Sermon Notes: How Should Churches Practice Baptism – Romans 6:1-11
I won’t do a full exposition of these eleven verses today. We will only deal with the baptism component of what the apostle presents to the church of Rome.
The big idea about baptism from Paul’s instruction is that baptism portrays the glorious work of the good news.
What can we glean about baptism and the gospel that will lead to us answering our question: How should churches practice baptism?
Those who are baptized into Jesus are baptized into his death. V. 3-4a
What an awesome summary of baptism!
Since we are baptized into his death, Galatians 6:14 reminds us of the truth that the cross is our boast.
Since the cross is how we are saved, and thus our great boast, the cross is the means of Christian discipleship.
Luke 9:23 (CSB) 23 Then he said to them all, “If anyone wants to follow after me, let him deny himself, take up his cross daily, and follow me.
One of our daily tasks of growing into maturity in Christ and practicing the confession of our baptism is putting to death the flesh that wants to rise up and put us to death if we are not vigilant. You could say that taking up our cross, putting the flesh to death, is the action of getting rid of passions that are contrary to the kingdom of God.
The cross is the only means for that maturing Christian labor.
The cross for us is a daily remembrance and reception of Jesus’ work for us. The cross is our active warfare to remain in the work of the cross. Otherwise, we are prone to wander. Make no mistake. This is not earning our salvation. This is not hardship for the sake of hardship. Taking up the cross, death to passions contrary to the kingdom of God, is the labor that is the fruit of salvation.
We fight this fight to render sin powerless.
When someone believes the good news and enters the waters of baptism as a believer in the Lord Jesus Christ and thus links up with the local church, they are making the statement that they are united with Jesus in his death. We/they are saying they are in union with Jesus’ death.
This is why we say: “Baptism is a church’s act of affirming and portraying a believer’s union with Christ…” UB, Jamieson, p. 6.
Baptism portrays our union with Jesus, that the portrayal of that union begins with the death of Jesus and our union with Jesus in his death, has profound implications on our discipleship as we have just briefly mentioned.
Being put under the water displays this gospel truth.
There’s more.
Those who are baptized into Jesus are baptized into Jesus’ resurrected life. V. 4b-5
Not only are we united with Jesus in death, but we are also united with Jesus in his life.
When we baptize people we don’t just hold them underwater. We raise them up out of the water.
The Bible calls Christians “new creation in Christ Jesus.” (2 Corinthians 5:17)
One of the miracles of new birth (John 3), is that we are resurrected from our state of being dead toward God and given new hearts and new life.
We have resurrection life now, and it’s not just when we are raised from death after we pass in the future.
Being raised out of the water portrays for all who witness baptism that we are no longer dead in sin but alive to God in every part of life.
Life in the Bible is so much more than not being physically dead. Life with God is life as intended before distrust in God killed our life with God and our experience of every dimension of life with God.
Life with God in Jesus Christ comes with Counselor Holy Spirit who guides us into all truth.
Life with God in Jesus Christ means we are the “first fruits” of new creation, the first shoots out of the ground of the newly renovated earth.
There is a rich and living existence in Jesus that is only just beginning for us at salvation and will one day be fully enjoyed in the restoration of all things.
We get the first drippings of this eternal reality in our present experience of resurrected eternal life, and baptism portrays that we live in that reality now.
Those who are baptized into Jesus portray being united with Jesus in such a way that our old self and sin have been crucified and we have been set free from sin. V. 6-7
The apostle starts out general. Death. Life.
Then he gets specific about what baptism portrays in our death and life.
Part of our salvation is that we get to shed the dragon skin of sin that is like the dragon himself who we follow apart of being rescued by Jesus.
In the “Voyage of the Dawn Treader”, we learn about Eustace Scrubb’s real nature of being a dragon as he encounters Narnia, and his healing is when Aslan painfully removes his dragon skin when Eustace has learned his lesson through difficulty and hardship. There is a crucifixion of his old self and the realization of a new Eustace.
What Lewis makes beautifully clear is what the Lord does for us in salvation.
We are followers of the dragon because of original sin, and in the work of the good news, the Lord sets us free, saves us, from our dragon skin to be our true selves in Christ.
Baptism portrays this work of the gospel to remove our old dragon self and set us free from that skin of death.
Through death, he takes away death’s curse and sets us free to live life his way.
Those who are baptized into Jesus portray that death no longer has mastery over us and that we will live with God and to God because we are dead to sin. V. 8-11
The gospel makes life with God a great reward.
The gospel enables us to live lives of holiness and righteousness to God as offerings of worship.
Baptism portrays this gospel story of death, resurrection, and restored life: Life with God. Life to God.
Baptism’s portrayal of the gospel is just the outskirts of the glory of the work of the metanarrative of the good news. It’s just the beginning of our discipleship.
