Affirmed in Love
“And a voice came from heaven,
‘You are my beloved Son;
with you I am well pleased.’”Luke 3:22b
This great feast, the Baptism of the Lord marks the end of the Christmas season. Although Jesus had no sin, He got baptized just like everyone else who waited in line before Him to be cleansed of their sins by John the Baptist. Jesus got in line. Like everyone else. Jesus became one of us, like us in all things but sin, to tell us “I AM with you.” In His baptism, Jesus shows us that He came to be one of us, to be with us in all things and to save us from our sins.
Upon rising from the water after Jesus was baptized, and as he was praying the voice of the Father said “You are my beloved Son; with you I am well pleased” and a dove, the Holy Spirit, descended upon Him. The Father, before all those present, affirmed the identity of Jesus: Son. And it is only after this affirmation did Jesus begin His public ministry, signifying that everything that the Son does is from the Father and is done with the Father in unity of the Holy Spirit. Jesus is the Son of the Father and the Father is pleased with Him.
Those very same words the Father says to us on our baptism day, we who are baptized into Jesus Christ, “You are my beloved son/daughter, and with you I am well pleased.” The Father is pleased with you. He loves you. He always has and always will. And this love is independent of anything we do or say. The Father is pleased simply in us; not the awards we achieved, the charity we have done, the people we have helped, the sacrifices we have made, God is simply pleased with you and loves you because you are you. Of course all those things are great and wonderful, but God does not love us more when we do those things or love us less when we do not. All of those good things we do, although when we do it, may make us feel as if God loves us more, do not make God loves us more, but rather we do those things because we know, either implicitly or explicitly, that God loves us. The good things we do really come from a place of gratitude because of the love of God we have experienced in our lives.
Just as Jesus only started His public ministry after this affirmation of identity by the Father, so too we must know who we are in God before we can go out and do the good that we know in our hearts. The Father speaks those words to us today, “You are my beloved, and with you I am well pleased.” Today may we, affirmed by God in His love, allow Him to penetrate our hearts so that we might come to live our lives in the manner Christ did — in the love of God, with the love of God, and moved by the love of God.
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