The Old Adam Lives!

I read a short introduction on a church’s website this morning. The intro was trying to tug on a persons heartstrings and get them to doubt in what had been done for them in their baptism. Once you realized that your baptism doesn’t mean anything…then they can lead you in the proper direction and help you do what is really necessary and obtain the proper understanding of a real, living faith in Jesus.

I just googled baptism and up popped this anti- baptism, Christian (so-called) site. That seems to be the way it is in most churches these days. People wanting you to forget about your baptism and get with the program! Let’s get serious about this Christian faith thing! If you’re gonna do it…then do it right!

I believe it stems from a great misunderstanding of what exactly baptism is. Many of these folks believe that baptism is merely a rite, a tradition, a going-through-the-motion type of exercise that is strictly about what we do…and therefore they conclude and rightly so if you want to look at it from their perspective, that nothing happens in baptism. Absolutely nothing.

So they see a lot of people that go to church and don’t bring their bibles, and cuss amongst themselves afterward, and talk about baseball, gardening or the economy, and don’t go to the soup kitchens and don’t attend bible studies. So they assume that these people are not Christians…because they don’t look like what they believe a Christian ought to look like. There are the fruits of the spirit you know…and these folks just ain’t got any!

So what now? Well…it is obvious that baptism itself must be worthless since almost all of these folks have been baptised and nothing happened, or it didn’t stick. So something else besides baptism must kick in. A sincere desire, an emotional commitment, an observable filling of the Spirit. One must sincerely repent and accept Jesus. Right?

Wrong.

One must do nothing.

That’s right…nothing.

All of your sincere repentance, all of your sincere love and acceptance for Jesus, all of your emotions and fire for the Lord mean nothing. It is all filthy rags…that’s all, and the Lord will have none of it when it comes to your salvation and justification before Him, the Living God.

He calls you. He chooses you. He gathers you. He enlightenes you. He justifies you. He sanctifies you.

And to make sure that you get all these things He baptises you. He makes you a promise in baptism to do all these things for you. He adopts you in baptism. You belong to Him. He promises to be your God and gives to you the forgiveness of your sins, life, and salvation.

He doesn’t leave it up to you to muster up the appropriate amount of sincerity, or commitment. He is the One who is sincere. He is the One who is committed….not you… for cryin’ out loud. Would you like it if someone were to follow you around 24 hours a day for the next week and really see just how committed and sincere you really are? I didn’t think so.  And they would see just your actions or inactions…what about what’s going on inside that sinful little head and heart of yours? Well, somebody does follow you around 24 hours a day and knows every thought, word, and deed of yours. And it ain’t pretty.

I was baptised as an infant. I had no idea of what God was doing to me, and for me. But He still did it, and does it, and will continue to do it . I trust that He will. He made that promise to me in my baptism and that promise of God’s to me is good if I’m one month old or one hundred years old.

So, if some people want to poo-poo what God does in baptism and fall back into their own whatevers… then so be it. But I am asking them to leave the rest of us alone. We will not throw everything overboard because there are people that misuse the promise, or distrust the promise, or poo-poo the promise.

“Baptism saves you now also…” 1st Peter 3:21

That is water baptism! When Jesus tells us to go into all the world, baptising and teaching…He isn’t telling us to give the Spirit of God to people (only God can do that)… so baptism is what baptism is. It is what almost all of the references to baptism in the New Testament are…water baptism!

” No thanks, I’d rather rely on my own feelings of faith.”

Fine. Who’s stopping you? Have at it. I hope you don’t get dizzy on the top of that ladder. And don’t look down, lest you have a great fall.

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We believe that this is pleasing to our Lord

Depending on which prism you use, you will end up with radically different, and totally opposite understandings of baptism and what it actually is.

With the ‘law prism’, you will see baptism as an act that we do. An act of symbolism, a re-creation of the death and resurrection of Jesus, a drama in which we are the main player. In ‘symbolic baptism’, or ‘believer’s baptism’ as it is often called, the faith of the believer is the critical issue. Faith in Christ must be present before the baptism can take place. This is the type of baptism that John the Baptist was doing, in which the people being baptised focused on their belief and their repentance of sins.

