Life: A Two-Part Series on Baptism
Sycamore Creek Church
Matthew 3:5-8
June 27, 2010
Tom Arthur
Peace, Friends!
Today we continue with the second part of a two-part series on baptism. Last week we looked at what we believe about baptism. We found that: Baptism is death, life, growth, and community. Baptism involves dying to sin, newness of life, union with Christ, receiving the Holy Spirit, and incorporation into Christ’s church. Today we’re looking at the practice of baptism. I’d like to look at five parts of the practice of baptism: the pattern, the water, preparation for baptism, appropriate age for baptism, and rebaptism. So let’s dive in beginning with the story of John the Baptist.
Matthew 3:5-8
5 People from Jerusalem and from every section of Judea and from all over the Jordan Valley went out to the wilderness to hear [John the Baptist] preach. 6 And when they confessed their sins, he baptized them in the Jordan River. 7 But when he saw many Pharisees and Sadducees coming to be baptized, he denounced them. “You brood of snakes!” he exclaimed. “Who warned you to flee God’s coming judgment? 8 Prove by the way you live that you have really turned from your sins and turned to God.
This is God’s story for us today. Thank you, God!
Pattern
How should we baptize?
There isn’t a lot of direction in the Bible about how to baptize. The Bible only tells us to baptize. It assumes for the most part that we know what we’re doing. But here we find a very basic pattern that will help us as we explore our own pattern for baptism. We find that baptism begins with teaching:
Teaching
To hear John preach…
Matthew 3:5 (NLT)
The crowds came to hear John preach. They wanted to know what it was that he was all about. Then when they heard what he was teaching, they realized that their lives didn’t measure up so they confessed:
Confession
They confessed their sins…
Matthew 3:6 (NLT)
After they had heard John’s teaching, were convicted and confessed their sins, then John baptized them.
Baptism
John baptized them…
Matthew 3:6 (NLT)
Finally, John expected that this experience would change their lives. He was particularly incensed at the religious leaders of the day who came out to hear him preach and wanted to be baptized but didn’t want to change how they lived. John expected that teaching, confession, and baptism would lead to change.
Change
Prove by the way you live…
Matthew 3:8 (NLT)
Thus we see here in John’s baptism a basic pattern of:
Teaching…Confession…Baptism…Change
If you want to be baptized you should expect that you too will hear some teaching about what baptism means and what it means for your life. As you measure your own life up to this teaching, there should be some confession. This confession then leads to the death, life, growth, and community of baptism which all equals change.
Having looked at a basic pattern for baptism, let’s turn our attention to that first part of the pattern: teaching or preparation.
Preparation
How should one prepare to be baptized?
One of my favorite movies of all time is Nacho Libre. It’s this ridiculous Jack Black movie where Jack Black plays a Mexican monk named Nacho who wants to be a professional wrestler. He finds a homeless man named Esqueleto to be his wrestling partner, and one night before a match, he begins to worry about Esqueleto’s “salvation and stuff.” Esqueleto does not believe in God, he “only believes in science.” So Nacho sneaks up behind him with a bowl of water and dunks his head in it as Esqueleto screams out. Nacho concludes with “Praise the Lord!”
Obviously this is not the best preparation for being baptized, but it does help get at a point that I’m trying to make. Some preparation is very important for baptism. The question is, how much?
We have at least two different church membership manuals from the early church. I’ll talk about another one in a moment, but the one I want to focus on right now is called The Apostolic Tradition and it’s from the third century. That is the 200s AD. This is a very early church membership manual. It is before the Roman Emperor Constantine and the Edict of Milan in 313 which made Christianity legal and paved the way for Christianity to get mixed up in the state and the politics of power. “Apostolic” simply means of the Apostles, or of those who first followed Jesus. This membership manual would be like the three-ring binder you get when you take one of SCC’s membership classes.
When you read through The Apostolic Tradition you begin to see that the early church took preparation for baptism very very seriously. I think this was because as Christianity moved away from its geographic and spiritual roots in Israel and Judaism, the church began to see that there was a lot more foundation that needed to be laid in the life of new believers for them to fully comprehend and follow Jesus. So they developed a very rigorous three-year class for new Christians to take before becoming baptized.
This class began with teaching on morality and ethics. I find it interesting that they did not begin with beliefs, but rather with actions. We tend to think that beliefs come before actions, but they thought the other way around: beliefs follow actions. This included quite a bit of service. In that day the key people that they would serve were orphans, widows, and the sick. They also prayed regularly, but not with the whole church. Prayer with the whole church was reserved for after baptism. Finally after going through all of that, toward the end of the three years they got to the beliefs that Christians held. The last part of this class was exorcisms. That’s a little odd for us today, but perhaps we can consider it in this way: are there any addictions or severely bad habits that one needs to find freedom from before being baptized?
The last step of this preparation included an intense final preparation a couple of days before baptism. They would fast, receive more teaching, more exorcism, and finally they would memorize the Apostle’s Creed, a basic creed of belief:
I believe in God the Father almighty,
Maker of heaven and earth;
And in Jesus Christ his only Son our Lord,
who was conceived by the Holy Spirit,
born of the Virgin Mary,
suffered under Pontius Pilate,
was crucified, dead, and buried.
