Words alone could never fully capture the meaning and wonder of Christmas — but we can sure do a whole lot better than the card aisles in stores today. “Many blessings and wishes to you.” “May your life be filled with warmth and good cheer this holiday season.” “Sending lots of peace and joy to you and your family this Christmas.” “It’s people like you who make this season so magical and bright.”

No, it’s not people like you (or me) that make this season merry, magical, or bright. In fact, by increasingly thinking we’re what makes Christmas so merry, we’re slowly siphoning off its true power. The Son of the living God was born human in a small town in the Middle East, sent to bear the awful weight of sin and shame, overpower Satan’s terrifying forces of evil, place death itself in the grave, and clear the narrow path to paradise, and yet how many settle for something superficial and fleeting instead — for greeting cards, newly released electronics, and a few LED lights?

Read enough cards and watch enough movies, and you begin to wonder if the actual “magic” of our modern Christmas is avoiding the real Christmas altogether.

Unfeigned Magic

The world can have its makeshift magic over these next couple days; we’re praying for a spiritual miracle — in us, freshly and more deeply, and then in everyone we love:

Though you have not seen him, you love him. Though you do not now see him, you believe in him and rejoice with joy that is inexpressible and filled with glory. (1 Peter 1:8)

Do you still love the King lying in the manger? Does your heart still rise to see him serve his friends, heal the sick, deliver the possessed, and then die for the world? Do you recognize yourself in the verse above, rejoicing “with joy that is inexpressible and filled with glory”? If not, come and look again at the deeper, earth-shaking, heaven-filling magic of Christmas, all from just one paragraph in Colossians 1.

1. This Christ shows us God.

He is the image of the invisible God. (Colossians 1:15)

Those eight words really ought to be enough to drive the banality right out of our homes and pews. The man who was born to a real woman, with a real womb, in a real city, during a real time in history has made the infinite and invisible God seeable. Recognizable. Huggable. Human. This Christ was in the beginning, and all things were made through him. And then he took on the flesh that he had made, and ate the food that he had made, and walked over hills that he had made, and loved the people that he had made — all so that we might see God.

And not only did God make himself seeable in the child born in Bethlehem, but he’s opened our eyes to see his glory — in the manger, at the cross, on the throne. Before we believed, “the god of this world” kept us from seeing what we now see. And then, whether suddenly or slowly, we saw him differently. We came to see “the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God” (2 Corinthians 4:4). In this Jesus, we’ve seen God.

2. This Christ created and upholds all things.

By him all things were created, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities — all things were created through him and for him. And he is before all things, and in him all things hold together. (Colossians 1:16–17)

The man at the center of Christmas changes how we see God — we actually see him — and he changes how we see every other thing we see (and everything we don’t). Christmas isn’t only an opportunity to place Christ above all else, but to see him in and behind all else. “All things were made through him, and without him was not any thing made that was made” (John 1:3). The one who came to live on earth invented earth and life. This makes everything around us, everything in the universe, everything beyond our universe its own Christmas devotion about Christ.

He assembled the trees in our yards, wrapping their rings, stretching their branches, carefully placing leaves and fruit — billions and billions of trees, and yet each of them their own. And over all those trees, he painted a sky, that cosmic canopy of blue. And over that canopy, he taught the sun how to rise each morning and dance, in all its colors, each evening. And beneath that dance, he wove together the people we love, all the people we love, for all the reasons that we love them. Everything that is or will be, he made. He was and is the great Carpenter of creation.

This carpenter was in the beginning, but he wasn’t only in the beginning. He made all things, but he didn’t only make all things; he also holds them together — right now, as you read, and eat, and unwrap presents, and sing. “He is the radiance of the glory of God and the exact imprint of his nature, and he upholds the universe by the word of his power” (Hebrews 1:3).

3. This Christ came to receive the wrath of God.

And you, who once were alienated and hostile in mind, doing evil deeds, he has now reconciled in his body of flesh by his death, in order to present you holy and blameless and above reproach before him. (Colossians 1:21–22)

As genuinely miraculous as his coming was, we celebrate what happened that night in Bethlehem because of why he was born. This Christ came and lived to die. The Son of Man did not come merely to be born, “but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many” (Mark 10:45). He received the wrath of God so that we might enjoy his presence and favor.

In the end, it’s the death of this human Son that sets a Christian Christmas apart from all its pagan and commercial imitations.

We preach Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and folly to Gentiles, but to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. (1 Corinthians 1:23–24)

Some may join us in celebrating the cute baby in a domesticated manger, but only Christians find peace and joy beneath the bloody cross. Their stumbling block is our cornerstone. We were once alienated from God and hostile to him — not neutral or indifferent, but venomous — and yet Jesus laid down his life, paying for all our hideous hissing and defanging our mutiny against him. Christmas is about the canceling and dethroning of sin.

And he died not merely to forgive an enemy, but to have his bride — “he is the head of the body, the church” (Colossians 1:18). He’s not a mercenary Savior, but an adoring and devoted husband. He entered the filthiness of a stable, the indignity of human life, “that he might sanctify [the church], having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word, so that he might present the church to himself in splendor, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing” (Ephesians 5:26–27).

4. This Christ holds the keys of Death.

He is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, that in everything he might be preeminent. (Colossians 1:18)

You could of course argue that we celebrate what happened on Christmas morning less because of how he died and more because of how he rose. The man who was born in Bethlehem did in fact die, but then he was “born” a second time when he shook off his grave clothes and walked out of the tomb. He didn’t merely come to die, but to put death itself in a grave.

“Fear not,” this Christ says again this Christmas, “I am the first and the last, and the living one. I died, and behold I am alive forevermore, and I have the keys of Death and Hades” (Revelation 1:17–18). He’s not the cuddly, defenseless baby the world would prefer. No, his resurrection announced his awesome power and authority over all rivals. None can withstand this Christ, and none will avoid his judgment.

