Sermon Notes: What is Baptism?

We are going to do an excursion from our study in Exodus into a very important topic. Baptism.

During this six-week series, we are going to address the following questions:

1. What is baptism?
2. Who should be baptized?
3. What do we believe about Infant baptism?
4. Why is baptism required for church membership?
5. When is baptism, not baptism?
6. How should churches practice baptism?

Today, we will ask and answer the question: What is baptism?

The Christian life is the “churched life”. – Jamieson, UB, p. V.

From the Lord’s Supper to the Great Commission, the life and work of the Christian is not an individual work where we commune with the Lord isolated from the local church.

Like the Lord’s Supper and the Great Commission, baptism is not for the individual alone. Baptism is not a spiritual service offered by the church to whoever deems themselves ready with zero accountability to the local church. Baptism is not a spiritual service offered by the church for parents to assist in feeling like their child’s salvation is somehow now complete.

Baptism displays a public witness together with a local church to the world.

This witness by the follower of Jesus with the local church tells the whole world they are no longer part of the world system.

Here is a silly illustration: Think of it like a press conference in which the baseball player announces they are no longer part of the Yankees but have seen the light, accepted the trade, and now play for the Braves.

Baptism communicates that the follower of Jesus has turned from the world system and followed Jesus. The turning from the world to Jesus is communicated by following Jesus into his death and resurrection displayed in the drama of baptism.

That decision to turn from the world system and follow Jesus into his death and resurrection through baptism is further and fully displayed by being a contributing and accountable member of Jesus’ church that he is building (Matthew 16:18).

Yes, we are spiritual members of the “universal church”, and the Bible makes clear that the universal church is manifested in a local church that is made up of real people who are covenanted together on Jesus’ mission to disciple the nations.

An introductory explanation/confession

When we started TRC many moons ago, we recognized that we aligned theologically a lot with protestant folks who were in traditions that practiced infant baptism. Many of these folks were disconnected from those churches or looking for Bible teaching that was expositional in nature.

Many folks in Rome/Floyd County are disconnected from previous experience in the local church.  

We did not want baptism to become a stumbling block to membership for these folks as they appropriately came to us from those traditions, so we did not do the traditional Baptist practice of having new members who were infant baptized in a protestant denomination be baptized as believers.

The Bible is silent on this practice I just articulated because there were no infant-baptized people at Pentecost. Therefore, our decision needed to be determined from the aggregate of the church’s historical teaching on baptism. So, that is what we have done.

I agree that TRC’s choice of practice is inconsistent with our Baptist tradition, and I also agree that although we believe it is a fine and unifying thing to do for us, it also leaves some confusion about baptism that I have NOT done a good job of making clear.

Make no mistake, if you have come to TRC from a tradition in which you were baptized as an infant and you are compelled that you need to follow Jesus in baptism in the order and manner that aligns with what we believe is clear in the Bible, you should do that.

If your conscience is clear about your baptism, we won’t lay any further obligation on you.

If you are a new believer, you need to follow Jim Lanier’s leadership through our baptism process and commit to joining TRC as a member.

I made a mistake a few years ago when a man came by during one of our baptism services, stopped because he saw us baptizing, proclaimed he had been saved, and told us the Lord told him to stop and get baptized. In the rush of the moment, I consented and baptized the man. We have not seen him since.

I should NOT have done that. That man should have been invited to attend, be discipled, submit to TRC to discern his relationship with the Lord, and then baptize him as he became a functioning and accountable member of Three Rivers Church. 

I should have done a better job over the years in teaching on baptism, and thus we would all be clearer on baptism together.

So, we are going to study through a little book we use for baptism class called “Understanding Baptism” by Bobby Jamieson.

Let’s read Matthew 28:18-20 together as it is an appropriate starting point for our study.

Matthew 28:18-20 (ESV) 18 And Jesus came and said to them, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. 19 Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, 20 teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age.”

What is Baptism?

We will begin with a working definition from a Baptist theological framework because we are a Southern Baptist church. This definition is from Jamieson’s little book I referenced earlier.

“Baptism is a church’s act of affirming and portraying a believer’s union with Christ by immersing him or her in water, and a believer’s act of publicly committing himself or herself to Christ and his people, thereby uniting a believer to the church and marking them off from the world.” – Jamieson, UB, p. 6

Let’s unpack this definition one statement at a time.

Baptism is a local church’s action.

Matthew 16:18-20, Matthew 18:15-20, and Matthew 28:18-20 are completely hardwired together. Matthew 16 and 18 are why we know the church owns the Great Commission rather than para-church ministries or denominational organizations.

How do we know that?

Jesus connects the apostle’s ministry as continuing in the establishment of the church and the church’s authority in Matthew 16 and 18.

