Audio only:
Joe Heschmeyer examines the Biblical evidence for Baptism’s salvific power.
Transcription:
Joe:
Welcome back to Shameless Popery. I’m Joe Heschmeyer, and I want to try to convince you today of something, namely that baptism does something maybe more than you realize it does, and that this is very clear from scripture and it’s clear from the Old Testament. It’s clear from the New Testament, and as we’re going to see at the very end, it’s also clear from the universal witness of the earliest Christians. In answering this, I want to respond to a question I was asked recently over on Patreon. A guy actually wrote on behalf of his wife who asked the following, if baptism is a part of salvation, please explain the specific role that baptism plays in salvation. I believe that because my faith has saved me, I submit to baptism. This, by the way, is a very common view that we get baptized because we are saved.
Baptism doesn’t save us in any way, but then she explains to save that baptism saves me is saying I play a part in my own salvation. I believe Jesus did it wholly. He said it is finished. He said, if there’d be any other way, let this cup pass from me. So again, I think this is a pretty standard view and I think it makes a lot of sense. If you say, look, salvation is by faith alone, not by any works, and you say baptism looks like a work, then it doesn’t seem like baptism can have any role to play in the salvation process. But I want to throw two flags on the play. I want to just sound too warning signs or alarms, right? The first one is the word baptism and the noun form of baptism or in the verb form to baptize appears something like 98 times in the New Testament.
I may have missed some, I’m going off of concordances there. So it’s mentioned a lot and yet when people argue that baptism doesn’t do anything, almost invariably they point to texts that don’t mention baptism at all. Christ in the garden saying This cup can pass from me or Christ on the cross saying it is finished. And so if you’ve got something like 98 different verses explicitly about baptism and you want to understand baptism and you’re going to the verses that don’t mention baptism, that’s weird, right? I’m not saying that automatically disproves the theology, but that should be throwing off some warning signs like something’s going on here. Because if I want to understand a doctrine and scripture has dozens of references to that doctrine and I ignore those references and instead look to a different place on a different doctrine, that’s a very strange way to find out what scripture teaches about the doctrine ex say I’m trying to find out about right?
So it just shows something weird is going on in the objections to baptism because they’re not based on what scripture actually says about baptism, and there’s a reason as we’re going to see scripture is super clear that baptism actually does something. The second warning sign though is that the theology that says baptism can’t do anything, so right, it isn’t that people are saying baptism doesn’t do anything because here’s this Bible verse that says baptism doesn’t do anything. That Bible verse doesn’t exist. In fact, there are a bunch of Bible verses as we’re going to see that seemed to say the exact opposite of that, that baptism really does do something instead, the people who object to that will say, well, those verses, no matter how clear they seem to be, couldn’t be saying that because baptism can’t do anything. Baptism isn’t allowed to do anything for your salvation.
Why? Because according to this view, baptism is a work that we are actively doing for God. So that can’t have anything to do with it. On the other hand, faith is allowed. You could say faith saves you because in this view, by contrast, faith is something merely passive. So I’m going to call this kind of vision of theology, the theological blinders. What I mean by that is not that people are just presupposing, that simply plenty of people have carefully reasoned their way to those beliefs. My point is those are not beliefs about baptism. And if you want to understand what scripture actually says about baptism, you can’t be starting from your non baptismal theology and trying to fit the biblical teaching on baptism into your particular theology. If it turns out your theology is wrong, which is why it doesn’t have room for the Christian teaching on baptism.
So with that, let’s remove the theological blinders. I want to start with this line. This unnamed woman mentioned that to say that baptism saves me is saying that I play a part in my own salvation. I believe Jesus did it. Holy, he said it is finished. Let’s unpack that before we get into the what does baptism do because again, I can throw out a bunch of verses saying, here’s all this stuff that says baptism saves you, it does this, that and the other thing. And if these theological blinders are in place, you’ll say, well, that actually just means baptism is a sign of the fact you’re already saved or some other sort of reinterpretation. So let’s try to take the blinders off as much as we can. When Jesus says it is finished, what does he mean? For many evangelicals, it’s kind of taken for granted that what he’s saying is the work of salvation is done.
This is a legal debt that’s paid, and this act of our justification is complete. So all we have left to do is receive it by faith. Now, there’s two things you should know. Number one, that is not what the passage means, and we have pretty clear indications. That’s not what this means because in Romans four, St. Paul mentions that Christ was put to death for our trespasses and raised for our justification. So if your view of it is finished means that the justifying work of Christ on the cross is finished, then how do you make sense of the fact that there’s still something related to justification happening with Christ rising from the dead on Easter morning? That doesn’t sound finished, but the answer I think at a deeper level is the second thing I’d say, which is this ignores the context of what’s actually said.
When Jesus is on the cross, he doesn’t sign a contract saying it is finished. Look at the actual text in John chapter 19, Jesus knowing that all was now fulfilled. So notice something has now been fulfilled, said to fulfill the scripture, I thirst. Okay? So if you want to understand what’s happening in John 19 verses 28 to 30, the fact that Jesus has said I thirst is going to be really important, John has just flagged that He says this is to fulfill the scripture. And so they give Jesus a bowl full of vinegar that they then put on his sip, his is what they used during the Passover and sprinkling the blood on the door and then they hold it to his mouth and then we’re told when Jesus had received the vinegar, he said it is finished. So notice there the context is him drinking a cup with a lot of, excuse me, Passover sort of imagery.
