Baptism: part 1. It's not about getting wet.

The debate over sprinkling or immersing is not terribly important. In the earliest baptisms, in fact, the point was to keep the people dry.

a guard tower at an old military site in Oradea

---

Baptism is not about getting sprinkled or immersed, nor is the discussion about infant baptism vs believer baptism terribly important. Baptisms in Scripture have included people of all ages, people who made no claim of belief, and even animals. Sometimes the people got wet, sometimes they specifically did not get wet.

We get off course when we think of baptism as being about us. It's not. It's about God. Most specifically, it's about where God is working and how he moves his people from where he is not working to where he is.

I won't hold you in mystery until the end. The conclusion is this:

There are times that God does something especially important. To fix the occasion in our minds, he highlights the event to make it unique in our memory. It could be a person, a mountain, a meal, a ritual... or baptism. Baptism is one way that God insists that we remember something important. The common thread that runs through all examples and teachings of baptism in Scripture is that God has moved his people from an old place to a new place. Between the old and new place is a passageway: a door. That door opens to let certain people through and then shuts so no others can go through—and so the people who went through cannot go back. The significance of that passageway is so important that God gives it a unique, unforgettable image to remind us it happened. Those images are the rainbow, the crossing of the Red Sea, John in the wilderness, Christ's death on the cross, and the tongues of fire at Pentecost.

Those five events were so important to God that he imprinted in our minds with vivid imagery the scene and setting so we could not forget. Importantly, in each case there was a passing from the old to the new, and that passing was a momentous, one time event, never to be repeated, but to be done again at a different time and place when God once again moved his work and created a way for those who would go to remain in his work.

Even though people who go through the passageway are saved in one way or another, the baptism is not to save them but to memorialize the fact that God saved them from the judgment that came upon those who didn't go. Some who went were not believers, some did not appreciate that they had been saved, some didn't want to be saved after they had been saved, and some (like the babies and animals) had no understanding that there was an old place or a new place or that they had been moved. None of those things are so important. The important thing is that God established a new place for his people and that those who went along were spared from whatever happened to those who didn't. The only way to remain the people of God (or to have a chance to be part of the people of God) was to go to that new place, and then to stay there until God said to move again.

tracing baptism through Scripture

Baptism says that God has done something, he has included certain people in that thing, and we need to remember that he has done it. Baptism tells us there is a one-way passage from the old to the new, the passage is opened by God for a certain time, and then the passage is closed by God. Baptism says that the people who pass through are saved from God's judgment upon those who didn't. It does not mean they are saved from a future judgment if God tells his people to move again.

The examples of baptism in Scripture are:

• water baptism

• baptism in/by the Holy Spirit

• early church baptism

• Jesus' baptism on the cross

• John's baptism

• John's baptism of Jesus

• Israel's baptism into Moses

• Noah

We put too much effort into making baptism about getting wet. We say Jesus was baptized on the cross because he bled onto himself. Wrong. So long as we are tied to that "wet" concept we will confuse what God is doing. We say that Noah only prefigures true baptism: that it is not true baptism. No, it was true baptism. Paul says the people of Israel were baptized into Moses and we say, "well, yes: sort of." No, not sort of: really. It wasn't our kind of baptism, but it was God's kind of baptism, and that's all that matters.

1 Cor 10:1-2

Our ancestors were all under the cloud, and all passed through the sea, and all were baptized into Moses in the cloud and in the sea.

The three key elements (cloud, sea, Moses) are the means used by God to get his people out of slavery in Egypt and (ultimately) into the Promised Land. The cloud guided and protected them, the sea was the dividing line between their old life and their new one, and Moses was the person God appointed to lead them.

When the Scriptures tell us that the people were baptized into/by/in/with the cloud, sea, and Moses we must remember those were only the actors. God did it. He used Moses and the sea and the cloud, but they did not do it: he did. The phrase "all were baptized into Moses in the cloud and in the sea" is the monument God erected to which we look to remember that it happened. It is desperately important to God that we remember. Paul is careful to name the baptism of Israel in all its constituent parts: Moses (remember him?), the cloud (remember how it blocked the enemy?), and the sea (certainly you can't forget that!). The vivid imagery is to enshrine forever in our memory that it really did happen, so we don't forget, because God knows us, he knows how easily we forget, and he especially needs us to remember because the next baptism will come and it will be just as important that we cross over with God.

When the people passed through the sea it looked like they went under the water. They didn't. They walked on dry ground: families, animals, pets, and belongings. They weren't saved by the sea; they were saved because God opened the sea and then closed it back to stop others from going through. Afterwards some of them wanted to go back. God became angry and told them that since he had don't these never-before-seen-in-the-history-of-the-world things for them, not one of them would see the Promised Land. Their baptism did not guarantee the Promised land: it guaranteed that none of them would see it.

