Baptism into Christ

HEAD with Christ, and risen with Christ! How perfectly has the Spirit enshrined this twofold doctrine for us in the initial ordinance of the gospel! Baptism is at once the rite in which the believer gives token of his union with Jesus in his death and resurrection, and in which he receives in germ all those deep kindred truths which are to unfold with his daily growth in faith and knowledge; the sacrament which the Church holds as a perpetual trust from her ascended Lord, and which holds for the Church in perpetual preservation this doctrine in which her life is bound up.

If we have assented then to what has been said in the foregoing chapters, and if we have “obeyed from the heart that form of doctrine” to which we are thus committed, we

1 Note H.

70 liv CHRIST.

shall have now no hesitating answer for the question of the Apostle, “Know ye not that so many of us as were baptized into Jesus Christ, were baptized into his death? “Nor having assented to this shall we be uncertain as to his conclusion,” Therefore we zvere buried’^ with Him by baptism into death, that like as Christ was raised up from the dead by the glory of the Father even so we also should walk 17i newness of life!’

And so we look back to that solemn moment when, in the name of the Trinity, we were immersed beneath the water, and then raised again from the parted wave, and we see in the act the divine credential which our Lord gave to our consenting faith of our union with Him in his dying and rising; or in the expressive phrase of Chrysostom, “the sign and pledge of our descent with Him into the state of the dead, and of our return thence.”

How far we must ever keep from ascribing any saving efficacy to the water, or to the ritual act of baptism, will appear when we consider how wonderfully framed the ordinance is for disclaiming all merit for the be-

1 Note I. ‘^ Rom. vi. 3, 4.

IN CHRIST, yi

liever’s obedience, in the very act of helping him to render that obedience. For not only is here a sign which is empty and worthless, without the accompanying faith, but one which shows how empty that faith is without its object, Christ crucified and risen. Repentance, belief, obedience, what are these apart from the Redeemer, and except as methods of appropriating his redemption y God reads them, and will have us express them in the terms of the Saviour’s atonement. And therefore side by side with the requirement of faith He has placed that of baptism, giving us thus the synonym of death and resurrection as the language in which we must utter our confession of faith, that we may never forget how we were redeemed.

Thus baptism is the divinely appointed method of translating our obedience and faith into the phraseology of our Lord’s death and resurrection. By it the disciple says to God, not, “I have believed and obeyed the gospel, therefore accept me; “but rather,” It is Christ that died, yea rather that is risen agaiiil’ and I hereby declare my conformity to his death, and my fellowship with his res- urrection.

Noting more minutely the features of this apostolic ordinance, we shall see how it answers in every particular to the doctrine unfolded in previous chapters.

Here is first the burial, which confirms and seals our crucifixion in Christ. The Spirit declares “The body is dead because of sin,’’ and the water opens now its mystic tomb to ratify that verdict. And how, as for a moment the prostrate form of the disciple disappears beneath the wave, is the whole solemn story of our death in Christ silently rehearsed! Here is no sparing or reprieving of our guilty nature. The inexorable purpose for which “our old man was crucified with Hi7n” is proclaimed without equivocation, “that the body of sin might be destroyed!’ Judaism, that trial of man in the flesh, that system for his cleansing in his carnal state, had as its ordinance, circumcision, the typical rite of the purification of the flesh. But Christianity, starting upon the axioms that “The carnal mind is enmity against God,” and that “They that are in the flesh cannot please God,” 2 has a far different ordinance, even

Kom. viii. lo. ‘“^ Rom. viii. r, S. baptism, the typical rite of the burial of the fleshy in order to a better resurrection. Circumcision is “the putting away of the filth of the flesh;” baptism is “the putting off of the body of the sins of the flesh.” Therefore by this confession do we not only, as Edward Irving expresses it, “sign the death-warrant of our natural man which has been issued from the court of heaven,” but we sign it literally with the “sign of the cross;” the similitude of our Lord’s death being the appointed and permanent vehicle of this confession, that so we may be constantly reminded not only that we must die to sin in order to live to God, but except we die with Him we cannot live with Him.

