Luke 3:21-22 (ESV) Now when all the people were baptized, and when Jesus also had been baptized and was praying, the heavens were opened, and the Holy Spirit descended on him in bodily form, like a dove; and a voice came from heaven, "You are my beloved Son; with you I am well pleased"
Prayer is the God-ordained means for the outpouring of the Holy Spirit.
Which Came First? The Chicken or the Egg: A Qualification Up Front
Some might flinch at the proposition that prayer precedes the outpouring of the Holy Spirit. After all, doesn’t Paul say the Spirit helps us in our weakness? When we don’t know how to pray as we ought, it is the Spirit that aids us and intercedes for us (Rom. 8:26-27). To this, I add my yes and amen! The Christian cannot rightly pray apart from God’s Spirit. For more on this, see my post “What is Prayer.” We established in Part 1 of this series, “Prayer Changes Things,” that God ordains that certain things happen in response to the prayers of his people. God has revealed in Scripture that one such thing that he ordains to happen in response to prayer is the outpouring of the Holy Spirit. Luke 3:21, while developing some key Christological themes, tangentially lays out the first of many examples, from both Luke and Acts, of prayer preceding the outpouring of the Holy Spirit.
Key Christological Themes
Luke 3:21a (ESV) Now when all the people were baptized, and when Jesus also had been baptized.
Jesus the Righteous. Jesus, we learn from Matthew’s account, was baptized to “fulfill all righteousness.” How was it that Jesus, the righteous, needed to be baptized into the Baptism of John, a baptism of repentance (Cf., Matt. 3:15, Mark 1:4, Luke 3:3, and Acts 19:4)? Calvin answered correctly in his Commentary on a Harmony of the Evangelists Matthew, Mark, and Luke, “Since Christ had voluntarily subjected himself to the law, it was necessary that he should keep it in every part.”[1]
Jesus the Sin-Bearer. From the above, we can see that in Jesus identifying with the sinners, his baptism is a foreshadowing of his substitutionary atonement. “As sin-bearer,” Sproul stated, “he had to enter into his people’s indebtedness before God. He had to become one with them, entering into the sin of his people as the Lamb of God.”[2] Jesus, who would die in the place of sinners, was baptized alongside sinners.
Jesus Consecrator of our Baptism. As well as Jesus being baptized to fulfill all righteousness, Calvin also pointed out, “The general reason why Christ received baptism was that he might render full obedience to the Father; and the special reason was, that he might consecrate baptism in his own body, that we might have it in common with him.”[3] Consider Paul’s admonition, “We were buried therefore with him by baptism into death, in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life” (Rom. 6:4, emphasis mine). In the same way that the Lord’s Supper was consecrated by Jesus in his body given and blood that was shed on the cross, baptism was consecrated by his body. Jesus, the righteous, was baptized alongside sinners as our sin-bearer.
The Outpouring of the Spirit
Luke 3:21b-22 (ESV) “And when Jesus also had been baptized and was praying, the heavens were opened, and the Holy Spirit descended on him in bodily form, like a dove; and a voice came from heaven, ‘You are my beloved Son; with you I am well pleased’” (Emphasis mine).
As mentioned earlier, this will be the first of many instances where prayer is directly tied to and precedes the outpouring of the Holy Spirit. After a brief interlude of the genealogy of Jesus, Luke is quick to remind us that Jesus was full of the Holy Spirit: “And Jesus, full of the Holy Spirit, returned from the Jordan and was led by the Spirit in the wilderness for forty days, being tempted by the devil. And he ate nothing during those days. And when they were ended, he was hungry” (Luke 4:1-2). And when the temptation of Jesus was complete, Luke states that “Jesus returned in the power of the Spirit to Galilee, and a report about him went out through all the surrounding country” (Luke 4:14). The direction and power of Jesus’ earthly ministry are tied clearly to the leading and filling of the Holy Spirit, a leading and filling that prayer preceded.
Do you want the direction of your life and ministry to be led by the Holy Spirit?
Do you pray?
Do you want the filling of the Holy Spirit to fight temptation?
Do you pray?
Do you want the power of the Holy Spirit in your life and ministry?
Do you pray?
Note that Luke does not tell us what Jesus was praying for prior to his baptism, but we do see the results—the leading, filling, and empowering of the Holy Spirit. The lesson is implied here. If you want the leading, filling, and empowering work of the Holy Spirit in your life, then you must seek God in prayer. What is implicit in chapters 3 and 4, is clearly stated in Luke 11:13, “If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will the heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him!” The giving is preceded by the asking. If the Holy Spirit is to be poured out in individual lives, households, churches, communities, and nations, then we must pray to God and ask for the outpouring of his Holy Spirit. Prayer is the God-ordained means for the outpouring of the Holy Spirit.
Endnotes: [1] John Calvin and William Pringle, Commentary on a Harmony of the Evangelists Matthew, Mark, and Luke, vol. 1 (Bellingham, WA: Logos Bible Software, 2010), 202. [2] R. C. Sproul, A Walk with God: An Exposition of Luke (Great Britain: Christian Focus Publications, 1999), 57. [3] John Calvin and William Pringle, Commentary on a Harmony of the Evangelists Matthew, Mark, and Luke, vol. 1 (Bellingham, WA: Logos Bible Software, 2010), 202.