This Is My Beloved Son: The Baptism Of Our Lord Jesus Christ (Matthew 3:13-17)

January 11, 2026, Year A, First Sunday of Epiphany, The Baptism of Our Lord Jesus Christ, Season of Epiphany

Matthew 3:13–17, Isaiah 42:1–9, Psalm 89:1–29, Acts 10:34–38

Grace, mercy, and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ be with you on this First Sunday of Epiphany, the Baptism of Our Lord Jesus Christ.

Five days ago the Magi arrived. Epiphany, January 6, is the feast of the manifestation of Christ to the nations: the star, the long journey, the strangers kneeling before the Child with gold and frankincense and myrrh. The Season of Epiphany is the season of manifestation, the weeks in which the identity of the one born in Bethlehem is progressively revealed. And on the very first Sunday of that season, the lectionary takes us immediately to the Jordan River. The Magi have barely left when John’s voice is already crying in the wilderness. The season that began with a star ends its first Sunday with an open sky, a descending dove, and a voice.

What happens at the Jordan is the season’s opening declaration. If the Epiphany asks the question, who is this Child? the Baptism of Our Lord answers it before the season has properly begun. The Father speaks. The Spirit descends. And what the Father says is the sentence the rest of the Epiphany season will spend its Sundays unpacking: “This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased.” (Matthew 3:17, ESV)

Before we get to the declaration, we need to sit with John’s protest. John is baptizing in the Jordan, and when Jesus comes to him, John tries to prevent it: “I need to be baptized by you, and do you come to me?” (Matthew 3:14, ESV) John knows who Jesus is. He knows that the one coming to him is the one whose sandal he is not worthy to carry, the one who will baptize with the Holy Spirit and fire. And he knows that his own baptism is a baptism of repentance. So why is the sinless one coming to be baptized by the one who needs to be baptized by him?

Jesus’ answer is one of the most theologically precise sentences in the Gospels: “Let it be so now, for thus it is fitting for us to fulfill all righteousness.” (Matthew 3:15, ESV) He is not being baptized because he needs forgiveness. He is being baptized to fulfill all righteousness, to identify completely with the humanity he has assumed, to take his place among the people for whom he has come. He steps into the Jordan as the representative of the sinners he has come to save. The second Adam entering the waters does not enter them for himself. He enters them for us. He takes his stand where sinners stand, though he himself is without sin, and he begins openly the saving mission that will carry him all the way to the Cross.

The early Church saw something more in this as well. Gregory of Nyssa and other Fathers spoke of Christ’s descent into the Jordan as sanctifying the waters for those who would later be baptized into him. They did not mean that Jesus needed cleansing. They meant the opposite. The sinless Son enters the water, and water itself is taken up into the saving economy of God. The Lord who needs no Baptism enters the Jordan for us, and Christian Baptism thereafter belongs to the saving work of the Christ who entered the water, went to the Cross, and rose again.

What this means for us is not peripheral. At the Jordan, the saving mission of the Son is publicly enacted before Israel. It is the moment the Son takes his stand in solidarity with sinful humanity, not to approve of sin, but to identify himself with the humanity he came to save, to be numbered with transgressors before he bears their sin at the Cross. The Jordan is the beginning of the via crucis, the way of the Cross. He who knew no sin was baptized among sinners so that sinners could be baptized into him.

And then the sky opens.

Matthew says the heavens were opened. This is not a weather event. Isaiah 64:1 prays, “Oh that you would rend the heavens and come down.” The heavens that sin had made inaccessible are opened at the Jordan in answer to that long cry. Matthew places before us two extraordinary openings in the story of Jesus: at the Baptism, the heavens are opened over the Son; at the crucifixion, the curtain of the temple is torn before the people. The two moments belong to the same saving movement: God overcoming the distance that sin has created between us and him. At the Jordan, the heavens open and the Spirit descends upon the Son. At Calvary, the curtain tears so that sinners may draw near through the saving work of that Son.

