Baptism – What Does This Mean?

The Three Ways God Cares for Us

Encore Post: [Twentieth in a series of posts on Martin Luther’s Small Catechism] When we baptize a new Christian, we ask him to promise several things and to confess several things. Following the ancient tradition of the Church, we ask the candidate if they believe what the creed proclaims. But we do this with three questions: “Do you believe in God the Father…?” “Do you believe in Jesus Christ…?” and “Do you believe in the Holy Spirit…? We do this because each person of the Holy Trinity has His own role in our life and salvation.

This is a bit of a mystery, since all three persons are involved in all these acts of love for us, yet the Scripture speaks of each having these roles. Rather than try to puzzle out how this is so, we rejoice that each person loves us in his own way.

Martin Luther, in his Small Catechism, calls each person’s work an article and speaks about them separately. So, he talks about the good news that God the Father created and provides for us, that God the Son redeems us with his own blood and the Holy Spirit makes us holy. This good news gives us joy, especially since we just considered his law in the Ten Commandments. We have been confronted by the fact of our sinfulness. Now we can have peace in the gospel of the forgiveness of sins, life and salvation.

Originally posted at What does this Mean? Blog: https://whatdoesthismean.blog

The posts in the blog What does this Mean? are now available at What does this Mean? | Rev. Robert E. Smith | Substack

Rev. Robert E. Smith

Pastor Emeritus

Fort Wayne, Indiana

The Sabbath Rest

Encore Post: [twelfth is a series of posts on Martin Luther’s Small Catechism] The Sabbath rest is ancient. God himself rested on the seventh day, just after he created the world in six days. When God gave his law to his people, the command to rest on the seventh day made the top ten. God knew that working without rest would damage his creatures. So he built it in — rest every night and the seventh day. It provided time for his people to worship and to meditate on his word.

Yet for Christians, the day they worship — and rest — is a matter of freedom. It belongs to the civil law, the law for the nation of Israel. It is not a part of the moral law, the law for all people. We know this because Jesus called himself “the Lord of the Sabbath” and St. Paul describes that freedom in Romans and Colossians. Still, the church chose from the beginning to rest every Sunday, the first day of the week, to remember the Resurrection of Jesus.

While Christians should worship God every and any day, resting on Sunday brings with it the opportunity to hear God’s word preached, to receive his gifts of baptism and the Lord’s Supper, to meet with each other and pray for each other and to study the Word of God. It is not so much that we have to go to church than that we get to go to church. At many times and in many places that freedom does not exist.

So we honor Sundays and Holy Days. We used the opportunity to receive the forgiveness of sins and bread for our daily lives. We rejoice to honor our Lord Jesus, who died for us, rested in the tomb three days and rose again, so that we might rest with him forever.

Originally posted at What does this Mean? Blog: https://whatdoesthismean.blog

The posts in the blog What does this Mean? are now available at What does this Mean? | Rev. Robert E. Smith | Substack

Rev. Robert E. Smith

Pastor Emeritus

Fort Wayne, Indian

Pray, Praise and Give Thanks

Encore Post: [Eleventh is a series of posts on Martin Luther’s Small Catechism] A name has a lot more packed into it than we often realize. It carries a person’s reputation, authority and power with it. In ancient magical lore, if you know a person’s true name, you can have power over them. God’s name is the most important of all, not because it is magical, but because God has promised to hear us when we call to him.

The Second commandment is all about using God’s name in prayer, to act as his tools in this world to bring the Gospel to the lost and do his will as we serve him and our neighbors. We baptize in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. We teach all that he commands us to teach. When we make promises to tell the truth and make promises to each other in his presence, we commit ourselves to keep them.

The problem is our sinful nature wants to use God’s name to cover lies and to make people believe we intend to do what we have no intention of doing. We want God to give us things that we desire, treating God as if he were some kind of cosmic vending machine — insert prayer. Believe you will get it and it will come to you. We are inclined to say “O my God” when we are surprised or shocked rather than as a prayer for help. These uses are misuses of God’s name and what the command tells us not to do.

So, then, do we go the other way, as Judaism does, and not even use his name at all? No, God wants us to use his name. We call to him in trouble. We are comforted when in his name, our pastors forgive our sins. We draw strength when we remember he came to us in our baptism and put his name on us that in his name we are saved. We call his name like we call a beloved father, mother and grandparent, knowing we are loved and they want to share our lives. We use his name to praise him and thank him for his love and mercy.

Originally posted at What does this Mean? Blog: https://whatdoesthismean.blog

The posts in the blog What does this Mean? are now available at What does this Mean? | Rev. Robert E. Smith | Substack

Rev. Robert E. Smith

Pastor Emeritus

Fort Wayne, Indiana

©2018, rev. 2020 Robert E. Smith. All rights reserved. Permission granted to copy, share and display freely for non-commercial purposes. Direct all other rights and permissions inquiries to cosmithb@msn.com

Faith

Encore Post: Faith is one of those “church words” that everyone knows and uses, but finds hard to pin down. We use it to mean everything from a family of church bodies, to a system of things people believe, to trust in God, to accepting something is true, but that we cannot prove. The Greek language uses one word for both faith and belief. (πιστεύω — pisteoo — to believe, πίστις; pistis; Faith) When the New Testament uses the word, it uses it for both what we believe in and our trust in God to keep his promises to save us.

