Mark's Blog

Sherrylee and I are taking a week of vacation, so I am going to use the opportunity to post some of my early blogs that many of you have not seen.  I hope you find them helpful and interesting.

From August 24, 2010

As I was writing, I was reminded of my sister-in-law Janet, who lived with her family in a pretty rough part of New Jersey for many years. Her children grew up walking and riding public transportation through city parts that would frighten lots of parents in more suburban settings.

She made it a practice as they walked out the door into the challenges of their world to arm her children with these words: “Remember your baptism!”

I was talking to a very good Christian friend recently, who was describing to me moments of doubt, doubt about whether he was good enough, doubt if he was the example he wanted to be to others, even a hint of doubt about his salvation.  He is sometimes angry about how his parents raised him to believe, and he is definitely angry about the great sense of guilt and eternal uncertainty that he received from the church he grew up in.

In an attempt to help this friend, I found Janet’s words to be perhaps the most appropriate thing I could say: “Remember your baptism.”

If you don’t really connect with these words, I suspect you grew up in the same kind of church I did, where baptism was unintentionally perverted.  Without impugning what was taught because we don’t always hear what was intended, here is what I learned about baptism:

• The ritual act of baptism is what is most important.  This had to be because our preaching was all about immersion over any other form, about the age to be baptized, and occasionally about the words that were spoken by the baptizer. If any of these ritual elements were tainted, then most likely, the baptism was not effective. I have seen people baptized again because their arm did not go under the water with the rest of their body, because they were too young to understand everything they needed to understand, and because the person who baptized them did use the triune formula, rather just baptized in the name of Jesus.
• Baptism was a rite of passage. You had to be 11-12 years old—anything younger and you were suspect. At baptism, you became a member of the church—which, if you were a boy, meant you could not only take communion, but serve communion and lead public prayers.  Girls could only take communion.
• Baptism separated the saved from the unsaved.

At this point, you may be surprised to hear me say that I still have a very high view of baptism. I might even say I still believe the above—just much differently. Let me explain:

• The biggest change in my theology of baptism is an understanding that it is all about what God does in baptism and less about what we do. Rather than “getting baptized” which is how it is generally described where I go to church, I wish we would talk about “receiving baptism” as I’ve heard in other churches. The first emphasizes the initiative and activity of the person, the second is more passive. The person is the recipient of the grace, created and extended by God through Jesus, separate and apart from anything we might do to earn it.
• The symbol of burial and resurrection inherent in immersion is indisputably connected to the meaning of the sacrament. If you mess with the symbolism, you start opening doors to new understandings of the rite.
• I still believe baptism is a rite of passage, but of passage from darkness to light, from blindness to sight, from carnal to spiritual, from the old man to the new, from the old creature to the new creation, from death to life.

So, here’s the BIG question: does baptism separate the saved from the unsaved? The real answer is that the blood of Jesus separates the saved from the unsaved. He died to destroy Sin and was raised to bring Life.  As Paul said in Romans 6, those who participate in His death will share in His resurrection. Paul says, “Remember your baptism!”

• Remember that you have been redeemed by the blood of Jesus.
• Remember that your old life was buried in the tomb with Jesus.
• Remember that you are new—not old or refurbished–resurrected!
• Remember that you are not your own. You were bought with a price.
• Remember that on the day of your baptism, God worked the miracle of salvation on you.

God says in baptism that He is for you!

And if God is for you, who can be against you?

That should be enough to get you through your day!