Anglican Perspectives

Baptism is God’s Work, not Yours

By the Rt. Rev. Steve Wood

 

Recently a couple approached me, wanting to join St. Andrew’s, asking when the next baptisms would take place.  After a brief conversation in which I discovered that they had both been previously baptized (her, three times and him, twice), I assured them that baptism is God’s work and not theirs and that their first baptism was true, genuine and satisfactory.

 

In our conversation I walked them through the following:

 

1.  Baptism is a work of God.  It is a divine work.  It is not invented by man but commanded by God and witnessed to by the Gospel.  The foundation of the sacrament of baptism is not the faith of the one being baptized, rather it is the word of command and promise spoken by our Lord.

 

Matthew 28.19-20
[Jesus said] Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age.

 

2.  Baptism is a sign of Christ’s death, which only happened once.  To be rebaptised is to cast doubt on the efficacy of Christ’s death and substitutes your work for His.  For if baptism is based on Christ’s work it is perfect the first time. But, if it is based on your work it is imperfect every time.

 

Baptismal Font
Baptismal font in the Cathedral of Magdeburg, Germany. The font is made of red porphyry (Porfido rosso) from a site near Assuan, Egypt. Originally designed as a fountain with a hole in the center, the item may be thousands of years old, and is still used for baptism today.

 

1 Peter 3. 18-22
For Christ also suffered once for sins, the righteous for the unrighteous, that he might bring us to God, being put to death in the flesh but made alive in the spirit, in which he went and proclaimed to the spirits in prison, because they formerly did not obey, when God’s patience waited in the days of Noah, while the ark was being prepared, in which a few, that is, eight persons, were brought safely through water.  Baptism, which corresponds to this, now saves you, not as a removal of dirt from the body but as an appeal to God for a good conscience, through the resurrection of Jesus Christ, who has gone into heaven and is at the right hand of God, with angels, authorities, and powers having been subjected to him.

 

Romans 6.3-11
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.

 

3.  Addressing their concern that their baptism as an infant was illegitimate, I suggested that we see two things in Scripture.  First, in the Old Testament we read that God instructed Abraham to circumcise male infants (Genesis 17.12) as a sign of their inclusion in the covenantal community of Israel.  The practice of baptizing infants is a sign of the new covenant promises extended to children of the covenantal community and is consistent with the witness of Scripture.  Secondly, to the charge that we see no command of Christ to baptize children, we respond by saying (as Luther noted) that neither do we read of Christ commanding the baptism of adults, or men, or women.  Instead, the dominical command was that we are to baptize “all nations” of which children are a significant number.

 

4.  Pastors who demand rebaptism as a condition of church membership reveal an ignorance of the scriptural nature of baptism, cast doubt upon baptism as an effective means of grace, and do spiritual damage to the individuals they seek to rebaptise by undermining their confidence in Christ’s promise.  In his Concerning Rebaptism: A Letter to Two Pastors, Luther wrote:

 

It is the devil’s masterpiece when he can get someone to compel the Christian to leave the righteousness of faith for a righteousness of works [by requiring rebaptism], as he forced the Galatians and Corinthians on to works though, as St. Paul writes, they were doing well in their faith and running rightly in Christ (Galatians 5.7). So now, as he sees we Germans through the gospel acknowledging Christ in a fine way and believing as they should, so that they thereby were righteous before God, he interferes and tears them away from this righteousness, as if it were vain, and leads them into rebaptizing as if this were a better righteousness. He causes them thus to reject their former righteousness as ineffectual and to fall prey to a false righteousness. What shall I say? We Germans remain true Galatians. For whoever permits himself be rebaptized rejects his former faith and righteousness, and is guilty of sin and condemnation. Of all things such behavior is most horrible. As St. Paul says, the Galatians have severed themselves from Christ (Galatians 5.4), even making Christ a servant of sin, when they circumcise themselves.

 

Bishop Steve Wood is Bishop of the Anglican Diocese of the Carolinas and is based in Mt. Pleasant, SC.

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