You may have heard the Canadian Blood Services’ advertising slogan–“Blood. It’s in you to give.” I would like to adapt that for our thought for today–“Baptism: It’s on you to live.”
Baptism. One of the foundational hallmarks of the church. In the Lutheran Church’s official statement of belief, the Augsburg Confession, we say this about Baptism: “Concerning Baptism, our churches teach that Baptism is necessary for salvation (Mark 16:16) and that God’s grace is offered through Baptism (Titus 3:4-7). They teach that children are to be baptized (Acts 2:38-39). Being offered to God through Baptism, they are received into God’s grace.” (AC, IX, 1)
It is a marvellous thing, Baptism. As our Epistle for this morning we have St. Paul’s meditation on what Baptism is and means from Romans 6:1-11. And indeed, all our readings for today reflect on the wonders of Baptism; the Psalm speaks of our God whose voice thunders over the waters, the Old Testament Reading looks at how God’s Servant will carry out His work of redemption, the work which began with Jesus’ baptism, which is the focus of our Gospel.
Clearly, this is an important day for the church. So it is that our paraments remain white this morning, and we continue to rejoice in the glories of God. And this passage historically was one of three which were used interchangeably on Epiphany Sunday itself. In a book of sermons by Luther which I have in my collection, he refers to Christ’s baptism as the “very highest and most comforting thing about this festival.”
The great comfort and blessing of this festival comes in one specific thing: that here Jesus Christ identifies Himself with us. Here the sinless one confounds the greatest prophet who ever lived and goes into the water with the messy, filthy, miserable sinners.
And a good thing, too. Because that’s exactly what messy, filthy, miserable sinners need. In the order of confession and absolution used at the start of Divine Service 3 and Divine Service 5 in our hymnal we use the following words to confess who we are before God: “I, a poor, miserable sinner...” Jesus went to the waters of the Jordan for you, poor, miserable, and a sinner.
One popular evangelical speaker, Joyce Meyer, who had grown up Lutheran but left the church, was once quoted as saying, “I am not poor, I am not miserable, and I am not a sinner.” But see what this poor soul is missing out on! For it is only the sick that need a doctor, our Lord says, and it is the lost that Jesus has come to seek and to save.
In a way, you have to feel for John the Baptist. Here he has been telling people that the coming Messiah is going to tear the world apart and burn it to cinders, and the same Messiah pops up in the baptismal queue one day. The shock and horror John has at seeing Jesus in the lineup shines through in the original in a way that translations can’t really give justice to. “But I need to be baptized by you–what on earth are you doing, coming to me?!” might be an idiomatic way of rendering what John says to Jesus here. John didn’t want Jesus to be baptized. The optics were all wrong. What would it mean to everyone else if the Messiah got baptized? Surely God wouldn’t send a faulty, defective Messiah? Israel needed a top-notch, high-quality, grade-A messiah!
But that’s exactly what they got. Jesus steps into the water and all of John’s doubts are cast aside. Who else had God the Father speak to them from the clouds, and the Holy Spirit light upon them in the form of a dove at their baptism? Indeed, Jesus’ baptism is something special, something that denoted His special role with us. Here is the one whom God the Father chose to be our Saviour, to be the one to get into the waters of the Jordan and identify with all the sinners who went before and after Him in that stream. Here Jesus began to undertake His divine role as Saviour of the world. Here Jesus demonstrated for the first time that He was here precisely to get flooded with the sin and guilt and shame of the sinners of this world, so that we could be His own pure, clean, and holy people.
Something special happened that day, and indeed, something special happens with every baptism in the name of the Triune God. We begin our order of worship with the Invocation– in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit precisely because we are recalling to mind not only the God whom we worship, but we are also remembering our Baptism. That’s why in the hymnal it has that special note that during the invocation you may wish to make the sign of the cross in remembrance of your baptism.