How can we make some closing applications? Let’s set up a few questions that will serve as our applications.
We have learned that the church is how the Lord unleashes this good news of the kingdom on the world.
Remember, we have been given the keys of the kingdom to unleash the good news on all of creation for the salvation of sinners and the restoration of all things as new creation springs up from creation by the effective power of the gospel.
This glory gets put on display in baptism.
Thus, baptism follows the powerful work of this good news in the lives of those who believe the good news.
Baptism is the church’s work because the good news makes people part of the local church.
Since the unleashing of the good news is the church’s task, then we should ask some basic questions about how churches should practice baptism for our work of unleashing the good news on creation.
How much water should be used in baptism?
There is no prescribed amount of water, but the evidence (John 3:23; Acts 8:36-39; Romans 6:1-11; Colossians 2:11-12) indicates that baptism is to portray our union with Jesus in death, burial, and resurrection.
John baptizing in Aenon because there was much water there indicates that there should be enough water to put someone under the water to portray death, burial, and resurrection.
We should have enough water, under normal circumstances, to immerse a person in the water.
Is pouring or sprinkling as good as immersing?
We believe that immersing is the ideal and prescribed method.
However, as I have shared with you in other sermons in this series, we poured for one baptism when we had a candidate who had a legitimate fear of water, and they requested a means that allowed them to obey the Lord and did not send them into a bad place, and we happily complied.
So, are alternative modes allowed in dire circumstances? I would say there is room to make allowances.
And those alternatives should be reserved for situations as I just described.
I can tell you for a fact, having witnessed it with my own eyes, that brothers and sisters in hard places with only a Bible (and in some cases only a witness to what the Bible teaches) and their understanding of baptism culturally (strange there is a cultural understanding of baptism in some cultures) want to be immersed in water for baptism.
I’ve witnessed midnight and early morning baptisms in canals in South Asia because the candidate understood it with no training. The gospel made it clear. They understood the innate and obvious proclamation of the act and insisted on doing it because it is the way.
These brothers and sisters were willing to make their faith public afterward, and the only reason they wanted to get baptized at dark was to make sure it happened and they would not killed before getting it done and having a chance to verbally give witness to the gospel.
So, unless it’s a real phobia issue, it’s sort of a Western comfort question to ask if immersion is the method taught in the Bible.
Immersion is the ideal and prescribed method of baptism.
Who should do the baptizing?
We believe that under the oversight of local church elders, other church members can and should participate in the baptism of folks. Paul affirms other folks baptized people at Corinth besides himself.
Fathers have baptized their children.
Friends have baptized friends who they have led to faith and are discipling.
If every disciple is a potential church planter, then every disciple needs to understand baptism and be prepared to baptize new disciples.
When the church is on the frontier, there are times when the only disciple there is to baptize a new believer is the one person who just won a person to Christ. Therefore, it’s appropriate that the whole church understand baptism and be prepared to participate in baptizing new followers of Jesus.
Where should we baptize?
“Baptism is a public profession of faith, and the church is the first and most important public to whom that profession is addressed. Further, since baptism is the whole church’s act of affirming a believer’s profession and welcoming him or her into their number, I would argue that churches should normally baptize people in the context of the whole church gathering.” UB. Jamieson, p. 68-69.
Jamieson is right. We should baptize in a setting in which the whole church is invited to be present and able to be present.
What we do in baptism should proclaim that the whole church is offering the Lord’s affirmation of a person’s faith since the whole church wields the keys of the kingdom, as we have argued. The person being baptized is declaring to God and the whole church their commitment to Jesus and the local church in church membership and are willing to seal that commitment with their lives.
When we baptize, we do it so that the whole church can celebrate for these reasons, and we believe every local church should do the same.
How soon after repentance/faith should someone be baptized?
There are examples in the New Testament in which baptism was immediate. Since baptism is the public profession of faith, baptism should be as close to a person’s conversion as possible.
At the same time since baptism is linked to membership in the local church, we need to make sure there is confidence in the gospel and the person is clear on what everything means.
As stated in the last sermon, we can pinpoint times in church history when adequate understanding and circumstances were in place to facilitate immediate baptism.
There are other times in church history when it took time to disciple folks from deeply demonic worship backgrounds into a place where the people would know enough to understand what this new life was so they would not disgrace Jesus and the local church as well as introduce demonic ideas into the practice of others.
An example is that there are places around the world where people will quickly embrace Jesus, and only after some inquiry do we realize they are just adding Jesus to their pantheon of gods, and if we baptize too quickly, we are affirming a salvation that is not present.
So, our timing needs to be appropriate to real faith and real fellowship in the local church.
Worship!
The Lord has been faithful through this excursion into baptism to do some amazing work in hearts and minds, and he is indeed building his church, and that should increase our faith and bring us to a place of worship.
So, let’s respond to the Lord in worship.