So if you want a much deeper dive on this, I would suggest the fourth cup Scott Hahn has, which very simply, without going into any of the details of this at all in the Passover there were four cups. When you see the institution of the Eucharist, this is the cup of blessing. St. Paul calls it that in one Corinthians that’s the third of the four cups, which means there was still one more cup for the Passover liturgy. So it is finished is not a reference to a legal debt being paid The way a lawyer like John Calvin reads it, it is finished, is a reference to this Jewish liturgical action of the Passover, which is how the New Testament presents it. And so if you are taking it is finished as therefore baptism can’t do anything. You’ve taken one line out of its proper biblical context and read it in this wildly inaccurate sort of way. And I don’t say this by any means to insult the wife of someone paying me money on Patreon. I mean this to suggest that so many of us can fall into this trap and that this is a recurring theme that we find when people argue against baptism. So I’ll give you an example from God questions ministries because they’re not giving me money because I think they’re pretty representative of the kind of arguments that we see that baptism cannot do anything for salvation,
CLIP:
Requiring anything in addition to faith in Jesus Christ for salvation is a works-based salvation. To have anything to the gospel is to say that Jesus’ death on the cross was not sufficient to purchase our salvation. To say that baptism is necessary for salvation is to say we must add our good works and obedience to Christ’s death in order to make it sufficient for salvation. Jesus’s death alone paid for our sin, Jesus’s payment for our sins is appropriate to our accountant by faith alone. See Ephesians chapter two verses eight through nine.
Joe:
So remember the two warnings that I suggested earlier? First, you’ll notice that in making these arguments about what baptism cannot do, he looks to two passages, Romans five, eight and Ephesians two, eight to nine, neither of which even mentions baptism. But then the second warning sign that this is based on the idea and this I think becomes very clear in that video, this idea that this is a work. So if you believe baptism saves you, that is a workspace salvation because it’s assumed baptism is a work in the biblical sense, and by contrast, faith isn’t a work, it’s merely something passive. I want to suggest that is very clearly wrong from a biblical perspective. Let’s unpack both halves of that. First is baptism a work? The people who are opposed to baptism seem universally convinced that it is, it’s us doing something for God. That’s not at all how scripture speaks about it though.
For instance, in Galatians two, St. Paul says, we ourselves who are Jews by birth and not Gentile sinners yet who know that a man is not justified by works of the law but through faith in Jesus Christ. So let’s stop right there and say, what is a work? Well, according to St. Paul when he’s talking about works, he’s talking about works of the law, and you might say what law in Galatians three, he clarifies, he means the law of Moses. He describes it coming 430 years after the time of Abraham. This is why he’s talking about this in the context of Jews and Gentiles. His argument is not Gentiles are incapable of doing nice things. His argument is that the Gentiles didn’t know the mosaic law and the question that the early Christians were facing, and we see this explicitly in places like Acts 15, is what role does the Mosaic law have for Christians, for Jewish Christians, for Gentile Christians?
Paul answers that repeatedly throughout Romans, Galatians, Ephesians and so on. And so is baptism a work? Well, it’s certainly not a work of the mosaic law. There’s nothing in the mosaic law that says you need to get baptized. That’s just not there. So if you understand works in the way St. Paul does, no, it’s clearly not a work. But some people will argue, well, baptism is a good work and that’s also condemned somewhere in terms of being important for salvation. It’s not clear to me that passage actually exists, but occasionally people will find these references. Paul has to works where he doesn’t specify works of the law and say he must actually mean good works. I still think that’s taking him out of context. I still think he means works of the law, but fine, we’ll assume that. Is baptism even a good work? Well, it’s not clear that it is in any way.
It isn’t like in getting baptized you’ve helped an old lady cross the street or fed the hungry or taking care of the poor. Any of the things Jesus talks about as being selfishly important when he’s talking about the separation of the sheep and the goats, instead, the role of salvation with baptism is pretty different. In the biblical depiction in one Peter chapter three, St. Peter says, baptism saves you, but he clarifies that it saves you not as a removal of dirt from the body, but as an appeal to God for a clear conscience. If your argument is appealing to God for a clear conscience is a work that isn’t allowed in salvation, then you seemingly have to say faith isn’t allowed as playing a role in salvation. If I can’t appeal to God, if I can’t cry for help, that’s too active, that’s too much of a work, well then there’s no room for faith either.
And so understood in the biblical light, baptism is not a work of the law and it’s not even a good work. It is a cry for help. That’s one Peter three’s description of how salvation works with baptism. Now we’ll get into more of that passage later on, but right now I just want to flag that this idea that baptism is a work is flatly unbiblical. It is not coming from the Bible. What about the flip side, the idea that faith can have the role to play in salvation because it’s merely passive that it’s not a work? Well, here again, this is kind of being imposed on scripture, not drawn out of scripture because the Bible speaks in a very different way. For instance, James chapter two, after talking about how Abraham, our father was justified by works when he offered his son Isaac upon the altar, James writes, you see that faith was active along with his works and faith was completed by works.
So the biblical concept of faith is not just a passive reception, it’s something active that you are acting upon what you believe. So if faith which is active is able to play a role in salvation, you can’t also say activities. What we would normally call works are not allowed. If on the other hand you say, well no, I don’t mean the kind of faith that James means and active faith, I just mean belief. I don’t know why you would say that, but if you did, James has a rebuttal. He says, you believe that God is one you do well, even the demons belief and shudder. So if by faith you just mean belief, well then the devil would be in heaven. If that’s all it took to be saved, that would be enough, right? Because the devil has a better knowledge than you do that Jesus is Lord.
