Down to Earth But Heavenly Minded

Question:

2. “N., Glasgow,” asks ― (1) Baptism; what does it mean ― death only ― or death and resurrection? (2) Does the 6th chapter of Romans teach Baptism of water? and what is the teaching in that chapter.

Answer:

 (1.) In Baptism one is always baptized to something. In Christian Baptism, as many of us as are baptized to Christ, are baptized to death. We are buried with Him by Baptism to death (Rom. 6:4). The thought of resurrection follows, in coming up out of the water; but is not the primary thought of Baptism, which is a going to death; we are baptized for death ― The thought is death and burial.

(2.) In Rom. 6 the Apostle refers to Baptism of water, to show that in it the person had been baptized to death, and that it contradicted the thought that one might consider himself alive in a sinful state, so as to continue in sin, that grace might abound. The chapter fully refutes the unholy thought that the full, free, boundless grace of God, which constituted the believer righteous by the obedience of another (ch. 5:19, 21), is a principle of sin. The argument is, that if we have part with Christ at all, we have part with One who has died to sin, and who is alive to God. We have died with Him to sin and we cannot be alive to that state to which we have died ― we cannot be alive to sin and dead to sin at the same time; the objection contradicts itself. Our Baptism was to Christ’s death. When Christ died, He died to sin; He was, in His death, discharged from it; He came out of the position to which sin attached as a substitute. Alive in resurrection, He has nothing to do with sin, and lives to God only. We should then consider ourselves as having died to sin, and having come out by His resurrection from the sin for which He died, and as alive to God only; in a state outside the former, and so to walk in newness of life. We have a right to do so, because He died for us. The subject of the chapter is practice, not standing; and in the allusion to Baptism, he gives us God’s thoughts, as to what Christian Baptism expressed as an initiatory ordinance.

But it is to be observed that it is never a sign of what is already possessed; but of what the baptized is about to possess. It is the reception of persons into the sphere of blessing where the Holy Ghost dwells, and the privileges of Christianity are, by those who are there already; it is the act of the baptizer. The baptized are received in order to partake of the blessings of that place of privilege. Instance the day of Pentecost; when Peter exhorts the Jews to “Repent and be baptized every one of you, in the name of Jesus Christ, for (είς) the remission of sins, and ye shall receive the gift of the Holy Ghost” (Acts 2:38). Here it is plain that they were to be baptized with a view to (είς) forgiveness, and the reception of the Holy Ghost. They were not baptized as possessing these things, but in order to receive them. So also we find every case in Scripture. Paul is baptized that his sins might be washed away (Acts 22:16). We have been baptized for (είς) death (Rom. vi), not because we are dead and risen already. No doubt we find that many who were born of God were baptized, but they never were baptized because of this, but were received by those within into the sphere of blessing here on earth ― the House of God.
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