And can those who realize the greatness of those two dangers which are always threatening the Church, namely, a bloodless moralism on the one hand, and a spiritless ceremonialism on the other, be too grateful for the form of this ordinance which the Spirit has thus fixed y Substitute, as has been done, the sprinkling or pouring of water upon the person, for burial in the water; thus let the cleansing only of the soul be signified

1 I Pet. iii. 21. 2 Col. ii. ii.

in the rite, with no symbolic designation of the method of that cleansing, death in Christ. It is easy for the moralist now to use the ordinance without ever having his mind turned to the sacrifice of Calvary. Aye, desiring not to see that sacrifice which means death to the carnal man, he comes readily to view the rite as a kind of Christian circumcision, marking the sanctifying of human nature, and bringing that into covenant with God. And so, “as many as desire to make a fair show in the flesh” will readily be constrained to adopt it, when both their heart and their flesh would cry out against that baptism into Christ’s death which marks the crucifying and putting off” of the old man. And on the other hand how easily the idea of mystical efficacy becomes attached to the element of water, unless the form of its use be such as to carry the thought immediately and certainly to Christ crucified and dead How vitally important then that “form of doctrine “prescribed by the Scriptures, namely, the sacramental burial, which, while it so distinctly signifies our union with Him” who came by water,” as distinctly adds the saving clause,” not by water only, but by u-ater and bloody

As we have intimated already, such a seal of doom to the natural man will not be likely to find much favor in this world. Why should it? It is the cross translated into symbol, and the cross gets little human approbation. The old offense and ignominy lurk even in its shadow. Doubtless many a true believer has turned back to circumcision from finding how much deeper the gospel cuts than the law; and doubtless many another, who has gone down with Christ into the mystic grave, would have started back affrighted had he realized all that he was showing forth.

But sorrow can have no place at this tomb if we stop to consider how much is put off in this putting off of our old man; how the sin that roots itself in that nature, the curse that clings to that nature, and the condemnation that rests upon that nature, are all swallowed up in the sepulchre of Jesus Christ. The cross condemns and brings death indeed, but just beyond is the tomb where the condemnation is buried, and the death is swallowed up in victory. “So I saw in my dream,” says Bunyan, “that just as Christian came up with the cross, his burden loosed from off his shoulders and fell from off his back, and began to tumble, and so continued to do //// it came to the month of the sepulchre, when it fell in, and I saw it no morel’ And does not this word, “I saw it no more,” answer the deepest note in the longing and groaning of our sin-burdened humanity? That Christian cry, “Who shall deliver me from the body of this death?” and that heathen cry embodied in the fable of Lethe, whose waters of forgetfulness the dead are ever thirsting to drink that they may enter into rest, are strangely akin in this, — that it is the pain of an aching conscience, the sighing for ease from the sting of sin, that is told alike in each. And where have these cries been answered but in those sacramental waters, which in a figure are at once the grave where the body of sin is buried, and the river of forgetfulness where bygone guilt is overwhelmed and its memory swallowed up? And when was ever God’s ancient promise, “Their sins and their iniquities I will remember no more,” written in so large letters as here? Not surely in that law that “stood in divers washings;” for in that there was “a remembrance again made of sins every year.” Not in that pseudo-gos-

1 Heb. ix. ic. 2 Heb. x. 3.

pel which places our hope in some cleansing or betterment of human nature; for in that, hope dies, and bitter memories awake with every fresh reviving of the evil principle. But here is found an ordinance that says to the believer “no condemnation,” and “no more conscience of sins.”

Say not then with a Romish Father,^ that “The true penitent never forgives himself Say rather that he is one who has learned to see in the grave of his Lord the burial of all his sins, with their burning remembrances, their bitter accusations, and their stinging reproaches, and so, entering into God’s thought concerning him, has learned to forgive himself in God’s forgiveness of him. “Blessed is he whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered” “Blessed is the man to whom the Lord imputeth not iniquity.”

And if there is a signing of the death-warrant of the natural man in this rite, there is just as clearly the making over of a quit-claim upon him by a satisfied law. For when did the law ever pursue a culprit into his grave y To have died with Christ is to have died to the law.^ No avenger of blood can

J. H. Newman Rom. vii. 4 pursue his victim within the guarded precincts of this city of refuge, the sepulchre of Jesus. And to the fact of the believer’s having entered here, the water is a perpetual witness. “I buried him with Christ,” it says. “I rolled my wave like a stone against the door of his sepulchre. I set the seal of the new covenant inscribed with the triune name upon his tomb.” And so every taunt of a suspicious conscience, and every rising terror of a broken commandment, is silenced.

If now it seems to any believer that he can afford to lose the letter of this commandment because forsooth “the letter killeth,” it may appear upon deeper reflection that this is just the reason why he needs it. Confidence in the flesh, and bondage to the law, are enemies that we may rejoice to have killed; and if the letter of baptism can show them to our faith as cut ofl” and utterly destroyed in the grave of Christ, it has done a blessed work for us. Oh, would that all seekers after peace might discover this — that there can be no entrance into “the power of Christ’s resurrection,” except through conformity to his death. Would that the tomb of Jesus might be seen to be as it is, the only shelter from the law, the only stronghold from the persecutions of conscience. Then, the preciousness of the doctrine being discovered, the preciousness of the symbol would be felt. And how would they who have learned to say “I am crucified with Christ,” also

“Joy to undergo
This shadow of his cross sublime,
This remnant of his woe.”