He’s gotten to know him up close and personal in a way that we have not yet. And as a result we can say faith in the biblical sense of a saving faith is more than simply belief. Now some people will say, oh, that’s just James St. Paul says something else. And I would say, no, I don’t think so. And I would point here to St. Paul’s epistle to the Romans. He opens the epistle to the Romans with a very long sentence that goes from Romans one verse one to Romans one verse seven, and in it he talks about how Jesus Christ our Lord, it is through his resurrection we’ve received grace and apostleship to what to bring about the obedience of faith for the sake of his name among all the nations. So the kind of faith that St. Paul is talking about throughout Romans is not simply ascending to theological propositions like the devil could do.
It is trusting in God and obeying which the devil doesn’t do. And that’s not just the first paragraph of Romans one, it’s also the last paragraph of Romans 16, the very last. So it’s the beginning and the end of the epistle to the Romans. St. Paul reiterates that it’s now disclosed and through the prophetic writings is made known to all nations according to the command of the eternal God, to bring about the obedience of faith. So faith in the biblical sense in both Paul and James’s usage is something obedient and something active. So go back to that second warning sign I had that this is based on the idea that baptism can’t do anything. It’s not allowed to do anything for salvation because it’s a work not biblically speaking, it’s an appeal for help and faith can do something for salvation because it’s merely passive.
Again, not biblically faith in the biblical sense is active and obedient. Now, we can apply all of this to baptism directly. Remember, my complaint after all is there’s a lot of talk about what baptism can and can’t do without looking at the passages, actually talking about baptism. So wouldn’t it be great if St. Paul in the midst of talking about faith and works also mentioned the role of baptism? And fortunately he does. In Galatians chapter three, he writes that the law was our custodian. Pedago, I believe is a Greek word there. It’s like a teaching slave, like a rich family would have a slave who was in charge of teaching their kids. And the idea was you had to obey as like a babysitter you had to obey until you grew up. So that’s what’s meant there by custodian. So the law was our custodian until Christ came that we might be justified by faith, but now that faith has come, we are no longer under a custodian for in Christ Jesus.
You’re all sons of God through faith. And if it stopped there, you might say, okay, I don’t see any room for baptism there, but it doesn’t stop there. The very next verse says, for as many as you as were baptized Christ have put on Christ. So how do we receive Christ Jesus through faith? Well, through baptism. That’s what Paul says. He doesn’t seem to think well if baptism then not faith. He views by faith through baptism. He’s showing you there that we’ve put on Christ, not simply through belief, but specifically as many of us as we’re baptized into Christ have put on Christ that baptism is actually doing something. And what it’s doing here is it’s us putting on Christ. Alright, so I would suggest that a good question to ask someone who has these theological blinders on is when were you saved? And I’ve heard different answers to this.
You can imagine any number of different answers. It could be a pivotal moment in your life. It could be when you got baptized. It could be when you prayed the sinner’s prayer. It could be any number of things. The one answer I’ve never heard in all my years asking this question, I’ve never heard anyone say, I got saved on Good Friday that the sufficiency of Christ’s death on the cross didn’t mean that I was saved in 33 ad there still had to be something in my life in which what happened that the work Christ has done had to be applied into my life in some way. That application doesn’t say, Jesus, your work wasn’t enough and it would be outrageous to accuse someone of saying that since Catholics, Protestants, evangelicals reformed, whoever you are, you’ve got to recognize that Christ’s work on good Friday needs to be applied in your life.
And that by the way, is the biblical way of speaking about it and the biblical way of speaking about being saved. To give just one example because again, this kind of a rabbit trail, I’m not going to go all the way down it. I’m going to peek that way. St. Paul writing to Timothy says, take heed to yourself and to your teaching. Hold to that for by so doing, you will save both yourself and your heroes. Now notice St. Paul seems totally content with the idea that you might have something to do related to your own salvation. I don’t know another way of reading the phrase, save yourself that doesn’t involve you having some kind of role somewhere in the process. But moreover, notice that in Paul’s conception, he’s running the Timothy who already is a Christian. Salvation isn’t just a one and done thing in the past.
Similarly, in Colossians one I said one verse, I meant two my bad. He says, I rejoice in my sufferings for your sake and in my flesh I complete what is lacking in Christ affliction for the sake of his body. That is the church. So I want to go back to the language, got questions used where it’s this very, I don’t think it’s intentionally emotionally manipulative, but it’s pretty emotionally manipulative language. If you think you have anything to do, you’re denying Christ’s sufficiency. All of those accusations could be brought against St. Paul, and I think that should tell us those are badly formed objections. So all of that is, I know a long kind of preamble to doing the deep dive on baptism, but I think we have to do that because if you start reading the biblical text on baptism by saying baptism can’t possibly do anything because of my views on justification and you refuse to challenge that, then you’re never going to understand what the Bible says about baptism because it doesn’t fit with a certain conception of justification.