And all who take refuge in him will never die (John 11:25–26). Because of Christmas, death will now kneel to serve you, one day lifting you into the life you’ve always wanted and never deserved. In fact, God has already “raised us up with [Christ] and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, so that in the coming ages he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus” (Ephesians 2:6–7).

5. This Christ will inherit and transform everything.

In him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, making peace by the blood of his cross. (Colossians 1:19–20)

He may have been raised in the humility of a remote and obscure town, but he came to capture the world, to unite every throne on earth under his rule. And not just the cities and governments, but everything that is — mountains and oceans, grizzly bears and goldfish, evergreen trees, snow fall, and reindeer. And not just everything that’s here on earth, but everything in every realm, all the spiritual realities and forces that invade human life without being seen. “All things,” verse 16 says, “were created through him and for him.”

Christmas is as good a moment as any to stop and remember that God has already made known his “plan for the fullness of time, to unite all things in [Christ], things in heaven and things on earth” (Ephesians 1:9–10). When this world comes to an end, we’ll look back at it all and see him. We’ll see how the wildness of creation and the even greater wildness of history all ties together into one stunning tapestry of the glory of Christ. Christmas, then, is the beginning of the end of history — the inbreaking of the one who both makes sense of it all and owns it all.

So, from all the depths and riches of all this Christ is and means for us, merry Christmas! As you prepare your heart and family to remember him, resist the safe and comfortable seduction of worldliness, and press into the Christ-exalting, world-offending, heart-stirring words God himself has given us for this wonderful day.

ABSTRACT: Due to his shameful death at the hands of Aaron Burr, Alexander Hamilton is not typically remembered for his religion. But Hamilton appeared to exercise a genuine faith during his lifetime, including in the final hours following the duel. While a number of America’s founding fathers questioned or rejected the fundamental beliefs of Christianity, Hamilton, the grandson of a French Huguenot, remained within the bounds of historic Protestantism and was no stranger to the Bible or the church. Without these broad theological convictions, his immigration to America and his own political achievements likely would not have been possible. Despite his seemingly authentic faith, however, Hamilton was a man between two churches, shaped by both but finding fellowship in neither.

For our ongoing series of feature articles for pastors and Christian leaders, we asked Obbie Tyler Todd (PhD, New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary), pastor of Third Baptist Church in Marion, Illinois, to explore the faith of Alexander Hamilton.

When Aaron Burr shot Alexander Hamilton through the liver in Weehawken, New Jersey, on the morning of July 11, 1804, Hamilton clung to life for another 31 hours after the duel. Although his illustrious career and ignominious death have not typically been remembered for their piety and devotion, Hamilton’s beliefs about God, Christ, sin, and salvation came to the fore in these last excruciating moments.

Hamilton was no stranger to the Bible or the church. As a child on the Caribbean island of Nevis, where he was born across the street from St. Paul’s Anglican Church, he attended a small Hebrew school and learned to recite the Decalogue in its original language. At Elizabethtown Academy in New Jersey, he wrote commentaries on the books of Genesis and Revelation. At King’s College in New York, he attended chapel and began “the habit of praying upon his knees both night and morning.”1 In fact, Hamilton owed his passage to America largely to the Presbyterian church through the patronage of Rev. Hugh Knox, who inspired the teenager to record his thoughts about God and who likely sponsored the subscription fund that sent him to America to be educated.

By the time Burr’s bullet settled in his vertebra and left him withering away in a second-floor Manhattan bedroom, however, Hamilton’s relationship to the church was much less promising. Alexander Hamilton, the West Indian immigrant who became the principal architect of the new American government, was still without a church home. As a result, coupled with the egregious circumstances of his death, he was twice denied communion in his final moments.

Deathbed Confessions

Shortly after crossing the Hudson River wounded and being transported to the home of his friend William Bayard, Hamilton called for Rev. Benjamin Moore, the rector of Trinity Church, the Episcopal bishop of New York, and the president of Columbia College. In 1788, the Hamiltons had their three eldest children baptized simultaneously at Trinity Church. Since 1790, when the church was rebuilt after the great fire of 1776, they had rented pew 92. Therefore, to ask Moore to perform last rites was not totally unexpected. On one hand, Hamilton appeared to ascribe some efficacy to the sacraments and wished to be buried at Trinity Church. On the other hand, Hamilton was only nominally Episcopalian.

“Hamilton’s beliefs about God, Christ, sin, and salvation came to the fore in these last excruciating moments.”

No amount of legal work he supplied for the church or religious fervor on the part of his wife, Eliza (who was unaware of the duel), could atone for the fact that Hamilton had never actually been baptized an Episcopalian. Hamilton had neither attended Trinity Church regularly nor had he taken communion. Therefore, despite a dying plea from one of the nation’s founding fathers, Hamilton was to Bishop Moore a lawless duelist without access to the Lord’s Table. Moore’s refusal to administer the Lord’s Supper to a non-Episcopalian would only foreshadow the high church theology of the next bishop of New York, John Henry Hobart, whose Apology for Apostolic Order and Its Advocates (1807) was aimed at the second clergyman who visited Hamilton that day: Rev. John Mitchell Mason.

Although Mason was less exclusivist than the Episcopalians, he likewise was bound by his own theological convictions in the Associate Reformed Presbyterian Church. When Hamilton pleaded with his dear friend to administer communion to him, Mason replied that, even though it gave him “unutterable pain” to decline such a request, “it is a principle in our churches never to administer the Lord’s Supper privately to any person under any circumstances.” After Mason explained that the Supper was only a sign of the mercy of Christ that is “accessible to him by faith,” Hamilton responded softly, “I am aware of that. It was only as a sign that I wanted it.”