In the days of Noah God delivered 8 people, their belongings, and all animals through the sea (actually, on the sea). Everyone not in the ark died in the sea. Noah and his family were saved on the sea and were delivered safely onto dry land. Still, after all that, one of his sons sinned and was cursed.

In both Moses and Noah, the common thread is that God moved a small group of people from an old place to a new place. He didn't call it baptism at the time. It was up to the apostles later to put the name to it and to draw the comparison: that what happened in the days of Noah and Moses was the same as what was happening now. God was again opening a passage in the days of John and the apostles

between the people's old lives and their new ones

between the people of God and the enemies of God

between death and life

God told people to do it and gave them time to prepare. He closed the door on John's baptism: the way through was no more. He will one day close the door on Christian baptism when he has decided his work is moving to a new place.

John's baptism

John called the people of Israel into the wilderness to be baptized because they were heading in the wrong direction and needed to get on the path of God again. The same people of God who once were saved through the sea were now told to move on. God was leaving behind the people he had once saved. They had the choice to go to John or to stay home, but God was in the wilderness with John and there was no other door to where God was.

A critical element to baptism is uncertainty, fear, and loss. Baptism is never simple. The baptism of John was difficult because the people of God had to admit that the people of God were wrong. It essentially required becoming a traitor. The most respected of them were the very ones a person had to turn away from. The priests, the high priest, the teachers, and experts: all were in the place God was leaving. All had to go to John to move on with God.

God made it difficult. He dressed John in rags and gave him almost nothing to eat: only whatever he could find in the wilderness. It was easy for people made fun of him: a reed swaying in the wind. This skinny, sunburned, mop-haired, ragged, man standing in the water was a joke. How could a person not make fun? How could a person turn from the leaders in their fine robes and positions of honor to this funny man? It was not easy for the people of God to think this was actually what God wanted.

John told the people they were on the wrong path. He told them there was a new path and it went through him.

Jesus came to be baptized by John to confirm to everyone that yes: this was God at work. God put John in the Jordan to escort people to the new place God was preparing for them. Jesus was not baptized to be saved or cleansed. He was baptized by John because the path God had established was out there in the wilderness, and it went through John.

The baptism of John was the way for the people of God to leave the people of God and become the people of God. God would no longer call himself the God of the people of God. If they wanted to stay with God they needed to go to John, to say "Yes, I will do this. I will go with God."

Christ's baptism

Luke 12:50-51

I have a baptism with which to be baptized, and what constraint I am under until it is completed! Do you think that I have come to bring peace to the earth? No, I tell you, but rather division!

Jesus told his disciples he was looking toward a baptism. The important elements are all there: continuing on the path God has determined, through the passageway into the new place where God is. Jesus names it clearly: it is the dividing line. It is a line of turmoil and struggle. People will have to make a very difficult decision. The enormity of Christ's path up to the moment of baptism warns of the difficulty of doing it with him. It will require people who go through that door to become traitors, to their families, their people, their own beliefs.

Jesus was different from all the others because he was both the form and the real thing. He was the Moses leading people into the sea, but he was also the path through. He both established the path to the door and was the Door.

Christ's death was literally the ultimate path from death to life for the people of God. They could continue on as the people of God, but if they stayed they were no longer the people of God, because he would not allow himself to be called the people of God by people who stayed. Naming the name of God is an offense when done by those who have refused the path.

Pentecost

The tongues of fire were the visible proofs that this was God doing it, and a warning that refusing it was refusing God. God was no longer in the old place. He would give people a chance to accept and join, but there was coming a time when the door would be closed.

The significance of the baptism of the Holy Spirit was that the new people of God would not longer be identified by a physical place. The land God told Abraham to go to was no longer the place the people of God could claim as the place of God. The Promised Land that Moses led the people to was no longer the place of God. The Temple was no longer the place of worship. There were now two tombs in Jerusalem. Both were empty.

Christian baptism was performed by the Spirit and confirmed by baptism in water. The Spirit was the real thing; the water was the commemoration that the person had announced they would go with God. Baptism did not save. It never did. But it did give the person that moment to publicly announce the way to God went through Christ. The path from the old to the new was death.

parts 2, 3, and 4

There is a lot more to say about baptism. In parts 2, 3 and 4 we will look at the Scriptures to examine how they build our understanding of what baptism means to God, and should mean to us.

We will look at Deut 17:16: "You must never return that way again."

We will look at the valley of the shadow of death: of John the Baptist.

We will look at all the passages in Scripture that mention baptism, to see what God sees.

The central truth in it all is that God works, his people are told to go with him, and that life for those who do is life-and-death different from those who don't.

Baptism is the magnifying glass that God places over his work at times, to show us there we need to be. Baptism reveals how God works, in every age, in every place.