Word of Salvation – Vol.41 No.13 – April 1996

 

Baptism: The Blood And The Spirit

 

Sermon by Rev. W. Wiersma on Lord’s Day 26

 

Dear Congregation,

Christian Baptism is meant to strengthen our faith in Christ.  Baptism is designed to assure the believer that he or she has a part in Christ and in all the benefits which Christ gives to those who are joined to him by faith.  We saw that this is the church’s understanding of baptism as well as of the Lord’s Supper.  Lord’s Day 25 says that the sacraments were instituted by God so that by our use of them, He might make us understand more clearly the promise of the Gospel and might put His seal on that promise.

Now, the promise of the Gospel is that God gives those who believe in Jesus all the benefits of Christ and His saving work.  This is what salvation is really all about, about receiving Christ and all His benefits.

Now, baptism visually illustrates and reminds us what those benefits are.  Baptism, as the Scriptures teach us, symbolises or pictures for us a number of things.  The most obvious symbol is that of water washing us clean.  Baptism points us to the benefit of spiritual cleansing which is provided by the Lord Jesus to those who believe in Him.  We will come back to this aspect a little later.

Another symbol in baptism is found in the words of Jesus when He told his disciples to baptise people in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit.  Now, to baptise in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit not only means that the church baptises in obedience to the command of the triune God.  The church not only baptises on the authority given to it by the Father, Son and Holy Spirit.  The church also baptises into the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

This means that through baptism, the believer is symbolically brought into all and everything that God is and stands for.  The believer is brought into, has in fact already been brought into, the saving intent and activity of the triune God.  And baptism, in that sense, assures the believer that Father, Son and Holy Spirit love him and are doing their part to bring the believer safely to the destination God has in mind for him or her.

Another symbol is found in Romans 6, where the apostle Paul writes about dying and rising with Christ.  The idea is that as you enter the bath of baptism you leave the old life behind and come out a new person.  Was that not the significance of the journey of the Israelites through the Red Sea?  They went in as slaves, fleeing their Egyptian oppressors – they came out a free people who knew they were under the powerful care of their covenant God.  And God would make sure that they would reach the Promised Land.

Baptism therefore speaks of a new relationship, a new situation, a new birth, a change from death to life, a change from the bondage of sin to the freedom of the children of God.  That’s what being born again is about.  The new birth, the regeneration, symbolised by baptism is the new relationship we have to God.  A new relationship which God Himself brings about but in which we have an active part.

It is true that the church baptises in the name of God, and it is true that God does the saving, but it is also true that the believer has to submit to baptism.  He has to obey the instruction.  And it is in this way that the believer actively accepts the promises of God and receives Christ and all His benefits.  Remember that the sacraments are designed to strengthen believers in their faith.  That is, in their understanding and in their acceptance of the Gospel of Christ and all His benefits.

For a good understanding of these things, we have to make careful distinctions.  The Catechism helps us to do that by telling us that we are to trust in the work of the triune God for our actual spiritual cleansing.  Baptism is the symbol or rite by which we are assured of what God has done and will do for us.

Let’s have a closer look at Question and Answer 70 of the Catechism to see what that is.  Question and Answer 70 speak of being washed by the blood and Spirit of Christ.  It also speaks of God forgiving and of the Holy Spirit renewing.  That happens to someone who believes the promise of the Gospel.  In other words, there is first of all God and Christ.  There is particularly the Lord Jesus who brought His great sacrifice on the cross.  By that sacrifice Christ achieved something.  Jesus obtained, or won, something for the people He came to save.  The sacrifice of Jesus on the Cross made atonement for the sins of the people.  And now His blood can make the foulest clean.

This picture is taken from the old Testament where the blood of the sacrifices was not only sprinkled on the altar and on the ark of the covenant, but the blood was also sprinkled on the people.  By this God was saying, “You have part in the sacrifice.  The benefits of the atoning sacrifice are for you.”

So, when God applies the blood of Christ to the believer, the believer has a part in Christ’s sacrifice.  His sins are forgiven, they are no longer reckoned to him or held against him.  So instead of living under the threat of punishment and death because of his sins, the believer is forgiven and he lives under the assurance of God’s acceptance and love.

By His sacrifice our Saviour has also merited God’s Spirit for his people.  Believers are not only forgiven and accepted, they are also given the Holy Spirit – the Spirit of truth and power, the Spirit of holiness.  We need that Spirit to free us from the power of sin.  The power of sin that is still in us and the power of sin that surrounds us.

The Holy Spirit is given to the believers to help them to love Christ and to keep His commandments.  The Spirit is given to change them from people who please themselves to people who want to please God and who actually begin to do what is pleasing to God.  As Paul writes in his letter to the Philippians, “God (the Holy Spirit) is at work in them to will and to do what is pleasing to God.”

