We now jump ahead roughly 28 years to Jesus’ baptism and the beginning of his public ministry. This is because there is almost nothing in the Bible regarding Jesus’ childhood, adolescence and early adulthood. I say ‘almost nothing’ because there are two brief passages in Luke’s Gospel, both of which we have previously mentioned – Jesus’ dialogue with the religious leaders in the temple courts at the age of 12, and the subsequent passage where we are told that he returned to Nazareth with his parents where “he grew in wisdom and stature, enjoying the favour of God and people” (Luke 2:51-52).
But that’s all we get. We are not given any details of his teething, his toilet training, his childhood illnesses, his bumps and bruises, his adolescent adventures, his breaking voice, his first chin hairs, his education, his work in his father’s business, his relationship with his brothers and sisters … nothing. As fascinating as all these details might have been to us, God has apparently deemed them to be irrelevant and unnecessary.
And so we arrive at the day of Jesus’ baptism. He is now 30 years old. We don’t know what he has done until this point in his life. Most likely he worked in his father’s carpentry business in Nazareth. It may even be that Joseph has died by now because there is no further mention of him in the Gospels, even though Jesus’ mother and brothers and sisters are mentioned several times. Thus it is possible that Jesus may even have taken over his father’s business, along with his brothers, but we simply aren’t told.
Now, however, the time has come for him to be revealed to Israel as their Messiah and for his public ministry to begin. And this great unveiling occurs at his baptism. All three synoptic Gospels record this event, with Matthew providing the most detail:
“Then Jesus came from Galilee to the Jordan to be baptized by John. But John tried to deter him, saying, ‘I need to be baptised by you, and do you come to me?’ Jesus replied, ‘Let it be so for now; it is proper for us to do this to fulfill all righteousness.’ Then John consented. As soon as Jesus was baptized, he went up out of the water. At that moment, heaven was opened and he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove and alighting on him. And a voice from heaven said, ‘This is my Son, whom I love; with him I am well pleased.’” (Matthew 3:13-17)
Jesus’ baptism fulfils several important purposes. Firstly, it is the act whereby Jesus identifies with sinful humanity, undergoing a baptism of repentance even though he was sinless and did not need to do so. In a sense, this is a prophetic act, ultimately fulfilled by him representing sinful humanity on the cross as he suffered in our place.
Secondly, the baptism of Jesus reflects Jesus’ submission to the Father, something that would characterise all that he said and did. By kneeling in the Jordan river as he would have done, Jesus was not kneeling before John or the surrounding people, but before his Heavenly Father, the One who had sent him into the world and whose will Jesus now pledged to carry out.
Thirdly, Jesus’ baptism provides us with an insight into the Trinity. This is the one event in all the Gospels where the Trinity is most clearly and manifestly evident. All three divine Persons of the Godhead are present and interacting simultaneously at Jesus’ baptism. The Son is demonstrating his obedience and his submission to the Father’s will. The Holy Spirit is descending visibly upon Jesus to fill and empower him. The Father is verbally honouring the Son and declaring his great love for him, while also directing the people to submit and listen to him. The manifest presence of all three divine Persons of the Godhead at this event refutes the false teaching of modalism – that Jesus and the Holy Spirit are merely alternate manifestations of the one God in a different form at different times. If this were true, they would not be speaking to each other and interacting as separate entities.
But my intention here is not to defend and explore the doctrine of the Trinity, for that would take a whole book. There is a fourth purpose which the baptism of Jesus fulfils which carries within it a meaning that is largely lost to 21st century Christians. I am speaking of Jesus’ ordination to rabbinical ministry. While it is generally well-understood that Jesus’ baptism represented his commissioning and endorsement by God marking the commencement of his public ministry, the significant Jewish undertones of this event are almost entirely lost on most people today.
At the conclusion of his account of Jesus’ baptism, Luke makes one additional statement:
“And Jesus, when he began his ministry, was about thirty years of age.” (Luke 3:23)
Why does Luke make a point of mentioning Jesus’ age? What is the significance? He doesn’t tell us the age of any of the disciples, nor of anyone else we encounter in his Gospel.