He descended to the dead;
the third day he rose again;
he ascended into heaven,
and sits at the right hand of God the Father almighty;
He will come to judge the living and the dead.
I believe in the Holy Spirit;
the holy catholic Church;
the communion of saints;
the forgiveness of sins;
the resurrection of the body,
and the life everlasting. Amen.
After all of that was the baptism. According The Apostolic Tradition baptisms were on Easter morning. Men and women were split into two groups in different rooms. This was because they stripped off everything they were wearing to symbolize their dying to sin. They renounced evil and were immersed three times. Why three times? One for the Father. One for the Son. One for the Holy Spirit. Not three Gods, but one God in three persons, the Trinity. They were anointed with oil, and then they put on a new white garment. This white robe was to symbolize two things. First, it was a symbol that they had been washed from their sins and made clean. Second, it was a symbol of simplicity and service because it was the first layer of Roman clothing, the only layer that the slaves and servants wore because they didn’t have the money to buy the extra stuff to put on top. Thus, by their clothes they said something about their lifestyle. Finally, after all that was done, they entered into the sanctuary where the rest of the church was gathered and they participated in communion for the first time, and they joined the church in praying for one another and the world.
Now if all that seems like a lot more than you would imagine preparing for being baptized, consider some of the other important things in life that you spent a lot of time preparing for. A wedding. How much work did you do during your engagement? Did you have premarital counseling? Did you have lots of long talks with your future spouse? Did you ask for various blessings from family members? Or how about a getting a diploma. For high school or college you’ve got four years of work. For a PhD you’ve got two to five or more years. Thus, when you stand with your spouse and say your vows or when you walk across that stage and receive your diploma, it means something much more to you than had you simply woken up one day and decided that you wanted to be married or get a diploma. The preparation was part of the experience. And how much more important is the death, life, growth, and community of baptism than something even as important as a wedding?
I’m not suggesting that everyone should spend three years preparing for being baptized, but there should be some preparation for it, some basic first step of teaching in the pattern that John shows us. And our culture is much like the early church’s Roman culture. We need a little more instruction than those who grew up Jewish and understood the basics.
We’ve looked at the pattern and we’ve looked at preparation. Let’s turn our attention to water.
Water
How much water should we use in baptism?
There is almost no instruction in the Bible about how to use water in baptism, but only that we should use it. This of course has left open a huge door for Christians over the centuries to spend a lot of time debating just exactly how much water to use and how exactly to use it. I’m not sure this was what John or Jesus intended when they taught and expected us to be baptized, but Jesus’ followers aren’t always the best followers. We all have room to grow.
While the Bible doesn’t have a lot of clear instruction about the water, we do have another even earlier church membership manual called the Didache [Did-uh-Kay]. I know. It sounds like a big word, doesn’t it? Well, it’s not. It’s just Greek for “teaching.” It’s from the first century. It is so early that many early church leaders considered it to be part of the Bible, but generally today we don’t consider it to be so. The Didache would be like a three-ring binder that you got when you took one of our membership classes here at SCC. In the Didache we find quite a bit of instruction about water that tells us something about how the very early church lived out the practice of baptism. Here’s the Didache’s teaching on water:
“Baptize…in living water. But if you have no living water, baptize into other water; and if you cannot do so in cold water, do so in warm. But if you have neither, pour out water three times upon the head” Didache (1st Century).
Some of this seems a little foreign to us, but if you think about it, it will make sense. How many of you want to be baptized in a desert in mucky stagnant hot water? OK, you get the picture. If at all possible, use water that is “living.” In other words, running water from a river, stream, or creek. It’s probably cleaner and clearer. And if it’s cold then there’s probably not a lot of junk growing in it. And if you can’t find cold running water around you in the desert…well, then use what you’ve got and pour it. Why three times? One for each person of the Trinity: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Not three gods, but one God in three persons.
There is a basic principle I gather from the Didache. Be generous with your water, but do what you’re able given your circumstances. In other words, after you’ve been baptized, it should look like something happened to you, because it did!
Some people ask, “I was sprinkled as a baby. Does that count?” Absolutely! You do what you can with what you’ve got. If you’ve got a big pond outside, like what we’ll do later this afternoon, then use a big pond. If you’ve got a baptismal font in a church that lets you sprinkle, then sprinkle. Be as generous with the water as you can be. In the end, the death, life, growth, and community of baptism is up to God, not how much water ends up on you.
I had a seminary professor who liked to tell this story. If you’ve been on a hiking trip in the desert with a friend, and you get lost, and you’re about to die, and your friend has a moment of conviction after you’ve told him about Jesus, and she wants to be baptized…then use the last drop of water in your water bottle and baptize her. If you don’t have a drop of water, then spit in your hands. If you can’t get enough saliva together in your mouth to spit in your hands, then pretend you do have lots of water and act like you’re using water. God will honor that baptism.
