Mark tersely describes the most significant event through which he introduces Jesus as God's dear Son, the King who will rule for God, the Servant of God who will accept the path of suffering to save others. We have to turn to Luke 3:23 to find out that Jesus was about thirty years old.

Jesus joined those who accepted John's call to repent and be baptized (1 :9), in his baptism identifying himself with those he had come to save from the power of sin and evil. This act of identification had immediate and tremendous consequences for Jesus. 'He saw heaven opening'  (1: 10) means that God's glory was seen by Jesus as the presence of the Holy Spirit empowered him, and God's voice spoke to him in a way that made the task ahead of him very clear.

 



The words in 1: 11 refer to and connect two different ideas in the Old Testament, (i) of the King (Psalm 2:7) who will rule over the whole world for God (Psalm 2:8), and (ii) of the obedient Servant of God (Isaiah 42:1). The verse from Isaiah is the beginning of the first of the five 'Servant' passages which reach their climax in Isaiah 52: 13 - 53: 12 where the suffering of the Servant, for the sake of others, is described.

Mark's account does not indicate that anyone except Jesus was aware of the divine glory and voice and the empowering of Jesus by the Holy Spirit. Mark does not say that John the Baptist knew that Jesus was the one whose coming he had foretold but this is indicated in the other gospels (Luke 7:19, Matthew 3 :13-15, II :3, John 1:23-27).

At his Baptism, Jesus knew that the time had come for him to begin to manifest the rule of God in the world in a new way, in the power of the Holy Spirit, but the way ahead of him would not be that of the Messiah of popular expectation, a greater king than David with power over all nations, a conqueror who would destroy Rome. The victory of Jesus would only be reached through the way of suffering, rejection by men, and total obedience to the will of God.