Alexander Hamilton held to a basic understanding of the gospel, to be sure. Nevertheless, in the face of Hamilton’s shameful and imminent demise, Mason proceeded to quote from a barrage of scriptural texts, including Romans 3:23, Acts 4:12, Hebrews 7:25, Ephesians 1:7, 1 Timothy 1:15, and Isaiah 43:25 and 1:18. When the preacher reminded him “that in the sight of God all men are on a level, as all have sinned, and come short of his glory,” and must take refuge in the righteousness of Christ, Hamilton answered, “I perceive it to be so. I am a sinner: I look to his mercy.” Upon Mason’s insistence that the grace of God was rich, Hamilton interrupted, “Yes, it is rich grace.” Indeed, few presentations of the gospel could have been clearer than the one delivered to Alexander Hamilton on his deathbed. Still, perhaps the most compelling testimony from Rev. Mason is his account of Hamilton’s reaction to Ephesians 1:7. After hearing of the “forgiveness of sins according to the riches of his grace,” Hamilton finally let go of Mason’s hand, clasped his own hands together, looked up to heaven, and cried, “I have a tender reliance on the mercy of the Almighty, through the merits of the Lord Jesus Christ.”2

Hamilton the Christian?

Were these the words of a true believer? At first glance, Hamilton’s confessions appear as if they were uttered in genuine faith. In his final hours, the Major General claimed that the promises of Scripture were his “support.” Years earlier, in a renowned legal case, Hamilton had referred to the Jews in the Old Testament as the “witnesses of [God’s] miracles” who were “charged with the spirit of prophecy.”3 Even though Hamilton was influenced by deism during his lifetime, he was never suspicious of biblical revelation to the degree of Franklin, Jefferson, or Madison.4 Hamilton once confessed that he could prove the truth of the Christian religion “as clearly as any proposition ever submitted to the mind of man.”5 His abolitionism and his capacity for lasting friendship set him apart from many of the other founders. His view of human nature, demonstrated best in the Federalist Papers, often bordered on the Puritanical.

However, like Washington (who actually joined the Episcopalian Church), Hamilton was reticent to discuss his Christian faith. Ironically, the man who, to rescue his financial integrity, printed an entire account of his own affair in the first major sex scandal in American history had seemingly less to say about his relationship with Jesus Christ. Episcopal Bishop William White refused to publicly drink a toast to Hamilton due to his indiscretions with Maria Reynolds, and evangelicals today have also been reluctant to honor an adulterer.6 Although he had once opposed dueling “on the principles of religion” and seemed not to intend to actually kill Burr, a duelist he was nonetheless.7

“Hamilton was a paradoxical figure whose sins were just as public as his successes.”

As many scholars have noted, Hamilton was a paradoxical figure whose sins were just as public as his successes. By examining the complexity of Hamilton’s faith, Christians today are confronted with the conflict that inevitably arises when the authority of the local church is subordinated to personal ambition and when the teenage fire of Christian zeal is slowly cooled by professional aspirations and the desires of the world. In such a relatively brief life, one encounters the danger of building earthly kingdoms without seeking first the kingdom of God, the grace and encouragement of a believing spouse, and the fleeting nature of even the most astonishing career. In order to better understand Hamilton’s theology, his aversion to church membership, and his own Christian practice, the best place to begin is on the small Caribbean island from which he came.

Grandson of a French Huguenot

As a boy, Alexander Hamilton was raised in a religious, albeit savage and precarious, world. His mother’s store in St. Croix was next to St. John’s Anglican Church on Company’s Lane. The Hebrew school in which he was instructed left him with a lifelong affection for the Jewish people. In fact, Protestantism was the very reason that Hamilton’s family had arrived in the West Indies. In a letter to William Jackson in 1800, in which he fumed over criticisms of his ignoble birth, Hamilton wrote, “My Grandfather by the mothers side of the name of Faucette was a French Huguenot who emigrated to the West Indies in consequence of the Edict of Nantz and settled in the Island of Nevis and there acquired a pretty fortune. I have been assured by persons who knew him that he was a man of letters and much of a gentleman.”8

Huguenots were Protestants in France in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries who held to the teachings of John Calvin, a French-born theologian in Geneva. While the Edict of Nantz in 1598 granted religious toleration to Protestants for the sake of civil unity, the French Reformed Church would endure severe persecution when the Edict was revoked in 1685 by Louis XIV.9 The result was a Huguenot diaspora throughout the western world, including the West Indies. John Faucette had arrived at the shores of Nevis as a French immigrant seeking religious freedom from the tyranny of the Catholic Church. Not surprisingly, his grandson would carry an aversion to popery all of his life.

Indeed, Hamilton may very well have thought of his grandfather when he denounced the Quebec Act of 1774, a measure that extended the border of Quebec to the Ohio River and guaranteed full religious liberty to French-Canadian Catholics. In A Full Vindication of the Measures of the Congress, Hamilton opined, “The affair of Canada, if possible, is still worse. The English laws have been superseded by the French laws. The Romish faith is made the established religion of the land, and his Majesty is placed at the head of it. The free exercise of the protestant faith depends upon the pleasure of the Governor and Council.” He then asked, “Does not your blood run cold, to think an English parliament should pass an act for the establishment of arbitrary power and popery in such an extensive country?”10

Shown by his friendship with Marquis de Lafayette and his proficiency in the French language, Hamilton never lost touch with his French heritage. But an abiding hostility toward Catholicism and French “infidelity” always remained. In a letter to Edward Carrington in 1792, Hamilton warned that Thomas Jefferson had “drank deeply of the French philosophy, in Religion, in Science, in politics.”11 Although the rationality of deism appealed greatly to Hamilton, he never strayed from a Protestant outlook of world events. He was, after all, also the grandson of a Scottish laird on his father’s side.

Nevertheless, despite his rich family heritage, there was also a darker side to the religious world he inhabited. As the illegitimate son of a bankrupt merchant, Hamilton was likely barred from being instructed at an Anglican school.12 In addition to the many losses and rejections that he and his brother James suffered at a young age, this would certainly have influenced his religious consciousness. Alexander Hamilton was, in some sense, disinherited by his own family and by the church. As Ron Chernow observes, “As a divorced woman with two children conceived out of wedlock, Rachel was likely denied a burial at nearby St. John’s Anglican Church. This may help to explain a mystifying ambivalence that Hamilton always felt about regular church attendance, despite a pronounced religious bent.”13

Hamilton’s affiliation with the church thus became not unlike his own American citizenship, being at once insider and outsider. The hierarchical West Indian system that bred in him a hatred of slavery and an indomitable ambition may also have fostered a rather conflicted view of the church. Hamilton, the architect of the U.S. Constitution and the nation’s first banking system, was a believer in institutions. Yet as demonstrated in his last moments, he also had difficulty submitting himself to that very authority.

