NOTES for Mar 1:11-12
The Savior's earthly ministry begins with His washing and with the descent of the Holy Spirit upon Him, followed by testing in the wilderness. At first glance this may look somewhat strange: Jesus was born into the world already bearing within Himself the whole fullness of God. What could He receive at the moment of the descent of God's breath upon Him? What did He lack? And what was the meaning of the test through which He then passed in the wilderness?
If He had only needed simply to walk on earth, even revealing to the world the whole divine and human fullness, and then leave this world as all who lived here before Him left it, nothing like 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. This was the necessary condition of the service entrusted to Him. But the service itself consisted in something else: it was necessary that His uniqueness cease to be something belonging to Him alone; it had to be opened to the world. He had not simply to reveal Himself as King; He had to open to everyone who seeks the path into His Kingdom. Together with Him something greater than He Himself had to enter the world - greater not in fullness, but in scope.
And this greater thing, 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 manifestation of the Kingdom to the world possible. And the tests in the wilderness through which He passed immediately after the descent of the Holy Spirit upon Him were a testing of Him not simply as a human being or even as the God-Man, but as King of that Kingdom which He was to become.
It is no accident that all of them, one way or another, were connected with the single main question: what kind of King will You be? How will You rule: according to the laws of the fallen world, using human weaknesses and vices, or as King of God's Kingdom? The right choice meant the establishment of the Kingdom; the wrong one meant collapse at the very beginning of the ministry. And this was a completely free, humanly free choice of Jesus. The choice with which His ministry as Messiah began.