One Baptism

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Our title this morning in our series on the Nicene Creed is “One Baptism”; and that’s from the clause, “we acknowledge one baptism for the forgiveness of sins.”

We make that acknowledgement because Jesus commands baptism:

“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” (Matt 28.19).

In one sense it is all very simple. You become a believer with sins forgiven and new life by the Holy Spirit and Jesus says you need to anchor your faith by going through this ritual that symbolises a washing away of sin and the work of the Holy Spirit. And it is a witness that gives you encouragement and spiritual strength. But sadly there have been disagreements over baptism among Christians. This is one reason why this clause appeared in the Creed. So this morning I make no apologies for asking you to do some hard thinking, as we face some of these disagreements; and as I try to explain why the mainstream of the Church has taught what it has taught. And to help us I shall be referring to various Bible passages. But I want to start with Ephesians 1 and my headings are first, BAPTISM – ITS HISTORY; secondly, BAPTISM – ITS NATURE; and thirdly, BAPTISM – ITS MEANING.

First, BAPTISM – ITS HISTORY


There are three periods to note: before time, before Christ; and after Christ – so eternity, BC and AD!

First, pre-history. Verses 4-6 of Ephesians 1 tell you that, “the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ” …

“… chose us in him before the foundation of the world [before time and this universe], that we should be holy and blameless before him. In love he predestined us for adoption as sons through Jesus Christ, according to the purpose of his will, to the praise of his glorious grace.”

This means your discipleship that led to your Baptism (or Renewal of vows or Confirmation) did not start because you chose to pray a prayer at Christianity Explored or, brought up in a Christian home, because you gradually came to a personal faith. No! It started with God “before the foundation of the world.” It was God who brought your faith to life. In Ephesians 2.8 Paul says:

“by grace you have been saved through faith [with faith simply the faculty that receives what God has done and is doing]. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God.” (Ephesians 2.8)

So baptism is fundamentally a sign of what God has done and is doing. Of course, that prayer at Christianity Explored was necessary and involved free choice, as was your gradually coming to a personal faith after being baptised as a baby. Yes, this is a mystery - how God’s Sovereignty and Providence allow for free human choice. But the Bible makes it clear they do. So much for pre-history.

Secondly – before Christ.

Very briefly - after the Fall of the first man and woman, all human nature was corrupted. So by nature you do not have spiritual life. And in the world death, violence, hatred and selfishness bringing misery are now second nature. But God’s plan was for a special people leading up to a special person (Jesus Christ) to bring change and hope. The first special person was childless Abraham to whom God made an amazing promise of children as many as the stars to form this special people. And we read in Gen 15.6 that Abraham “believed the Lord [for this promise], and he counted it to him as righteousness.” Also by trusting God’s promise he became the father of all subsequent people who had and have faith in the one true God, as Paul tells you in Romans 4.

However, Abraham discovered this promise (called a ‘covenant’) had some requirements. Genesis 17.10-12 says one of the requirements was for Abraham to have a sign or symbol of this promise (or covenant). God said:

“This is my covenant, which you shall keep, between me and you and your offspring after you: Every male among you shall be circumcised. You shall be circumcised in the flesh of your foreskins, and it shall be a sign of the covenant between me and you. He who is eight days old among you shall be circumcised.” (Genesis 17.10-12)

And Abraham obeyed and there was circumcision. However, things didn’t go perfectly after that. Throughout Old Testament history things often were bad. So there then came another promise or a New Covenant. In Jeremiah 31.33 you read:

“this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, declares the LORD: I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts. And I will be their God, and they shall be my people.” (Jeremiah 31.33)

There would be new moral strength and changed hearts. And all that came with Jesus Christ.

What, then, happened during the third phase of this history, from Christ to the present, and with special reference to children? In the 1st century there was John the Baptist preaching a baptism of water for repentance. However, Jesus predicted a new baptism that will not only be for repentance but also “with the Holy Spirit”. This came about at Pentecost, soon after Christ’s Ascension. The New Covenant of Jeremiah was at that point inaugurated and the Holy Spirit was poured out in a totally new way for all. And a new baptism, the sign of the New Covenant, came at the end of that gathering. For at the end of his Pentecost sermon and with people asking, “What shall we do?” the Apostle Peter replied like this (Acts 2.38-39):

“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. For the promise is for you and [notice] for your children and for all who are far off, everyone whom the Lord our God calls to himself” (Acts 2.38-39)

And 3000 were baptised.