It doesn’t fit with a certain conception of the role of works. I get that that is a misconception of works, a misconception of baptism, a misconception of faith and a misconception of justification. And unless you’re willing to put all those things on the table, you’re just not going to be able to understand the teaching. But if you are willing to challenge those theological blinders and to say at least for the sake of argument, well let’s start with just seeing what the Bible says about baptism and then worrying later about whether I can fit it into my preexisting theology, that would be a better place to start. So let’s do that if you’re open to it and start with actually the Old Testament with four promises that God makes. I want to look here particularly at the prophet Ezekiel and God’s promises through Ezekiel, he says, and by the way, at this point we don’t know whether this is or isn’t about baptism.
I’m not asking you to assume it’s about baptism. I’m asking you to consider four promises. He says in Ezekiel 36, I will sprinkle clean water upon you and you shall be clean from all your un cleanliness and from all your idols. I will cleanse you a new heart I will give you and a new spirit I’ll put within you and I’ll take out of your flesh, the heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh and I’ll put my spirit within you and cause you to walk in my statutes and be careful to observe my ordinances. You shall dwell in the land which I gave to your fathers, and you shall be my people and I will be your God. Now there’s a lot there, but I want to highlight four promises in particular. Number one, there’s a promise of cleansing of sin through water, right? I will sprinkle clean water upon you and you shall be clean from all your own cleanliness and from all your idols. I will cleanse you. So cleansing of sin through water. Number two, spiritual rebirth. You’re going to be born again, a new heart I will give you and a new spirit I’ll put within you.
Number three, the gift of the Holy Spirit. I will put my spirit within you and cause you to walk in my statutes and be careful to observe my ordinances. And the fourth promise is the entrance into the people of God. You will be of my people and I will be your God. So as I say, I don’t ask you to presuppose that that’s about baptism, but I hope you’re open to asking the following questions. Does baptism cleanse us from sin? Are we born again in baptism? Do we receive the Holy Spirit in baptism? And fourth is baptism our entrance into the people of God. What does the New Testament say in relation to these four promises that we see laid out in Ezekiel? Number one, does baptism cleanse us from sin? Here I want to turn to St. Paul himself because even though St. Paul is often marshaled against the idea that baptism does something that’s very clearly not his own understanding.
So Paul in Acts 22, gives an account of his own conversion and he talks about how he has a whole road to Damascus moment. He’s blinded and then Ananias comes and restores his sight and Ananias says, brother Saul receive your sight. And in that very hour he says, I receive my sight and saw him. And then he said, the God of our father has appointed you to know his will, to see the just one and to hear a voice from his mouth, for you’ll be a witness for him to all men of what you’ve seen and heard. And then Ananias says something pretty crucial. And now why do you wait? Rise and be baptized and wash away your sins calling on his name. So according to Ananias St. Paul quotes seemingly favorably and Ananias remember was called by God to this encounter, baptism does something.
It’s the washing away of our sins as we call on his name. Remember one Peter three that baptism is an appeal for a clean conscience, but it also sounds like it is washing away your sins. That’s right there in Acts 22, and it’s not a standalone kind of moment either. Hebrews 10 for instance says, let us draw near with a true heart in full assurance of faith with our hearts sprinkled clean from an evil conscience and our bodies washed with pure water. Now that sounds number one, like a reference to baptism. And number two, like it’s saying that this is actually some kind of spiritual cleansing. So do we find that baptism cleanses us from sin? Seemingly the answer to that is yes. I’m not suggesting by the way you couldn’t possibly read any of these verses any other way, but that it appears if we’re not going in there with a thumb on the scale saying it can’t mean that it looks like it means that.
Question two, are we born again in baptism? Lots of people call themselves born again Christians, but do they mean it in the same way Jesus does? Let’s look what Jesus means in John chapter three. He talks about being born again or born anew. The Greek means from above, so it could also mean from above, but if you think about reading something and then from above means again, so a new again above all of those are possible readings in the Greek, but it’s certainly a spiritual rebirth because we’ve already been physically born once, and Nicodemus even makes this kind of objection. How can a man be born when he’s old? I’ve already been born. How can I be born again? Jesus answers that in John three verse five. He says, truly, truly I say to you, unless one is born of water and the spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God.
So again, what does that sound like? I would suggest it sounds like baptism. You’ve got two ingredients, water and the spirit. If it’s just a conversion moment, you’ve got spirit. It’s not clear how you have water. And if you say, oh, the water is like a symbol of the spirit, why would you say water in the spirit if you just meant the spirit? So you’ve removed one of the ingredients we’re going to see. That’s kind of a theme in people who object to baptism doing something is it’ll remove ingredients they don’t like from Jesus’s teaching. That’s a problem exegetically. So water in the Spirit is a recurring theme from literally Genesis one where you see the spirit hovering over the waters all the way through the rest of the Bible and it seems to be pointing to baptism. We’re going to get numerous other examples along the way, but I would say to the second question, are we born again in baptism?
The apparent answer in John three on Jesus’s own lips is, yes. Question three then do we receive the Holy Spirit in baptism? Here again, I would suggest the answer is yes. Here again, I would start with St. Paul because Paul passing through Ephesus encountered some disciples and he asked him, this is in Acts 19, did you receive the Holy Spirit when you believed? They said, we’ve never even heard there’s a Holy Spirit. He then asked into what then were you baptized? They say into John’s baptism, meaning John the Baptist baptism. Now this is going to be a crucial moment because St. Paul is going to have the opportunity to explain the difference between Christian baptism and the symbolic baptism of John the Baptist. He says in Acts 19, beginning in verse four, John baptized with the baptism of repentance. So notice as a point of distinction, he’s saying that’s like a baptism of repentance. In other words, John’s baptism was a way for people to publicly show that they were leaving behind their old sins and that they wanted to change their life. It’s a public expression, it’s a symbol. And he seems to think that this symbolic baptism is different than Christian baptism.
