We recently looked at the two sacraments God has given to his church. These are visible signs of what God is doing invisibly in the life of his church. My friend Josh recently said a sacrament puts “sensory handles on unseen realities”. Through baptism and communion we can see and feel what God is doing among his people. As we see the baptismal waters cover a person and we see that person rise up out of the water, we see union with Christ in his death, burial, and resurrection. When we taste the bread and drink the cup the apostle Paul says we are participating in the body and blood of Christ.
For many Protestants, baptism has long had the visual proclamation. We see death, burial, and resurrection. We see washing away sins (Acts 22:16). But what is really happening in baptism? For many, the only real thought given to baptism has to do with the right recipients (believers) and the right mode (immersion), with little regard for a fuller understanding of it.
Michael Svigel, the author of the book “RetroChristianity”, is a Patristics scholar (that is, the early church fathers immediately after the apostles and into the fourth / fifth century). He explains there are six things being accomplished in baptism. When all six are present, a baptism is a Christian baptism. Various Christian traditions emphasize some aspects over and even against other aspects, but when all six aims of baptism are accomplished, there is a legitimate Christian baptism. Baptism is:
- a public confession of the Trinitarian faith
- a personal association with Christ’s death and resurrection
- repentance from a life of sin
- a pledge to live a sanctified life
- a rite of initiation into the covenant community
- a mark of official community forgiveness
We see baptism is a public confession of our Trinitarian faith. The Lord Jesus instructed his apostles to make disciples of all nations. This requires the proclamation of the gospel. This requires going to the lost. This requires baptizing new believers in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. It is important to note we do not baptize “in the name of the Father and in the name of the Son and in the name of the Holy Spirit”. There is one God who eternally exists in three distinct Persons yet remains one God. Therefore there is the name of God. Baptism is inherently Trinitarian. At a minimum this requires instruction in our Trinitarian faith. Dr. Svigel points out the first time a baptizand hears of the Trinity should not be at his or her baptism.
Baptism is a personal association with Christ’s death and resurrection. In baptism God is uniting the believer with Christ in his death, burial, and resurrection. As Colossians 2:12 indicates, we are buried with him in baptism and raised with him to new life. These are the words we speak when we baptize a person. Through baptism we see what God is doing in the unseen realm.
Baptism is repentance from a life of sin. This is the reason the early church quickly moved from immediate baptisms to a delay. When the Ethiopian eunuch said, “See, here is water! What prevents me from being baptized?”, he was a worshiper of the God of Israel, He was leaving Jerusalem where he had come to worship God, though from a distance for being a eunuch and thus not allowed to come too close. He owned a copy of the Isaiah scroll, which indicates a substantial personal investment. The passage he asked Philip about is right before the passage where God promises the time was coming when even eunuchs could present offerings on his altar (Isaiah 56:1-8). The eunuch was already instructed in a life of repentance from sin. As more and more Gentiles came to believe the gospel, teaching regarding living a Christian life became more urgent as it was utterly foreign to many of them. Through baptism a person is declaring his or her desire to follow Christ and Christ alone by continually turning away from sin.
Closely related to this, baptism is a pledge to live a sanctified life. I remember the scene in the movie “O Brother Where Art Thou” in which the main characters are plotting together when a large group of folk were heading through the woods to a lake where a man was baptizing them. Delmar ran into the water and also received baptism. When he exits the water he exclaims, “Well, that’s it, boys! I’ve been redeemed. The preacher done warshed away all my sins and transgressions. It’s the straight and narrow from here on out!” I’m not suggesting we get our theology from a movie, but Delmar was right—at least on this point: baptism is a public pledge to live a life that is transformed by the gospel of Jesus.
Baptism is, therefore, a rite of initiation into the covenant community of God. Through baptism the church is exercising its authority for binding and loosing. This is what Jesus was getting at in Matthew 18 with regard to church discipline. The verb tenses are important. He said this:
Truly, I say to you, whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven.
Matthew 18:18 ESV
The verb tenses are significant. Whatever a church binds on earth will have already been bound in heaven, and whatever the church looses on earth will have already been loosed in heaven. The binding and loosing on earth merely reflect what is already true in heaven. In baptism the church is agreeing together that the recipient of baptism has been loosed in heaven. The church declares together the baptizand is received into the body of Christ. This is the reason we have made a change in our baptismal practices in which a baptizand is immediately received into membership.