The church is the continuation of the apostle’s ministry. That is affirmed in Acts 2 when the church receives the promised Holy Spirit, is sent on mission, and the apostles move out on mission and, by and large, appropriately fade into history obeying Jesus’ mission as members and leaders with the elders of the local church, not as men above the local church.

These two dense sentences are important.

Jesus tells us that the church, because he is building it and sending it with his authority (Matthew 28:18), has the keys of the kingdom to bind and loose on earth what Jesus has bound and loosed in the heavenly realm. (See Matthew 16 and 18)

NOTE: The two keys of the kingdom Jesus gives explicitly in binding and loosing for the church are Jesus building his church with the good news of the kingdom that Jesus is the Christ AND restraining sin by obeying God’s word about dealing with sin in God’s way.

In his resurrected authority, Jesus is speaking to his disciples (apostles and other followers) and he gave them, the church, the Great Commission in Matthew 28.

In the Great Commission, Jesus instructed that the church baptize after we make disciples by going and preaching the good news of the kingdom.

Therefore, when the church makes disciples by going, baptizing, and teaching the church is binding what needs to be bound that Jesus has given us authority to bind, and we are setting loose on creation what Jesus has given us authority on earth to set loose.

Therefore, baptism is the action of the local church that Jesus is building.

NOTE: Sometimes people use Acts 8 with Philip baptizing the Ethiopian Eunuch as a prescription or pattern for baptizing folks as soon as they believe without involvement from the local church and church leadership preparing a disciple.

However, it’s imperative to see Acts 8 as a missionary exception rather than the pattern established by the Lord and practiced by the church.

On the missionary frontier, the person who makes a disciple baptizes the disciple because there is no one else and no other authority to work with.

And, as disciples are made and the church is established, the church begins to apply the keys of the kingdom of God and applies order where there used to be chaos, and the church begins to own that work as evidence of the establishing of the kingdom through the local church.

We are not saying that church leadership must be the ones who do the baptizing.

We believe any member of a local church who has been instrumental in the faith journey of the baptized can baptize the person, as you will see at our baptism on September 15.

The local church’s leadership, affirmation, and consent are vital, however.

We would say that ordinarily the church’s consent should be involved because it’s not only the person being baptized who is making a public statement. The person baptizing and the church are making a public statement. They are going on record in affirming a person’s union with Christ. – Jamieson, UB, p. 8.

Baptism affirms and portrays a believer’s union with Christ.

Baptism affirms a person’s union with Christ.

What does “affirming a person’s union with Christ”, mean? Romans 6:3-4 gives us an answer.

Romans 6:3-4 (ESV) 3 Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? 4 We were buried therefore with him by baptism into death, in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life.

When a person believes the good news they get a new heart, they get the Holy Spirit, and they are united with Jesus in such a way that they become a son or daughter of God and experience the very life of Christ. Paul even tells the Corinthians they have the very “mind of Christ” (1 Cor. 2:16).

“Union with Christ is a phrase used to summarize several different relationships between believers and Christ, through which Christians receive every benefit of salvation. These relationships include the fact that we are in Christ, Christ is in us, we are like Christ, and we are with Christ.” – Wayne Grudem, ST, p. 841.

Baptism is an act of affirmation by the church that what the Bible says has happened in salvation is seen and evidenced.

Therefore, the church must be able to witness the evidence that a person is in Christ, dead to the world system, and committed to putting the works of the flesh to death and living as a new creation in Christ.

So, by baptizing a person, we are saying we see evidence of union with the Lord Jesus.  

Baptism also portrays our union with Christ.

Baptism is a dramatic portrayal of the work of Jesus Christ in the place of sinners, being buried, and rising on the third day to complete salvation.

When we enter the water, we are saying in the act that we are one with Christ by turning from sin and thus dying to sin by entering the water. We have accepted that we are glad to die daily and receive all the difficulty and joy of the cross, so we are put under the water. We have received the hope of resurrection, so we are brought out of the water.

There is no greater dramatic presentation of the good news!

Baptism portrays our union with Christ by immersion in water.

The Greek word baptizō means to dip or plunge something into water.

Some who argue for the baptism of infants say that since the Septuagint (Greek translation of the OT) translates the Hebrew word tabal in Leviticus 14:6, which means “to dip” or “plunge” as “bapto” (where baptizō comes from), it is evidence that the New Testament’s use of that word justifies modes of baptism other than immersion because there is not enough blood in the killed bird to immerse the live bird in as well as the cedar wood, scarlet yarn, and hyssop.

That exegesis lacks credibility due to the New Testament’s clear application of what it means.

NOTE: Baptism is not new to the Jews of the New Testament. When the priests and Levites come to confront John the Baptist who is immersing the repentant in water for the baptism of repentance, they don’t ask him “What are you doing?”. They ask him, “Why are you baptizing?”

They knew what it was, and they understood the mode and implications.

The New Testament portrays baptism as the person being immersed in water.