Between these two moments, the entire ministry of Jesus unfolds.

Three things happen in rapid succession, and this is one of the Gospel’s clearest revelations of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit together. The Father speaks. The Spirit descends. The Son stands in the water. The whole Trinity is present and active in a single moment. This is why the Baptism of Our Lord is the Sunday of Trinitarian manifestation. Not the Sunday we merely explain the doctrine of the Trinity, but the Sunday we are shown the Trinity in action: the Father speaking, the Spirit descending, the Son standing in the water. And when the risen Christ later commands his Church to baptize, he commands Baptism “in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.” (Matthew 28:19, ESV)

Now hear Isaiah 42, the appointed Old Testament reading. The Father’s words at the Jordan do not come out of nowhere. They rise out of the promises God has already spoken: “Behold my servant, whom I uphold, my chosen, in whom my soul delights; I have put my Spirit upon him; he will bring forth justice to the nations.” (Isaiah 42:1, ESV) Chosen. Delighted in. Spirit-anointed. The Father’s words at the Jordan bring together the great Old Testament portraits of the beloved Son-King and the Spirit-anointed Servant. The one standing in the Jordan is the Servant Isaiah saw. The Spirit descending upon him is the Spirit Isaiah promised. The Baptism is not a moment of isolated divine approval. It is a fulfillment of the prophetic hope that has been building through Israel’s Scriptures.

Isaiah 42 also carries a second movement that is easy to miss. After the Servant’s commissioning, the passage turns outward: “I am the LORD; I have called you in righteousness; I will take you by the hand and keep you; I will give you as a covenant for the people, a light for the nations, to open the eyes that are blind, to bring out the prisoners from the dungeon.” (Isaiah 42:6–7, ESV) The Servant is not commissioned for Israel alone. He is given as a covenant for the people and a light for the nations. This is why Acts 10 places the Baptism at the beginning of the Gospel Peter preaches in the house of Cornelius. The one anointed at the Jordan is the one through whom the light will reach the nations.

Psalm 89, the appointed Psalm, adds another layer. It is the great Davidic covenant Psalm: “I have found David, my servant; with my holy oil I have anointed him.” (Psalm 89:20, ESV) The word Christ means Anointed One. What David’s anointing foreshadowed, the Spirit’s descent at the Jordan now publicly manifests in the greater Son of David. The Servant of Isaiah and the Anointed King of Psalm 89 converge at the water. The one standing in the Jordan is both: the Servant who bears the Spirit and the King whose reign fulfills the promises. The Baptism publicly commissions the one who already is the eternal Son and promised Messiah.

Peter understood this. In Acts 10:34–38, the appointed Epistle, Peter is in Caesarea at the house of Cornelius, and he begins his summary of Jesus’ public ministry with John’s baptism and the anointing of Jesus with the Holy Spirit: “How God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Spirit and with power. He went about doing good and healing all who were oppressed by the devil, for God was with him.” (Acts 10:38, ESV) The Baptism stands at the beginning of the public ministry Peter proclaims. Everything Jesus now does, every healing, every teaching, every confrontation with the powers of darkness, flows from the identity the Father reveals and the mission the Spirit publicly marks at the Jordan.

Now the Collect draws the line that changes everything. The BCP 2019 Collect for today reads: “Eternal Father, at the baptism of Jesus you revealed him to be your Son, and your Holy Spirit descended upon him like a dove: Grant that we, who are born again by water and the Spirit, may be faithful as your adopted children.” (BCP 2019, p. 601) The movement of the Collect is the movement from the Baptism of Jesus to the Baptism of the Christian. At the Baptism of Jesus, the Father reveals him to be the Son. In Christian Baptism, those united to Christ are born again by water and the Spirit and received as adopted children. He is Son by nature. We become sons and daughters by adoption and grace.