The people Paul is speaking to decide to get baptized with Christian baptism, and we’re told in verse six when Paul had laid his hands upon them, the Holy Spirit came on them and they spoke with tongues and prophesied. Now that looks like we received the Holy Spirit in baptism and indeed that Paul is confused how someone could be baptized and not have received the Holy Spirit leading him to realize that they only had John’s non-monetary baptism. I can understand maybe someone reading that differently, but it certainly doesn’t look like John’s is a symbol of repentance and all we have is another symbol of repentance. No, something else is going on and it seems to involve the giving of the Holy Spirit. And that’s pretty clear I think in the text if that isn’t clear enough. You have St. Peter in Acts chapter two after preaching his famous sermon on Pentecost, the people listening cry out, brethren, what shall we do?
And Peter says, repent and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins and you shall receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. That’s Acts 2 37 to 38 that could not be more explicit that baptism is connected to causally, connected to apparently us receiving the Holy Spirit. So do we receive the Holy Spirit in baptism? Peter and Paul say yes, and that this is actually one of the things that separates it from the symbolic baptism of John. Fourth question, okay, do we enter the people of God through baptism? Is this the doorway to the church? If you want to put it that way? Let’s go back to St. Peter on Pentecost. Those who received his word were baptized and they were added that day about 3000 souls. That’s Acts two, verse 41 well added to what well added to the church.
That’s pretty clear from context. If it wasn’t clear enough, you have it spelled out pretty explicitly in verses 46 to 47 talking about the early church, how day by day attending the temple together and breaking bread in their homes, they partook of food with glad and generous hearts praising God and having favor with all the people and the Lord added to their number day by day those who are being saved. So the added to their number is used in Acts two, first in verse 41 and then in verse 47 and in verse 47 is pretty explicitly about being added to the church, and verse 41 is also pretty obviously about being added to the church. So is baptism the doorway to the church according to Acts? Yes, likewise St. Paul, let’s go back to him. He says, for in Christ Jesus, you’re all sons of God through faith for as many as you as were baptized into Christ, have put on Christ.
Remember that’s that passage we looked at before where he doesn’t think there’s a tension between saying this happens through faith and that it happens through baptism, but notice that our entry into Christ is through baptism according to Paul. So let’s go back to those four questions we started with. Does baptism cleanse us from sin? Yep. Are we born again in baptism? Yep. Do we receive the Holy Spirit in baptism? Yep. And is baptism or entrances under the people of God? Yeah. So it looks like the Ezekiel 36 promises are fulfilled in baptism pretty explicitly in the New Testament, but I want to go back to a line that I kind of glossed over. Remember when we were talking about Acts two in verse 47, the Lord added to their number day by day those who were being saved. That looks like it’s saying baptism isn’t just the doorway to the church, but it’s the doorway to salvation.
That baptism is the beginning of the process of being saved or that baptism saves you in some sense. And of course if the four promises that we saw through Ezekiel are true, that would certainly make sense and becoming the people of God and having God as our father and all of this, that sounds like what we mean by becoming saved. So we should ask, we’ll call it a bonus question, does baptism save you? And the obvious starting point is in first Peter chapter three, where we’re explicitly told yes in context. St. Peter is talking about God’s patience in the days of Noah during the building of the ark, in which a few that is eight persons were saved through water. And then he says, baptism, which corresponds to this now saves you. Now we already saw how does it save you? It’s an appeal to God for a clear conscience.
It’s not you just scrub really hard and you wash the sins away. It’s rather that in this posture of baptism, whether it’s you or a child, this is one of the reasons a child can be baptized. It’s not something you are doing for God, it’s something God is doing for you. And so anyone can receive that. It’s an appeal to God for a clear conscience. Notice Noah and his children were on the arc. You don’t have to have done all of the work of building the arc. Being on the arc is not what one would normally call a good work, but this is the motif that St. Peter uses to help us understand baptism. So let’s go back briefly to Genesis to see what that was all about. People have gotten really wicked. And so God says in Genesis six, verse 17 to 18, behold, I’ll bring a flood of waters upon the earth to destroy all flesh in which is the breath of life from under heaven.
Everything that is on the earth shall die, but I will establish my covenant with you and you shall come into the ark you your sons, your wife and your son’s wives with you. So two things there. Number one, it’s both salvation from death and two, it’s an entrance into the covenant people. So there’s a reason that a lot of churches are shaped like arcs because the entry into the arc was an entry into the covenant people of God and explicitly as St. Paul points out, this is an example of salvation through water. Notice that he uses that phrase. He says in this moment that we’re looking at Noah’s Ark a few that his eight persons were saved through water. Why does he specify they’re saved through water? Because his argument is baptism, which corresponds to this now saved you. So you’ll find people who say, oh, St Paul, excuse me, St.
