One Baptism
Ephesians 4:5
READ Ephesians 4:5 . . . “There is one Lord, one faith, and one baptism.”
Sometimes as pastors we can be susceptible to rare gaffes. So its no surprise that the story is told about the baptism of a King by St. Patrick in the middle of the fifth century. Sometime during the ritual, St. Patrick leaned on his sharp-pointed staff and inadvertently stabbed the king’s foot. St. Patrick was totally unaware. After the baptism was over, St. Patrick looked down at all the blood, realized what he had done, and begged the king’s forgiveness. Why did you suffer this pain in silence, the Saint wanted to know. The king shrugged and replied, "I thought it was part of the ritual." *Unknown Source taken and adapted from sermonillustrations.com
Sometimes when we approach practices of the church we may have little understanding of what they are all about. What they mean? Or if we’re new to a church we may wonder what that church teaches and so today, right off the top as we get ready to focus on the topic of baptism in our series through Paul’s exclusive statements in Ephesians 4, I want to try to read your mind, and answer four questions quickly, if you want a longer more high falutin’ Reverend style answer, check with me later.
4 quick questions re: baptism . . .
Which baptism is Paul talking about in Ephesians 4:5? (Spirit or Water) I believe both. I don’t believe we should seek to split the intent of the whole passage. Both the baptism of spirit and the physical sign of water baptism are exclusive elements of the Christian faith and as I have shared before, modern Christian practice has done a poor job in holding together the experience of Spiritual conversion and the outward sign of that conversion in water baptism.
Is water baptism needed for salvation? No, salvation is by God’s grace through faith in Christ and what he accomplished for us in his death and resurrection.
Do we baptize infants? No we practice what I like to call confessional baptism.
Do we require confessional baptism in order to be a member or to accept you as a Christian? No. I hope.
You know, Paul stating that there is ONE BAPTISM probably doesn’t tell us a lot and so let’s look at how Paul unpacks baptism in . . .
READ: GALATIANS 3:26-29
There are two things I want us to focus on in regards to baptism this morning. Paul communicates that baptism, Spirit & water accomplishes the job of and communicates the reality of spiritual union. Listen to what I said. Spirit accomplishes the job of spiritual union. Water communicates the reality of spiritual union. As there is Spirit & water there is also Christ & Christians. Two spiritual unions!
Spiritual union with Christ.
Spiritual union with Christians.
The off-season of your favorite pro-sport can be a confusing time figuring out who is going to be playing for what team in the coming season. And we have major league baseball and 1976 to thank for it. In 1976 baseball players signed a collective bargaining agreement with baseball owners that allowed them to be the first professional athletes to have the opportunity for free agency. Until that point, players were drafted or signed by a team . . . and players stayed with their team unless they were traded . . . players were a commodity. They were owned by teams. Until 1976, when a player’s contract ended, the team had the exclusive right to resign the player always. Players couldn’t just decide that they would go to another team that would pay them more money. From this point on, players would get to make a decision as to who would own their rights. This has begun a most interesting sports ritual, the free-agent signing press conference. Beyond talking about the millions of dollars a player will be making or the speeches about how athletes want to take care of their families and promises to bring a championship to their new city, there is something that always happens at a free-agent signing press conference. The free agent always puts the jersey of his new team on. He wears the new logo and clothing of his owner. He becomes a marked man. Most of the time that jersey that a player also pulls on also has a number on it, recognizing that the player is not the exclusive model of the uniform. He is but one of many players that wears the uniform, beyond the number, they all look the same.
Paul tells us that baptism is an expression of a spiritual union with Christ. Verse 27 states, “For all of you who were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ.” What is Paul trying to communicate to these his readers when he says that baptism has clothed them with Christ? What is the clothing of Christ?
Righteousness – Paul has just spent the whole 3rd chapter of Galatians proving to his readers that living by the law, jumping through the hoops, living by a set of rules does not make a person righteous. But faith in Jesus Christ brings righteousness . . . It is God at work and our response to him in faith that allows us to be wearing righteousness and found righteous. Look at verse 2-3, “This is the only thing I want to find out from you: did you receive the Spirit by works of the law, or by hearing with faith? Are you so foolish Having begun by the Spirit, are you now being perfected by the flesh?” Let’s skip down to verse 6, “Even so Abraham believed God, and it was reckoned to him as righteousness.” And verse 8, “foreseeing that God would justify the Gentiles by faith…”
All this to say some simple things . . . that when we have faith (remember, believing and trusting God) we are clothed with Christ. That clothing is righteousness. Not that we are righteous in ourselves, but specifically God is righteous, and the righteousness that is seen on us is his righteousness. And because of Christ’s righteousness, his sacrifice, his resurrection, and our faith, when God looks upon us in judgment, we are simply found not guilty. We have a spiritual union with Christ because we trust Christ, and because of that trust we are given a gift, the Spirit. Instead of being given a hat and a jersey to pull on, what we are really given is a deposit of the presence of God to indwell us in our lives, that if there be any righteousness coming out of us, it would not be as a result of ourselves, but as a result of the Spirit that now dwells within us.
Spiritual union with Christ is described as being clothed with Christ, but Paul also uses another way of describing this union when he writes in verse 29. . . “And if you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham’s descendants, heirs according to promise.” Paul describes spiritual union with Christ as more than just being clothed with Christ, its also ownership. You belong to Him. If, Paul says you belong to him, you are also Abraham’s descendants, which in this immediate context of our text tells us that we are his not because of our works but because of our faith. And because we belong to him we are heirs. Heirs are sons, blood relatives or relatives because of adoption, because of covenant. Paul writes in Ephesians 1:13-14 . . . “In Him, you also, after listening to the message of truth, the gospel of your salvation – having also believed, you were sealed in Him with the Holy Spirit of promise, who is given as a pledge of our inheritance, with a view to the redemption of God’s own possession, to the praise of His glory.” What does being sealed mean? It means that you are marked. You are marked by an owner. In Paul’s words, with a view to the redemption of God’s own possession, means that the Holy Spirit is God’s spiritual symbol in your life of the fact that he has bought and paid for you, you are his!
