Baptism and the Forty Days

136:8.1The next great prob­lem with which this God-man wres­tled and which he pres­ently de­cided in ac­cor­dance with the will of the Fa­ther in heaven, con­cerned the ques­tion as to whether or not any of his super­hu­man pow­ers should be em­ployed for the pur­pose of at­tract­ing the at­ten­tion and win­ning the ad­her­ence of his fel­low men. Should he in any man­ner lend his uni­verse pow­ers to the grat­i­fi­ca­tion of the Jew­ish han­ker­ing for the spec­tac­u­lar and the mar­velous? He de­cided that he should not. He set­tled upon a pol­icy of pro­ce­dure which elim­i­nated all such prac­tices as the method of bring­ing his mis­sion to the no­tice of men. And he con­sis­tently lived up to this great de­ci­sion. Even when he per­mit­ted the man­i­fes­ta­tion of nu­mer­ous time-short­en­ing min­is­tra­tions of mercy, he al­most in­vari­ably ad­mon­ished the re­cip­i­ents of his heal­ing min­istry to tell no man about the ben­e­fits they had re­ceived. And al­ways did he refuse the taunt­ing chal­lenge of his en­e­mies to “show us a sign” in proof and dem­on­stra­tion of his di­vin­ity.

136:8.2Je­sus very wisely fore­saw that the work­ing of mir­a­cles and the ex­e­cu­tion of won­ders would call forth only out­ward al­le­giance by over­aw­ing the ma­te­rial mind; such per­for­mances would not re­veal God nor save men. He re­fused to be­come a mere won­der-worker. He re­solved to be­come oc­cu­pied with but a sin­gle task—the es­tab­lish­ment of the king­dom of heaven.

136:8.3Through­out all this mo­men­tous di­a­logue of Je­sus’ com­muning with him­self, there was pres­ent the hu­man el­e­ment of ques­tion­ing and near-doubt­ing, for Je­sus was man as well as God. It was ev­i­dent he would never be re­ceived by the Jews as the Mes­siah if he did not work won­ders. Be­sides, if he would con­sent to do just one un­nat­u­ral thing, the hu­man mind would know of a cer­tainty that it was in sub­servience to a truly di­vine mind. Would it be con­sis­tent with “the Fa­ther’s will” for the di­vine mind to make this con­ces­sion to the doubt­ing na­ture of the hu­man mind? Je­sus de­cided that it would not and cited the pres­ence of the Per­son­al­ized Ad­juster as suf­fi­cient proof of di­vin­ity in part­ner­ship with hu­man­ity.

136:8.4Je­sus had trav­eled much; he re­called Rome, Alexan­dria, and Da­mas­cus. He knew the meth­ods of the world—how peo­ple gained their ends in pol­i­tics and com­merce by com­pro­mise and diplo­macy. Would he uti­lize this knowl­edge in the fur­ther­ance of his mis­sion on earth? No! He like­wise de­cided against all com­pro­mise with the wis­dom of the world and the in­flu­ence of riches in the es­tab­lish­ment of the king­dom. He again chose to de­pend ex­clu­sively on the Fa­ther’s will.

136:8.5Je­sus was fully aware of the short cuts open to one of his pow­ers. He knew many ways in which the at­ten­tion of the na­tion, and the whole world, could be im­me­di­ately fo­cused upon him­self. Soon the Pass­over would be cel­e­brated at Je­ru­sa­lem; the city would be thronged with vis­i­tors. He could as­cend the pin­na­cle of the tem­ple and be­fore the be­wil­dered mul­ti­tude walk out on the air; that would be the kind of a Mes­siah they were look­ing for. But he would sub­se­quently dis­ap­point them since he had not come to re-es­tab­lish David’s throne. And he knew the fu­til­ity of the Cali­gas­tia method of try­ing to get ahead of the nat­u­ral, slow, and sure way of ac­com­plish­ing the di­vine pur­pose. Again the Son of Man bowed obe­di­ently to the Fa­ther’s way, the Fa­ther’s will.

136:8.6Je­sus chose to es­tab­lish the king­dom of heaven in the hearts of man­kind by nat­u­ral, or­di­nary, dif­fi­cult, and try­ing meth­ods, just such pro­ce­dures as his earth chil­dren must sub­se­quently fol­low in their work of en­larg­ing and ex­tend­ing that heav­enly king­dom. For well did the Son of Man know that it would be “through much tribu­la­tion that many of the chil­dren of all ages would en­ter into the king­dom.” Je­sus was now pass­ing through the great test of civ­i­lized man, to have power and stead­fastly refuse to use it for purely self­ish or per­sonal pur­poses.

136:8.7In your con­sid­er­a­tion of the life and ex­pe­ri­ence of the Son of Man, it should be ever borne in mind that the Son of God was in­car­nate in the mind of a first-cen­tury hu­man be­ing, not in the mind of a twen­ti­eth-cen­tury or other-cen­tury mor­tal. By this we mean to con­vey the idea that the hu­man en­dow­ments of Je­sus were of nat­u­ral ac­quire­ment. He was the prod­uct of the hered­i­tary and en­vi­ron­men­tal fac­tors of his time, plus the in­flu­ence of his train­ing and ed­u­ca­tion. His hu­man­ity was gen­uine, nat­u­ral, wholly de­rived from the an­tecedents of, and fos­tered by, the ac­tual in­tel­lec­tual sta­tus and so­cial and eco­nomic con­di­tions of that day and gen­er­a­tion. While in the ex­pe­ri­ence of this God-man there was al­ways the pos­si­bil­ity that the di­vine mind would tran­scend the hu­man in­tel­lect, nonethe­less, when, and as, his hu­man mind func­tioned, it did per­form as would a true mor­tal mind un­der the con­di­tions of the hu­man en­vi­ron­ment of that day.

136:8.8Je­sus por­trayed to all the worlds of his vast uni­verse the folly of cre­at­ing ar­ti­fi­cial sit­u­a­tions for the pur­pose of ex­hibit­ing ar­bi­trary au­thor­ity or of in­dulging ex­cep­tional power for the pur­pose of en­hanc­ing moral val­ues or ac­cel­er­at­ing spir­i­tual prog­ress. Je­sus de­cided that he would not lend his mis­sion on earth to a rep­e­ti­tion of the dis­ap­point­ment of the reign of the Mac­cabees. He re­fused to pros­ti­tute his di­vine at­tri­butes for the pur­pose of ac­quir­ing un­earned pop­u­lar­ity or for gain­ing po­lit­i­cal pres­tige. He would not coun­te­nance the trans­mu­ta­tion of di­vine and cre­ative en­ergy into na­tional power or in­ter­na­tional pres­tige. Je­sus of Naz­a­reth re­fused to com­pro­mise with evil, much less to con­sort with sin. The Mas­ter tri­umphantly put loy­alty to his Fa­ther’s will above ev­ery other earthly and tem­po­ral con­sid­er­a­tion.