Peter doesn’t think that the water does anything. And St. Peter’s like, yes I do. You’re saved through water. He’s really clear about that point. But a lot of people want to remove the idea that water baptism could do anything special or anything important. Okay? There’s another passage that’s also really important on the for baptism saving, you kind of question does baptism save you? But I want to describe this as kind of the two ingredients of breakfast or the two ingredients of salvation. I’ll explain what I mean. The passage in question is Mark 1616. Jesus says He who believes and is baptized will be saved, but he who does not believe will be condemned. Now I don’t think that’s grammatically very confusing, but a lot of people stumble over that and find any number of reasons that it couldn’t mean what it seems to me. So let’s just pause on the question of belief and baptism and talk instead about bacon and eggs because just started a new diet and bacon and egg sounds really good right now.
And so imagine if I just said he who has bacon and eggs will have a delicious breakfast, but he who does not have bacon will not have a delicious breakfast. Now clearly one of the things I’m talking about there is the deliciousness of bacon, but I think you would naturally read that and say, well, obviously Joe’s not telling us we should have bacon alone, but pretty explicitly saying we should have bacon and eggs. Those are the two ingredients of a delicious breakfast. And you’d be surprised I think if someone said, well, he actually meant you just need bacon. Now I mentioned this as you might imagine because a lot of people read Mark 1616 where Jesus says that you need to be baptized and believe and say that really just means you have to believe that the baptismal part isn’t necessary. So I want you to hear the argument and then we’ll kind of consider why that argument doesn’t make a lot of sense.
CLIP:
This passage is often misunderstood and misused to assert that water baptism is necessary for salvation. Notice the first portion of this verse includes both belief and baptism. While the latter portion of this passage omits baptism and only includes unbelief, this signifies that if a person is damned, they are damned because they did not believe, not because they were not baptized.
Joe:
So half of that analysis makes complete sense and half of it makes no sense at all. To me, the half that makes complete sense is yeah, if you don’t believe you won’t be saved. That is very clear from Mark 1616. Likewise in my breakfast analogy if I said he who does not have bacon, will not have a delicious breakfast and you don’t have bacon, you won’t have a delicious breakfast really clearly, but it would be bizarre to say therefore you can cut out the eggs because I said he who has bacon and eggs will have a delicious breakfast. I seem to be saying bacon and eggs are delicious combination. You should have both of them together. It’s going to be amazing. And so why would I mention the and eggs if I just thought you should have bacon by itself? Well, likewise. In Mark 1616, Jesus says He who believes and is baptized will be saved.
He then says is true. He who does not believe will be condemned. But even if that lying didn’t exist, we would already know that to be saved. Jesus has said you need two things, belief and baptism. The other part, he who does not believe will be condemned logically follows from the first. If it’s true that he who believes and is baptized will be saved, that those are the two ingredients of salvation, then missing one of them means that you are not saved. This strange thing about the interpretation we just heard is you could literally just scratch out and is baptized from Jesus’s words and it wouldn’t make a difference that he who believes and is baptized will be saved really just means he who believes will be saved. Well, that seems obviously wrong. Similarly, when I say he who has bacon and eggs love delicious breakfast, I clearly don’t mean he who has bacon alone.
Another part that this also gets wrong though that’s maybe a little subtler because it says he who believes and is baptized will be saved and will be saved in the Greek is in the future tense. Why does that matter? It’s saying two things, belief in baptism happen and the result is salvation. But the reinterpretation, many people have to say, baptism doesn’t do anything, gets this completely backwards. It doesn’t say he who believes in is baptized will be saved, but rather he who is saved will be baptized. But that’s not what Jesus said at all. So you’ll notice that it doesn’t just remove one of the ingredients for the plan of salvation laid out by our Lord. It also gets the order of things completely inverted rather than he who believes and is baptized will be saved. He who believes will be saved and then he’ll go get baptized.
That’s not biblical. That’s not what Jesus lays out. Okay? You might be protesting. I see where you’re getting all this from, Ezekiel from Acts from Jesus himself, but doesn’t that contradict Paul’s theology? And the answer is no. Hopefully you’ve seen that enough times, right? Like Ananias that we’re getting from St. Paul. But we can also see plenty of time where Paul talks about this important role of baptism in the role of salvation. Now, I’m going to do something a little bit out of order here. I want to look at Romans six at the beginning of chapter six. St. Paul says, what shall we say then? Are we the continue in sin that Grace May abound by no means how can have died to sin still live in it. Now the question should be how do we die to sin in Paul’s theology? And now I want to intentionally jump forward a few verses.
I’m going to skip over verse three and four because we’re going to get back to them and jump all the way down to verse five where St. Paul says, for if we have been united with him in a death like his, we shall certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his. So it seems really important self vally that we die with Christ so we can rise to resurrected life with Christ. So we should be asking according to the theology of St. Paul, how do we do that? Is that something we only achieve by faith alone in the Protestant conception of it? And the answer to that is not at all. Let’s now plug in verses three and four. Paul says, do you not know that all of us who’ve been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? We were buried therefore with him by baptism into death so that as Christ was raised from the dead, by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life.
So notice according to St. Paul, we enter the death and resurrection of Christ, how well through baptism pretty explicitly. And that’s how we begin to walk in newness of life. That sounds pretty regenerative. That sounds like something that’s happened. That is an actual change. We might even say ontologically. So that’s just Romans six, but it’s not alone. In Colossians chapter two, St. Paul reminds the Colossians in him also, you were circumcised with a circumcision made without hands by putting off the body of flesh in the circumcision of Christ. So what does the circumcision of Christ look like? He says, and you were buried with him in baptism in which you were also raised with him through faith in the working of God who raised him from the dead. So our entrance into the death and resurrection of Christ is through what? Well through baptism. Similarly, in Titus chapter three, he says that God saved us not because of deeds done by us in righteousness, right?
