What does "This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased" mean in Matthew 3:17?

"And Jesus, when He was baptized, went up straightway out of the water: and lo, the heavens were opened unto Him, and He saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove, and lighting upon Him: and lo, a voice from heaven, saying, This is My beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased." Does it not seem that this wonderful testimony of God the Father was the consequence of Christ's fulfilling all righteousness in the waters of Jordan? It was the answer of God to the place that Christ, in His grace, had taken. It was God, jealous for the glory of His Son, who would not permit that a suspicion should rest upon this loveliest and lowliest of acts. And therefore, lest the full grace of it should not be felt, how quick is God the Father to say, "This is My beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased "! Do not think He has sin. But if you are there, He is with you: if the sheep are in the waters, the shepherd must enter them too. The Father at once vindicates His Son: "This is My beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased." It is not that He was well pleased with that act merely, but it is the retrospective expression of God's delight. It refutes all that the poor mind of man might have — has — gathered out of this transaction. It is always thus in the word of God. If there be, so to speak, a locked door, the key is always beside it. If there is a heart that counts upon God, and knows the perfection of His character, and is jealous over the honour, of His beloved Son, God is always with such. Man has endeavoured to take advantage of the Lord's grace, taking thus His place with the godly in Israel, in order to lower His person and His position even in relation to God Himself. But when we read with chastened spirits, what do we hear? "This is My beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased." We shall by and by find the importance of this in connection with what follows; but I leave the subject for the present. There is nothing in the whole compass of God's word so full of blessing to the believer as the person of Christ and His ways; but it requires great jealousy over self and the special guidance of the Holy Ghost; for who is sufficient for these things?

But more than this the voice came from heaven which said, "Thou art my beloved Son; in thee I have found my delight." This voice is of all importance too. It is manifested that Jesus was the delight of God as man, not merely in consequence of a work that was going to be done; it was the Person Who was owned, and His Person too after He had identified Himself with the people who were baptized. They must not mistake nor misinterpret His baptism; it was the baptism of repentance for them, but thoroughly in grace for Him. He had nothing to own. He was about to enter upon a great work, but baptism was in no way the expression of need on His part, nor to fit Him for what He was entering upon. "Thou art my beloved Son; in thee I am well pleased" — not only I am, but I have been well pleased, "have found my delight." It is retrospective, and not present merely.

If the eye of God passed, as the dove of Noah, over this earth, swept by the deluge of sin, nowhere, till Jesus was seen in it, could His eye have rested in complacency and peace; there on Him it could. Heaven, as to the expression of its satisfaction, whatever its counsels, was closed till Jesus (the second and perfect Man, the Holy One, He who offered Himself to God, coming to do His will) was on earth. The moment He presented Himself in public service, heaven opened, the Holy Ghost descended to dwell in this His one resting-place here, and the Father's voice, impossible now to be withheld, declares from heaven, "This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased." Was this object (too great, too excellent, for the silence of heaven and the Father's love) to lose its excellence and its savour in the midst of a world of sin? Far otherwise. It was there its excellency was proved.

In Mark and Luke, the declaration takes the form of an expression of communion by the Father to the Son. The utterance is an acknowledgment by the Father of His complacency and delight in His beloved Son, and it was addressed directly to the opened ear of the Son Himself: "Thou art My beloved Son, in Thee I have found My delight." Moreover, it is recorded in scripture for the deepening of our communion with the Father and the Son.

"It was the grace and perfection of Jesus which caused heaven to open" upon the dependent Man, and the Voice to come forth from the Father, expressing His good pleasure to the Son on earth. When God saw the first man, Adam, in his created freshness, He pronounced him "very good" (Gen. 1), but in the Second Man, the last Adam, the Father found His "delight." And this delight in His Sent One is no surprise to us, because it is inconceivable that the Father could have the Only-begotten Son in His bosom, and not be delighted with Him. How transcendent that delight!

At His baptism, too, He was marked off from all others. Jerusalem and all Judea, stirred by the preaching of the fiery Baptist, were being baptized of him in Jordan, confessing their sins. How natural it would be for the bystanders to think that this man, too, had sins to be confessed. To prevent any such mistake, God, at just that critical moment, parts the heavens, and says, as the dove-like Spirit descends and abides upon Him, "This is My beloved Son, in whom is all My delight." All might know from this that He was no mere man who was that day baptized of John in Jordan. He was markedly distinguished from all around.