The fact that Jesus was thirty when he was baptised and commissioned by the Father is extremely significant. This is because thirty was the age when new rabbis were ordained – in a very similar ceremony to the baptism that Jesus underwent at his baptism. By pointing out Jesus’ age, Luke is making an extremely important point that would not have been lost on his Jewish readers. He is declaring Jesus to be a true rabbi, ordained at the age of thirty by God himself.
It is worth taking a moment to reflect on the rigorous pathway undertaken by those who sought to become rabbis in first century Israel. The path to formal rabbinical ordination involved eighteen long years of gruelling study.
It began at the age of twelve after a boy’s Bar Mitzvah (a term which meant “son of the Law”). This ceremony took place at their graduation from Bet Sefer (“the house of the book” or more generically known as synagogue school). Following this, the brightest and most gifted of these boys from across the land were then selected by a rabbi to become a ‘talmid’ (a disciple) of the rabbi. Any boy who was fortunate enough to be selected for discipleship to a rabbi left their family and home and for the next eight years he lived and studied alongside his rabbi, obeying his every instruction and memorising his every word. Lesser rabbis only had one or two disciples at any one time, but the great rabbis of Jesus day, such as Gamaliel and Hillel, had hundreds of young disciples in their discipleship schools in Jerusalem. During these eight years, the young disciples were said to be in Bet Midrash, the house of study, where they not only memorised large portions of the Torah, but they also learnt their rabbi’s interpretations of it and studied the finer points of Halachah (the application of the Law) as codified in the Talmud – a massive tome of rabbinical interpretations of the Torah.
At the age of twenty, a brutal culling took place in which most of these young disciples were let go. These unsuccessful young men then had to find employment in the secular world. But the very best of the disciples were invited to enter the final ten years of discipleship, in preparation for possible ordination as a rabbi. After a further ten years of intense study and training, when these remaining disciples approached the age of thirty, a final brutal culling often occurred, with unsuccessful disciples being let go. Only the very best of the best of these disciples were finally invited to become rabbis. This occurred when at least two existing rabbis formally endorsed the successful disciple. The ordination ceremony then took place before a body of rabbis in Jerusalem, where the successful applicant knelt in submission and had hands laid on him by several leading rabbis.
Thus, the pathway to rabbinical ordination in the first century was long and incredibly arduous, involving great sacrifice and dedication on the part of those who embarked upon it. But the key point is that it was at the age of thirty that a man was finally ordained as a rabbi – never earlier. According to Jewish tradition, thirty was the age by which a man had accumulated enough wisdom to be qualified to be a respected teacher. And, very significantly for our current consideration, a rabbinical ordination ceremony involved three key elements: the applicant knelt, hands descended upon his head and words of commissioning were spoken.
The parallel to Jesus’ baptism could not be clearer. At the age of 30 and in a formal public ceremony, Jesus knelt, the Holy Spirit descended upon his head and words of commissioning were spoken. This was the Father’s ordination of Jesus, setting him apart as the divinely appointed rabbi (teacher) to Israel.
Very soon after this, Jesus began doing two things that only rabbis did: teaching with authority and calling disciples to himself. The latter, in particular, was a very strong claim by Jesus to be a rabbi, because only rabbis had disciples.
Jesus’ self-proclaimed ‘rabbiship’ quickly drew the ire of the formally qualified rabbis and religious leaders of Israel, and we can understand why. Jesus had not gone through the established rabbinical pathways. He had not spent the long, gruelling years as a disciple, apprenticed to a rabbi.[1] He had not come through their ranks and been formally acknowledged and ordained by the establishment. In their eyes, Jesus was an unqualified imposter. Hence the Pharisees (the leading theological party of rabbis in the first century) did not tend to call him “rabbi”. They called him “teacher” in deference to his surprising wisdom and growing following, but they refused to give him the formal title of rabbi that they had worked so hard to attain themselves.
