The Vicarious Baptism of Jesus

I added the following Torrance quotation to my blog post on January 24th (entitled NT Survey lecture summary):

“In Jesus God Himself descended to the very bottom of our human existence where we are alienated and antagonistic, into the very hell of our godlessness and despair, laying fast hold of us and taking our cursed condition upon himself, in order to embrace us for ever in His reconciling love…The Gospel tells us that at His Baptism Jesus was baptized ‘into repentance’, for as the Lamb of God come to bear our sins He fulfilled that mission…in a way in which He bore our sin and guilt upon His very soul which He made an offering for sin. That is to say, the Baptism with which he was baptized was a Baptism of vicarious repentance for us which He brought to its completion on the Cross where He was stricken and smitten of God for our sakes, by whose stripes we are healed. He had laid hold of us even in the depths of our human soul and mind where we are alienated from God and are at enmity with him, and altered them from within and from below in radical and complete repentance…Sin has been so ingrained into our minds that we are unable to repent and have to repent even of the kind of repentance we bring to God. But Jesus Christ laid hold of us even there in our sinful repentance and turned everything round through His holy vicarious repentance” (Thomas F. Torrance, The Mediation of Christ).