When the Bible talks about faith in God, (Saving Faith, Justifying Faith) it means a trust in God to keep his promises, especially his promise to save us. This trust is not something we create by things we do. It is created in us when the Holy Spirit comes to us through the Gospel, Baptism or the Lord’s Supper. (Romans 1:17, John 20:30-31, Ephesians 1:13, Romans 1:16-17) Our faith clings to Jesus, believing that his sufferings and death on the cross forgives our sins and gives us everlasting life. This faith responds to the Grace given to us in God’s Word and the Sacraments. It thanks God for his mercy, praises him and gives us the desire to serve God and our neighbors. (much more on this later. For now, see Ephesians 2:10)

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Rev. Robert E. Smith

Fort Wayne, Indiana

Means of Grace

Encore Post: Now and then, the news is filled with excitement over lottery jackpots worth hundreds of millions of dollars. Long lines form at convenience stores as everyone wants to buy a ticket. For all but a handful of people, the only value of the ticket is entertainment. Yet the very lucky winner is very happy indeed. She has won a fortune! Yet her bank account hasn’t changed a penny. Until the money is deposited, nothing has changed — other than she discovers she has more cousins than she ever knew she had!

Because of the death and resurrection of Jesus, we have amazing riches in heaven. God loves us, gives us his grace. We are his children. Our sins are forgiven and we will live forever. Yet without a way of these things coming to us, it is not yet applied to us. To give these gifts to us, God uses the Means of Grace.

The Means of Grace are visible means by which God the Holy Spirit gives the gifts Jesus earned by his death on the cross. He uses these to plant faith in our hearts, strengthen and preserve it. Through them, we receive the forgiveness of sins, life and salvation. He uses this to enter our hearts and live there.

These means are the Gospel of Jesus Christ, Holy Baptism, the Lord’s Supper and perhaps Absolution. Baptism and the Lord’s Supper and sometimes absolution are called sacraments.

Rev. Robert E. Smith

Fort Wayne, Indiana

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Baptized into Christ’s Body

Encore Post: Baptism connects us with Christ. We are united with him in his death and when he rose from the dead, we rise with him. That is about as personal a relationship as we can get. Yet there is more. When we are united with Christ, we are also made a part of his body, the Church. We now have brothers and sisters in Christ with whom we will live forever.

When Jesus gave his final instructions to his apostles, he commanded them to make disciples from all peoples, baptizing them and teaching them. (Matthew 28:18-20) When we were baptized, we were put into Christ’s body, one of many members. God knew that we would need each other and so bound us together. (1 Corinthians 12:12-27) In this one body, we are united by the Holy Spirit. We have one Lord, one hope, one faith and one God and Father of us all. (Ephesians 4:4-6)

For this reason, the church ordinarily baptizes new Christians, young and old, during worship services on a Sunday morning or during the Vigil of Easter. In this way, all of the new Christian’s spiritual family can welcome them and rejoice with God that his child who once was lost has now been found and brought home to be him and them forever.

Rev. Robert E. Smith

Concordia Theological Seminary

Fort Wayne, Indiana

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Stay Calm and Remember Your Baptism

Encore Post: While Baptism is a one-time event, its blessings last a lifetime. Baptism is an event outside of us, observed by witnesses and recorded in books. Especially when we are baptized as children, there is no question that God loves us, that he adopted us as his children and that we will live with him forever. When we are baptized, we realize that we are not seekers, but that God sought us and found us. We can be sure that we are saved and that we will live with God the Father, Son and Holy Spirit forever.

In our sin-filled world, where we are at war with the world, the devil and our flesh, life can get confusing very fast. As we are confronted with our sinful nature, we may wonder how God can love us, whether we please him or can ever measure up to his standards. At times like these, we can remember our baptism. No matter what happens, this is the central fact of our lives. I am baptized.

St. Paul reminds us that in baptism, we are united to Christ in his death. (Romans 6:3-11) Christ bore our sins on the cross, suffered and died to pay the full penalty we deserved for them. Because we are baptized, when he died, we died. When He rose from the dead, we rise to new life. Now we can face anything that comes our way.

Each day, we can prepare ourselves in prayer for the day. We can make the sign of the cross, remembering that we are baptized, thank God for his mercies and remember that nothing can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord. (Romans 8:37-39)

Rev. Robert E. Smith

Concordia Theological Seminary

Fort Wayne, Indiana

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Who Should Be Baptized?

