Request your free, three-month trial to Tabletalk magazine. You’ll receive the print issue monthly and gain immediate digital access to decades of archives. This trial is risk-free. No credit card required.
Try Tabletalk NowAlready receive Tabletalk magazine every month?
Verify your email address to gain unlimited access.
Matthew 3:13–17
“Jesus came from Galilee to the Jordan to John, to be baptized by him. John would have prevented him, saying, ‘I need to be baptized by you, and do you come to me?’ But Jesus answered him, ‘Let it be so now, for thus it is fitting for us to fulfill all righteousness’” (vv. 13–15).
Rightly understanding the work of Christ to accomplish our salvation requires that we have a basic understanding of the tasks inherent to the offices of prophet, priest, and king, since Jesus fulfills them all. Having considered the prophetic office, wherein Jesus represents God to us, we will now consider His priestly office, wherein He represents us to God.
Much of our Savior’s work as our Great High Priest consisted in His suffering on our behalf as the perfect and final sacrifice for sin. He represented us before God, taking our sins upon Himself and bearing the wrath of God in our place (Rom. 3:21–26; Heb. 9:1–10:18). Yet Jesus did not represent us only in His suffering. He also represented us in what has been called His active obedience.
Christ’s active obedience operates in light of the original covenant that God made with mankind in Adam. Regarding that covenant, for now we will note only that when God made Adam, He entered into a covenant with him in which Adam had to render perfect and perpetual obedience to God in order to merit eternal life for himself and his posterity. He represented all his descendants conceived and born in the ordinary and natural way. If Adam had obeyed, we would not need salvation and would have eternal life through him. But he disobeyed; thus, apart from faith in Christ, we have only death through Adam (Rom. 5:12–21).
Jesus came to succeed where Adam failed so that everyone who is in Him by faith would have eternal life. Since Adam had to obey God perfectly to secure eternal life for us, so did Christ. Thus, Reformed theologian Louis Berkhof writes that the active obedience of Christ consists of “all that Christ did to observe the law in its federal aspect, as the condition of obtaining eternal life.” For us to have eternal life, Jesus had to obey God’s law flawlessly. His perfect keeping of the law is His active obedience. His flawless conformity to God’s law replaced Adam’s disobedience for the elect, and we who trust in Jesus benefit (Rom. 5:12–21). As Westminster Confession of Faith 8.4 puts it, Jesus “was made under the law, and did perfectly fulfill it.”
The New Testament notes often that Jesus never sinned, but in today’s passage we see His proclaiming the necessity of His perfect active obedience. God commanded all Jews to be baptized by John the Baptist, so Jesus had to keep that law. He passed through the waters of baptism “to fulfill all righteousness” (Matt. 3:13–17).
Coram Deo Living before the face of God
Many theologians have observed that without the active obedience of Christ, His suffering the penalty of sin would have just put us back in the same state as Adam before the fall, having to merit eternal life. Because of Christ’s perfect active obedience, however, Jesus has merited eternal life for us. Therefore, we can rest in Him, not having to earn our own salvation.
For further study
- Leviticus 18:5
- Isaiah 53:9
- John 6:38
- 1 Peter 2:22
The bible in a year
- Psalms 96–98
- Romans 12