Under a Sovereign God

Hamilton’s life changed when he met Rev. Hugh Knox. Ordained by Princeton president Aaron Burr, the son-in-law of Jonathan Edwards and the father of the man who killed Hamilton, Knox believed that illegitimate children should be baptized. His combination of evangelical Calvinism and intellectualism attracted young Hamilton to the things of God. Soon after the Presbyterian minister arrived in St. Croix in 1771, Hamilton began regularly attending his revival services and reading from his extensive library (Knox graduated from Yale in 1751). According to one historian, “At seventeen Alexander Hamilton may have undergone a powerful religious conversion. At least that is the impression he gave that spring, as the Great Awakening swooped down on St. Croix.”14

Although Hamilton probably read sermons and devotional tracts from his mother’s book collection as a child, this was the first time he thought freely and deeply about the Bible, consuming bound sermons from his mentor’s library. Knox even inspired his young protégé to compose his own religious epistle! After a hurricane demolished St. Croix in 1772, Knox delivered a sermon to his congregation to lift their minds and hearts heavenward. Eventually published in a pamphlet, the sermon seemed to have a profound effect upon Hamilton, who wrote a graphic letter to his father describing the ferocity of the storm and drawing from Knox’s themes. After showing the letter to Knox, the minister persuaded him to publish it in the Royal Danish American Gazette. The letter illustrates that, even as a teenager, Hamilton believed in a Creator who intervened powerfully and personally in his creation. He wrote,

See thy wretched helpless state, and learn to know thyself. Learn to know thy best support. Despise thyself, and adore thy God. How sweet, how unutterably sweet were now, the voice of an approving conscience; Then couldst thou say, hence ye idle alarms, why do I shrink? What have I to fear? A pleasing calm suspense! A short repose from calamity to end in eternal bliss? Let the Earth rend. Let the planets forsake their course. Let the Sun be extinguished and the Heavens burst asunder. Yet what have I to dread? My staff can never be broken — in Omnipotence I trusted. . . . He who gave the winds to blow, and the lightnings to rage — even him have I always loved and served. His precepts have I observed. His commandments have I obeyed — and his perfections have I adored.15

After recounting the horror of the hurricane to his father, Hamilton added, “But see, the Lord relents. He hears our prayer.” The themes of judgment, mercy, and human dependence in the letter reflected Hamilton’s belief in an all-controlling God who ordered the cosmos and who ultimately could be trusted in an unstable and cruel island world. Remarkably, Hamilton’s letter about God’s providence became his ticket to America when a number of benefactors read the piece and began a fund to send the young man north to be educated.

Before leaving, Hamilton almost certainly penned an unsigned hymn that his future wife, Eliza, would cherish for decades after his death as an example of his Christian piety. Published in the Gazette on October 17, 1772, as an imitation of Alexander Pope’s “The Dying Christian to His Soul,” it reads,

Hark! hark! a voice from yonder sky,Methinks I hear my Saviour cry,Come gentle spirit come away,Come to thy Lord without delay;For thee the gates of bliss unbar’dThy constant virtue to reward

I come oh Lord! I mount, I fly,On rapid wings I cleave the sky;Stretch out thine arm and aid my flight;For oh! I long to gain that height,Where all celestial beings singEternal praises to their King.

O Lamb of God! thrice gracious LordNow, now I feel how true thy word;Translated to this happy place,This blessed vision of thy face;My soul shall all thy steps attendIn songs of triumph without end.16

While Alexander Hamilton did not frequently express his thoughts about Jesus Christ, he was, at times during his youth, capable of eloquent meditations on the Son of God. After arriving in America, he continued his religious instruction and even developed spiritual disciplines. But the Revolution and his own personal ambition made it difficult for him to settle upon one denomination.

Between Two Churches

By the time Hamilton disembarked in Boston in 1772, the political frenzy in the colonies had already begun to erupt in the churches. At Elizabethtown Academy, Hamilton studied under Presbyterian teachers who would later serve under his command, including headmaster Francis Barber. Hamilton listened to three-hour sermons on Sundays next to men possessed by the spirit of liberty. As a training ground for Princeton (the College of New Jersey), Elizabethtown introduced Hamilton to Presbyterian orthodoxy and patriotism. In some ways, he was being catechized in the Westminster Confession and in republicanism. After all, Princeton’s president John Witherspoon was the only clergyman to sign the Declaration of Independence and the first clergyman at the Continental Congress.

On one hand, its combination of evangelical Calvinism and Whig principles made Princeton the logical choice for a college education. Hamilton was accepted at 18 years old after passing Witherspoon’s examination. On the other hand, Hamilton’s insatiable drive to achieve was greater than his desire to ground himself in the Presbyterian faith. As a result, when Witherspoon denied his bold request to complete his schooling in three years instead of four, Hamilton looked to New York — to the Church of England.

As he would later prove in his writings, Hamilton’s departure from Princeton was not a sign of any Tory sympathies (although he often feared the rising mob mentality in the colonies). However, upon his passing an examination into Princeton by one of the most anti-Episcopal figures in America, that Hamilton then chose to attend King’s College in New York City, a bastion of Anglicanism and loyalism in the colonies, is perhaps the clearest sign that Hamilton’s affiliation to the church was only as strong as his professional aspirations.

“Hamilton was a man between two churches.”

Still a teenager, Hamilton was no more loyal to the Church of England than the Church of England had been to his family as a child. The only difference was that Hamilton, the illegitimate son from Nevis, was now in seeming control of his political destiny and itching to receive his education from the fastest bidder. While this apparently did not hinder his personal Christian devotion, it certainly did not strengthen his ties to the local church. Indeed, Hamilton was a man between two churches. A Presbyterian from Princeton had helped thrust him to America, and yet another inadvertently forced him to Manhattan to study under Anglican Myles Cooper, one of the most outspoken loyalists in the colonies.

Nevertheless, Hamilton’s ecclesiastical turnabout did not hinder his efforts to develop his own spiritual disciplines. At King’s College, his roommate Robert Troup recalled,

Whilst at college, [he] was attentive to public worship and in the habit of praying upon his knees both night and morning. I have lived in the same room with him for sometime and I have often been powerfully affected by the fervor and eloquence of his prayers. [He] had [already] read most of the polemical writers on religious subjects and he was a zealous believer in the fundamental doctrines of Christianity.17

Although Troup may have been guilty of a bit of hero worship, Hamilton did attend chapel services routinely and exhibited an interest in theological study. As to his reading of polemical works, these may have led Hamilton to lean in the direction of deism as the war began, as the Anglican church was defined by a vehement anti-Calvinism and extreme rationalism in the late colonial and early national periods.18 Although, for example, Hamilton mocked Anglican leaders like Samuel Seabury for their loyalty to Parliament, he did not repudiate Anglican theology to the same degree.

As the war progressed and nation-building ensued, due to his political genius and military skill, Hamilton’s writings naturally adopted a much more civil and diplomatic turn. Hamilton’s references to the divine became vaguer and less Christian. The language of a “divinely authoritative Religion,” “the will of heaven,” and “an over-ruling Providence” far outweighed any allusions to Scripture or any kind of theological discourse, indicating that Hamilton may have slowly traded the Christ-centered, born-again religion of his youth for the lawful, reasonable deism of the age (or something we might call Christian rationalism).19

Still, there is no evidence to support the idea that Hamilton rejected the deity of Christ or that he questioned God’s miraculous intervention in the world. To simply label Hamilton a “deist” or a “rationalist” does not adequately describe his own theology during this stage of his life. To begin, more so than Jefferson, Hamilton believed that the French Revolution was opposed to “friends of religion.”20 Like Washington, he believed that we “flatter ourselves that morality can be separated from religion.”21 In other words, natural law is grounded in the eternal, revealed law of God. In the early years of the republic, Hamilton proposed a “day of humiliation and prayer” for the nation.22 In his doctrine of divine providence, Hamilton still remained the same young man who had prayed for the hurricane to cease on the island of St. Croix. Faith was about more than knowledge or reason. As Secretary of the Treasury, he noted to George Washington “the conflict between Reason & Passion,” a tension that many of his deist or Unitarian colleagues might not have admitted so easily.23 Although the Federalist Papers never mention God explicitly, Hamilton sounded like a New Light evangelical in his opening essay: “In politics, as in religion, it is equally absurd to aim at making proselytes by fire and sword. Heresies in either can rarely be cured by persecution.”24 Political liberty and religious liberty were inseparable in Hamilton’s mind, and he affirmed a real boundary between orthodoxy and “heresies.”

As he slowly passed from the earth, Hamilton once again found himself between the Episcopalians and Presbyterians, begging each for the bread and the cup from the Lord’s Table. But Hamilton’s end was much like his life, confessing the faith once delivered to the saints while finding no real home in the communion of believers.

Eliza’s Influence

As scholars have noted, perhaps the most compelling evidence to the authenticity of Hamilton’s faith is his marriage to Eliza, a devoted follower of Jesus Christ. An active member in the Dutch Reformed Church, Eliza worshiped her Lord and sought to obey his commands with such heartfelt sincerity that Washington’s staff was somewhat surprised when Hamilton chose to marry her.25 After all, Hamilton had written to a friend in 1779 about his ideal wife: “As to religion a moderate stock will satisfy me. She must believe in god and hate a saint.”26 In Eliza he found no moderate believer, and their wedding in 1780 was in traditional Dutch Reformed custom.

If Alexander Hamilton was an unbeliever, he was indeed “made holy because of his wife,” as her influence upon his soul became evident in his waning moments (1 Corinthians 7:14). Upon rushing into the second-floor room and discovering that her husband was dying (not suffering from “spasms,” as originally she had been told), the frantic Eliza was consoled not by Hamilton the soldier or Hamilton the founding father or Hamilton the financial genius, but by someone who appeared to know the weight of sin and the hope of Christ: “Remember, my Eliza, you are a Christian.”27

ABSTRACT: When John the Baptist appears in the wilderness, baptizing and “proclaiming a baptism of repentance” (Mark 1:4), his ministry may seem novel — and in some ways, it is. At the same time, however, almost every aspect of John’s ministry fulfills Old Testament expectations. His mission fulfills Malachi’s promise of a new Elijah. His call to repentance reaches back to the prophecy and new-covenant promise of Deuteronomy 30. And even his meeting place comes freighted with prophetic significance: by calling Israelites into the wilderness across the Jordan, he calls them to follow a new Joshua through the waters of a new exodus into a new covenant. Since John, baptism has marked a spiritual crossing of the Jordan River, as God’s people pass from the wilderness of exile into the promised land, now citizens of a new kingdom and a new King.

For our ongoing series of feature articles for pastors and Christian leaders, we asked Colin Smothers (PhD, The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary), executive director of the Council on Biblical Manhood and Womanhood, to explain the origins and meaning of John’s baptism.

When John the Baptist appears in the wilderness, baptizing and “proclaiming a baptism of repentance” (Mark 1:4), what is he doing? From where did John’s baptism come (Matthew 21:25)? And what does its origin mean for Christians today?

The thesis of this essay is that the meaning of John’s baptism relates to its inspired novelty: namely, John’s baptism prepares a new-covenant people of God for a new exodus and conquest — albeit with escalated and spiritualized aims. Through John’s baptism, a new-covenant people are prepared to follow a new Joshua, or Yeshua, across the River Jordan — very much like the people of Israel when they entered the promised land — as citizens of a new kingdom under a new King, a Son of David. Moreover, because Jesus, the Christ, receives John’s baptism at the inauguration of his ministry and continues the practice throughout his earthly ministry and beyond (John 3:22; 4:2; Matthew 28:19), the meaning of John’s baptism has implications for Christian baptism.

We will explore three aspects of John’s baptism under three headings: the message, the meeting place, and the meaning. Once we sound the meaning of John’s baptism, we will be prepared to comment on the meaning of New Testament baptism.

The Message of John’s Baptism

In the three Synoptic Gospels, John’s ministry of baptism is clearly tied to his proclamation of repentance and the nearness of the kingdom of God. Matthew directly quotes John the Baptist’s message in Matthew 3:2, where he says, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.” Matthew ties this message explicitly to Isaiah’s new-covenant prophecy by quoting from Isaiah 40:3: John is “the voice of one crying in the wilderness: ‘Prepare the way of the Lord’” (Matthew 3:3). Matthew, a student of Scripture, knows John’s redemptive role. Isaiah 40 is a hinge that marks a turning from the former things under the old covenant to the new things under the new covenant. By hyperlinking, as it were, John’s ministry and message to Isaiah 40, Matthew announces for his readers that the new things have arrived with the arrival of John.

Instead of quoting John’s message, Mark summarizes it in Mark 1:4: “John appeared, baptizing in the wilderness and proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins.” Repentance is central to John the Baptist’s message — a message that, as we will see, is central to the prophetic literature surrounding the “return” or “turn” from exile that initiates the new covenant. Significantly, Jesus himself takes up this message of repentance in his own preaching ministry in Mark 1:15: “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand; repent and believe in the gospel” (cf. Matthew 4:17).

Repentance and “returning” or “turning” are related concepts in the Old and New Testaments. For example, the word translated “repent” in John’s and Jesus’s message is metanoeō, which is used in LXX Isaiah 46:8 to translate the Hebrew word shuv, or “turn” — a word that we will see is extremely significant.

In Luke’s Gospel, we are given further background details to John the Baptist’s ministry, as Luke begins his Gospel with details surrounding John’s conception and birth. An angel is sent to John’s father, Zechariah, with a message about his unborn son’s ministry in Luke 1:16: “He will turn [epistrephō] many of the children of Israel to the Lord their God.” The word translated “turn” here in Luke 1:16 is used 298 times by the LXX to translate the Hebrew word shuv, “turn” or “return.”

John’s baptism is further substantiated as a message of “turning” and “repentance” when Luke summarizes John’s baptism as a “baptism of repentance” in Luke 3:3 and again in Acts 19:4. Luke goes on to connect John’s ministry to Isaiah with a quote from Isaiah 40 (Luke 3:4–6), just as the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, and John do.

Message of Return in Deuteronomy 30

From these passages, it is clear that “repentance” or “turning” is a significant element to John’s message and ministry of baptism. What can we conclude from this? Significantly, this same language of “turning” and “return” is used in a prominent place in the book of Deuteronomy, in arguably the Torah’s most explicit new-covenant passage. In fact, the angel’s words to Zechariah in Luke 1:16 almost certainly echo Deuteronomy 30:2.

Luke 1:16: “He will turn [epistrepho + epi] many of the children of Israel to the Lord their God.”Deuteronomy 30:2: “Return [epistrepho + epi] to the Lord your God, you and your children.”

In Deuteronomy 30:1–10, the Hebrew word shuv — which the Brown-Driver-Briggs lexicon glosses as “turn back, return” — occurs seven times.1 In context, Deuteronomy 30 is a record of Moses’s words to a new generation that has replaced the faithless wilderness generation. The book of Deuteronomy is a covenant renewal. But Moses predicts the dire future of this covenant in Deuteronomy 28–29: the people will enter the land, they will disobey the covenant, and they will be exiled.

Deuteronomy 28–29 becomes programmatic for the history of Israel in the land. All that Moses says will happen in these chapters comes true as Israel’s history unfolds. But Moses does not leave them without hope. In Deuteronomy 30, Moses says that “when all these things come upon you,” and the people call (shuv) these words to mind (verse 1), and the people and their children return (shuv) to the Lord (verse 2), then the Lord will restore (shuv) them and gather them again (shuv) from exile (verse 3). Then the people will again (shuv) obey the Lord and keep his commands (verse 8), and the Lord will again (shuv) delight in them (verse 9), when they turn (shuv) to the Lord with all their heart and soul (verse 10).

“John’s baptism prepares a new-covenant people of God for a new exodus and conquest.”

Significantly, it is in Deuteronomy 30:6, the heart of this passage, where we find the theme of heart renovation, or heart circumcision, which is a significant component of the new covenant: “The Lord your God will circumcise your heart and the heart of your offspring, so that you will love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul, that you may live.” The prophet Jeremiah picks up this theme of heart renovation in his new-covenant prophecy in Jeremiah 31:33, which builds on Moses’s prophecy in Deuteronomy 30.

Message of Return in the Prophets

As I argue in my book In Your Mouth and In Your Heart,2 Deuteronomy 30 is a wellspring that later biblical authors return to again and again in their Spirit-inspired expositions and developments of new-covenant promises and messianic hopes. A few examples of this will have to suffice.

In the first chapter of the book of Isaiah, the prophet announces coming judgment against Israel because of their continual disobedience to the covenant. But as in Deuteronomy, this note of judgment comes with a promise of redemption. Though God will turn his hand against them, “Zion shall be redeemed by justice, and those in her who repent [shuv], by righteousness” (Isaiah 1:27). Who will announce this coming righteousness? The one who, according to Isaiah 40:3, cries out “in the wilderness” — or perhaps, according to some interpretations, “prepares a way in the wilderness” — for the Lord. And the Lord comes with a promise: “I have blotted out your transgressions like a cloud and your sins like mist; return [shuv] to me, for I have redeemed you” (Isaiah 44:22).

The theme of “turning” and “returning” is a major thread through the Minor Prophets, or the Book of the Twelve (see Hosea 6:1–2 as one example), which includes the following expectant words of Malachi the prophet before God’s special revelation goes dark for centuries — until, that is, the world sees a great Light:

Behold, I will send you Elijah the prophet before the great and awesome day of the Lord comes. And he will turn [shuv] the hearts of fathers to their children and the hearts of children to their fathers, lest I come and strike the land with a decree of utter destruction. (Malachi 4:5–6)

It is no coincidence, then, that the first word of John the Baptist’s message is “Repent!” “Turn!” And his baptism is a baptism of repentance. Why? For the new covenant has arrived; the kingdom of heaven is at hand — the King is here.

The Meeting Place of John’s Baptism

Almost as significant as John the Baptist’s message is his chosen meeting place. Where does John the Baptist choose to proclaim his message of repentance for the forgiveness of sins and the announcement of the coming kingdom and King? He could have gone many places to find water. He could have stayed in the land of Israel, perhaps at the Sea of Galilee. But instead, John goes across the Jordan, outside the historical boundaries of the promised land, to the wilderness, much like some of the messianic pretenders of his day were doing.3

Why is John in the wilderness, baptizing in the Jordan River? The prophets are replete with possible reasons. Considered together, I believe these texts form a formidable rationale and theological explanation for John’s wilderness ministry of baptism. As we will see, they also have implications for Christian baptism.

The most obvious prophetic background to John the Baptist’s ministry comes from Isaiah 40, which, as we have already seen, every one of the Gospel writers notes. But the book of Isaiah contains several other textual backdrops to John’s baptismal ministry in the wilderness.

Right before Jesus preaches his message of repentance in Matthew 4:17, Matthew quotes Isaiah 9:1–2, saying, “The land of Zebulun and the land of Naphtali, the way of the sea, beyond the Jordan, Galilee of the Gentiles — the people dwelling in darkness have seen a great light” (Matthew 4:15–16). This phrase in Isaiah 9:1, “the land beyond the Jordan,” is cited in relation to the land of Israel, which means it is the land opposite the promised land, in the wilderness, that “he has made glorious.” Significantly, John 1:28 uses the same language to describe where John was baptizing, “across the Jordan,” in the wilderness.

From the Wilderness to the Jordan

In fact, Isaiah’s entire new-covenant program seems predicated around a wilderness sojourn. We will pick up this thread in Isaiah 43. Many scholars have noted the new-covenant turn that Isaiah 40 and following takes — what Brevard Childs refers to as the “new things,” in contrast to the “old things” of chapters 1 through 39 — and chapter 43 is no exception.4

The whole chapter deserves quotation, but we must be selective. Isaiah 43 begins with a promise of God’s redemption in verse 1, and then a promise of God’s protection in verse 2: “When you pass through the waters, I will be with you; and through the rivers, they shall not overwhelm you.” Here we have latent baptismal language (cf. 1 Peter 3:21): God promises to be with his people when they are in the midst of the waters and to see them safely to the other side. Isaiah is clearly invoking exodus imagery, which itself is an echo of the waters of the salvation through judgment in Noah’s flood.5 God promises to be with his people just as he was when they passed through the midst of the Red Sea (Exodus 14). But the mention of rivers in Isaiah 43:2 suggests also Israel’s crossing the Jordan River (Joshua 3), a reference Isaiah amplifies a few verses later.

In Isaiah 43:5–7, God promises to bring his people from the east, the west, the north, and the end of the earth — “everyone who is called by my name.” In these verses, Isaiah describes Israel’s redemption as a return from exile, an ingathering from the nations, using the cardinal directions much as Psalm 107 does, which opens book 5 of the Psalter — the book sometimes called the “Book of Redemption.” The new covenant involves a new (re)turn.

Isaiah 43:16–17 picks up the exodus imagery and develops the theme of passing through the waters on the way of redemption or return. Then comes an explicit mention of the “new thing” God promises to do:

Remember not the former things,     nor consider the things of old.Behold, I am doing a new thing;     now it springs forth, do you not perceive it?I will make a way in the wilderness     and rivers in the desert.The wild beasts will honor me,     the jackals and the ostriches,for I give water in the wilderness,     rivers in the desert,to give drink to my chosen people,     the people whom I formed for myselfthat they might declare my praise. (verses 18–21)

The wilderness theme in Isaiah 43 is invoked in part due to the exilic imagery and the return journey of the people of God, through the deserts, on the way to the promised land. But the journey intentionally channels the one God’s people took in their exodus out of Egypt — a journey that brought them through the midst of the Red Sea into the wilderness, only to camp on the “other side of the Jordan” and await another crossing, another passing through the midst of waters, on their way to inherit the promised land.

Importantly, the Law and the Prophets are negative in their assessment of this first journey and inheritance: the people became undeserving and the land spit them out (cf. Leviticus 18:28; Deuteronomy 28:15–68; Jeremiah 25:11–12). But the Prophets also tell of a day when the people will once again inherit the land — a new kingdom — after a wilderness exile (Jeremiah 29:10–14; Isaiah 40:1–11; Daniel 9:24–27).

Is it not reasonable, then, to expect this new “return” to come with yet another crossing of the River Jordan from the wilderness?

New Exodus, New Return

This new wilderness sojourn as part of the beginning of a “return” to the promised land is reinforced in polyphonic harmony when we bring in other prophetic witnesses. In Ezekiel 20, the prophet speaks of the “return” or “restoration” of Israel that God has promised, even in spite of their current exilic judgment. In verses 33–35, Ezekiel says that this program will include a going out from their current dwelling places, a wilderness gathering, and a coronation with God as King:

As I live, declares the Lord God, surely with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm and with wrath poured out I will be king over you. I will bring you out from the peoples and gather you out of the countries where you are scattered, with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm, and with wrath poured out. And I will bring you into the wilderness of the peoples, and there I will enter into judgment with you face to face.

This wilderness gathering is compared to the wilderness gathering of the exodus generation in verse 36, and it precedes a promise of a new covenant, “I will make you pass under the rod, and I will bring you into the bond of the covenant” (verse 37), and a new entrance into the land, “You shall know that I am the Lord, when I bring you into the land of Israel, the country that I swore to give to your fathers” (verse 42).

Historically speaking, the Scriptures do not record a covenant renewal or covenant establishment “in the wilderness” in the generations that returned to the land during the ministries of Ezra and Nehemiah and after. Instead, the New Testament authors appear to assume that the foundation of this covenant promise is inaugurated with the new-covenant ministry of Jesus, whose way is prepared by the baptism of John “in the wilderness.”

A final prophetic witness provides one more reason to pay attention to the meeting place of John’s baptism in order to grasp its theological meaning. Hosea speaks of the Lord’s tenderness toward his unfaithful people in Hosea 2:14: “Behold, I will allure her, and bring her into the wilderness, and speak tenderly to her.” Later in the book, in Hosea 6:1–2, the prophet issues a clear call to God’s people to “turn” that they might be healed in the midst of their sinfulness.

The meeting place of the Jordan River becomes especially intriguing when we consider the New Testament’s testimony that John the Baptist is the Elijah to come, as promised by the prophet Malachi (Malachi 4:5–6). Where in the Scriptures do we see Elijah at the Jordan River? In 2 Kings 2:6–8, Elijah “prepares the way” for Elisha by parting the waters of the Jordan to cross to the other side — something Elisha himself does on the way back, entering into the land of promise through the waters of the Jordan (2 Kings 2:13–14).

It would seem, then, that John’s baptismal ministry and message of “repentance” or “return” is not just an individual call — although it most certainly is that — but also a programmatic call that initiates a new exodus and new return under a new Joshua who is King of a new kingdom.

The Meaning of John’s Baptism

If the several canonical threads regarding the message and meeting place of John’s baptismal ministry have been sufficiently established, then we are ready to explore a few biblical-theological possibilities for the meaning of John’s baptism, which have implications for Christian baptism.

The apostle Paul clearly connects baptism to the exodus crossing of the Red Sea:

I do not want you to be unaware, brothers, that our fathers were all under the cloud, and all passed through the sea, and all were baptized into Moses in the cloud and in the sea, and all ate the same spiritual food, and all drank the same spiritual drink. (1 Corinthians 10:1–4)

But John comes baptizing not in the Red Sea, but in the River Jordan, proclaiming his preparatory prophetic message of repentance to God’s people, the same message given to Hosea and the other prophets: “Return to the Lord.” How are the people supposed to respond to John’s message? By leaving the promised land and joining him in the wilderness, they acted out a confession of their covenantal disobedience and unworthiness to be in the land — Ezekiel said God would enter into covenant with them in the wilderness — so that God’s people might return again to the land as citizens of the kingdom of God under a new and rightful king.

This is what John is doing, baptizing across the Jordan in the wilderness. He is preparing a people for a new exodus, or return, to the promised land under a new Joshua, crying out in the Spirit of Elijah, “Repent! (Return! Turn!) For the kingdom of God is at hand!” Where is this kingdom? Who is this king? He is the one called Yeshua, Salvation, who bears the name of another who parted the waters of the Jordan ahead of the people entering the promised land.

How does all of the foregoing relate to Christian baptism, especially the explicit teaching in Romans 6 that baptism symbolizes the Christian’s union with Christ? Romans 6:3–11 makes clear that Christian baptism has at its theological center our blessed union with Christ by faith in his death, burial, and resurrection. The very act of water immersion signifies a burial in the waters of God’s judgment, having died to sin and put to death the old man in Christ — these waters that are typified by the great flood and the Red Sea and even the Jordan River. And when the baptized emerges from these waters, this signifies his resurrection to new life — life as a new man, a new creation, in Christ by faith (2 Corinthians 5:17).

But when Jesus received John’s baptism at the Jordan River, it became Christian baptism, and he and his disciples continued the practice during Jesus’s earthly ministry and beyond (John 3:22; 4:2; Matthew 28:19; Acts 2:38). Those who did not receive this baptism as Christian baptism, but only as John’s baptism, had to receive the true sign of which the Holy Spirit is the seal (Acts 19:1–7).

In fact, when Paul encounters some disciples who had not heard of the Holy Spirit, he seems to fault them for not understanding John’s baptism, which they had received. In Acts 19:3, Paul asks them, “Into what then were you baptized?” They answer, “Into John’s baptism.” Paul’s response is instructive: “John baptized with the baptism of repentance, telling the people to believe in the one who was to come after him, that is, Jesus” (Acts 19:4). In other words, if John’s baptism is received as Christian baptism — baptism into Christ — then it is true baptism.

In this way, it seems proper to understand New Testament baptism as a continuation of what John began and Jesus received in the wilderness, beyond the Jordan River. I do not think it is a coincidence, then, that John 1:28 says, “These things took place in Bethany across the Jordan, where John was baptizing.” Perhaps John chose this site intentionally, as the place where Israel would have camped and even crossed into Canaan as they prepared to enter the land, first coming to the city of Jericho, not far across the way from where John began his baptismal ministry.

With John in the Jordan

It has been tradition for many Baptist churches to have a mural of the River Jordan painted over their baptismal. If the texts and implications in this exploration hold together, this imagery rightly offers at least a partial understanding of the meaning and origins of both John’s baptism and Christian baptism.

We too have crossed the River Jordan, being put under the waters of judgment, following the new Joshua in a new exodus under a new covenant, and by faith in him we have at least begun to enter the promised land as citizens of a new kingdom and a new King. God has caused us to return, to repent, for the kingdom of God is near — indeed, it is at hand, and though we are sojourners, we are no longer in the wilderness. We are citizens of the kingdom of heaven.