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September 18, 2005
Baptism and Personal Salvation
“I believe in one baptism for the remission of sins.”
Genesis 6: 13-22 / I Peter 3: 18-22
September 18th, 2005
It is not an overstatement to say these are times that try the soul. The vocabulary of distress increases. 911. Tsunami. AIDS. Katrina. Iraq. There are many people today who are asking, in effect, “What can I do to be saved?” Though not all mean the same thing. “What can deliver me from this world that is going mad?” some mean to say.
There is a story in the New Testament about a man whose life bottomed out. It made him ask this question. He was apparently a career military officer who late in his career was given a cushy assignment as a city-prison warden in a Roman city in Macedonia. Compared with guarding the frontiers, being a prison warden was easy. He could live in town with his family. Essentially all he had to do was to watch the gate to make sure prisoners stayed in. Rarely did anything disturb the routine of a Roman jail.
Then one night everything went wrong through no fault of the jailor. An earthquake hit the city. It shook the prison to the foundations. It opened the doors and broke the moorings of the shackles that held prisoners in the cells and in the inner dungeon. Any prisoner who wanted could simply walk out of the building. Any jailor who had a prisoner escape faced serious consequences—the death penalty—no matter what. This jailor drew his sword to take his own life.
But he was interrupted by the voice of one of his prisoners who must have been watching him. “Don’t hurt yourself. We are all here.” The jailor called for lights. A lantern in hand, he went and checked, and found everyone there, even though their leg irons were no longer anchored in the wall.
As Dietrich Bonhoeffer soothed the cares of prison guards and fellow-prisoners in the Flossburg Prison in Germany in World War II, Paul and Silas spread calm throughout this miserable Roman jail that night. “Why did not the other prisoners escape?” he must have wondered. Was it because of the effect of these two remarkable men who sang during the night, not flaunting their tormentors but because their hearts were filled with song?
Now freed from their dungeon, rather than escaping, they responded to their jailor’s predicament in a way he would not have expected. They stood in the doorway of the prison office, looking at their tormentor now tormented. “Don’t harm yourself. We are all here.” Why should they be concerned for him? But they were concerned for him.
Their concern led to his asking the question that has echoed throughout history, “What must I do to be saved?” What did he mean? He had not listened to an evangelistic sermon. He didn’t know the term we know so well, “saved.”
He may have meant, “All is lost if one prisoner escapes. How can I get keep them from escaping?” But the answer he got addressed a far deeper need than making sure no prisoner escaped. “Believe in the Lord Jesus Christ and you will be saved.” Paul and Silas told him how to find peace with God, peace inside his own heart-- peace, that rare commodity that eludes so many of us.
He found his heart strangely warmed.
How could this man have known what Paul meant? All he knew was that this man Paul, and his companion Silas came into his prison with their backs beaten to a bloody pulp and spent the night singing. He could hear them from the dank dungeon where he’d shackled them. Their singing soothed the tension in the cells and in the dungeon where prisoners would usually moan and curse in their wretchedness. So when Paul said, “Believe in Jesus,” it clicked somehow in his heart.
He took Paul and Silas to his home and bathed their wounds. Luke, who wrote the Book of Acts, tells us that Paul and Silas spoke the word of the Lord to everyone in his house. By this he means they told them the story of Jesus’ death and resurrection and what this meant for him. Apparently they understood. The jailor and his household were baptized at once.
I want to speak of two matters that arise from this story. First, I’m struck at the parallels to this man’s plight and what’s going on in the lives of an awful lot of people today. Second, I must speak about this baptism that took place after the jailor and his family believed in Jesus.
There are a lot of people who dread facing another day of the stress in their homes-- in their work places. They are trapped in their jobs because they need the income. They are trapped in their homes because they can’t afford to live anywhere else. A painful question echoing with aches in many peoples’ hearts is: “What must I do to be saved?” And people mean much the same as the jailor meant. “What can deliver me from this situation?”
Some people who live in desperation, not knowing what to do, do things that make matters worse. The readily available solutions of choice for many are alcohol and drugs. How quickly life can unravel when alcohol and drugs become part of the picture!
Some people turn to petty crime to relieve themselves of financial distress. They steal from their employers, from their neighbors, from their relatives. They are caught. Ordinary people in distress act out of character and they are caught. I was startled recently to see listed on an internet site of foreclosed mortgaged many upscale homes in our town! Some facing bankruptcy respond in desperation. Some of these do something unlawful, who have no crime in their past. Thus they stand before a judge embarrassed, ashamed, lost. In a panic their hearts cry out, “What must I do to be saved?”