Baptism has a pretty special role in the life of the believer. Most, if not all of us here this morning have been baptized. In baptism God gives His grace. And, just as Jesus began His ministry with being baptized, so each of us gain a special role in God’s mission through baptism. Consider again Paul’s words to the Romans as we heard earlier:
What shall we say then? Are we to continue in sin that grace may abound? By no means! How can we who died to sin still live in it? Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? We were buried therefore with him by baptism into death, in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life. For if we have been united with him in a death like his, we shall certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his. We know that our old self was crucified with him in order that the body of sin might be brought to nothing, so that we would no longer be enslaved to sin. For one who has died has been set free from sin. Now if we have died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with him. We know that Christ, being raised from the dead, will never die again; death no longer has dominion over him. For the death he died he died to sin, once for all, but the life he lives he lives to God. So you also must consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus. (Romans 6:1-11 ESV)
Perhaps one of the least understood parts of what our church teaches and believes about what Baptism effects in the life of the believer–in your life–is summarized here. Baptism’s key importance is that it frees us from the power of sin. That’s what forgiveness is about. We are freed from sin, however, not to go back and return to it, to keep on sinning. No, we are freed from sin’s effect so that we can live as God’s people. Paul’s rhetorical question–“Are we to continue in sin that grace may abound?” is answered with “By no means!” The Greek phrase indicates as strong a prohibition as possible. To claim to be part of Christ and to persist in willing sin is a contradiction in terms.
That’s what God’s Word tells us. As such, I would like to encourage you now to take a moment and consider your own willing sins in the light of your relationship with Christ. Which of the Ten Commandments do you habitually break? Remember that when Jesus forgave the woman caught in sin, He told her, “Go and sin no more.” (John 8:11) So it is with us. Jesus gladly forgives us when we confess our sinfulness and cling to the promise made to us in Baptism, but we shouldn’t use that as an excuse to be a gossip or a busybody, to cheat on taxes or to conduct ourselves dishonestly. Jesus has promised to cover over our sins and offenses but that is no excuse to harbour a grudge, to be unforgiving, to entertain lustful and impure thoughts or to be manipulative. God has promised that He will never leave us or forsake us. Yet so often we forsake His Word. How easy it is to get out of the habit of coming to the Lord’s House to hear and learn of Him! God has promised to provide all we need to support this body and life, and yet so often we cast our lots with false gods, like our money or our job or our friends or anything which helps us make it through.
Dear friends, as many of you as have been baptized have been clothed with Christ Jesus. Your life is not your own, but belongs to Him. That is, we should rejoice to come to the Lord’s house every Sunday and each week, live according to God’s Word, always being ready to give reason for the hope that is in us. If we are concerned that our children or grandchildren aren’t interested in church, we need to model that interest for them, show what the difference it makes for us is through how we live, how we talk, and how we love. This is what Jesus referred to as letting our light shine before men. For this is what God has called us to do through baptism, to observe everything which He has told us in His Word, to obey His commandments and follow His decrees–not because we are afraid of punishment, but because we rejoice in the freedom from sin, death, and the power of the devil which we have been given through Christ Jesus’ death and resurrection for us.
And we return to this baptismal grace every time we confess our sins and receive absolution–the word of pardon from Christ Himself, spoken through me, your pastor. As well as our common confession and absolution, there is always the option of private confession, for those times when you have a particular sin which is troubling you. God has given this to His church so that we can bear one another’s infirmities. The apostle James encourages us in his letter to confess our sins to one another that we may be healed–another image for what forgiveness does, for what God’s grace does when received by the heart of faith. It heals us, makes us whole again from the brokenness and sickness of sin. In the Large Catechism, Dr. Luther notes that all that confession and absolution is, ultimately, is simply returning back to the promise of Baptism. As the Large Catechism says:
For this reason, let everyone value his Baptism as a daily dress in which he is to walk constantly. Then he may ever be found in the faith and its fruit, so that he may suppress the old man and grow up in the new. For if we would be Christians, we must do the work by which we are Christians. But if anyone falls away from the Christian life, let him come again into it. For just as Christ, the Mercy Seat, does not draw back from us or forbid us to come to Him again, even though we sin, so all His treasure and gifts also remain. Therefore, if we have received forgiveness of sin once in Baptism, it will remain every day, as long as we live. Baptism will remain as long as we carry the old man about our neck. (Large Catechism, IV, 84-86).
Baptism–it’s on you to live! Live each day remembering that in Baptism God has brought you from sin to new life, that the Triune God has made you His own child for now and forever. Live boldly, freely, serving your neighbour gladly, for God has brought you out of darkness into His light for precisely that purpose. Consider yourself dead to sin and alive to God–for when you are alive to God, you need no other! In Christ, our baptized and baptizing Lord and Saviour. Amen.
Last updated January 2008 by the webmaster.