Baptism: Fourth

Small Catechism Review

Baptism: Fourth

In Baptism: First, we confessed what Baptism is: the water included in God’s command and connected to God’s Word. In Baptism: Second, we confessed what it does: It works forgiveness of sins, delivers from death and the devil, and gives eternal salvation to all who believe this. In Baptism: Third, we confessed both what it is and what it does: It is a water of life, rich in grace, and a washing of regeneration and renewal by the Holy Spirit, with the Word of God and faith as the things that make Baptism effective. Finally this evening, in Baptism: Fourth, we confess what Baptism signifies. In other words, it not only does something. It implies something. It points to something. It pictures something. It signifies something.

What does such baptizing with water signify?

It signifies that the Old Adam in us should, by daily contrition and repentance, be drowned and die, with all sins and evil desires, and that a New Man, in turn, should daily emerge and arise, to live forever before God in righteousness and purity.

Where is this written?

St. Paul says to the Romans in chapter six: “We were buried with Christ through Baptism into death, in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, so we, too, should walk in a new life.”

So, again, what did Baptism do? It united us with Christ. It clothed us with Christ. And, therefore, it washed away sin, as a bath washes away dirt and grime. It regenerated; it gave new birth. It worked forgiveness of sins, delivered from death and the devil, and gave eternal salvation to all who believe this. Baptists and other Evangelicals deny that Baptism does anything. To them, it’s man’s work done for God, only a symbol, only a sign of a regeneration and salvation that supposedly takes part entirely apart from Baptism. So we emphasize the first three parts of Baptism and mustn’t yield an inch on what Baptism truly does.

But there is also something symbolic, something figurative about Baptism, something that is pictured, namely, death, burial, and resurrection. We don’t usually bury a person under water for our Baptisms anymore, also known as Baptism by “immersion,” but there was a time when it was common practice in the Church, though never the exclusive practice. (Anyone who tells you that the Bible requires Baptism by immersion is either ignorant or lying.) But since the Evangelicals have come along with their insistence that Baptism must only be by immersion for it to be a valid Baptism, since they insist that Baptism is only a symbol, we usually refuse to baptize by immersion, as a confession against their error, and to keep people from being deceived into thinking their Baptism was “better” if it was done by immersion.

Still, the picture of being “buried” under the water and “rising” up out of it again is both Scriptural and meaningful, because regardless of the manner in which we were baptized, we were actually buried with Christ through Baptism into death, as Paul says in Romans 6.

But what does that picture of death and resurrection signify? What does it point to? What is it supposed to remind us of on a daily basis?

First, it should remind us that the Old Adam in us should, by daily contrition and repentance, be drowned and die, with all sins and evil desires. The Old Adam is the same thing as the Old Man, Original Sin, the sinful nature with which we’re all born, which we inherited from fallen Adam and Eve, which is always hostile toward God, never truly loves or believes in God, and is full of evil desires.

It’s providential that we heard the lesson this evening about Sodom and Gomorrah, because it really helps us to understand what we’re talking about here. You and I and every human being naturally born carries around with him or her an Old Adam that is no less wicked than the men of Sodom were. People hear of an especially egregious sin, and they wonder how people can be so evil. Well, the symbol of Baptism cries out to you, “You have that same evil growing inside of you!” You may control it better—or hide it better. But we all carry the same strain of disease.

In the Sermon on the Mount, part of which we also heard this evening, Jesus lays bare the thoughts, attitudes, words, and actions within us that must be drowned and die: Murder. Adultery. Theft. Pride. Malice. Deceit. Lovelessness. Selfishness. Whether those sins burst forth on the outside or whether they are only harbored as desires and attitudes on the inside. For these there must be daily contrition and repentance.

And we’re talking about the baptized here, not the unbaptized and unbelieving. We’re talking about the daily putting to death of the Old Man in the believer, daily allowing the Law to “crush” you (that’s what “contrite” really means) and make you sorrowful over your sin, daily “repenting,” turning away from sin in your heart, saying “no” to it, recognizing it for the repulsive evil that it is, instead of something you want to keep nurturing and obeying.

But, since we’re talking about the baptized, the believers in Christ, that daily exercise doesn’t end in despair. It ends in fleeing in faith to Christ for refuge, for forgiveness, and firmly trusting in His merits and in His promise of full and free forgiveness.

Then, on the other side of repentance are the fruits of repentance, the rising to life of the New Man, the one who was born of water and the Spirit. Baptism also pictures that as the baptized “comes up out of the water under which he was buried,” a picture of rising from the grave, of rising from the dead, to do, what? To sit around? No, but to live! To live one’s life. To live it now as a new person, with godly motives, godly attitudes, and godly purposes. Baptism signifies that a New Man, in turn, should daily emerge and arise, to live forever before God in righteousness and purity.

So each day, remember your Baptism, both what it did for you, and what it pictures for you, how it urges you each day to repeat that process of drowning the Old Adam and getting up again as the New Man, by the power of the Holy Spirit, to say “no” to sin and “yes” to righteousness. Because you who are baptized and believing are the true born-again Christians. And you were born, not to wallow in sin, but to walk in a new life. Amen.