Matthew 3:16

16. Baptized How he was baptized is not said. His coming out of the water aids us not in guessing how, for the preposition properly signifies from. Nor if Jesus waded into and out of the water, would it in the least aid the matter. Thousands in ancient and modern times have been baptized by affusion, as they are represented in ancient pictures, standing or kneeling in the bed of a stream. But at any rate, the mode of his baptism was such as to make it the symbol and picture of the spiritual baptism which forthwith descended upon him in dovelike form.

And he saw That is, Jesus saw the dovelike Spirit. And John says that he saw it John 1:32. There is no proof for the opinion of some that it was unseen by many others. Like a dove That is, in a dovelike shape, as Luke beyond all equivocation declares in a bodily shape like a dove. That is, the Spirit invested itself with a dove form, in order to make itself visible to their senses. It assumed the form of a dove, as that bird was to the minds of those spectators the emblem of innocence. We cannot understand the purpose of commentators who endeavour to mar the beauty of this gracious manifestation by talking of its not being a dovelike form, but forsooth a quivering motion, (of what?) like a dove!

And here have we not a striking illustration of the Incarnation? As the Holy Spirit the third hypostasis in the Trinity, assumes the bodily form of a dove by way of self-manifestation to the eyes of men, so what difficulty in supposing that the second person of the Trinity should become God manifest in the flesh in a human form? So, many a time in the Old Testament, the angel of Jehovah, or rather the angel-Jehovah, being no other than Jehovah manifest, is described as appearing to the patriarchs. In Eden Jehovah-God walked in the garden, and pronounced sentence upon Adam. Jacob wrestled with God “face to face” at Peniel. The angel-Jehovah appeared to Moses, and said, “I am the God of thy Father.” And revealing his name, to be uttered to Pharaoh, he says: “Thus shalt thou say, I AM hath sent me unto you.” The most learned doctors in the Church, in all ages, have agreed, and that on most reliable ground, that this personage so at various times appearing, was no other than the Son of Man, seen at last in vision by Daniel, (chap. 7,) invested with “an everlasting dominion, which shall not pass away.” Few persons, at any rate, feel any difficulty in supposing, or at least comprehending and conceiving, that these angelic forms were visible embodiments of the person of Jehovah. What greater difficulty is there in conceiving that the person of Jesus should have been as truly the visible representative manifestation, or embodiment, of the same Divine Being?