04/01/2025
On Sunday morning, I failed to go "live" with the Sunday sermon, so I thought I'd take a few minutes and post a summary. We were celebrating a baptismal service and we wanted to discuss baptism. Our text was Romans 6.
The text begins with a question-- "What Shall we say then?" which was the Apostle Paul's way to saying does this make sense. "Shall we continue in sin that grace may abound?" In other words, is our continued, intentional sin helpful to God by making a need for his grace to continue in our lives. Does it glorify God? Does it make God more merciful and forgiving? He follows with "God forbid!" (The King James) The Greek word means something that is so absurd and wrong it should never even be considered even a silly wish. It is translated in various places (NIV) as "impossible," "by no means!" etc.
Does a husband cause his wife to be more gracious if he is physically abusive and she continues to forgive him? Does it make sense for a spouse to continue to be unfaithful because his or her spouse continues to forgive? Rather than our misbehavior making someone better, it allows our character to become warped and our thinking defective. To continue in sin after being forgiven is to spit in the face of that forgiveness. It is to show contempt on the grace of God.
Paul goes on to say that we are dead to sin and baptism was the place where we demonstrated that death, burial, and resurrection in Christ was part of our lives. However, in regards to sin, that isn't our experience, even when we declare it to be so through the public commitment of baptism.
Did you ever hear someone say "You're dead to me?" Of course, the person isn't really dead! What they mean is that they are going to act as if that person no longer exists.
Paul tells us that we are to "reckon" ourselves dead to sin. It isn't our experience, but when we remind ourselves that we are supposed to be dead to sin (even more powerful when we focus on a particular sin) then we choose God's Way and begin to overcome, little by little, the same way we grow in our Christian life.
Baptism is the place where we take that step of faith towards telling others that we have committed our life to Christ and consider ourselves dead to sin, but alive to Christ. It is much like a public marriage ceremony, where the couple makes that public commitment and then begins their new life together.
Baptism is not a requirement for salvation, but it was so much a part of the commitment to Christ that it was expected to be almost immediate. Think about this-- the early church did not have a "new believer's class" dedicated to lead a new Christian to the baptistry. They did, however, believe that baptism was an important step for the new believer that it was coupled with repentance as the first steps for a new believer to take. In the book of Acts we see that it happens over and over again in an immediate fashion.
We also spoke of baptism being for believers, not infants.
Finally, we spoke of the proper mode of believer baptism to be immersion, for sprinkling cannot symbolize the believer's faith-based identification with the death, burial and resurrection of Christ. When someone passes away, we don't just throw a handful of dirt on the casket and call them buried. The only mode of baptism that illustrates the death, burial, and resurrection of Christ (and by faith the new believer) is a full-out dunking and raising from the water.
We rejoice with Brother George's commitment to Christ and encourage others to also follow Christ in this like manner. Praise God from whom all blessings flow!
