The Savior's earthly ministry begins with His baptism and the descent of the Holy Spirit upon Him, followed by trials in the wilderness. At first glance this may seem somewhat strange, for Jesus was born into the world already bearing within Himself all the fullness of God. What could He receive when God's breath descended upon Him? What did He lack?...
The Savior's earthly ministry begins with His baptism and the descent of the Holy Spirit upon Him, followed by trials in the wilderness. At first glance this may seem somewhat strange, for Jesus was born into the world already bearing within Himself all the fullness of God. What could He receive when God's breath descended upon Him? What did He lack? And what was the meaning of the trials He then underwent in the wilderness?
Had He needed simply to walk the earth, even revealing to the world the entire fullness of the divine and the human, and then leave this world as everyone who had lived here before Him had left it, perhaps none of this would have happened to Him. But He is the Messiah, and He had to reveal the Kingdom to the world in all its fullness. It was not enough for Him simply to be born the God-man. That was a necessary condition of the ministry entrusted to Him, but the ministry itself consisted in something else: His uniqueness had to cease being something that belonged to Him alone and had to be opened to the world. He was not merely to reveal Himself as King, but also to open the way into His Kingdom to everyone who sought it. Together with Him, something greater than Himself had to enter the world—greater not in fullness but in scope.
And this greater reality, His Kingdom, had to be opened to the world in His unity with the Father. The Holy Spirit—the fullness of the Father's breath—made this revelation of the Kingdom to the world possible. The trials in the wilderness that He underwent immediately after the descent of the Holy Spirit upon Him became a test not simply of Him as a man, or even as the God-man, but as the King He was to become over that Kingdom.
It is no accident that all these trials were connected in one way or another with the single central question: what kind of King will You be? How will You rule: according to the laws of the fallen world, making use of human weaknesses and vices, or as the King of God's Kingdom? The right choice meant the establishment of the Kingdom; the wrong one meant collapse at the very beginning of His ministry. And this was Jesus' completely free choice, free in a human way—the choice with which His ministry as Messiah began.
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1:1 The beginning of the Gospel of Jesus Christ - The evangelist speaks with strict propriety: for the beginning of the Gospel is in the account of John the Baptist, contained in the first paragraph; the Gospel itself in the rest of the book. Mat 3:1; Luk 3:1
1:2 Mal 3:1
1:3 Isa 40:3.
1:4 Preaching the baptism of repentance - That is, preaching repentance, and baptizing as a sign and means of it.
1:7 The latchet of whose shoes I am not worthy to unloose - That is, to do him the very meanest service.
1:9 Mat 3:13; Luk 3:21.
1:12 And immediately the Spirit thrusteth him out into the wilderness - So in all the children of God, extraordinary manifestations of his favour are wont to be followed by extraordinary temptations. Mat 4:1; Luk 4:1.
1:13 And he was there forty days, tempted by Satan - Invisibly.After this followed the temptation by him in a visible shape, related by St. Matthew. And he was with the wild beasts - Though they had no power to hurt him. St. Mark not only gives us a compendium of St. Matthew's Gospel, but likewise several valuable particulars, which the other evangelists have omitted.
1:14 Mat 4:12.
1:15 The time is fulfilled - The time of my kingdom, foretold by Daniel, expected by you, is fully come.