It’s not work salvation. But in virtue of his own mercy by the washing of regeneration and renewal in the Holy Spirit. Notice this because it is huge. He’s saying it’s not by works in the sense that Paul means it. It’s by baptism, the washing of rebirth or regeneration and in the Holy Spirit that if you just read this without the blinders, it becomes pretty clear. Okay? Yeah, that makes sense. That if Paul thinks that we enter the death and resurrection of Christ through baptism, as he repeatedly says, this would be the beginning of our life of salvation, that this does save us and this is how we enter into this divine life with Christ. And so that’s how he has saved us, not because of any deeds we’ve done, but through baptism. Okay, I want to pivot now from St. Paul’s theology going all the way back to the Old Testament.
I know I’ve talked about the Old Testament somewhat with Ezekiel and somewhat with Noah’s Ark as well. But I want to look at a few other passages that are really important beginning. This is actually going to be St. Paul’s the pivot point here, beginning with the partying of the Red Sea because one of the things Paul says in one Corinthians 10 is that he wants us to know that our fathers were all under the cloud and all passed through the sea and all were baptized into Moses in the cloud and in the sea. Okay, notice again, you got two ingredients. You got water and you’ve got cloud. Now, what is this about? Well, it’s clearly about baptism in some sense. He’s clearly understanding the parting of the Red Sea using the motif of baptism. What does he mean by this? Let’s look at what he’s talking about by going back to Exodus 13 and 14 and Exodus 13 we’re told that the Lord went before the Israelites by day in a pillar of cloud to lead them along the way and by night in a pillar of fire.
So the pillar of cloud is God. So when we say water in the spirit, it’s literally the Holy Spirit leading them in a visible way through the cloud. And then they get to the Red Sea, and you have the parting of the Red Sea in Exodus 14, verse 21, Moses stretched out his hand over the sea. The Lord drove the sea back. So you’ve got them passing led by the Spirit, led by God himself and God himself, not just in a generic way, but the cloud is identified with the Holy Spirit. So for instance, in the transfiguration, you have the voice of the Father. You have Jesus being transfigured, and then you have the cloud, which is the visible representation of the Holy Spirit. So you have here in the parting of the Red Sea water and Spirit, as the Israelites are beginning their new life.
Now, if you’re someone who thinks this is just a symbol, I would ask, was it just a symbol for the Israelites? And the answer is absolutely not. It was the difference between life and death. It was the difference between dying and living. And we’re told that pretty explicitly in Exodus 14, 24 to 25, I’ll quote it, and in the morning, watch the Lord in the pillar of fire and of the cloud looked down upon the host of the Egyptians and the host of the Egyptians clog in the church wheels. So they drove heavily and the Egyptians said, let us flee from before Israel for the Lord, fight for them against the Egyptians. Well, how did he fight for them? Well, through the parting of the Red Sea, this is what led to the salvation of the Israelites and the death of their enslavers. That’s not just a symbol that was actual life and death through water in the spirit.
And so then think about that again in light of Jesus’s words to Nicodemus about how unless you’re born of water in the spirit, you cannot under the kingdom of God, that’s starting to look very much like baptism because remember, St. Paul sees the cloud in the water and says, that’s baptism. So it’d be very strange to say, sure, all the other times of water in the spirit were about baptism. But when Jesus talks about the necessity of water in the spirit, that’s something else. Okay? One other example I want to use from the Old Testament is one that I don’t think is enough appreciation. Neiman the Syrian, he was a leper. Long story short, he’s wealthy, successful, powerful, all those things, but has leprosy and has no control over it. And so he goes to the prophet, Alicia, this is in two kings, chapter five, and he goes to Alicia’s house and Alicia does not even bother to come out to him.
He instead says, go and wash in the Jordan seven times and your flesh shall be restored and you shall be cleaned. Now notice this is going to be a theme of both cleansing, but also regeneration, rebirth that’ll become very clear as we get a little further on here. So Naiman is told to go wash, and he’s mad about this because he thought Alicia was going to come out and do some kind of magic over him and wave his hand over the place and cure the leprosy. And then he’s mad because he’s like, actually, the rivers of Damascus are better than the waters of Israel. So his objection is like, how could water possibly do this? Could I not wash in them and be clean, meaning the waters of Damascus? So he turned and went away in a rage. This sounds like a lot of the objections to baptism.
How could water baptism possibly do anything? Objection? And one of his servants points out, look, if the prophet had commanded you to do some great thing, you have done it how much? Rather than when he says, do you wash and be clean? I love that language, wash and be clean. So on the nose, it’s not very subtle, it’s just God being like, this is about cleansing through baptism. Guys wash and be clean, but fine. We can have the same objection. Naiman has, this seems too easy, and yet we’re called to obey the word. And so in two Kings, five verse 14, Neiman goes and he dips in seven times in the Jordan, as he was told, according to the word of the man of God, and his flesh was restored like the flesh of a little child, and he was clean. That language strikes me as significant because remember the question in the conversation between Jesus and Nicodemus about being born again.
