Fulfilling all righteousness

Then Jesus came from Galilee to the Jordan to be baptized by John. But John tried to deter him, saying, "I need to be baptized by you, and do you come to me?" Jesus replied, "Let it be so 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 lighting 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).

If you are driving someplace you’ve never been before, it’s essential to have a map of some kind. Roads are unpredictable. In Fort Wayne, Indiana, a street can change names without notice as you cross a township line. In Wisconsin, every county road is identified by a sign because stubborn German farmers would not let the county run pavement through their fields, resulting in roads that twist and curve around any number of property lines. When you’re out driving, you never know when you’ll be stopped by a river with no bridge or a street that dead ends at a city park. It’s hard to find an address when some city streets are laid out on a grid, others cut through town at an angle, and still others curve this way and that because of hills. Trying to navigate without a map can make for a very frustrating trip.

County commissioners don’t have an easy job. No one wants their property condemned so that a road can be laid in a straight line. When I was in high school, a four lane was being planned that would join Milwaukee with Green Bay; the route cut through many farms, and some people were so upset that, during the night, they would tip over caterpillar tractors and put sugar in the fuel tanks of the trucks. City planners don’t have it any easier. People don’t want their trees cut down in order to widen the street; business owners fear losing business if traffic is routed through another part of town. People are selfish, and many times their selfishness results in road design that is hard for visitors to navigate.

God hates disorder. Disorder can make lives unnecessarily hard and steal the joy from living. From the very beginning, God has been bringing order out of chaos. Describing our world at the beginning of time, Genesis chapter one says the earth was formless and empty. Our world was in utter chaos; the first thing God did was to establish order. He separated light from darkness and land from water. He put the heavenly bodies in their place, and arranged the stars to mark the passage of time. It was only after everything had been organized that God created man and woman.

Even in paradise, there was a sense of order. Genesis chapter two says, The LORD God took the man and put him in the Garden of Eden to work it and take care of it. From the very beginning, it’s been our job to keep God’s creation in good order. And there was Law in the garden, too. The LORD God commanded the man, "You are free to eat from any tree in the garden; but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat of it you will surely die" (Genesis 2:16-17). All this is because God hates chaos; chaos makes life stressful. Our God desires the peace that results from order. 1st Corinthians chapter 14 says, God is not a God of disorder but of peace.

Of course, perfection did not last long. Although they had only one law to respect, Adam and Eve disobeyed God, and that act of chaos ruined the peace of God’s perfect order. Every harvest was made difficult because of weeds and bad weather. Animals that used to get along peacefully began eating each other and attacking man. Within a generation, Cain murdered his brother, and in time the spread of chaos made things so bad that God flooded the world in an effort to wash sin away. The only people that God spared were Noah and his family, but within months of planting a vineyard after the flood was over, a night of drunken behavior caused problems for God’s chosen family. As their descendants repopulated the earth, sin and chaos spread once more. God even wrote His laws on stone with His own hand, but humanity continued to choose chaos over God’s order.

But God never gave up. And so, two thousand years ago, God sent his Son, born of a woman, born under law, to redeem those under law (Galatians 4:4-5). Jesus came into our world holy, and He never sinned during the years He was growing up. Finally at age 30, Jesus was ready to begin His work in earnest. He came out to the Jordan River to be baptized by His older cousin John. This request surprised John; he had been telling the people that they needed to repent of their sins, and he baptized them to show that God had accepted their change of heart. But John knew full well that Jesus had never done anything wrong; there was no reason to baptize Him. So John tried to deter him, saying, "I need to be baptized by you, and do you come to me?" But Jesus replied, "Let it be so now; it is proper for us to do this to fulfill all righteousness." Then John consented.

Fulfill all righteousness—that’s what Jesus came here to do. God the Father has high expectations for us—be holy, for I the LORD your God am holy (Leviticus 19:2). Sadly, being perfect from cradle to grave is completely beyond us. So although it did not apply to Him, Jesus chose to obey the Law perfectly on our behalf. In order to do this, the Son of God left heaven to become the Son of Man. Jesus was born to represent mankind in its totality. Through His perfect life, each of us gets credit for living perfectly even though we haven’t. When He died for our sins, each of us is credited with having suffered God’s punishment even though we haven’t. Jesus makes everything right between God and us. This was only possible because Jesus took God’s Law seriously—He was determined to fulfill all righteousness. This even included baptism, the baptism that we need but was otherwise superfluous to Him. For Jesus, no aspect of the Law was overlooked.