Yet was Jesus, the Baptizer with the Holy Ghost, Himself baptized by John in the Jordan, Himself receives the Holy Ghost! What a sight and truth! Infinitely above sin and sins (which He did not even know), yet was He baptized with water. He had no unrighteousness to confess, but thus it became Him to fulfil all righteousness. From Nazareth of Galilee came He, who was God over all, blessed for ever. There He dwelt, as Matthew tells us, so that the prophets' saying might be in this, as in all else, fulfilled. Could heaven behold unmoved such grace? Impossible: "And straightway going up from the water, He saw the heavens cleaving asunder, and the Spirit as a dove descending upon Him." What meaning had that act of baptism in the mind of God! "And there came a voice out of the heavens saying, Thou art My beloved Son, in Thee I have found My delight."† Him," as St. John says, "hath God the Father sealed."‡ It is not merely the fact, but "He saw," etc., which is here recorded. Though truly God, He was man; though a Son, He became a servant, and was now about to enter on His ministry. He receives the Spirit as well as the recognition of His Sonship. He had justified God's sentence on, and call to, Israel — yea, He had in grace joined the souls who had bowed to it in the waters of Jordan; but this could not be without the answer of the Father for His heart's joy in the path He was about to tread. The one was the fulfilment of every kind of righteousness, and not legal only (this in grace, for there was no necessity of evil in His case), the other was His recognition thereon by the Father in the nearest personal relationship, over which His submission to baptism might have cast a cloud to carnal eyes. "In thee": so Edd. with ℵBDL, etc., best cursives (33, 69), Old Latin, Syr., etc. "In whom" is the reading of A and later uncials with most cursives. †Because of "His association with all in Israel who felt and owned their condition in the sight of God … the Saviour identifying Himself with the godly-feeling remnant" ("Lectures on the Gospels," p. 19 ff. Cf. note 19. ‡John 6:27. Cf. note 30.

Turning back for a moment, let us look at two occasions on which God declared that this was His Son. Look at the Man Christ Jesus associated with His people at the time of His baptism. Repentance had been preached by the faithful forerunner of Christ, John the Baptist, and the people confessing their sins had taken their place in Jordan, owning their evil desert, owning they were under death and judgment. When they are all baptized, there comes One, Jesus, whom John recognizes as the One by whom he had need to be baptized, instead of associating Him with these people. But He, in spite of John's protest, takes His place too amidst a people who had confessed their sins. He goes down into that which for Him was an anticipation, a foreshadowing of His own death. He goes down into Jordan and takes His place in all humility and grace as the Substitute of His people, identified with them. And just as He comes out of those waters of death the heavens are rent asunder, and God declares of Him, "This is My beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased." The very One who to outward appearance seemed to be one of that repentant throng, who had, apparently, nothing to distinguish Him from that crowd of people who had confessed their sins, God distinguishes, and declares Him to be His beloved Son, in whom He found His delight. In all those thirty years of private life at Nazareth He was perfectly pleasing and acceptable to God, who sets the seal of His perfect approval upon His entire life up to that time: "This is My beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased."

If the goodness of Jesus as Man did not extend to God (in the way considered above), there were those who greatly benefited both from the divine goodness made known in Him and from what He was personally to them. To Him, His disciples were the excellent of the earth, for they were the saints of God, and His chosen companions. At His baptism, Jesus identified Himself with those who were righteous before God as having confessed their sins saying, ‘thus it becometh us to fulfil all righteousness’ (Matt. 3:15), but the Father at once announced who Jesus was: His beloved Son, in whom all His pleasure was found.

In Luke 3, at the time of His baptism, the Lord Jesus is in the attitude of prayer, in accordance with the attitude of dependence in which He is presented in Psalm 16, where He says "Preserve me, O God: for in Thee do I put my trust." While in this dependent attitude before God, the heavens were opened, and a voice came from heaven, which said, "Thou art my beloved Son; in thee I am well pleased." Where the Lord is expressing to the godly remnant of Israel that He had come to be identified with them, God is expressing His deep joy and satisfaction in the One Who has thus come into Manhood for His pleasure.

God here adds His voice, to the testimony of Scripture and of John the Baptist, to the dignity of Him who was taking His place in lowliness" Thou art My beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased."