What Denzel Washington’s Baptism Teaches Us about God’s Transforming Power

Denzel Washington has made fifty movies and won two Oscars, but he wrote recently in Esquire, “The biggest moment of my life was when I was filled with the Holy Spirit,” an experience that occurred forty years ago.

Last Saturday, he received his minister’s license and was baptized. In a video he shared online, he said, “It took a while, but I’m finally here . . . If [God] can do this for me, there’s nothing he can’t do for you.”

Washington is right in ways we cannot begin to imagine.

Literally.

“If Your Mind Were Only a Slightly Greener Thing.”

One of my sons gave me The Overstory by Richard Powers as a Christmas present. As soon as I began reading, I understood why it won the Pulitzer Prize and was a #1 New York Times bestseller.

The novel is creatively centered around trees and those who experience them. It begins with a woman in a park leaning against a pine. The tree and those farther away say to her:

All the ways you imagine us—bewitched mangroves up on stilts, a nutmeg’s inverted spade, gnarled baja elephant trunks, the straight-up missile of a sal—are always amputations. Your kind never sees us whole. There’s always as much belowground as above.
That’s the trouble with people, their root problem. . . . A chorus of living wood sings to the woman: If your mind were only a slightly greener thing, we’d drown you in meaning (his italics).

As I read, I made a note: “What is true of roots below is also true of heaven above. What we cannot see is what makes possible what we can see. There is far more that we do not know than what we do. What we do not know changes our lives the most.”

Here’s why.

Why Jesus Had to Come at Christmas

The Bible says that “God is love” (1 John 4:8), that he is “holy, holy, holy” (Isaiah 6:3; Revelation 4:8), and that “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever” (Hebrews 13:8; cf. Malachi 3:6). Each aspect of his character requires the other: If God is love, he must always do what holiness requires. If he is holy, he must always do what love requires. And he cannot change—he must always do the most loving and righteous thing in our lives.

This is why Jesus had to come at Christmas. He had to come to save us in love while atoning for our sins in holiness, revealing his unchanging nature by taking on our nature while preserving his own.

But this was also true for millennia before Christmas. From Joseph saving his people from starvation to Moses liberating them from slavery to Joshua leading them into their Promised Land, to David defeating their enemies, to the prophets declaring his pathways to flourishing— God was unchangingly loving and holy.

It has been true for millennia after Christmas. From Cornelius opening the way for Gentile conversion to Paul taking the gospel across the Empire to writers giving us the New Testament, and to parents, pastors, evangelists, theologians, political leaders, soldiers, doctors, attorneys, engineers, business people, teachers, and a plethora of others—God continues to act in and through us in ways that are unchangingly loving and holy.

And what is true on earth is true in heaven as well.

Why “We Are More Than Conquerors”

In Paul’s soaring revelation we read, “Jesus Christ is the one who died—more than that, who was raised—who is at the right hand of God, who indeed is interceding for us” (Romans 8:34; cf. Hebrews 7:25). The apostle can therefore ask rhetorically, “Who shall separate us from the love of Christ?” (Romans 8:35) and proceed to list the worst enemies we face before assuring us, “We are more than conquerors through him who loved us” (v. 37).

All this because Jesus is “interceding for us” right now, continuing the Christmas miracle as he incarnates his unchanging holy love in and through us.

Do you believe the Father always answers his Son’s prayers? One day, we will fully know what today we can only “know in part” (1 Corinthians 13:12). On that day, I believe we will see the thousands of ways the Father acted in our lives because the Son prayed for us.

In the meantime, the familiar words of Alfred Lord Tennyson take on new meaning for us:

More things are wrought by prayer
Than this world dreams of.

What would you like to ask Jesus to pray for, for you?

*Denison Forum does not necessarily endorse the views expressed in these stories.

Quote for the Day:

“If I could hear Christ praying for me in the next room, I would not fear a million enemies. Yet distance makes no difference. He is praying for me.” —Robert Murray McCheyne

Published Date: December 27, 2024

Jim Denison, PhD, is a cultural theologian and the founder and CEO of Denison Ministries. Denison Ministries includes DenisonForum.org, First15.org, ChristianParenting.org, and FoundationsWithJanet.org. Jim speaks biblically into significant cultural issues at Denison Forum. He is the chief author of The Daily Article and has written more than 30 books, including The Coming Tsunami, the Biblical Insight to Tough Questions series, and The Fifth Great Awakening.