Then other Apostles soon preached and obeyed the command of Jesus to make disciples and baptise. And as they did so, a number of times they baptised the individual believer together with his or her household. These household baptisms happened, for example, at Philippi with both Lydia, a business woman, and a Prison Jailer as you read in Acts 16. But were children involved in household baptisms?

Over that there is disagreement. So much for New Testament times and the 1st century.

In the 2nd second century we are told little to help us with this disagreement regarding baptism and children. However, in the 3rd century (the 200s) we do know that children of Christian families were baptised. And we know that some people didn’t like it. The problem, however, was not infant baptism but their doctrine of post-baptismal sin and their (incorrect) fear that such sin could never be forgiven. So they thought it better to postpone baptism until much later in life to nearer your dying day than to your birth. But in their arguing, they never claimed that infant baptism was a second century invention and not a practice of the Apostles of Jesus. Rather it was now positively said to be from the time of the Apostles. And in the early 200s there would have been older people around who knew directly from older people who had themselves experienced apostolic practice.

But why would the Apostles have baptised infants? Answer: from their notion of family solidarity that included the children and which they saw in the very first covenant of faith. For the children of Abraham were circumcised before they came to years of discretion. Abraham was not told by God to wait until his children came consciously to share his justifying faith before he circumcised them. He was to circumcise them as children.

And we know that this solidarity was still there in the New Testament. For in 1 Corinthians 7.14 Paul can say regarding marriage: “the unbelieving husband is made holy because of his wife, and the unbelieving wife is made holy because of her husband. Otherwise your children would be unclean, but as it is, they are holy.”

So while the New Testament doesn’t positively say that household baptisms included children, nor does it say they didn’t. Nor does the New Testament have any positive command to children of Christian parents to get baptised when older.

Well, that is what we know about the early church and why at the Reformation in the 16th and 17th centuries Luther, Calvin, Zwingli, Knox (of Scotland), Matthew Henry, Richard Baxter, John Owen all accepted infant baptism – John Owen especially. These Reformers abandoned a number of wrong baptismal traditions that had grown up in the church. And they suffered for their views. But they did not agree that infant baptism was a late invention and non-apostolic. And after the Reformation, Jonathan Edwards, Wesley, Whitfield, John Newton, the Clapham Sect members, Wilberforce, Shaftesbury, J.C.Ryle and many other great evangelicals all accepted infant baptism.

True wonderful godly men like John Bunyan and then later William Carey and in the more modern period Charles Spurgeon and the neo-Orthodox, Karl Barth, rejected infant baptism as do Baptists today. And their commonest argument against the practice of infant baptism, apart from children not being able to make a profession of faith, was and is its abuse when it is nothing but a social occasion. But as the early theologian Augustine famously said, “the abuse does not take away the true use.”

So, to sum up the practice of baptism regarding children in history - the majority of Christians in the period after Christ have agreed with the statement in Article XXVII of the Thirty-nine articles on baptism:

“The Baptism of young Children is in any wise to be retained in the Church, as most agreeable with the institution of Christ.”

Secondly, BAPTISM – ITS NATURE

Let me now mention three things about its nature

First, its nature is described as being a sacrament, which the Book of Common Prayer describes as “an outward and visible sign of an inward and spiritual grace”. But there is nothing automatic about a sacrament. There has to be right participation. Article XXVII says (in old 16th and 17th century language) that …

…“as by an instrument, they that receive Baptism rightly are grafted into the Church, the promises of the forgiveness of sin and of our adoption to be the sons of God by the Holy Ghost [the Holy Spirit] are visibly signed and sealed.”

So baptism is a sacrament and sign of true church membership; forgiveness of sins; and the Holy Spirit bringing people to being adopted as sons of God. But its strengthening of faith is only for those who “receive Baptism rightly” – they have faith in Christ. It is not automatic. Simon, the magician, in Acts 8 was baptised but not a true believer. By contrast the thief on the Cross died a true believer but not baptised.

Secondly, sacraments, being signs, are often said to be the thing they signify. That is where some are confused. The concept of “one baptism” comes from Ephesians 4.5 where it talks of :“one Lord, one faith, one baptism;” Then in Ephesians 5.25-26 you read: “Christ loved the Church and gave himself up for her, that he might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word.” Of course, it is not the aggregate of water from baptisms that cleanses the Church. No! It is Christ through the believers’ faith and obedience, of which baptism is a symbol, that leads to cleansing. On this use of sacramental language 1 Peter 3.21 is so clear when it says:

“Baptism … now saves you, not as a removal of dirt from the body but as an appeal to God for a good conscience, through the resurrection of Jesus Christ.” (1 Peter 3.21)

So, first, Baptism is a sacrament; secondly, you mustn’t be confused by sacramental language.

