“Lights, Camera, Action”–A Pastor’s thoughts on Mark (Mathew Claridge)

[Editor’s note: To read previous articles in this series on the gospel of Mark, click here.]

In our last post on Mark 1:9-15, we noted that the most surprising actors to take the stage at Jesus’ baptism is the Trinity itself. And this event raises the question, “why is the Trinity revealed here of all places?” For that, we need to consider the back-story. Jesus’ baptism was not just an unusual event of ambiguous but numinous spiritual significance; it is a supernatural revelation demonstrating that Jesus is the answer to why the world exists and where the world is going. Everything about these events are meant to recall for us the two Acts of God’s epic story: Creation and Redemption.

Act 1: Creation

In both the baptism and testing of Jesus, we see a recapitulation of the creation account. Several things are noteworthy. Jesus’ emergence out of the waters of “chaos” and receiving the benediction, “Son of God,” identifies Jesus with Adam in a very pointed way (cf. Lk. 3.38; 1Cor. 15.45).[1] The descent of the Spirit recalls the primeval Spirit of God “fluttering” over the primeval waters and the dove that symbolizes the end of the flood in Noah’s day. The Father’s benediction on Jesus is analogous to his benediction over the creation, “it is good” (Gen. 1.31). Just as Adam, following his creation, enters a time of testing and trial in which Satan plays a prominent part, so too does Jesus.

What does all this have to do with the revelation of the Trinity? Several things, in fact. First, it implies that the work of creation was fundamentally a Trinitarian project. As all three divine persons are involved in Christ’s baptism, so all three were involved in the original creation. A link is forged between the old and new creation in the plan of God. Second, this “new creation” centers on the revelation of Jesus, the Son of God. Jesus is really the man God had in mind when they created the world (Col. 1.15ff). This is the New Adam, the final Adam, the intended Adam through whom God himself becomes not only the writer of the play but the hero of it (Jn. 5.23). Again, it should be noticed that no one else is the focus here; the God-man Jesus is the only one on whom the Father lavishes his praise and into whom the Spirit is breathed.

In other words, we are peeping in on a very private family affair between the members of the Trinity. And perhaps we might become offended that we don’t get any screen time. After all, doesn’t John 3.16 say that “God so loved the world, that he sent his Son”? But we aren’t even in the picture here, nor the object of the Father’s loving praise. Or so it seems. In fact, our absence from the stage is a profound blessing and the source of our ultimate joy. We can draw two life-giving implications from our “absence” at this point in Mark’s account.

First, let’s consider God’s love within the Trinity and God’s love for the world. Putting these two together correctly depends on how we understand God’s relationship with his creation. In other world-faiths and philosophies, the world and God (or “ultimate reality” depending whether God is conceived as a personal or impersonal being) are dependent on each other. God needs the world and the world needs God. One typical consequence of this symbiotic relationship is that the creation becomes eternal in the same way “God” is. If God needs the world to define who he is, after all, then the world must have been around as long as He has been. Of course, in various belief systems this is put together in different ways. Eastern religions tend to collapse the God-world distinction and identify the two. Philosophies in the Western, Neo-platonic tradition (e.g., Idealism, Process Theism, Radical Orthodoxy) attempt with all their might to maintain some functional distinction between the two. Regardless, God and the world are in an eternal bond of co-dependency.

Depending on how you put it, this co-dependent relationship might come across as appealing. It might be flattering to think that God needs me and I need God, that I have something exclusive to contribute to God’s story. He needs me to complete his mission. He loves me because there’s something about me he finds very attractive. After all, isn’t that how love works in human relationships? Isn’t that what most people really mean when they croon, “you complete me?”

One of several errors in this line of reasoning is pressing an analogy too far, with dire consequences. In this case, a romantic relationship (interpreted in a thoroughly modern way) between human partners is used to exhaustively describe the relationship between God and his world. Indeed, such a straightforward projection of human experience onto metaphysics ends up compromising not only the integrity of God, but the authenticity of human relationships.

This co-dependency implies first of all that God is not all-sufficient in himself; He is eternally discontent. Consequently, his love for the world can never entirely rise above the motivation of self-interest. He negotiates with the world to get what he needs; just as we must do with him. This is a vision of fellowship with God as “contract” not “covenant.” God contracts with the world for services rendered, “I scratch your back, and you scratch mine.” If we obey and serve him, he promises his protection.