What about you? How do you feel about fulfilling all righteousness? Do you think that it is done by showing up at church occasionally, dropping something in the plate, and praying the Lord’s Prayer? What does God’s Law really entail? Doesn’t the Law tell you to love God with all your heart and mind and strength? Aren’t you to love your neighbors as yourself? God expects you to love Him so much that you want to be in church at every opportunity, because you enjoy spending time listening to His Word and singing His praises. God expects you to value Him so much that you are praying to Him throughout the day, just as the disciples chatted with Jesus wherever they were and whatever they were doing. God wants you to love other people so much that you go out of your way to bring them to Christ for salvation. God wants you to love your neighbors so much that you would never hurt them, use them, or ignore their needs. God wants you to respect Him so much that you would never dream of breaking even one of His commands.

But we want to get by on the minimum, don’t we? We take shortcuts with righteousness when the whim moves us, when we are tired, when we are bored and want some excitement, when we’re scared or grasping at straws, when we’re being pressured by others or are trying to keep everyone happy. God’s ways don’t always mesh with our lives, and so a choice needs to be made. Then we act, sometimes forgetting that God says, "My Way or the highway."

Actually, God’s Way is the High Way. When we turn away from God, we end up taking the low way. Do you know where the term ‘highway’ comes from? In ancient times, good roads were elevated to prevent them from being washed out. Ordinary roads were little more than tracks in the dirt; highways were built on a lasting foundation. This is the imagery of Isaiah chapter 35, where the prophet speaks of the perfect world that Jesus will bring about: a great road will go through that once deserted land. It will be named the Highway of Holiness. Evil-minded people will never travel on it. It will be only for those who walk in God's ways; fools will never walk there. Lions will not lurk along its course, nor will any ferocious beast get up on it. Only the redeemed will walk there. Of course, a system of highways takes work to establish and maintain—consequently, such roads are few and always lead to an important place. If you want the safety and comfort of highway travel, your choices are limited; you must follow where the road goes. If you want more freedom in your choice of direction, you have to get off the highway and drive along the back roads. Now, you might find that some of them go nowhere because a bridge is out or they are not maintained; gas stations might also be hard to find. Or if you want complete freedom of movement, abandon your car and start walking through the fields. You can go any direction that you want, but you risk turning an ankle, getting poison ivy, or becoming lost.

I’m sure that at some time or another, you’ve had the experience of taking the wrong exit from a highway and getting lost. You could still see the highway in the distance, but couldn’t find an ‘on’ ramp. That happens to us spiritually as well. We make some foolish decisions and end up traveling a low way, a muddy and rutted path that makes everything in our lives filthy, and threatens to get us stuck somewhere by ourselves with no help to be found. Thankfully, in baptism Christ gives you a promise—whenever you repent and seek His aid, He will wash away your sin and restore you to the path of righteousness. This is why Jesus had to fulfill all righteousness—without a perfect life having been lived for us, we would be lost eternally, seeing the highway but not knowing where it leads or how to get up on it. We need Jesus’ perfect life to satisfy God’s requirements for us, and we need His atoning death to protect us from God’s anger at our sins.

No ordinary man could do this for us. Psalm 49 says, no one can redeem the life of another by paying a ransom to God. Redemption does not come so easily, for no one can ever pay enough to live foreverand never see the grave. No human being can redeem another. God expects 100% perfection from each of us; how could anyone be more than perfect, so that he or she had leftover goodness to share with others? Anyway, all of us are terribly sinful, never performing at even a fraction of what God expects. So Jesus had to be more than just a man—He needed to be infinite God, so that His perfect life would have infinite value, value enough to satisfy God’s requirements for all of humanity. Jesus needed to be a man in order to live as a subject under God’s Law—but He also needed to be God so that His perfection could be credited to all believers. Paul writes, God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might have the righteousness of God (2 Corinthians 5:21).

Jesus took seriously every one of God’s laws—early in His ministry He said, Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them. I tell you the truth, until heaven and earth disappear, not the smallest letter, not the least stroke of a pen, will by any means disappear from the Law until everything is accomplished (Matthew 5:17-18). Jesus took God’s Law seriously because 1) He loved and respected His Father, 2) if He did not satisfy the requirements of the Law for us, we would be utterly lost, and 3) He hates chaos and disorder. Jesus took the High Way seriously because He is righteous. Through baptism, Christ offers that same righteousness to you. Please, take it seriously as He did.