Encore Post: At first, this seems like a strange question. Since God uses baptism to save, why not baptize everyone? In fact, the words Jesus used to institute baptism says: “Going, make disciples of all peoples, baptizing them in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit.” (my translation of Matthew 28:19) The reason why this is important question is that baptism is not some kind of magic spell that works as long as you do everything right. Baptism saves everyone who believes in its promises that God adopts them as his children, forgives their sins for the sake of the death and resurrection of Jesus and saves them from sin, death and the power of the devil. It is for everyone who is baptized in the name of the Triune God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

It is at that point that Evangelicals object to the baptism of infants and young children. How can children believe if they do not understand any of this? This concern comes from a different understanding of faith than Lutherans have. We see faith as a trust in God and his promises. James tells us that the demons believe, too, and they shudder. (James 2:19) No one trusts more than little children. Jesus holds them up as examples of faith, in fact. (Mark 10:13-16, Luke 18:15-17) I’ll say more on infant baptism in a later post.

For the same reason, many Protestants urge people baptized as children to be baptized again. The first Christians to do this lived during the Reformation are were called Anabaptists, which means: “baptized again.” Lutherans believe that once a person is baptized in the name of the Triune God that they do not need to be baptized again. Since God himself is the one baptizing and in it he makes us his children, sealing us with the Holy Spirit forever, we do not need to be re baptized.

The only time Lutherans would re-baptize someone would be if their church was not Christian at all. So, Mormons, who believe in a false god (Their father god is a human being like us who grew to godhood. He is a separate being from his literal, physical son, Jesus and their Holy Spirit), come to faith in the real Jesus, would be baptized. Of growing concern for us are churches, including ones that call themselves Lutheran, that baptize in names other that Father, Son and Holy Spirit. These Christians might need to be baptized again so they can be sure it was in the name God himself reveals to us and with which Jesus commanded us to baptize.

In short, baptism is for people who believe in what it promises — that for the sake of Jesus and his sacrifice our sins are forgiven, we belong to him and are sealed with the name of the one and only true God, the Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

Rev. Robert E. Smith

Concordia Theological Seminary

Fort Wayne, Indiana

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Is Baptism Necessary?

Encore Post: At first, it seems like a strange question to ask — even the wrong question to ask. Since Baptism is God’s work to save us, why wouldn’t we want to be baptized? There are several different reasons why this issue comes up. The first arose during the Reformation. The Anabaptist movement believed that children are innocent and that God does not hold them accountable until a later age. In the Augsburg Confession (Article Nine) and the Apology of the Augsburg Confession (Article Nine) firmly rejects this argument (more in a later post on infant baptism).

The other reason is that in this sinful world, sometimes people die without being baptized. Lutheran theologians answer the question by saying Baptism is necessary but not absolutely necessary for salvation. Baptism is necessary because God commands us to baptize and to be baptized. (Matthew 28:18-20, Acts 2:37-38) Jesus tells us that you cannot enter the kingdom of God if you are not born of water and the Spirit. (John 3:5) Yet the Scripture is very clear that the preaching of the Gospel also is a means of grace, which creates faith (Romans 10:14-17), forgives sins and brings everlasting life. (Romans 1:16)

So, God’s word can and does save, even when the opportunity for a Christian to be baptized has not come. But God is so rich in his mercy, that he gives his grace over and over again, in the form of the preaching of the Gospel, the baptizing of his children and in the Sacrament of the Lord’s Supper and in Absolution. Each means brings forgiveness of sins, life and salvation in its own way, providing for us certainty that we are God’s own and will live with him forever. We refuse them at our own peril, for God gives them to us for our good and strengthening in the face of the assaults of the world, devil and our sinful desires. While God requires us to do so, so they are necessary, it more that we get to enjoy these blessings.

Rev. Robert E. Smith

Concordia Theological Seminary

Fort Wayne, Indiana

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Baptism Saves You

Encore Post: Perhaps the point of greatest conflict between Lutherans and the Evangelical movement is our confidence that the Bible teaches that baptism saves you. As I noted in another post, most Protestants think of Baptism as a simple ceremony where a Christian declares that he puts his faith in Jesus as his personal savior. They think of baptism as something we do and so think that to say that baptism saves us, that it is the same thing as saying salvation is something we earn by what we do. Yet the Bible clearly says, “Baptism saves you” (1 Peter 3:21-22) and”unless one is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God” (John 3:5)

If Lutherans believed that baptism was something we do, we also would reject the teaching that it saves. After all, the heart and center of the Lutheran confession is salvation is by grace alone through faith alone for the sake of Christ alone. But we believe what the Scriptures teach, that salvation is God’s work, not ours. God the Father saved us, not by what we have done, but washing us and renewing us in baptism by the Holy Spirit. (Titus 3:4-7) Jesus gave himself for the church, cleansing us by the water and the word. (Ephesians 5:25-27) In Christ, through faith, God has buried us with Jesus in baptism and made us alive with Christ, forgiving our sins.(Colossians 2:11-14) So, when we say we are saved by baptism, we are saying that God saves us by baptism.

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