only begotten Son came into history. And according to God the Father's will, he was baptized by John, 'the voice crying in the wilderness'. Then the heavens opened and the Holy Spirit appeared as a dove and light. In ancient documents from the Near East, doves often appear as symbols of divine manifestation. And, as in Noah's Ark, it signifies a new world that will unfold through divine intervention.

The existence of the baptized Jesus is confirmed by the Father and the Holy Spirit. This is a scene showing the love fellowship of the triune God who will atone for all human sins and open a new world by the son of God humbly being baptized by the son of man. The life of Christ, the only begotten Son who became a man, dwells for a while in man's finite time and space from eternity, which is God's time, but is never bound and belongs to eternity as the true God.

German theologian Moltmann argues that the trust and fellowship of the triune God, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, is the social program of life that we must live. The fellowship is not bound by human time and space. That is why we do not lose to power, money, and evil powers that rule time and space. Those who confess and live by the Trinity God, and those who live by imitating that fellowship, meet a new world every day and live for eternity.

It never means withdrawal from the world or isolation. Rather, it means not yielding to those who boast of power and authority in the present world, but inviting those who are in the midst of resentment and pain to a new fellowship with the triune God. So those who go out with the triune God live in the kingdom of God in the presence of the Holy Spirit today. The wicked of the world hate them, but God says, "You are my loved ones."

So the concept of the personal fellowship of the triune God is anti-hierarchical and anti-monarchical. So, the fellowship of the Trinity became the confession of the Reformation, “We are the Church,” and was able to break down the religious authority of the religious authorities in the Middle Ages. Miroslav Wolf, a systematic theologian at Yale, raises the question of whether Christians today are turning the confession “We are the Church” into a totalitarian ecclesiology, “The Church is a We.”

The Son of God who is baptized humbles himself and follows the righteousness of God. The Holy Spirit guarantees God's love and companionship. Jesus Christ, born as the Son of Man, now endures a life of accepting his destiny in silence. No hierarchies or powers that govern human beings can intervene or dominate this life. So the gospel invites “both slave and free, Jew and Greek, male and female to be one” (Galatians 3:28). However, Wolf's suspicion was that many churches today are rather dominated by the power and desires of the world, and that they are degenerating into totalitarian groups that pursue their desires within the limits of time and space rather than God's providence.

The words of the Old and New Testaments that we have to read together today strongly describe the aspect of Christ who comes as promised. He is the one who will do great things, and as God's representative, he will testify to God's faithfulness and full love. God will work through him, and he testifies that he will always obey his father's will. With the power of God the Father's love and the presence of God the Holy Spirit, he will perform amazing signs and wonders that have never happened before and will never happen again. The Bible testifies that the Messiah promised by God to Israel will surely invade history, and then all things that have ruled space and time will kneel at the feet of Christ.

We can be sure that the same grace will be with us as we see the presence of the Father and the Holy Spirit with the Lord humbly being baptized. So, without any interference or intervention, we are the church. There are many denominations, but we ourselves, who confess the Trinity God and try to live according to the fellowship of love of the three Persons, are the church together. Any theory or logic that attempts to defeat this betrays sincere trust in the triune God.

It is fortunate that Yonsei became the oldest school with a difference of several years. I remember the church history teacher in school days who laughed as he said. The honor of the oldest school may be eternal honor in Korea. The school where I am currently teaching holds the honor of being the oldest seminary. I am proud of the honor of studying and teaching in the oldest school. However, sometimes that old history and tradition becomes the target of overcoming.

The original purpose of Yonsei's existence since its inception has been to fight against all kinds of filthy evil spirits and evil powers that rule the world in imitation of the fellowship of love of the triune God. Just like the church's great journey against the Roman Empire at the time, Yonsei's journey to declare hope through the gospel against Japanese colonial rule was like that. It was to participate in the Kingdom movement with the belief that ‘the truth will set you free.’ It is not an 'old' responsibility, but a responsibility of the present, only the present, living an eternity that transcends the limits of time and space, and defines the meaning of honor as the best school.

Today, the Korean Protestant Church is walking down the path of decline in just over 100 years. It is time to imitate Christ who began the journey of freedom and liberation of the great gospel by humbly receiving baptism, and it is time to tie our shoelaces with a new heart in 2023. With a heart that imitates the love and fellowship of the triune God, we must return to the heart of being baptized for the first time, willingly and humbly bowing our heads. Then our good God will open the heavens and say, “You are my beloved sons and daughters.” I wish you all the best in your home and ministry in 2023.