#37. Romans 6:3 - How to Piss Off an Entire Religion (Conciliation Series, Part XIV)

 Part IV: God’s Conciliation, Confirmed

The following is an excerpt from “The Baptist Faith and Message 2000,” from the sub-header “Baptism and the Lord’s Supper:”

“Christian baptism is the immersion of a believer in water in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. It is an act of obedience symbolizing the believer’s faith in a crucified, buried, and risen Saviour, the believer’s death to sin, the burial of the old life, and the resurrection to walk in newness of life in Christ Jesus. It is a testimony to his faith in the final resurrection of the dead. Being a church ordinance, it is a prerequisite to the privileges of church membership and to the Lord’s Supper.”

Ladies and gentlemen, I am now, in the span of a blog post, going to completely expose this statement for the foolish perversion of Scripture that it is.

Or are you ignorant that whoever are baptized into Christ Jesus, are baptized into His death?

That “or” there is crucial, because it follows from 6:2’s “don’t you know you’ve died to sin?” He points out, now, that you have one of two options. You either “recognized that you died to sin due to Christ Jesus, or you’re ignorant to the fact.” Ignorant carries with it an element of “arrogance,” in our modern usage of it, so I’ll clarify that the original Greek here says “YE-ARE-UN-KNOWING.” It simply means, “you either know this, or you don’t.”

The “whoever” here are we, who died to sin, which are the saints. As we know, it was not our decision to be pulled into this. The best example of what I mean can be understood by studying the least of the saints, being Paul. Check out Acts 9:1-6:

Now Saul, still breathing out threatening and murder against the disciples of the Lord, according to the chief priest, requests from him letters for Damascus to the synagogues, so that, if he should be finding any who are of the way, both men and women, he may be leading them bound to Jerusalem.

Now in his going he came to be nearing Damascus, and suddenly a light out of heaven flashes about him. And falling on the earth, he hears a voice saying to him, “Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting Me?”

Yet he said, "Who are you, Lord?" Yet He said, "I am Jesus Whom you are persecuting. Nevertheless, rise and enter the city, and it will be spoken to you what you must be doing.”

So, we now have a solid example of how Christ Jesus draws His body to Him: overwhelms them with grace (1 Tim. 1:14.) Paul did not choose to be enslaved to Christ, here, but was severed anyway (Rom. 1:1.) He was called, not given an option. There was no physical requirement for him to be brought into grace at all, here. Christ blinded Paul – not Paul achieved salvation.

Why does this matter? We must see, conclusively, that Christ does not require anything of us (Acts 17:25,) because once we see this, the rest of this verse becomes far clearer to us. It is only believers that “died to sin.” We are not asked to “cease” from sinning in this verse, or “do something” for Christ, because Christ Himself did not “cease” from sinning. He didn’t sin at all, but did die to sin.

With that, we have that happy trigger-word that people have formed an entirely new religion from. What, pray tell, is baptism? The average guy on the street will tell you, “it’s when you are dipped in water in church to get saved.” A priest will say something similar to the Baptist creed above, that “it’s a symbol of your faith in Christ’s death, that you begin a new life with him when you do so.” It seals the deal, so to speak.

I am not an average guy on the street, nor am I a Christian. The term “faith” is not mentioned here. It is not going to be mentioned for the next three chapters. It’s not the focus, here, nor will it be for the time being. Faith is a channel through which we understand what Paul is saying here, at all. Why would he wait for six chapters, after telling us of our blessings in Christ, and then go, “Hey, by the way, none of this is possible unless you go to a church and dip yourself in water!”? It doesn’t add up to anything sensible. If this were true, he might as well have told us about our baptism at Romans 3:21, right? Or maybe in 3:23, upon explaining the faith, as the Baptists so heartily correlate baptism with a sign of your faith.

You are baptized into Christ Jesus. Paul doesn’t say, “it’s an option.” He says, as a believer, you either know this, or you don’t. This isn’t “optional.” If this were a physical deed, Paul would have said, “You need to go be baptized, or else.” Indeed, baptism itself was a physical rite of passage for the Israelites, back in the day, and was directly correlated to “if you’re going to even speak with me, you need to be cleansed first.” It was a temporary deed.

Some will call baptism by its simple definition, being a “washing,” and this is true, in some ways, on its surface (Mart 7:4, 8, Heb. 9:10.) However, this obviously does not account for every use of the word baptism, and to proclaim that it is a literal “washing” every time with no proper context can lead to some pretty wild results (see: the above Baptist belief.)

Baptism itself is not merely a “washing,” but a washing that carries with it a spiritual significance. We covered the administrations of God over certain periods of time, when discussing the eons. That knowledge will benefit us greatly, here. The first “washing” that you could theoretically consider a “baptism” could be the flood of Noah, where all aside from those on the ark are cleansed from the earth. This, of course, is a bit of a stretch, because Scripture never discusses that deluge as though it’s a baptism, but I don’t see why you could not see the great flood in this manner.

