THE BAPTISM OF THE LORD JESUS
When the Lord Jesus was baptized, the Holy Spirit came down upon Him in the form of a dove. He was conceived of the Holy Spirit (Luke 1:31, 35; Matt. 1:20), and the Holy Spirit was mingled with His human nature within. When the Lord Jesus came to be baptized, He was already a man whose human element was mingled with divinity. Since He was mingled with the Spirit already, how could the Spirit as a complete unit descend upon Him? Are there two Holy Spirits? Did not the Lord Jesus have the Holy Spirit already? Although He had been conceived of the Holy Spirit, the Holy Spirit nevertheless came down from the heavens as a complete unit and descended upon Him. The Lord Jesus is wonderful! He was already mingled with the Holy Spirit, yet the Holy Spirit still came down upon Him.
John said, "He shall baptize you in the Holy Spirit" (Matt. 3:11). This raises a problem. How does He baptize us? When does He baptize us? If we could gather together all the Christian teachers from the first century to the present, they would fight until eternity about this one thing. No one can systematize it; no one can make it clear. Nevertheless, I do know that the Lord Jesus baptized Peter, I know He baptized me, and I know He baptized you into the Holy Spirit. How He did it no one can adequately explain. Psalm 139 indicates that we do not even know how we were formed and created by God. Yet we do know that God created us. It is hard for you to tell me how God created you. Although you may not know how you were created, you do know that you were created because you are here. Likewise, I do not really know how the Lord Jesus baptized me, but I do know that I have been baptized by Him because I am so excited about Him. If I had never been baptized by Christ, I could not be so excited about Him. We have been baptized. How we do not know, but He has baptized us into the Holy Spirit. Don’t try to analyze. Analysis only damages. In the Bible there is no such thing as systematic theology. We do know that we have been baptized into the Spirit and that we are here with the seed inside of us. The Lord Jesus has been sown into us in a way that is without culture and without religion.
THE VICTORIOUS SEED
Now we come to chapter four. The Lord Jesus is the seed of the kingdom to be sown into us, but before He could be sown into us He first had to pass the test. He had to defeat the enemy. So He went to the wilderness to meet the enemy and was victorious. The leader of the demons was defeated. The Devil was defeated, not by God, but by a man, Jesus the Nazarene. The enemy tempted the Lord Jesus not to stand on the position of a man, saying, "If You are the Son of God, speak, that these stones may become loaves of bread" (Matt. 4:3). He answered, "Man shall not live on bread alone" (Matt. 4:4). He stood as a man and defeated the enemy.
(The Kingdom, Chapter 5, by Witness Lee)