Finally, baptism is a mark of official community forgiveness. This is tied tightly to the binding and loosing authority of the church. When we baptize we proclaim the person is now in Christ. We proclaim him or her as a member in good standing—free of any conflict and division, accountable and in full submission to the leadership and membership of the church. This requires ongoing church discipline, of course, and baptism is the church’s pledge to conduct herself accordingly.
When all six of these facets of baptism are realized, a baptism is a legitimate, Christian baptism. This is why, for example, a baptism performed on an infant is later accepted upon that person’s profession of faith. When a person confesses the Trinitarian faith and acknowledges his or her union with Christ through baptism and publicly repents from sin and pledges to live a sanctified life and is received into the church as a member of the covenant community and is welcomed by the church as a member in good standing, that baptism—even if performed at the wrong time—accomplishes all that Christian baptism is supposed to accomplish.
This is where we really begin to sense some inconsistencies. When a church baptizes an infant, for example, some traditions claim the second facet, namely, the infant has a personal association with Christ in his death and resurrection. Some traditions claim the fifth: the infant is now counted among the covenant community of faith. These traditions are missing repentance from sin and a pledge to live a sanctified life. There are inconsistencies, but we do not wish to add to them. For this reason we will only baptize those for whom all six purposes of baptism are fulfilled.
We believe that infant baptism is an improper administration of baptism. When a person seeks to join our church and publicly confesses faith in the Triune God and repents from a life of sin and pledges to live a sanctified life, we receive that person into the church, recognizing his or her union with Christ and we offer baptism as a mark of official community forgiveness. In other words, even if one’s baptism were improperly administered, when all six purposes of baptism are fulfilled, we will accept that baptism as a legitimate—even if improperly administered—baptism. We do not wish to improperly administer the sacrament of baptism so we must delay a baptism until there is a credible profession of faith, for only then can all six purposes of baptism truly be fulfilled.
When we speak of delaying a baptism until there is a credible profession of faith, there are two of the six facets of baptism that are particularly important. When we baptize we will, of course, receive that person into membership. God is uniting the person with Christ, etc. What we mean by “credible profession of faith” is this: the person requesting baptism understands what repentance from a life of sin truly means and understands he or she is making a pledge to live a sanctified life. In Luke 14 Jesus is speaking of the cost of being his disciple.
“Whoever does not bear his own cross and come after me cannot be my disciple. For which of you, desiring to build a tower, does not first sit down and count the cost, whether he has enough to complete it? Otherwise, when he has laid a foundation and is not able to finish, all who see it begin to mock him, saying, ‘This man began to build and was not able to finish.’”
Luke 14:27-30 ESV
A credible profession of faith can only come from one able to count the cost. If a child is too young, we should delay baptism until he or she has a better sense of the cost. When is this? It depends on the individual! Further, a person who is either unwilling or incapable of acknowledging the need for repentance from sin does not have a credible profession of faith. If he or she refuses to repent, a profession of faith is not credible. The church could not, in good conscience, receive such a person into membership and declare official community forgiveness. In such a case, more discipleship is necessary prior to baptism—regardless of the person’s age.
When we step back and look at what baptism really is, what it really accomplishes, we see a remarkable gift given to the church. It is a sacrament—a visible sign of what God himself is doing. By receiving a person into the church through baptism we see God’s own adoption of that person. By declaring official community forgiveness we see God’s own forgiveness. In the person’s pledge to live a sanctified life we see God’s promise that he who began a good work in us will be faithful to bring it to completion at the day of Christ. We see the joining of that person into the family of God, which both obligates us to one another and grants us the incredible privilege of that obligation.
What a remarkable gift! As my friend Josh says, we are given sensory handles to unseen realities. We see the water, we hear the splash, we innately feel the joy both of the one baptized and the church doing the baptizing. In this we sense God’s own joy. In baptism we see the fulfillment of the prophet Zephaniah’s words concerning the Lord in the new covenant.
The LORD your God is in your midst, a mighty one who will save; he will rejoice over you with gladness; he will quiet you by his love; he will exult over you with loud singing.
Zephaniah 3:17 ESV
The sacrament of baptism makes this visible to us. As with communion, God himself is the celebrant. God himself is doing a wonderful thing in the life of the one receiving baptism and in the life of the church receiving the new member.