Baptism – Page 2 – What Does This Mean?

The Three Ways God Cares for Us

Encore Post: 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, 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.

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The Sabbath Rest

Encore Post: 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 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 use 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.

Rev. Robert E. Smith

Concordia Theological Seminary

Fort Wayne, Indiana

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Pray, Praise and Give Thanks

Encore Post: 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 command 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 to do. 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 that 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.

Rev. Robert E. Smith

Concordia Theological Seminary

Fort Wayne, Indiana

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©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@gmail.com

Faith

Faith is one of those “church words” that everyone knows and uses, but find 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

Concordia Theological Seminary

Means of Grace

Encore Post: Every 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 then 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

Concordia Theological Seminary

Fort Wayne, Indiana

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One Flesh in Two Persons: Marriage

Encore Post: For six days, God had been creating the world. He spoke and light appeared, earth took form, land appeared out of the great sea. The sun, moon and stars shown in the sky. Plants grew on the ground, fish swam in the sea and animals roamed the earth.

Now Father, Son and Holy Spirit conferred and said let us make man just like us. And so he made us – male and female. He planted a garden, came down and formed Adam (His name means “ground, soil” in Hebrew) from the soil and breathed life into him. But something still was not quite right. Adam was alone.

So God brought all the animals to him. He named them all one by one. While they were good, something just was not right. Dogs and Cats just didn’t do it. So God made woman from his own bones. Now at last man was just like God – two persons in one flesh. Adam called her woman — she-man and named her Eve–life, because she would be the mother of all people. God’s creation was finally complete. He had made marriage and the family. This was very good.

This perfect image of God, holy like him and the closest human beings have to understanding the nature of God, was ruined by sin and its consequences. When people make themselves the center of the universe there is no room for a god or another. Now sin tempts us to look everywhere for pleasure than in the very good gifts God has given to us. As we turn our hearts from our beloved and the Beloved, they grown cold and unfeeling.

This is why God condemns adultery, pornography, same sex relationships and acts, pre-marital sex, sexual assault, rape and all other seeking of desire outside of the love of one man and woman, united in marriage for a lifetime. It divides what God himself has joined together and marrs the image he placed in us. It destroys the image of the marriage of Christ to the Church and obscures the work he has done for us.

But when we were lost, unfaithful to God our husband, Jesus came and sought us to be his holy bride, with his own blood he bought us and for our life he died. When he found us, he washed us, cleansed us in baptism, so that he could present us as his radiant bride. One the last day, he will come for us, and bring us to the wedding and the marriage reception that lasts forever.

Old Man, New Man

Encore Post: When the Holy Spirit uses his gifts to create faith in our heart, he does more than just change our minds. He creates a whole new person within us. (2 Corinthians 4:6, 5:17) Our new self, our new Adam or Eve, loves God, is thankful for the salvation he won for us when Jesus died on the cross and desires to do good works, serving God and our neighbors. Our new person produces truly good works, deeds done because we love God. The Holy Spirit makes us more and more holy through these things we do for him and produces his fruits: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. (Galatians 5:22-23)

Yet, in this life, even though our old self, sometimes called by St. Paul the flesh, is drowned in the waters of Holy Baptism (Romans 6:3-4), it is not quite dead yet. Our old self seeks to serve ourselves and looks out for our own interests, to satisfy our bodily hungers and appetites rather than channel them to serve the way God made them. It seeks praise from the world and fills our hearts and minds with evil thoughts and desires. Every day in this life is a battle between our Old Adam and our New Adam, our Old Eve and our New Eve.

The Holy Spirit does not abandon us to fight this battle alone. He uses God’s law to remind us of our sin, the Gospel to forgive that sin, reminds us of our baptism and its power, feeds us with Christ’s Body and Blood in the Lord’s Supper and uses the ears and the voice of the pastors he calls to care for us to hear our confessions of sin and forgive them with the sure promise of our Lord Jesus.

We are never alone, then. Our Counselor stays by our side, prays for us and calls to our mind and heart all that Jesus promised us. With him, we will grow holier until the day death finally kills the Old Person in us and we go with him to be with Jesus until the day the resurrection of all flesh.