But the buried form is raised up again from the water in the likeness of Christ’s resurrection. It should remain submerged, if Christ be not risen. As it is, the momentary disappearance from sight, and the brief suspension of the breath, vividly suggests that fearful doom which were ours in such a case. But no sooner is the “buried with Him in baptism “spoken, than the” Now is Christ risen from the dead” is answered and echoed back by the joyful announcement,” wherein also ye are risen with Him through the faith of the operation of God which hath raised Him from the dead! ‘^ Blessed is he who, now looking into the grave where he was buried with Christ, sees what God sees, what the angels see, the winding sheet of Adam’s

A Col. ii. 12. curse put off from him and folded up forever, and the linen clothes of a legal righteousness laid by themselves. And thrice blessed is he who hears concerning himself the glad announcement, “He is not here, but is risen,” and so is enabled to go forth in the joy of the resurrection, to “walk in newness of life.” And this is what the Spirit by the water as well as by the word would certify to us, — our standing in union with our risen Head beyond the executed sentence of an injured law, our complete security in Him, and our right and duty to rejoice evermore in this grace.

The value of the ordinances is in their power of bringing truth within the apprehension of all our senses, physical and spiritual. Thus do they not only intensify our experience of doctrine, but they serve to put it beyond further question, as that “which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which our hands have handled of the Word of Life.”i

How vividly in the momentary chill and darkness of the grave of baptism do we taste his death who suffered for us all! And in the exultant uprising, the quick recovery of the bated breath that follows, how fully do we seem to enter into the joyful experience of his quickening! So closely does the symbol thus press upon the reality, that Paul in that bold “Know ye not,” seems to appeal to the believer’s baptism as the experience of his Lord’s death and resurrection, and as making it thus a subject of memory as well as of faith.

So by this memorial let the Christian know and remember that he has been .quickened with Christ; that henceforth his place is on resurrection ground, and he can fix it nowhere else without dishonoring his Lord. If, forgetting that his life is hid in the risen Christ, he is tempted to find it in Adam, let him hear all the floods of baptism lifting up their voice in rebuke, saying, “Why seek ye the living among the dead? “” Are ye so foolish, having begun in the Spirit, are ye now made perfect in the flesh y “^ If, unmindful of his accomplished justification by faith, he yet lingers under the law, let him hear the bridal vow, which in baptism sealed him to the Lord Jesus, condemning him,” Ye are become dead to the law by the body of Christ, that ye

1 Rom. vi. 3. 2 Gal. iii. 2.

should be rnarried to another even to Htm who is raised from the dead, that ye should bring forth fruit unto God.” Every return to the law now as a ground of justification, is treachery and infidelity to the Bridegroom of the Church; and any righteousness or trust brought forth from it, is only the fruit of a criminal and forbidden relationship.

But above all must this memory serve as a most tender and pathetic plea for a holy walk. Sin now takes on added guilt, that of criminal inconstancy. Its stain is of a darker hue, falling on that resurrection mantle. Its offense is a “crucifying of the Son of God afresh and putting Him to an open shame.” And so no possible dissuasion from sin can be so strong as this. “Neither yield ye your members as instruments of unrighteousness unto sin; but yield yourselves unto God as those that are alive from the dead, and your members as instruments of righteousness unto God.” 1

If baptism is for our “assurance of faith,” as the sign that we are risen with Christ spiritually, it is equally for our “assurance of hope,” as the prophecy that we shall rise

1 Rom. vi. 13.

bodily at the last day.^ Has not a strange apathy crept over the Church respecting this her most glorious hope? From Christ, who spoke that first word of comfort to the bereaved, “Thy brother shall rise again,” to the Apostle who consoled the Thessalonian Christians with that confident” If we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so them also

1 This truth is drawn out with great justness and force in the following words of Dean Goulburn: “There can be no doubt that baptism, when administered in the primitive and most correct form, is a divinely constituted emblem of bod* ily resurrection. And it is to be regretted that the form of administration unavoidably (if it be unavoidably) adopted in cold climates should utterly obscure the emblematic significance of the rite, and render unintelligible to all but the educated, the Apostle’s association of burial and resurrection with the ordinance. Were immersion, which is the rule of our Church in cases where it may be had without hazard to the health, universally practiced, this association of two at present heterogeneous ideas would become intelligible to the humblest. The water, closing over the entire person, would then preach of the grave which yawns for every child of Adam, and which one day will engulf us all in its drear abyss. But that abyss will be the womb and seed plot of a new life. Animation having been for one instant suspended beneath the water, a type this of the interruption of man’s energies by death, the body is lifted up again into the air by way of expressing emblematically the new birth of resurrection.” — Bampton Lectures 1850. Oxford edition, p. 18.