Then there are those people living in the Gulf states this past two weeks found themselves wondering, “What can I do to be saved?”—literally—as they saw the waters rise. People comfortably fixed lost everything—home, often family members died, their children lost, their work places destroyed. Everything gone in a few hours. “What will I do now?” How that question burns.
You go to the doctor’s office for a routine visit and discover that the cough that won’t go away means something awful is going on in your lungs. It may mean your life. “What will I do now?” It almost seems we all stand in a queue waiting our turn to hear a doctor’s fearful report.
Executives of major corporations live the high life they believe they must live in their station. They are trapped in luxurious living. Then they realize their financial empires are houses of cards. They monkey with the books to make things look better than they are. But finally they can deceive no one any longer. They are disgraced. They stand before the courts where to their disgrace is added prison time. “What must I do to be saved?”
Mike Bergmann and I go to the County Correction’s Work release facility each Tuesday evening and see ordinary people who have made mistakes with consequences most of us don’t suffer from our mistakes. In their eyes I see the haunting question, “What must I do to be saved?”
We see young people who dabbled in drugs thinking they’d never get caught. They get caught and their lives are forever affected. “ “What must I do to be saved?”
The answer more often than not does not come as they hope. It comes from God who through their misery is beckoning them to Himself so He can give them a change of heart for which tragedy has prepared them.
Paul answered the Philippian jailor’s question, “Trust in the Lord Jesus and you will be saved.” It may not have been what he was expecting, but it worked. It is an answer that still works. I am surprised how often I discover that responding to this recommendation works to begin to resolve the problems of people who have come to the end of themselves. The Apostle Paul told us that the goodness of God leads us to repentance. While we all dread coming to the point where we realize all is lost, for many this is the best thing that can happen. How good to finally ask, “What must I do to be saved?” and mean it!
Reading on in this story in the Book of Acts we read that the Philippian jailor and his whole household were baptized after Paul and Silas explained to them how to be saved, that is, how to trust in Jesus Christ.
Why then did Paul baptize them? Well, of course, because Jesus commanded it. But why did Jesus command baptism? There is a link between this simple matter of deliberately going under the water and trusting in Jesus, who was God’s chief revelation of Himself to us. It was clearly a command and not a suggestion Jesus made. Why would He command an outward rite for the benefit of an inward relationship with God?
In the Nicene Creed that has guided our thinking for some time we say, “I believe in one Baptism for the remission of sins.” This reflects what we read in our New Testament lesson this morning. “Baptism, which corresponds to [Noah’s deliverance from the flood] now saves you . . . as an appeal to God for a clear conscience through the resurrection of Jesus Christ.”
What do we mean when we say this? Does the act of baptism wash away our sins? You thought that it was belief in Jesus that was necessary.
What a curious thing it must have seemed to this Roman soldier to walk that night down to the riverside with his family, his wife, his children, his servants, and to be led into the water and be dipped three times beneath its surface. I wonder if it was Silas who pronounced the words, “I baptize you in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.” What a strange and painless initiation into this new way of peace!
But it was more than this. Faith in Jesus Christ may require us to be baptized in obedience to His command, but this is only the first stage in a deeper way of life God intends for us. It’s like wading deeper into a lake where there are depths so much beyond the few inches of water into which we wade just off the shore.
The Apostle Paul saw baptism as like being buried with Jesus in His death, and coming alive with Him in His resurrection. Some people see in Paul’s words here a virtual drama of redemption: immersion under water is like being put into the tomb; coming up from the water is like being raised from the tomb.
Paul wrote of this with another kind of picture too. “By one spirit we were all baptized into one body.” What an odd term: baptized into one body! It seems baptism is like a surgical transplant. And once so joined, one is part of this new body. Not only that but there is a finality to this act that touches heaven and earth. It’s an eternal connection, an eternal bond.
As the early Christians thought of it, it reminds me of how I’ve seen some non-citizens in this congregation go through the process of becoming citizens of this country. They stand and express their “faith” in this land and pass through an unseen barrier between not being citizens of this country and enjoying all the privileges of citizenship.