The Need of a New Heart

Encore Post: God used Moses to give his people the Lord’s Law on Mt. Sinai. It was the Lord’s holy will for Israel. And in effect, the way that Israel was called to live was to serve as an effective witness to the nations that surrounded it. Their way of life was to point to the Law of the Lord and bring life to the nations. That is why that he calls us to teach our children and their children. I think that is a call to remember the 3rd commandment because on the sabbath day Israel was to remember what the Lord had done for them and their salvation (Exodus out of Egypt). The generation with Moses were either eye witnesses or they were the generation that followed the eye witnesses of those events.

Israel was told not to forget the things they had seen, lest they lose life. But the problem was that Israel had a bad heart. And that is our problem too. We don’t listen and take to heart what the Lord our God tells us. If we look long and hard at our own hearts, or better yet, let’s let God talk about our heart. According to Him, we have a heart of stone. Israel could not be the witness the Lord called them to be, and neither can we. We utterly fail to walk in the way of the Lord. And we can’t make our hearts of stone alive. We need a new heart.

Dear Christian, you have been given a new heart, a new spirit.. This happened at your Baptism. This heart is made in the image of the One, the Word made flesh. Jesus walked in the ways of the Lord our God, His Father. He walked in the statutes and laws of His Father on your behalf. It was through Him and by Him that the nations learn of the mercy of God. And because of this wonderful One, Jesus Christ, you have life everlasting. Your heart is made alive in Christ, through baptism into His name. There at those baptismal waters you were made God’s child. He made Himself your God. And in and through Christ you certainly and do keep the laws and statutes of your Heavenly Father, for He has done them for you. And now we want to walk in His Way which leads us to life everlasting.

Rev. Jacob Hercamp
St. Peter’s Lutheran Church
La Grange, MO

See Also: The Law of God is Good and Wise | Fence, Mirror and Guidebook | What is Baptism? | Baptized into Christ’s Body | Sabbath as Day the of Salvation

The Faith of Children

Encore Post: Evangelicals reject infant baptism is they think faith is all about understanding and agreeing to a series of teachings about God, Jesus in particular, and how we are saved. Since infants and young children have little ability to understand things intellectually. For Lutherans and the Holy Scriptures, faith is not an exercise of our reason, but a trust in God’s promises.

The problem with understanding faith this way is that even adults do not always have an ability to think, and, when they do, may still reject the Gospel. Lutheran theologians point out that we do not think when we sleep or in a coma. Sometimes disease can take from us our mind in old age or brain trauma. Yet such adults are not considered by anyone to have lost their faith.

On the contrary, Jesus and the Apostles tell us children do have faith. In fact, Jesus praises their ability to trust God. (Matthew 18:2-6, Mark 10:13-16) John the Baptist and Timothy believed in the womb (Luke 1:41-44, 2 Timothy 3:15) So, faith is all about trusting in God to save us and children are the most trusting of all people. Jesus does not urge children to become more like adults when it comes to faith. He urges adults to become more like children.

Children are Sinners, Too

Encore Posts: On the surface, we might think that the Evangelical challenge to infant baptism is about the practice itself. If the objection was that simple, perhaps there would be much less passion in the debate.

I believe the real issues are deeper than that. For Lutherans, the emotion behind our defense of the baptism of infants comes from the assurance that our children are saved by baptism. For Evangelicals, the objection comes from their belief that children are not accountable for their sins until they can ask Jesus to be their personal savior and because they believe baptism is a human act of obedience. In short, they do not believe in original sin.

Original sin is the name theologians give to the teaching of Holy Scripture that all people are born as sinners and that that state is inherited from Adam and Eve, resulting from their first sin in Eden. The big problem that we have is less that we commit sins, than that we are conceived sinful. (Psalm 51:5)

Everyone, including children, are accountable to God for who they are and the sins they commit from the very beginning of their lives. (Romans 3:10-19) Every thought we have inclines to evil (Genesis 6:5, Genesis 8:21). These thoughts are the cause of all the sins we commit. (Matthew 15:17-20) Only by being born of water and the Spirit can we see God’s kingdom. That is why we baptize infants and children.