From John the Baptist baptizing where there was plenty of water (John 3:23), to Philip and the Ethiopian eunuch leaving the chariot because there was water, getting down and entering the water, the eunuch coming up out of the water (Acts 8:36, 38-39), to Paul’s instruction to the Romans in chapter 6:1-4 in which immersion is clearly implied, we are left to understand that immersion is intended to portray the dramatic work of the good news.

Immersion is not just an unimportant Baptist thing.

This does not mean that we can’t adapt when circumstances require it. Because baptism is not a justification action (there is only one of those, and it is Jesus on the cross, buried, risen, and ascended), but rather a discipleship action, we can adapt based on need.   

For example, we had a person who had a phobia of water and needed to be baptized, so we poured water over them in the creek rather than insisting they go under the water.

It must be noted that immersion, although adaptable because it’s not a salvation issue, is not a throwaway act. The act of immersion is part of the dramatic portrayal of what God has done in the work of the good news. Therefore, we strive to immerse when at all possible.

Immersion is part of the public witness of the gospel.

Baptism is a believer’s act, publicly committing to Christ and his people uniting the believer to the local church and marking himself or herself off from the world.

Baptism is a believer’s act.

We said earlier that baptism is the church’s act. And it is.

Baptism is also the believer’s act.

Baptism is the first act of public faith on the part of the person being baptized.

Baptism is something they must do, and it is what they do in response to receiving the good news.

Acts 2:37-41 (ESV) 37 Now when they heard this they were cut to the heart, and said to Peter and the rest of the apostles, “Brothers, what shall we do?” 38 And Peter said to them, “Repent and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins, and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. 39 For the promise is for you and for your children and for all who are far off, everyone whom the Lord our God calls to himself.” 40 And with many other words he bore witness and continued to exhort them, saying, “Save yourselves from this crooked generation.” 41 So those who received his word were baptized, and there were added that day about three thousand souls.

Baptism is publicly committing to Christ and his people uniting them to the local church.

Illustratively, baptism is the press conference where the Christian tells the world they are no longer on the team of the dark kingdom and they are now on Team Jesus.

They metaphorically take off the Jersey of the old team, and they put on Christ for the whole world to see.

When the Lord saves someone, he changes them inside and outside. The faith is not hidden, and it is not intended to be lived out in secret or just on Sundays.

NOTE: It’s not that there are not missiological moments where one must be shrewd as a serpent and innocent as a dove, but the faith is to always go public at some point.

1 Peter 3:21 tells us that baptism is an appeal to God for a good conscience. Peter’s argument is not that baptism is the saving act, but rather that baptism displays the saving act of the gospel, and baptism is our appeal that we have followed the Lord and done so as he instructed, and thus our conscience is clear.

Since this is the case, baptism then is an act done by the church, by the believer, immersed in water, and showing our union with Christ. Since that is the case and Jesus is building his church as his bride, the believer in baptism is choosing to unite with the local church in membership.

Baptism marks the believer off from the world.

Because of these glorious truths, the believer is marked off from the world and is marked for the kingdom of God.

The implications are huge. If we are in union with Christ, and we are church members marked off from the world, what happens when we act like the world with no repentance?

Church discipline, which the New Testament teaches explicitly. This action is a grace of God to help us be holy.

Now, all of this implies that there is a process of helping people understand they are members of a church, which we do in membership class.

Application

What are we to do with these truths?

Baptism means we are not isolated Christians. Baptism means we are part of a fellowship, the church, the body of Christ.

There is no such thing as Lone Ranger Christianity in which we declare ourselves part of the universal church with no connection to its manifestation in the local church that is on Jesus’ mission to disciple the nations.

If you are not a member and regular attendee of a local church, you need to check your theology of salvation, baptism, and church membership and see if it lines up with the gospel.

Believer’s baptism does not have to be a divisive issue, and it is also not irrelevant for the Christian.

A Christian can always respond by being baptized after their salvation, but baptism applied before one becomes a follower of Jesus introduces confusion into our discipleship.

Therefore, we need to be careful even in baptizing our students before they have a robust and clear understanding of the gospel and can articulate the gospel and its call on their lives.

Parents, there is no rush. Your sense of urgency needs to be going over the gospel, the metanarrative of the gospel, and the call of discipleship NOT getting them baptized as soon as possible.

Adults, that same thing goes for you. Understand the gospel. Understand the metanarrative (the worldview) of the gospel. Understand that when Jesus calls you, he bids you come and die.

Understand your responsibility to become a productive member of the church.

Baptism’s teaching and our upcoming baptism service is a fitting occasion to respond to what baptism portrays in worship.

The Lord Jesus has seen fit to save, grow, and instruct a crew of folks to follow Jesus in baptism. How glorious!

Let’s worship the Lord for his power to save, and for the beautiful drama of that salvation in baptism.