The first major documentation of Israel being baptized are when they travel across the ground of the Red Sea. Observe 1 Cor. 10:1-2:

I do not want you to be ignorant, brethren, that our fathers all were under the cloud, and all passed through the sea, and all are baptized into Moses in the cloud and in the sea…”

Yet what does Exodus explicitly mention concerning this baptism? Observe Ex. 14:22:

Then the sons of Israel entered into the midst of the sea on dry ground, and the waters were to them a wall on their right and on their left.

The Israelites were on dry ground. Water did not touch them. And yet they were baptized!! How can this be? Moreover, the sons of Israel are baptized in cloud, as well! How that that be?

The notion that spiritual baptism is in place, here, and not water baptism, is evident in Scripture, as well. It would be crazy if John directly said that this would be the case, and- oh, wait, what’s this??

For I, indeed, am baptizing you in water for repentance, yet He Who is coming after me is stronger than I, Whose sandals I am not competent to bear. He will be baptizing you in holy spirit and fire…

Oh, right, Matthew 3:11. Well, that’s just one verse, I mean…

I, [John,] indeed, baptize you in water, yet He shall be baptizing you in holy spirit.

Okay, that’s Mark 1:8, but-

And I, [John,] was not aware of Him, but He Who sends me to be baptizing in water, That One said to me, ‘On Whomever you may be perceiving the spirit descending and remaining on Him, This is He Who is baptizing in holy spirit.’

John 1:33, I get it, I get it! Goodness, fine, yes, Jesus baptized in holy spirit, sure, so, maybe we’re taking John’s words out of context? Maybe this is just ‘Jesus’ and not the ascended ‘Christ Jesus!’ Yeah, yeah, that’s it.

John, indeed, baptizes in water, yet you shall be baptized in holy spirit after not many of these days.

Wait, wait, but that’s Jesus speaking there, in Acts 1:5… wait just a minute. Doesn’t He ascend into heaven like 4 verses later?? So wait, the baptism in holy spirit hadn’t happened yet? Then what about…

And amazed were the believers of the Circumcision, whoever come together with Peter, seeing that on the nations also the gratuity of the holy spirit has been poured out.

I mean sure, that’s Acts 10:45, but baptism isn’t mentioned, there. That could mean anything!

Now as I, [Peter,] begin to speak, the holy spirit falls on them, even as on us also in the beginning. Now I am reminded of the declaration of the Lord, as He said that ‘John, indeed, baptizes in water, yet you shall be baptized in holy spirit.’

So even Peter comes to this realization. The evidence that this is not a physical rite of passage keeps mounting and mounting. Eventually, we must set aside our religious beliefs and consider the notion that baptism is not always directly concerned with water, but a spiritual cleansing. The passage through the Red Sea, and the baptisms performed in Ezekiel (47:1-12) and 1 Kings (1:23-29) are all types of the baptism which is about to be – the type that Paul presents in Romans 6:3. This lines right up with the dichotomy that Paul presented between man and Christ (Rom. 5:13-14.) Man’s understanding of baptism has become deformed and incongruent with Scripture’s discussion of it, because man is completely blinded by the physical reality of the world. This still comes back to, ‘man believes they must achieve something for God,’ whereas God says the exact opposite (Eph. 2:10.)

We are baptized, by holy spirit, and not by man, into Christ Jesus. We are baptized into Him, which is why we share any of His allotment to reign in righteousness at all (Rom. 5:17, 21.) The verse does not say, as the Baptist creed does, that “we are baptized into His faith,” nor does it say that the believer’s death to sin takes precedent. Our death to sin is the effect of His death to sin – nothing we accomplished in this chain of events. It’s not an “acknowledgement” of Christ as our Lord, or a chosen “conformity” to His death, or the “voluntary giving-up of our past life,” being born again or something. We are not justified by baptism that “gives us faith,” nor are we “enlightened” on God and His actions in physically dipping ourselves in water. We do not “begin a new journey” because we chose to be baptized.

Baptism in spirit is a part of Christ’s work. God chooses Who to save, and chooses a spiritual baptism into His Son, Who died to sin, as His method of doing so. People get so hung up on the physical baptism that they forget that the physical is a type of that which is about to be (Rom. 5:13-14, 1 Cor. 15:45-47.) To deny this is to begin teaching a ritualistic salvation, which are the markings of a cult, not the Creator of the universe.

Sorry, Baptists.

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With the definition of “baptism” properly defined, we can return to the original topic. We are baptized into Christ Jesus. This is, then, a spiritual unification with the ascended Christ. This is not to say that this “fills us full with spirit.” Being “filled full with spirit” is something that occurs over the course of your maturity. This is (relatively speaking) something that we do, in effect of this baptism. God entreats us to “Be filled with spirit!” in Eph. 5:18. It’s something that God has enabled us to effect. We are baptized once, but “filled with spirit” more than once.

How do we know that there’s a difference between the two? Well, because of the last part of the question. Look again:

Or are you ignorant that whoever are baptized into Christ Jesus, are baptized into His death?

We are baptized into Christ’s death, which happened approximately one time. We are unified with Him, in His ultimate suffering. Into His death we are baptized. When God entombed Jesus, He entombed His body, the corpse of His Image. Christ died to sin, and thus we died to sin, being unified with Him so closely by holy spirit. By this baptism, this spiritual baptism into our Lord, His death to sin, literally, is our death.

- GerudoKing