Baptizing Jesus

If Jesus never sinned, what was the point of his baptism?

Managable hair?

What about original sin. Did’t Jesus as the son of Mary inherit original sin ?

I am not a theologian, but baptism isn’t for the forgiveness of sins. Most denominations believe you only need to be baptized once. I don’t think that’s enough to cover all the sinning. :slight_smile:

Mary was born without Original Sin; hence Immaculate Conception.

According to John the Baptist, the reason was so Jesus would be revealed and start his ministry.

In Luke, it mentions the God saying the “You are my Son whom I love; with you I am well pleased” immedately followed by the note that Jesus was 30 when he began his ministry.

Jesus’s and John’s mothers were first cousins, and they didn’t know each other?

A lot of historians think that the baptism of Jesus by John is one of the few things in the Gospels that can be counted on as historically reliable precisely because it puts Jesus in a subordinate position to John. The Gospels also become increasingly defensive about it. Scholars call this event authentic under what they call the “criterion of embarrassment.” That is, because it seems to undermine Jesus’ authority, it’s considered to be unlikely to have been invented. It was also apparently well known enough to have to be explained, though. It’s “embarrassing,” not aggrandizing.

In any case, most scholars would say the most likely reason the Gospels report that Jesus was baptized by John was because it happened historically. Why is anybody’s guess, but many scholars postulate that Jesus started as a follower of JBap before he began his own ministry (maybe after JBap was killed).

He tells us in the Bible.

see,…it’s to fulfill all righteousness…what else?

No! I read postulated that sin can only be passed through the fathers genes. So someone (like Jesus) only had a female parent, thus no sin.
It would’ve worked with any female.

Some Christians teach that Jesus was modelling for us the use of Baptism as the symbol of the New Covenant between God and mankind that He was ushering in - replacing Circumcision, which was the mark of the old covenant. These churches will insist on “believer baptisim”, where the candidate is old enough to profess their own faith - those who have been baptised as infants must be re-baptised to become full members.

They were relatives of some sort, though not necessarily first cousins. There’s enough difference in age that they were probably of different generations. And I think it’ pretty clear that they did know each other.

John’s parents were Zechariah and Elizabeth. When an angle visits Zechariah and tells him his wife will give birth, he states that they are both old and that she is barren. In comparison, Mary is presented as a young woman. There’s probably at least a 40 year gap between them. However, Mary obviously did know them since she goes off to visit Elizabeth and both gab about their divinely ordained pregnancies.

There’s little mention of Jesus’ childhood and nothing indicating how often he came across John prior to the baptism.

This wasn’t recognized until the 19th century. Jesus was taking no chances.

It wasn’t made dogma until the 19th century, but it wasn’t invented then either.

The belief that Mary was immaculate at the time of Jesus’ conception rather than her own can be traced back even further and was much less controversial.

Here is a summery of the Catholic Church’s teachings the Baptism of Jesus. More can be found here.

First you are correct. Christ never sinned and was not possessed of original and so did not require baptism anymore than He required the sacrifice of the cross to be able to enter heaven. I make this comparison for reason, because, by His baptism, He was allowing Himself to be numbered among the sinners though He had no sin and this is an anticipation of His death on the cross. He is also, as stated in another post, “coming to fulfill all righteousness,” which in this case is fully submitting Himself to His Father's will and accepting His mission and its culmination on the cross. 

The Catechism does a better job, but is a bit longer.

Jack Miles, in CHRIST: A Crisis in the Life of God, has an interesting idea. John has been baptizing people for the washing away of their sins. By going into the water, Jesus takes those sins upon Himself.

That may be. I’ll just say that by getting baptized, Christ identified with all of us.

Also, a lot of people forget that John was a rogue priest & baptism was a remaking of the Jewish ritual bath, the mikvah.