which sleep in Jesus will God bring with Him,” this was the one blessed assurance with which primitive Christianity sought to dissipate the gloom of death. We dwell so much on the present joy of our dead who have gone to Christ, that we forget the joy that yet remains when God shall bring them with Him. But it is then only that death will be robbed of its sting and the grave of its victory. It is the resurrection that gives us back our beloved, looking and speaking as they were wont; that gives us back our bodies parted from us awhile, but endeared to us by the very sorrows we have borne in them; and that restores us wholly to the lost image of God, in which we were created, by making us to awake in the likeness of Christ, new created. Hence the eagerness of that waiting for the redemption of the body in which the whole creation shares.

As our whole nature, body, soul, and spirit, died in Adam, so must our whole nature, body, soul, and spirit, be made alive in Christ before our blessedness can be complete. And if we are in the Lord, our physical restitution is assured to us with equal certainty

* I Thess. iv. 14.

with our spiritual. For not only is it true that “he that is joined to the Lord is one spiritl’ but equally that we are members of his body, of his flesh, and of his bones.” But as the Head is, so must be the members. And they who, once unclothed by sin, have now put on Christ by baptism, have thereby, according to St. Bernard’s fine saying, “had two garments bestowed upon them: the one, the nghteoiLS7iess of Christ, with which they are already clothed in the joy and peace of redeemed souls; and the other, the immortality of Christ, with which they are yet to be clad in the glory and incorruptibility of redeemed bodies.”

That the hope of such a consummation may not die out of the Church — as, alas! what, hope may not when her heart has turned away from her Lord, and her eyes from watching for his appearing — the Spirit has not only reiterated it in scores of texts, but enshrined it in this rite as in “a statuary of truth which may endure though the picturing and writing of it should be effaced.”

And let it be noted that of all the types that have been employed to bring this hope vividly to the Christian mind, not one excepting baptism is adequate to the reality. Of a general resurrection which the Scriptures foretell, we see tokens and simiUtudes all about us in nature, — in the flower, springing up from the seed which has fallen into the earth and died; in the morning, opening the vast grave of night, and summoning a sleeping world to rise and meet the sun “as he Cometh forth as a bridegroom from his chamber; “in the springtide, calling the earth from the tomb of winter, loosing her shroud of snow, and clothing her with renewed life and beauty; in all these there are joyful parables and pledges of a resurrection. But the flower fades and dies, the morning sinks again into the embrace of night, and the earth lies down once more in the sepulchre of winter; and so, alas! these symbols only mock the hope they have kindled in the soul. But while we are asking sorrowfully,” Is there no resurrection that is exempt from death y “we turn to this ordinance of Christianity.” Risen with Christ,” it says; and then adding,” knowing that Christ being raised from the dead dieth no more death hath no more dominion over him,’’ bids ua

Rom. vi. 9.

likewise reckon ourselves to be alive with Him in the same resurrection. Thus this symbol of the gospel carries a promise and a benediction which are committed to no symbol of nature.” Blessed and holy is he that hath part in the first resurrection; on such the second death Jiath no power!’

To such salutary uses, and for the declaration of such blessed hopes, was the ordinance of baptism appointed. It holds conspicuously before our minds the truths that are most vital to our assurance and comfort in the Lord Jesus Christ. To each believer, on his profession of faith, and to the whole church beholding, it presents a sensible image of the dying of the Lord Jesus and his rising again, and thus seeks to form the Christian heart and life according to the pattern received from God.

Were it only a form of ecclesiastical registration, it might perhaps be counted among the non-essentials of Christianity. But as the divine emblem through which faith appre- y hends our union with the dead and risen Redeemer, and by which the Spirit solemnly reminds us of our engagement to die daily to

1 Rev. XX. 6.

sin in the mortifying of all unholy passions and desires, and to walk in newness of life by abiding in Christ, how shall we not most tenderly urge it upon all who love our blessed Lord? Rather, how shall we not ourselves most earnestly seek to preserve its integrity and illustrate its beauty by reflecting it in a consecrated and self-denying life? For we cannot forget that it is an unsanctified life that constitutes the worst perversion of this rite. The type may be perfect; but if the impress with which it was meant to stamp a life is blurred with inconsistencies and distorted by habitual sin, its perfection will not appear. For the seal is judged by its signature.

“Grant, O Lord, that as we are baptized into the death of thy blessed Son our Saviour Jesus Christ, so by continual mortifying of our corrupt affections, we may be buried with Him; and that through the grave and gate of death we may pass to our joyful resurrection, for his merits who died and was buried and rose again for us, thy Son Jesus Christ our Lord, Amen.”