So it is with baptism. It is a sign of being taken into the family of God as a child. It is more than this. It is a sign of membership in the Body of Christ. Baptism is huge. It is not a sign we can receive thoughtlessly.
It is worth asking, “What comes to your mind when you think of so identifying with Jesus that you enter the tomb with Him and come alive with Him? What enters your mind in seeing that you are now part of a Body you were not a part of before? What comes to mind in now being part of the family of God? It’s a bit like having a citizen’s welcome in this country, of being able to vote when one minute before you had no right to be here or to vote. Suddenly it is your duty to live like a citizen.
In the early days of the Church, Christians took baptism so seriously that they were afraid to be baptized because they feared they could not, or did not want earnestly enough to live the kind of life suggested by being so identified with Jesus Christ. There are many Christians who waited until they thought they were about to die to be baptized because they were afraid that if they sinned after being baptized God would not forgive them.
But over time a different problem has arisen with baptism. When we read that the Philippian jailor and his household were baptized it seems to suggest that Paul drew the whole family into the covenant with God into which the jailor came by faith in Jesus Christ. They wouldn’t have to go through the fearful ordeal that drew him to trust in Jesus. But they would enter just as fully into this new way of life their father or master had begun.
But people got used to the idea of baptism and it lost its immense meaning. It became the way babies were introduced in the church. Or it became the equivalent of an automatic bar mitzvah for children in the church who were twelve years old.
Christians have quarreled about how baptism should be applied or when. But it began so simply as the gentle sign of claiming the promise of God for salvation. Baptism and salvation meant a new family life, a new body life, a virtual escape from death. How could anyone ask to be delivered from the old way with all of its desperation while continuing on in the very life that brought such misery?
I realize that not all who come to baptism come prompted by the fear that brought the Philippian jailor to be baptized. Many of us have been reared in homes by Christian parents. We can’t remember when we began the odyssey of faith, it started to early in life. For most of us Baptism is a public sign that we have trusted in Jesus and desire to be obedient to Jesus who said we should be baptized if we believe in Him. There are some whom I have baptized for whom it is an emotionally overwhelming experience, so vivid in their minds is the privilege of being granted entrance into the Body of Christ.
Baptism is a sign answering the question, “What must I do to be saved?” It is a reminder that no matter what may happen to us in the course of life, we belong to God. And nothing can take away this from us. Martin Luther counseled those in despair, “Remember your baptism.”
And so would I. But our baptism is not only a sign of God’s care for us, “in life and in death,” but it is also a call to a way of life that thoughtfully embraces our identity in the Body of Jesus Christ.
A young American English teacher in China during the Second World War found himself quarantined in a prison camp in Shantung when the Japanese occupied China. He mingled with two thousand other non-Chinese for two and one half years. But during those long months of confinement, when resources were low and conditions were often hard, a quality of life developed that was remarkable. They found ways of making their lives quite pleasant as they each brought to the compound their abilities and attitudes. I read of the same result in the prison camp that built the bridge over the River Kwai, as men came together for a common purpose in degraded conditions.
When we are baptized into Christ we are called apart from the world into a Body, a community of those who have asked, “What must I do to be saved?” and have found salvation in Jesus Christ. We are engrafted members of His Body. I envision what can become of people who take to heart what it means to be thus drawn together. What happened at Shantung Compound at the dreadful camp around the bridge going up over the River Kwai in Thailand are suggestive of what the Church can be.
In the wonderful old Scots Confession we are reminded that, “By Baptism we are engrafted into Christ Jesus, to be made partakers of his righteousness.” We see a lot of folk wearing bracelets with the letters WWJD on them that stand for “What Would Jesus Do?” These are reminders that we are partakers of Jesus’ righteousness, a quality of goodness that has specific ways of being noticed. What peace there is for the one who intends to partake of the righteousness of Jesus. It is the way of life, not just alone, but in community, into which we are introduced by trusting in Him.
When I dream of what the Church can be I think of us having trusted in Jesus and with delight stepping forward to receive the right of baptism, I see the remarkable community life that is produced by our common gratitude. I pray we may come to enjoy this fully.
O Lord, thank you for answering for us our haunting question, “What must I do to be saved?” Grant that we may enjoy the full benefit of our place in your family. Amen.
Stuart D. Robertson, Pastor
Faith Presbyterian Church
West Lafayette, IN 47906
Posted by faithpres at September 18, 2005 09:30 AM