And, thirdly, baptism is one. In history this has been seen to rule out re-baptism. But it needs to be noticed that this statement that baptism is one comes in the letter to the Ephesians where it may have been underlined for the following reason. There were twelve people at Ephesus who had only known John’s Baptism which was simply for repentance not for receiving the Holy Spirit (Acts 19.3). And, therefore, Paul baptised them in the name of Jesus and they then had a dramatic experience of the Holy Spirit. So now some at Ephesus may have been tempted to think that there were two baptisms – one, with water like John’s, and a second baptism with the Holy Spirit. That is wrong.

For when Jesus said (Acts 1.5), “John baptised with water, but you will be baptised with the Holy Spirit,” he never meant there were now going to be two baptisms, one a water baptism, the other a Spirit baptism. For when the Holy Spirit dramatically descended on the first ever Gentile believers (Acts 10) and Peter remembered those words of Jesus, “John baptised with water, but you will be baptised with the Holy Spirit” (Acts 11.16), the first thing Peter did was to command these Gentiles “to be baptised in the name of Jesus Christ” and this, we are told, was a water-baptism (Acts 10.47-48). So water-baptism now has a richer sense. And this is a sign from the saving-work of Christ for both forgiveness and the giving of the Holy Spirit. And the baptism ritual often expressed that work of the Holy Spirit for it involved pouring of water.

I don’t know when the idea of vertical immersion was felt to be for some the preferred norm. The preference may come from Paul’s words of being “buried with Christ” in baptism.

But we need to remember that Christ was not buried vertically as in the West Jesmond cemetery. He was buried laterally in a rock tomb. Yes, the original word for Baptism means “dip”. But you can dip you feet into water without being immersed as often happened with ancient bathing. In many countries poorer people without baths had, and still have, full washes through standing in a river or stream and pouring water over themselves from a big bowl. And such pouring we know from ancient mosaics was a mode for baptism in the early church. You see, pouring was symbolic of Ezekiel’s description of the New Covenant, when God says (Ez 36.25-27):

“I will sprinkle clean water on you, and you shall be clean from all your uncleannesses, and from all your idols I will cleanse you. And I will give you a new heart, and a new spirit I will put within you. And I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh. And I will put my Spirit within you, and cause you to walk in my statutes and be careful to obey my rules.” (Ez 36.25-27)

However, the mode of baptism does not matter. What does matter is, as Paul and the Creed say, there is one baptism, not two or more. It is one baptism into the triune God, who is Father, Son and Holy Spirit. So it is symbolic of the Holy Spirit’s work. But, of course, it is still “for the forgiveness of sins” as the Creed says. That is where, humanly, Christian initiation has to start as the old children’s chorus puts is to well:

“There’s a way back to God from the dark paths of sinThere’s a door that is opened and all may go in.At Calvary’s Cross is where you begin, When you come as a sinner to Jesus.”

Perhaps there is someone hear this morning and you need to start there – at the Cross of Calvary where Christ bore our sins in our place for our forgiveness.

So, thirdly, and finally, BAPTISM – ITS MEANING

Baptism means obedience.

You were not baptised fundamentally because of your profession of faith or your parent’s faith. It is because of the command of Jesus to go and baptise. The profession of faith is not the ground of baptism but evidence for the Church or the clergyman that it is right to baptise those particular people professing faith and their children. But baptism then has to be made good. And that is by faith and obedience on the part both of adults and children.

Baptism, like circumcision for Abraham, is all about God’s promises. There are now promises of forgiveness and of the Holy Spirit. But these promises need the obedience of faith to be practically enjoyed and lived out. So when you are challenged at work or college to take a stand for Christ, believe the Holy Spirit will help you, and take a stand. But when you fail to take a stand, know that there is forgiveness still, as Holy Communion reminds you, for those post-baptismal sins.

Yes, the obedience of faith will be different for children.

In Christian families they will be brought up as Christians [not pagans] one day to make a profession themselves. The parents know that God alone can judge the presence or absence of spiritual life in their children. But they trust God is answering their prayers for their children and act accordingly.

And in Christian families when young, the children do pray and, in a child-like way, do trust Christ. And, remember, Christ accepted children and said “for to such belongs the kingdom of God” (Mark 10.14).

Yes, some do lose their way. So you must still pray for them. But that doesn’t mean you can ignore God’s command to

“bring them up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord” (Eph 6.4).

If the mainstream of Christian teaching is right, as I believe it is, that begins with their baptism.

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