When millionaire’s buy a new athlete they put a uniform expressing ownership on him, when a pastor buys a new book for his library he stamps or writes his name on it expressing ownership, when a rancher acquires calves or older cattle he puts his ranches brand on it, expressing ownership.
And so water baptism, is nothing more and nothing less than a ceremony of great importance, a free-agent signing press conference, if you will, expressing in a physical way the spiritual reality of God’s ownership on a life and the removal of old clothing . . . in other places, Paul calls it the old man. When a man goes under the water it’s a symbol of the old man dying, changing out of his old uniform, and when he rises out of the water it is a symbol that a new man liveth. He is sealed! He is marked! He has a new uniform.
We are spiritually united with Christ in reality and in symbolism for the world to see, but we’re not just united with Christ, we’re also united to Christians . . .
Take a peek at verse 28, “For all of you who were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free man, there is neither male nor female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus.”
The spiritual reality of faith in Christ, and the gift of the Holy Spirit is that we are all one. The reality is that what once kept us apart, in Paul’s words, race, class, and gender is erased by our baptism in spirit and in water. In Spirit in that before God we are now all one race, one class, and one gender. The Spirit is the great equalizer. We’ve spent already about two months now in Ephesians 4, the whole message of it is it’s the Spirit that keeps us together. Be diligent to preserve the unity of the Spirit, there is one body and one Spirit. God’s desire is that what is a spiritual reality, would become a social reality. As we allow the Holy Spirit to work in our lives we become one not just because we are owned by the same God and we all have the same mark, but we become one by how we treat one another and how we work with one another. You will know they are Christians by their love!
We have a spiritual union with other Christians by the presence of the Spirit in our lives, but we also have a spiritual union with other Christians through the symbol of water baptism. Very simply, water baptism is an initiation ritual. It says that you are a part of us and we are a part of you. When a person decides to be physically baptized they are aligning themselves with God . . . staking out that they believe in Jesus Christ and they are aligning themselves with the church. Saying this is my family. These are my people. This is my race, this is my class, this is my gender. This is where and who I belong to.
When a free agent pulls on a jersey, they are given, or they take a number. They’re expressing that they have an owner, that they’re part of a team and that they are not the only member of their team. No two players can wear the same number, but they all do wear a one.
So let me ask you the most obvious of questions this morning, and with it would you ask yourselves why you are or why you are not . . .
Are you baptized?
My greatest concern is not for symbols but for reality. But because I believe in reality I also believe in symbols. I pray that we would all have faith in the grace of God, the kind of faith that allows God to be the owner of our life. The kind of faith that believes, knows, and trusts God rather than ourselves for our salvation. But what I can’t figure out is if we truly have a spiritual reality, then why do we find it so hard to submit ourselves to the physical expression of it that we are commanded to obey and that as a church we are commanded to practice.
If we’re not, why do we wait?
- Fear of public speaking
- Fear of water
- Readiness . . . i.e. getting our junk together – works rather than grace
What we may very well be saying is not that I am not ready to be baptized, but I am not ready to be a Christian.
- Matters of association (Christ & the church) Co-habitating with Christ and the church. I’d like all the spiritual benefits of union with Christ and the church without the commitment.
Do you really want to disassociate yourself with Christ? Why
Do you really want to disassociate yourself with Christians? Why
Ivan the Great was the great gatherer of Russia . . . in the 1400’s he conquered many a kingdom and gathered together what was once known as the Soviet Union. He was courageous, brilliant, and he established peace (with an iron fist). He was also alone. His wife had died. He needed a new queen. Legend has it that his friends and advisors urged him to find a wife. But Ivan was ruling the Soviet Union, he didn’t even have time for speed dating, so he told his advisors to find him a wife. They searched across all the aristocracies of the world to find him a Queen, and they settled on a Greek princess. Personally the legend comes across more like the movie, My Big Fat Greek Wedding! Legend tells us that the King of Greece was adamant that if his daughter was to marry Ivan that they would have to get married in the Greek Orthodox Church and in order to get married in the Greek Orthodox church you had to be baptized in the Greek Orthodox Church. It wasn’t long before Ivan and 500 of his palace guards joined him on a trip to Greece to get baptized and married. Ivan was baptized, by immersion in the beautiful Mediteranean Sea. Legend has it that after his baptism, his whole palace guard, out of loyalty to their king, also wanted to be baptized. And so they were quickly catechized and were to be led out into the sea, but there was a problem, the church prohibited professional soldiers from being members. They troubleshooted the problem. 500 soldiers in full armor and battle swords marched into the Mediteranean with 500 orthodox priests. As the words were spoken and the priests began to baptize them, each soldier reached to his side and withdrew his sword. Lifting it high overhead, every soldier was totally immersed-everything baptized except his fighting arm and sword. *Taken and adapted from a sermon by Dr. Wayne Dehoney
This is supposed to be a true story, not some kind of tale. The unbaptized arm! There are some of us who say we believe in Paul’s one baptism, and we have the spiritual experience of conversion and the baptismal experience and pictures to prove it . . . but are we walking in such a way these days with an unbaptized arm. Are there ways in which we are trying to disassociate ourselves from Christ and his church. Are there areas of our life we desire Christ and his Spirit not to have ownership over? Do you have an unbaptized tongue? An unbaptized mind? An unbaptized relationship? Have you baptized your business? Has the way you spend your time been baptized? Have you allowed God to baptism your plans, dreams and goals?