Another way of describing the liabilities here is to uncover the assumption lying behind the projection of human romantic relationships onto to the God-world dynamic. The assumption is that the only factors considered in a romantic relationship are the two human participants; God is not factored into the premises. Thus, the Modern couple defines their relationship purely in terms of themselves, with no reference to a third party, i.e., God. Consequently, our Modern age has demonstrated that apart from a higher court of appeal, human romantic relationships never rise above the devastation of co-dependency. When a fallible, fragile, fickle person depends on the another fallible, fragile, fickle person to “complete me,” the results are high day-time TV drama and a string of broken, disgruntled, devastated lives. This is what Tim Keller describes as “apocalyptic romance.” Romantic relationships, apart from a mutual acknowledgment of their dependence on God’s all-sufficient love, must inevitably succumb to a sterile tit-for-tat negotiation. Every failure of the other human partner to “satisfy me” becomes a crisis beyond all reckoning. The problem with projecting this god-less view of human relationship onto God is that it means the “co-dependency” goes all the way down (or all the way up). No matter how exalted or powerful He may be, God cannot escape his equally fickle, fragile, and fallible existence apart from the world. We end up projecting the drama of day-time TV onto the script of the universe.

The Christian doctrine of the Trinity, however, breaks that vicious cycle. In the fellowship of the Trinity, God is defined as three Persons where His love, power, and glory are shared and received from all eternity. As such, God had no inner need to create the world to “complete” himself or to create a context for fellowship. As pictured in this tender scene at Christ’s Baptism, we see the Trinitarian God utterly content and blessed in the mutual love shared between the members of the Godhead. The cycle of co-dependence is broken at the very heart of the universe. In which case, God created the world out of freedom not necessity. He created it not in order to receive love, power, glory, respect, and joy but only to give those things to others. By the same token, God’s love is not given because we’ve earned it or attract it, but simply because God freely gives it, period.

This irreducible gift of love, which can draw no further explanation than God’s absolute freedom, proves that the absence of human participants at Christ’s baptism is not an oversight but a blessing. It is a blessing to us because it proves that God’s love is genuine and not a cover for really meeting his own needs.

The second implication of the Trinitarian focus in Mark’s account of the baptism is built on the previous one. The Trinity implies that satisfaction or joy, not emptiness or despair, resides at the heart of the universe. If God is utterly satisfied in Himself so that he doesn’t need the world, then absolutely nothing can overwhelm the blessedness and joy he experiences. Nothing can ultimately faze God. God is eternally, irresistibly, uncontrollably, omnipotently happy. This entirely un-fazed joy can be felt in this unique and giddy scene between the Father, Son, and Spirit in Christ’s baptism. Whatever else may happen in Mark’s Gospel, nothing will shake the Father’s “pleasure” in his Son.

Unfortunately, Christians have often had a very wrong view of God as a morose, frowning deity looking down from heaven on all the wickedness and ungodliness of men. Yes we know that God does get angry, wroth, and displeased. We know that God’s settled disposition to man’s rebellion is one of rage and punitive judgment. But, in the ultimate sense, those things don’t define God’s eternal life. We and our troubles and sins are not the only focus of his attention, perhaps not even the primary focus of his attention. His ultimate focus is on Himself—Father, Son, Spirit. That is what is eternal, not man and his “issues.” Without perhaps realizing it, a vision of God eternally angry at us gives us too much credit and reduced God once again to a needy deity whose emotional state is determined by our fickleness.

Again, at first blush, this appears rather offensive, as if we don’t matter at all to God’s ultimate happiness. Well, that’s true, and it’s actually the source of our ultimate joy. God’s omnipotent blessedness means that ultimate reality is described by life, joy, love, and purpose. Apart from this uncreated state of blessedness, we fall back into the black hole where random chance, mutation, survival of the fittest, chemical reactions, despair, co-dependency, and death reign as ultimate. The implication of this dismal modern worldview is that all our experiences of joy, love, acceptance, family, etc. are just illusions and have absolutely no significance at all in the cosmic scheme of things. I remember a Calvin and Hobbes strip in which Calvin is called on to answer the question, “What was the impact of the War of 1812?” To which Calvin answered, “in the grand scheme of things, probably nothing.” When the teacher fails to affirm his answer, Calvin ruminates, “nobody likes us big picture people.” In the Trinitarian view of the world, evil and despair is transitory; in the Modern view of the world, goodness and purpose is transitory. The difference is stark.

The baptism of Jesus says all this, and more. If at Jesus’ baptism we are privileged to peep in on the uncreated blessedness that defines the heart of reality, how do we connect with it exactly? How do we experience love in a fellowship that doesn’t need us? This is what is answered for us in considering Act 2: Redemption.

Matthew Claridge is an editor for Credo Magazine and is Senior Pastor of Mt. Idaho Baptist Church in Grangeville, ID. He has earned degrees from Trinity Evangelical Divinity School and the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. He is married to Cassandra and has three children: Alec, Nora, and Grace.