With the ‘prism of grace’, our understanding of baptism is one where God is the actor. God is doing the baptism, working repentance in us, actually giving us the Holy Spirit and forgiveness of sins (Acts 2:28).  The grace of God comes first (as it does in everything else in the Christian faith), before our faith has a say in the matter.

“Our faith is the key”, many say, and they are right. But what they fail to understand is that God has to give us that faith (it is a gift of the Holy Spirit). Faith is not something that we do, or muster up on our own. Faith is not mere intellectual ascent, or believing in something, but rather trust in someone. Trusting in the living God, our Lord Jesus is not something that we will to do.   ” who were born, not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of God.” (John 1:13) 

God has to get His faith to us somehow. Did you notice I said, “His faith“?  That’s right, the faith that we have belongs to Him.  God has decided to give us this faith in specific ways…in Word and sacrament. Preaching, teaching, Bible reading, and Holy Baptism and Holy Communion, and sharing Christ with one another. This is how the saving faith of Christ comes to us.

‘Extra Nos’…from outside of ourselves. God acts for us. He baptises us. When we place ourselves and our faith back in the center we start off on the wrong foot.  The whole enterprise now revolves around us, and what we do, what we say, what we think, what we feel.  Now the religious project gets rolling, and the phoniness and the pride, and lack of assurance, and all that goes with it.

God does not honor what we do. Abraham decided not to wait on God’s promise but rather to take matters into his own hands and got his slave woman pregnant. God sent that child out into the desert.  God does not honor our decisions when it comes to faith in Himself, but rather His own decisions and His own action for our sakes. 

Luther said (to the Anabaptists), “For a thousand years God has honored the baptisms of infants and created good and faithful Christians in His Church, and now you come along and say that baptism doesn’t work that way?” (paraphrased)

Some say that the baptism refered to in Romans 6 does not mean water baptism, but rather a baptism of the Spirit. They are failing to recognize that almost every single mention of baptism in the new testament is about water baptism. The baptism mentioned in Romans 6 is no different, it is talking about baptism…water baptism. That is what baptism means…being cleansed or purified by water.

  Another point that the modern day Anabaptists insist upon is that baptism must be through immersion only, otherwise it is not a valid baptism. The symbolism of total immersion is great symbolism and the Bible speaks of baptisms in that manner. If water were the only element, or even the key element in baptism, then I could agree that total immersion be a requirement for a valid baptism. But since water is just one component of baptism and not the most important one, but rather God’s Word, tied to that water, then I feel that any method of water baptism with the Word of promise in the name of the Triune God will suffice for God. After all, God is the One doing the baptising and He is more than capable of making Christians with 6 ounces of water, or 6, 000 gallons of water. (refer back to the Luther quote)  It does follow logically, however, that those that look through a ‘prism of law’, would insist on a legalistic interpretation to the question of how much water.

So, which camp do you fall in? The camp of those that believe their belief is the main thing in baptism? Or the camp that believes that God’s promises in baptism are enough, and that He is the One that is doing the actual baptising?

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I am baptised.

  – Steve M.

(has there been a shorter post on a Christian blog?)

Filed under: Baptism | 25 Comments »

 I wish to thank Eric Anderson for his patience in trying to teach this old dog a few new tricks when it comes to using my computer and this blog program. Eric is Pastor Mark Anderson’s (my Pastor) son and if this works his hours of torment at my request will not have been in vain.

  I just found this video clip on you-tube and thought it would be a good test case, and maybe get somebody’s blood moving faster than normal in the process.  Anyway, I hope you’ll enjoy Pastor Lassman’s class on Infant Baptism (one piece of it anyway).

Pastor Lassman is Pastor of Messiah Lutheran Church,  Seattle, WA.

PS – It didn’t take me hours to learn how to post the you-tube to the blog…I’m not that dumb. Most of the time and effort went into teaching me how to turn on the computer.

          – Steve Martin

Filed under: Baptism | 11 Comments »