12 The Banks of Jordan

THERE CAME A day when that long apprenticeship was over. His Father had sent His herald before His face, and John the Baptist was raising the people of Israel to a high pitch of expectancy. Excitement was abroad, all minds were agitated, men were making restitution, confessing their sins, looking for Him who should come. But the One who laid down His chisel and plane for the last time, and bade farewell to a reluctant and apprehensive family knew no such tumult. Calm and rock-like and free from the iron restraint of years, He came to Jordan with His people's sin upon His shoulders, and their salvation in His heart.

       As Ezra rent his garment and his mantle, and plucked off the hair of his head and of his beard and sat down astonished at the sin of his people, so did the King of Israel confess in Jordan the sin of His people before His Father. Doubtless John was astonished when his unknown kinsman approached him and, in answer to John's question about His sins before he baptised Him, confessed that He had none; and drew from John's lips the cry 'I have need to be baptised of Thee!' John did not realise then that it was the true High Priest standing for His people before an outraged God. Christ knew the shallowness of this mass movement, knew that their repentance was but a shadow, knew that their past sins were to be immediately surpassed by the murder of God's only Son; and in this knowledge bore them to His Father, as a parent might make restitution for an erring child before an offended neighbour, being far more upset himself than was the actual offender. And as His head disappeared in Jordan's stream was there no vision of that day when He, and His brethren after Him, should be buried by baptism into actual death?

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       It had been perhaps the most inexplicable and trying part of His life that hitherto the Son of God had had no more supernatural power than His neighbour. He had been quite unable to meet the needs of Israel by prophecy or healing or acts of power, such as had accredited Elijah or Elisha. So far as that was concerned He might as well not have been there. The tide of national suffering flowed on and on unchecked by the wondrous deeds of God. He must have felt like Gideon—'If the Lord be with us, where be all His miracles?'

       Yet He had read in the Scriptures that He was to be anointed by His Father for His ministry; and now that His apprenticeship was over He was to receive those supernatural tools wherewith to do His work.

       Further than this, He had lived for thirty years in the faith that He was the Son of God: alone He had clung to the Scriptures on this point in the face of universal unbelief. No tongue had refreshed His soul by calling Him God's Son: no knee had been bent before Him in adoration. 'Is not this the carpenter?' was His daily meat. But now there was to come to Him not only power in abundance, but also Divine recognition. He who had not received witness from man was now to receive it from God. The great contest was over; His faith was justified. The words 'Thou art My Beloved Son in Whom I am well pleased' set God's seal upon the struggle of His life. The anointing of the Spirit filled His empty hands with blessings, and He was ready to go forth upon His ministry in the Power of the Almighty.

       We may pause a moment to gather up what truth we may about Jesus of Nazareth as He passes through this astounding experience. Here is no enthusiast hurling Himself blindfold into a crusade which might cost Him His life, hoping that His nation would fall in behind Him and by His aid bring about a wonderful Kingdom of God upon earth. No, here is Jesus of Nazareth in the full faith and

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understanding that He was God manifest in the flesh, entering upon a short career ordained in every detail by His Father and plainly described through the prophets. His past lay open before Him, His present was equally plain, and His Father so clearly pictured in the Book that He could talk simply and in detail about what He would do after He had risen from the dead. (If He went so frequently to the Mount of Olives with His disciples, was it not because Zechariah 14:4 had declared it to be the place of His triumphant return?) His future was as present and real to Him as His actual present, for He believed what He read, and faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.

       His astonishment was, not that He Himself understood so clearly, but that those around Him were so much in the dark. His book was their book; they too were the children of the prophets, who had spoken so plainly of the plan of God. Here is no mighty thinker lifted above the common ruck of men by sheer power of intellect, but simply a humble believer, accepting without question what was given freely to all, and walking in the light provided by an All-Seeing Father. He should have come to a nation full of holy expectation of its Divine Messiah, eagerly looking for the running out of the time foretold in Daniel 9, and longing for the One Upon whom Jehovah would lay their sins, that He might carry them away into a salt place not inhabited. There was nothing He knew which they could not have known: the Almighty had revealed His Salvation plainly, in picture, in writing, in straightforward language so that no believer should be in any doubt about what to expect. Yet in actual fact the nation walked in gloom and anguish and in the shadow of death. 'O fools', was His cry 'and slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have written. Ought not Christ to have suffered these things and to enter into His glory?' If Isaiah had understood the suffering of Messiah and the glory that should follow, should Peter and

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James and John be ignorant?

       Christ was no young visionary thinking this and imagining that, the child of His age responding to the current hopes and ambitions of His people, and finding bitter disillusionment at the end of His life. He was the Son of God walking in the light along a path long laid down for His feet in Moses and the Psalms and the Prophets to a triumphant conclusion that should bring to pass every desire of His Father's heart, and vindicate the love and wisdom of His great act of Creation. God was in Christ; His Word had taken possession of His mind: though the Son of Man's feet were in Galilee the head of the Son of God was in Heaven, and the unseen was as visible to Him as it had been to Micaiah or Ezekiel. For what they saw He believed, as we may also do.

       Before we take our leave of Jordan's waters, there remains one topic to consider more fully. It was said by Lord Acton that 'All power corrupts; absolute power corrupts absolutely'. There is in fact no test of character as final as the acquisition of power. Then is the soul displayed in its true colours, and its real desires are uncovered for all to see.

       The carpenter of Nazareth lived in obscurity with but little chance of attracting anyone's attention, or indulging any ambitions that His soul might cherish, beyond those possible to a village tradesman. But now the Son of God was to issue forth with all power in Heaven and earth! What kind of a showing would He make? How would he appear when no inward desire could be withheld, no course of conduct however magnificent or wayward be opposed? Then shall we see that inward soul of God and discover for ourselves the secrets of the Divine Nature. All will be laid bare before the world when God comes forth in power. When power came his way, the house-painter of Austria revealed himself in his true colours: how would the the carpenter of Nazareth fare under the same pitiless exposure of His soul?

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