We’ve looked at the basic pattern of baptism, preparation for baptism, and we’ve looked at the water. Let’s consider for a moment the appropriate age for one to get baptized.
Age
What age should one get baptized?
Perhaps the question could be answered more easily if we put it this way: Are infants and children part of God’s family? Of course they are! So why wouldn’t we have them be baptized? Baptism is a sign of the new covenant and the new covenantal community between God and the church. It is like the sign of the old covenant, circumcision. Did circumcision involve infants? Absolutely! So should baptism. Let’s look at some of the biblical examples of baptism for infants and children.
There is no command to baptize infants, but we do see many households being baptized together. Peter, one of Jesus’ followers, preaches a sermon very early in the book of Acts where he says:
Each of you must turn from your sins and turn to God, and be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins. Then you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. This promise is to you and to your children, and even to the Gentiles — all who have been called by the Lord our God (Acts 2:38-39, NLT).
This promise is to you and to your children! Children are part of God’s promised community. Many people in the Bible take this very literally and seemingly have their entire household baptized. We see this with a woman named Lydia who Paul meets by the side of a river. We read that Lydia “was baptized along with other members of her household, and she asked us to be her guests” (Acts 16:15, NLT). Now it doesn’t explicitly say that her household included children, but we can infer from this that it probably did, and Lydia isn’t the only one who has her whole household baptized with her.
In baptism as in salvation there are two parts: God’s part and our part. The important part is God’s part. When we baptize infants we emphasize God’s part. There is absolutely nothing that an infant can do to earn God’s love. This is obvious to us. An infant has not worked to gain God’s promises. He or she is simply a recipient of those promises. When we baptize adults, we emphasize our part, but even then God’s part is present because the person does not baptize him or herself.
Some worry that an infant or child won’t be able to remember their baptism. This may or may not be true. I was baptized at the age of thirteen, but Sarah, my wife, was baptized as an infant. She no more remembers the day of her baptism than she remembers the day of her birth, but something unusual happened when we got married. Sarah’s family gave me her baptism candle. This was a candle that was given to them when she was baptized. As I opened it up and looked at it, it was burnt down so that it was only about two inches long. It had been about a foot long. Sarah told me that every year on the anniversary of her baptism, her parents would take out that candle and light it and remember her baptism. They would tell her stories about that day. Who was there. What happened. Who baptized her. What they said. And they would tell her why they had her baptized, and what they hoped for her in the future. If you ask Sarah now whether she remembers her baptism, she will say, “Of course I do.” She remembers her baptism in the same way that all of us remember our birthday every year. We don’t remember that day that it happened, but we still remember it.
We’ve looked at four questions so far: pattern, preparation, water, and age. Let’s turn to the last question: rebaptism.
Rebaptism
Can I be rebaptized if I was baptized as an infant?
The answer to this question is short and simple. No. Christians only baptize once. If the work of baptism is primarily God’s work, then what are we saying if we rebaptize? Aren’t we saying that God didn’t get it right the first time? And if you are desiring to be rebaptized, aren’t you actually saying that God did get it right the first time because look, “I want to follow Jesus!”
In Ephesians we read:
“We are all one body, we have the same Spirit, and we have all been called to the same glorious future. There is only one Lord, one faith, one baptism, and there is only one God and Father, who is over us all and in us all and living through us all” (Ephesians 4:4-6, NLT).
There is only one Lord, one faith, one baptism. If you were baptized as an infant, you were baptized truly. If you were baptized in another Christian church, then you were baptized truly. If you were baptized in another non-Christian church, well, then we’ve got some more work to do, but I don’t want to get into that today.
The early church wrestled with this question too. One of the early church leaders was Augustine in the fourth century. He found himself embroiled in a controversy about rebaptism. During the fourth century, the church experienced considerable persecution from the Roman authorities. Some church leaders gave into the persecution and handed over their Bibles and church property. Those who followed another church leader named Donatus thought that those who were baptized under these church leaders who caved during persecution needed to be rebaptized. This became known as the Donatist controversy. Augustine argued that they did not need to be rebaptized because the work in baptism is not based on the holiness of the one doing the baptism, but upon the name of the one in whom you are baptized: the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
The church has over the years understood that when an infant comes to a point in life where they are ready to make a profession of faith for themselves, that there is an appropriate time for that. This is sometimes called confirmation, or we sometimes call it in our church a re-affirmation of your baptism. You re-affirm or confirm for yourself what you were unable to do as an infant. This kind of re-affirmation or confirmation can happen over and over again. You can re-affirm your faith every single day. Do it while you shower every morning. As the water runs over your head and cleans you of all the previous day’s dirt and grime, remember your baptism and re-affirm it there between you and God. When we gather at the lake this afternoon, there will be a time for everyone to remember and re-affirm their baptism.
Thus, baptism is up to God, not us. The Christian church continues this today. If you were baptized in a Presbyterian church, a Baptist church, a Nazarene church, a Pentecostal church, or the Roman Catholic Church, you don’t need to be rebaptized in our church. There is one faith, one Lord, and one baptism.
Baptism is death, life, growth, and community and these are all God’s work.
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