Matthew 3:13-17
The Baptism of Jesus
13 Then Jesus came from Galilee to the Jordan to be baptized by John. 14 But John tried to deter him, saying, “I need to be baptized by you, and do you come to me?”
15 Jesus replied, “Let it be so now; it is proper for us to do this to fulfill all righteousness.” Then John consented.
16 As soon as Jesus was baptized, he went up out of the water. At that moment heaven was opened, and he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove and alighting on him. 17 And a voice from heaven said, “This is my Son, whom I love; with him I am well pleased.”
Evangelical Christian author Jerry Bridges writes this about the Cross: “Have you ever thought about the wonderful Truth that Christ lived His Perfect Life in your place and on your behalf?...Has it yet gripped you that when God looks at you today He sees you clothed in the perfect, sinless obedience of His Son?...And that when He says, "This is My Son, whom I LOVE; with Him I AM well pleased," He includes you in that warm embrace?...The extent to which we truly understand this is the extent to which we will begin to enjoy those unsearchable riches that are found in Christ.”...“The cross, then, is an expression of God's wrath toward sin as well as His LOVE to us...It expresses His holiness in His determination to punish sin, even at the cost of His Son...And it expresses His LOVE in sending His Son to bear the punishment we so justly deserved...So in answer to the question, "Why the cross?" we must say God's holiness demanded it as punishment for our sins, and God's LOVE provided it to save us from our sins.”...“Christ died for our sins...Jesus Christ, the Eternal Son of God, took upon Himself a human nature and died a horrible death on our behalf...That is the reason for the cross...He suffered what we should have suffered...He died in our place to pay the penalty for our sins.”...“Furthermore, even a deep, penetrating sense of our sinfulness does not do justice to the reality of our predicament...Our need is not to be measured by our own sense of need, but by what God had to do to meet that need.”...“Our situation was so desperate that only the death of His Own Son on a cruel and shameful cross was sufficient to resolve the problem.”...
And so we learn and understand why it is written that God so LOVES the world and mankind that He gave His One and Only Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish but have eternal life...For God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through Him...Whoever believes in Him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe stands condemned already because they have not believed in the Name of God’s One and Only Son...This is the verdict: Light has come into the world, but people loved darkness instead of Light because their deeds were evil...Everyone who does evil hates the Light, and will not come into the Light for fear that their deeds will be exposed...But whoever lives by the Truth comes into the light, so that it may be seen plainly that what they have done has been done in the sight of God...