The baptism of Jesus by John was the initiation rite marking the formal commencement of Jesus’s public ministry. And right at the outset, our Lord begins His ministry by formally identifying with the sinners He came to redeem. Hence the significance of Jesus’s baptism can be summarized in this: His vicarious identification with sinners as the sin-bearer.
Mark’s point is to show John the Baptist’s prophetic background. Isaiah prophesied of John’s coming 700 years before he was born, and Malachi, 400 years prior. The Baptist is one of the few individuals who have ever lived whose life was so historically significant that it was expressly foretold by the Prophets in the Scriptures.
Mark was probably written in Rome during the final phase of Peter’s ministry. As Peter was preaching the gospel in Rome, Mark was inspired by the same Spirit that was upon Peter to record the preaching of the apostle and to organize the material into a permanent, written testimony for the ongoing use of the…