This is what our Baptism means. We are baptized into Christ, not merely into the memory of what happened at the Jordan. We are joined to the one who entered those waters, went to the Cross, bore our sins, and rose again. The same Holy Spirit who rested upon Christ is given to his people. The Father who declared Jesus to be his beloved Son receives those who are united to Christ as his adopted children. We do not become what Jesus is by nature, but through union with him we receive what we could never possess on our own: adoption, new life, forgiveness, and the gift of the Spirit.

The Season of Epiphany that opens today is the season of manifestation: the weeks in which the identity of Jesus is progressively revealed. But the Baptism of Our Lord Sunday is also, by the logic of the Collect, the day on which we are invited to remember our own identity. The Father says of Jesus, “This is my beloved Son.” And through union with that beloved Son, the Father receives us as his adopted children. Not sons by nature, as he is, but sons and daughters by adoption, which is a gift of grace beyond anything we could earn or deserve.

Many parishes renew baptismal vows on this Sunday, and the practice is fitting. It is not re-Baptism. It is a remembering: a return in faith to the grace already given, a fresh reception of the identity Baptism signifies and seals. We do not renew our vows in order to make Baptism effective again. We renew them because the baptized life requires that we remember, regularly and concretely, whose we are and what we have been given.

Here are three takeaways for us today.

First, let us remember whose we are. The world will spend every day trying to give us an identity. Our work, our success or failure, our possessions, our politics, our reputation, our relationships, even our sins can all try to tell us who we are. But if we are baptized into Christ, the deepest truth about us does not come from any of those things. We belong to the Father through the Son, and we have been given the Holy Spirit. Before we accomplish anything for God, before we succeed at anything, before we become the people we think we ought to be, we have already received grace in Christ. When the voices around us become loud, let us remember whose we are.

Second, let us live from our identity rather than trying to earn it. Jesus did not enter the Jordan so that he could become the beloved Son. He entered the Jordan because he already was the Son, and his Baptism revealed and inaugurated the mission he had come to fulfill. The same grace-first order governs our life in Christ. We do not obey God in order to persuade him to love us. We obey because, in Christ, we have already received his grace. We do not pray, forgive, serve, give, resist temptation, love our enemies, or persevere in suffering in order to earn the Father’s adoption. We do those things because we are his adopted children. Grace comes first, and faithfulness follows. Faithfulness is what our identity requires.

Third, let us remember that our Baptism sends us into the world. The Spirit did not descend upon Jesus at the Jordan so that he could remain standing there. The beloved Son went from the water into the wilderness and then into his ministry, toward the poor, the sick, the oppressed, the sinner, the outsider, and ultimately the Cross. And the baptized life is not a life of retreat. We have been named, adopted, and given the Spirit so that we might bear the life of Christ into the places God has put us. The people in our homes, our workplaces, our neighborhoods, our friendships, and our communities should encounter something of the Servant who was revealed at the Jordan. We leave remembering whose we are, living from the grace we have received, and carrying the light of the beloved Son into the world.

The Collect does not ask that we would merely remember this truth. It asks that we would be faithful as adopted children. And that is where the Baptism of Our Lord becomes personal. The question is not simply whether we remember what happened at the Jordan. The question is whether we will live as the people Baptism into Christ has made us to be.

The Epiphany season will spend its remaining Sundays showing us what this beloved Son does: he calls fishermen from their boats, he teaches the crowds on the mountain, he heals the sick and casts out demons, he stills the storm and feeds the hungry thousands. Every act of his ministry is the demonstration of what the Father declared at the Jordan. And running beneath all of it, the thread that connects every healing and every teaching to this one moment at the river, is the identity the Baptism revealed: the Servant anointed with the Spirit, the King commissioned by the Father’s voice, the beloved Son in whom the Father is well pleased.

We began the year at the Jordan. The heavens are open. The Spirit has descended. The Father has spoken. The sentence he spoke at the Baptism of his Son is the sentence that grounds our adoption because our adoption comes through union with that Son. It is the sentence on which the whole Gospel turns.

“This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased.” (Matthew 3:17, ESV)

In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.