Friday, July 5, 2024

Maximus the Confessor on why Jesus Himself was Baptized

  

In His determination to free man from such dishonor and to restore him to his divine inheritance, the Word who created human nature truly became man, taking His human nature from men, and for our sake was bodily born yet without sin, and He who is God by essence and the Son of God by nature was baptized for our sake, voluntarily subjecting Himself to the spiritual birth of adoption, so that bodily birth might be abolished.

 

Seeing then that the Son and word of God, who created us, and who alone is who in divinity and glory with the Father and the Spirit, for our sake truly became man like us; and seeing that He who is God by nature was born bodily yet without sin and for our sake accepted the birth of baptism unto spiritual adoption. I believe that for this reason the teacher connected the birth of baptism with the Incarnation, [1348C] so that baptism might be considered as the abolition and release from bodily birth. For the very thing which Adam freely rejected (I mean the birth by the Spirit leading to divinization), and for which he was condemned to bodily birth amid corruption, is exactly what the Word assumed willingly, out of His goodness and love for mankind, and, by becoming man in accordance with our fallen state, willingly subjecting Himself to our condemnation (though He alone is free and sinless), and consenting to a bodily birth, in which lay the power of our condemnation, He mystically restored birth in the Spirit; and so for our sake, having dissolved in Himself the bounds of bodily birth, He granted, through birth in the Spirit, to those who believe in His name the power to become children of God instead of [1348D] flesh and blood. On account of my condemnation, the Lord first submitted Himself to Incarnation and bodily birth, after which came the birth of baptism received in the Spirit, to which He consented for the sake of my salvation and restoration by grace or, to put it more precisely, my re-recreation. (Maximus the Confessor, Ambigua to John: Ambiguum 42, in On Difficulties in the Church Fathers: The Ambigua, 2 vols. [trans. Nicholas Constas; Dumbarton Oaks Medieval Library; Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2014], 2:183, 185)