The only exception was Nicodemus the Pharisee who, when coming to visit Jesus under the cover of darkness, called him “Rabbi” and acknowledged that Jesus’ authority to teach had come from God (John 3:2).[2]
Apart from this one outlier, however, the Pharisees did not acknowledge Jesus’ self-proclaimed rabbiship nor take kindly to it. Indeed, it incensed them. We also read of the people of Jesus’ home village of Nazareth taking offense at his self-proclaimed rabbiship. Several months after the beginning of his ministry, having preached and worked miracles throughout Galilee and after accumulating a group of disciples and gaining a growing following, he arrived back in Nazareth and preached in the local synagogue (Mark 6:1-3). The people of his home village were incredulous and responded:
““Where did this man get these things?” they asked. “What’s this wisdom that has been given him? What are these remarkable miracles he is performing? Isn’t this the carpenter? Isn’t this Mary’s son and the brother of James, Joseph, Judas and Simon? Aren’t his sisters here with us?” And they took offence at him.” (Mark 6:1-3)
Significantly, the people’s indignation was due to their identification of Jesus as “the carpenter” (v.3). This is another clear indication that Jesus had not followed the institutionalised discipleship pathway toward becoming a rabbi but had remained in Nazareth with his family and worked in his father’s business. It is for this reason that his fellow villagers took offence that he should now suddenly proclaim himself to be a rabbi by taking on disciples and beginning to preach. In fact, their sense of outrage was so great – that Jesus, a humble carpenter, should suddenly proclaim himself to be a rabbi, completely bypassing the institutional ecclesiastical pathway that was deeply revered within their culture – that they tried to kill him! Luke’s Gospel records that the people of Jesus’ village took him to the edge of a nearby cliff in order to throw him down, but Jesus walked away from them unscathed (Luke 4:16-31).
The general populace, however, had no such reservations. They soon began addressing Jesus as “rabbi” (John 6:25; 20:16) and so did his disciples (John 1:38; 1:49). In fact the Gospels record thirteen different occasions when Jesus was addressed as “rabbi”. This, along with his rapidly rising popularity, only served to increase the ire of the Pharisees. Not only was there an unqualified upstart in their midst, but one who was quickly winning the hearts and minds of the common people!
The fact that Jesus had arisen out of nowhere, coming from the backward rural province of Galilee, added a sense of mockery to the Pharisees’ attitude toward Jesus. Thus, when Jesus travelled from Galilee and first preached in Jerusalem, the headquarters of the established religious authorities, we find them responding with incredulity:
“How can the Messiah come from Galilee? … Look into it and you will see that no prophet has ever come out of Galilee!” (John 7:42,52).
On another occasion, the religious leaders expressed their astonishment at Jesus’ arrival as a rabbi out of nowhere:
“We know that God spoke to Moses, but as for this fellow, we don’t even know where he comes from.” (John 9:29)
This latter statement does not mean they were unaware of Jesus’ Galilean origin, for that was well-known. Instead, their claim that “we don’t even know where he comes from” is a reference to his lack of formal training and his sudden arrival as a rabbi ‘out of nowhere’. In an earlier incident, during an encounter with other Jews in Jerusalem, we find people asking a similar question, “How did this man get such learning without having been taught?” (John 7:15). Once again, this is an acknowledgment that Jesus had not graduated from the established rabbinical pathway and had no formal qualifications.
With all this in mind, the baptism of Jesus takes on new meaning. Jesus’ ordination to rabbinical ministry by the Father himself represents a complete rejection of the established ecclesiastical pathways. From the very beginning of his ministry, Jesus set himself apart from the religious establishment. In fact, he eschewed their pride and pretence and very quickly began to openly criticise their hierarchical arrogance and their hypocrisy.
The fact that Jesus bypassed the accepted rabbinical pathways was no accident. It was a deliberate choice by Jesus and the Father. It represented a complete rejection of pretentious man-made religious traditions and points to the radically different values of God’s kingdom – values like humility, love, grace, self-sacrifice and servanthood. These are internal values of the heart rather than the outward badges of pretention, pride and egotism that dominated the religious world of the first century (and which still infest Christian leadership in some churches today)[3].
We see these radical, countercultural values at play not only in Jesus sidestepping the accepted ecclesiastical pathways, but also in his selection of disciples, which is the topic of the next chapter.
[1] We know this because, at the age of 12, “he returned to Nazareth with his parents and was obedient to them” (Luke 2:51) – something that would not have happened if he had been discipled to a rabbi.
[2] Whether Nicodemus’ acknowledgement of Jesus’ rabbiship and divine authority was genuine or simply false praise in order to trap him with questioning is unclear.
[3] For a comprehensive discussion of the unhealthy leadership culture that has infiltrated the contemporary church see my book, Leading Like Jesus, co-written with Dr. Keith farmer.