The idea that your flesh is restored to a childlike innocence looks like a great image of rebirth. You have baby skin to show. This is a representation of what’s going to happen spiritually through baptism. Okay, a few final things. One of them being the great commission. I didn’t have a good pace to put this, but it seemed wrong not to at least mention that Jesus’s last words in the gospel of Matthew are telling us to go out and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son of the Holy Spirit. Why specify that unless baptism is doing something really important. But then the other lasting I wanted to mention is the early Christians, and I’m not doing a video on the early Christian views on baptism if you want, I have an entire book called The Early Church was the Catholic Church in which I look at that at a much greater level of depth.
But for now, I want to just give a super 20,000 foot view and say this in the book, understanding four views on baptism, the Protestant theologian, John Lin from I believe Disciples of Christ or Churches of Christ, talks about how as he says remarkably, the Apostle Paul includes baptism in the short list of the seven basic realities that unify all Christians, he’s referring to Ephesians four here. He says, there was a time when the shared experience of baptism helped Christians to maintain the unity of the spirit through the bond of peace. Again, referencing quoting there from Ephesians four, he then contrasts that with today where he says, Christians give different answers to the most basic questions about baptism. Christians disagree on, number one, the purpose of baptism, the why. Number two, the recipient of baptism, the who, adults versus kids. Number three, the mode of baptism, the how is it by immersion, sprinkling, does it matter?
Does pouring, okay, all those questions, right? And so the point that he’s making there is in the New Testament time, the early Christians seemed to get baptism, right? And we can’t seem to agree on what baptism is all about. I would say that’s a good sign. We should listen to the early Christians. Now, I know anytime I mention the early Christians, you’re going to have a certain number of people who say, oh, the early Christians, they’re not infallible. They’re not divinely inspired. We shouldn’t treat them as an errant. I get that argument, I guess. But it seems like a pretty dismissive way of treating the early Christians. One of the reasons I say that is as gasoline points out in Ephesians four, St. Paul says, there is one body and one spirit, just as you were called to the one hope that belongs to your call.
One Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of us all who is above all and through all and in all, and it’s true. He seems to take for granted that the Ephesians understand what baptism’s all about. They’re not divided. He’s not trying to settle all of the questions that modern Protestants and Catholics and Orthodox everybody else has in fighting about baptism. So I would say from this, we have at least a strong suggestion that the early Christians got baptism, right? They were unified on baptism. They’re not being corrected on. It seems to point to the fact that they got it right. So what of the early Christians believe about baptism? Well, another Protestant theologian, Everett Ferguson has done some fantastic work on this in his book, baptism in the Early Church History Theology and Liturgy. In the first five centuries, and I believe it’s page 8 72, I mentioned this only to say after really laying out a ton of research that I’m not going to get into at all, he summarizes, although in developing the doctrine of baptism, different authors had their particular favorite descriptions.
There’s a remarkable agreement on the benefits received in baptism, and he points out that we already find these in the New Testament texts that they’re not just making this stuff up, they’re looking to scripture. Two fundamental blessings are often repeated. The person baptized received forgiveness of sins and the gift of the Holy Spirit, and then he cites to Acts 2 38 there, which as we already saw seems to point to that. But then he says, the two fundamental doctrinal interpretations of baptism are number one, sharing in the death and resurrection of Christ. That’s very much Paul’s kind of emphasis. And number two, regeneration or rebirth from above. That’s John three. So what can we say? We can say, I think three things. Number one, numerous Old Testament texts seem to point to the idea that Christian baptism does something. We saw this with Ezekiel. We saw as prefigured with Noah’s Ark with name in the Syrian and so on.
Number two, numerous New Testament texts seem to point to the fact that Christian baptism does something, and I already laid that out. I’m not going to do that again. Number three, the early Christians who again, if St. Paul’s to be trusted, seem to have gotten baptism correct. Were universally convinced that baptism does something. I don’t think without theological blinders, you can look at that evidence on balance and say, yeah, I don’t think baptism does anything. It’s overwhelming that it does. And only if you have a skewed vision of justification that precludes you from going where the evidence goes, do I think you end up saying anything other than, yeah, everybody else was right about baptism. The early Christians, the New Testament authors, the Old Testament prophets, and then all these references to water in the spirit from page one of the Bible forward makes sense In light of this, the great commission makes sense.
In light of this, all of these things come together in a perfect and beautiful harmony. Two last things on a really housekeeping kind of side of things. Number one, I just figured out how to get rid of Midroll ads. I hate having ads interrupt videos when I’m watching. I actually have YouTube premium to avoid this. If you want to avoid it, I’m going to try to reduce ’em. I can’t get rid of them completely. I don’t know how to, I don’t think it’s possible. You can also get rid of them by going to Patreon. I have ad free versions through Vimeo there. Hey. But also if you’re someone who doesn’t feel like you can do Patreon and you still want to say thanks, I love that. And on some versions of this, it seems super dependent on your computer and location. I don’t understand YouTube at all.
There might be a little button that says, thanks. If you want to contribute to a particular video, don’t ever feel obliged to do that. But if that’s something you want to do, there is a button. You can do that. And I am always grateful for any generosity you have, but most especially the generosity of your prayers, your comments, your shares, your likes, all of the things that help bring more people into the orbit of this little community we’ve forming. So I hope this has been helpful for you. I hope this has been something edifying both this episode and just more broadly, and I look forward to talking to you again next week. For Shameless Popery, I’m Joe Heschmeyer. God bless you.