The Cup and the Baptism

The previous post contained a section on the cup and the baptism, which I delve into more detail here, it is replicated again in the previous article in later edits. Replicating it again here for the benefit of some.

Matthew 10:38

The cup that I drink you will drink, and with the baptism with which I am baptized, you will be baptized.

The cup He drank refers to the one which He asked the Father three times, "let this cup pass from me". Where for Him it was the total combined load of the sins of all humanity throughout history in the vessel of His body to absorb the wrath of His Father. For the apostles, it was the scorn and hatred of men. Paul said, we are "the most hated of all men, the garbage of all the earth" (1 Cor 4:13). They could not bear the sins of the world being human and not God and man like Christ. But they could take up the hatred that people directed to God. "Now I rejoice in what I am suffering for you, and I fill up in my flesh what is still lacking in regard to Christ's afflictions, for the sake of his body, which is the church" (Col 1:24). It is as though the shepherd's job, the apostles' job is to absorb the hatred of Christ  from the world and the devil on behalf of the church, something like what Christ did for his disciples. When He was on earth, the devil and the whole religious mafia went after Him and His chicks were safe under his wings. I suspect in the spirit realm, it is a similar matter.

What is the baptism? Water baptism? haha of course not. It is the baptism of the Spirit in which Christ was filled at the river Jordan. And He went through another baptism in being glorified, He received "the Spirit without measure" (John 3:34), Acts 2:33 Peter says Jesus was resurrected, glorified, ascended and given a further portion of the Holy Spirit, being one with God as He said He would be in John 17. He then sheds this baptism upon those who ask Him. "How much more will the Father not give the Spirit to those who ask"? (Luke 11:13).

So we see the cup of rejection of and by men and the measure of the Spirit of God upon a person,  is linked together inextricably in Jesus' statement above. The reason why the Son of God could be glorified, is because "He learnt obedience through suffering". Having completed His obedeince to God as a true Son, He was entrusted with all power, omnipotent power, as God is powerful. No longer limited by space time and human weaknesses and frailties.