Now the Catechism says a remarkable thing – for the believer, it says “the Holy Spirit has renewed me.  “Should that not read that the “Holy Spirit will renew me”?  Well, actually the Catechism says both.  It says that the Holy Spirit has renewed the believer and set him apart to be a member of Christ.  Here the Catechism is referring to the fact that it is the Holy Spirit who makes a believer a believer.

Faith is a gift of God.  Faith is produced by the Holy Spirit.  So when the Holy Spirit gives a sinner faith and joins him to Christ by that faith, then that believer has been set apart – he is identified with Christ, he has been bought by the blood of Christ – he is no longer his own, he belongs to the Lord.  He has been rescued from the kingdom of darkness and been brought into the kingdom of light.

So a great renewal has taken place.  There is a fundamental change between a believer and a non-believer, between a person in Christ and a person without Christ.  The believer knows that his existence depends on Christ.  The unbeliever believes in someone else.  But then the believer needs further change.  He has to become more and more dead to sin.  He has to live an increasingly holy and blameless life.  There is to be a process of sanctification.  A process in which his thinking and behaviour becomes more and more like that of Christ.

For this the believer is absolutely dependent on the Holy Spirit.  Only in the power of the Spirit can we love Christ and do His will.  Only the Spirit is able to make us produce the fruit of the Spirit.  Yes God has to do it all.  And He will do it for all who believe in Jesus.

That is the message of baptism.  Baptism is a symbol of the blood and Spirit of Jesus Christ.  It is a symbol of the blood sprinkled on the people of God, telling them that they have a part in the atoning sacrifice of Jesus.  They belong to the people cleansed and reconciled to God by the blood of the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world.  They have a part in the prayers of the High Priest who has brought the blood of the sacrifice into the Holy of Holies and has sprinkled it onto the Ark of the Covenant.

Those who are baptised are identified with Christ and His people whom He has bought with His precious blood and whom He will preserve and defend with all the power at His disposal.  So baptism points us to Christ and to all the benefits of His saving work for His people.  Baptism is also a symbol of the Holy Spirit who is the gift of the Saviour Jesus Christ to His people.

The Holy Spirit is first of all the gift of God to Jesus.  The Holy Spirit is the reward to Jesus our Mediator for His perfect obedience to God.  And Jesus passes on this amazing gift to His people.  In other words, the Holy Spirit is Christ’s prize which He received from God and which passes on to His people.  And it is by His Spirit that Jesus renews us.  Through the Spirit of Truth, Jesus makes us to know and understand His teaching about Himself and His saving work.  It is by His Spirit that Jesus convinces us of His own identity and of His love for sinners and of the sufficiency of His atoning work.

Jesus renews our mind by His Spirit.  Jesus gives us a new knowledge; a knowledge of things about which we were totally in the dark before.  And by the Holy Spirit, Jesus also renews our will.  He shows us God’s love and enables us to respond in love to God.  “Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us and gave His Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins.”

Thus the Holy Spirit prepares our hearts to produce the fruit of the Spirit.  And the fruit of the Spirit is the practice of those things that express love to God and love to our fellow believers.  And the Spirit of Jesus not only gives us love for our fellow believers but also for all our fellow human beings.  Through the activity and strength of the Holy Spirit we become people of compassion, because we know that we ourselves only live by the compassion of God for us.

Baptism, of course, also has another side altogether.  It not only speaks of what the triune God is doing for those whom He has chosen in Christ.  Baptism also speaks of our need of this saving, this cleansing and renewing work of God.  Baptism is from our side a confession of sin.  It is a confession of our deadness in sin.  That, too, is a work of God.  I mean, our awareness of our sin and our confession of it and our repentance from sin.

One of the activities of the Holy Spirit is to make us hear and understand the Word of God in such a way that we are convicted of sin.  Through the Word we are convicted of our utter inability to save ourselves.  Baptism is a confession, an admission, on our part that we are filthy with sin, that we need to be washed, that we need to be renewed in mind and heart.  Baptism is the confession that we need to be born again.  We can hope for nothing from ourselves.  All our help comes from God and from His Christ.

That makes the positive side of baptism all the more glorious, doesn’t it?  What a glorious relief it is that we may look to God and to His appointed Saviour for the forgiveness of our sins and the renewal of our heart and life.  Baptism is the assurance that God will do it, for everyone who expects it all from God alone.  To all who confess their lostness in sin and look up to Jesus for salvation and life, God applies the great remedy for sin and death.  God gives them Christ and all His benefits.

Amen.