What is Baptism?
All Christians agree that baptism is something that every Christian should have happen to them. All agree that it is water that should be used. For the most part, all agree that the water represents how Jesus cleanses us from our sins. That is where the agreement ends and controversies begin. Sometimes these disagreements even lead to divisions, some of which come to define a good portion of a new tradition (e.g., Baptists). Even an element which causes division over baptism reveals another common set of assumptions.
Baptism, in some way, signifies the inclusion of its recipient into the body of Christ. But what does that mean? Are such recipients in full union with Christ? Are they members of the visible church, even while we cannot see into the heart to tell whether they are also members of the invisible church? When one ponders these questions, it becomes clearer that more studied disagreements over baptism are really consequences of different views of the church.
The Word and Concept
The Greek verb βαπτίζω means simply “I baptize,” so, in and of itself, it would not seem to give much help as to its range of meaning. In the biblical text, it is used for immersing in water as well as for dipping in water. One of the most persistent myths unique to American Christianity is that the word “always means” immersion. This was no doubt ingrained in the popular consciousness from Bible dictionaries written by authors who arbitrarily concealed the New Testament uses of the word that did not feature in literal baptism narratives. That is understandable up to a point. But this is a presupposition operating and no longer an unrestricted word study.
Two New Testament passages are instructive. They may even cause us to wonder whether or not the language of “down” and “up” in relation to the Jordan River in the early Gospel narratives really demand immersion even of those passages. At any rate, consider the case of Jesus’s criticism of the abused purity rituals of the Pharisees, as well as the author of Hebrews describing the old covenant rituals.
“and when they come from the marketplace, they do not eat unless they wash. And there are many other traditions that they observe, such as the washing of cups and pots and copper vessels and dining couches” (Mk. 7:4).
“[those] deal only with food and drink and various washings, regulations for the body imposed until the time of reformation” (Heb. 9:10).
Even the distorted practice of the Pharisees was a misapplication of the “washings” prescribed in the Law of Moses (cf. Ex. 30:18-21; Lev. 14), but the distortion was not an addition of water but rather a misapplication of it. The washings (baptisms) would have held in both the design and the distortion.
Baptism has long been called a “sacrament,” though modern Evangelicals prefer the word “ordinance” to the degree that they consider “sacramentalism” to be one of the chief characteristics of Roman Catholicism. If we choose to use the word “ordinance,” our emphasis may be on Christ’s institution of the practice. Sacrament encompasses this meaning, as well as others. A sacrament is a means of grace. The word comes from the same root as holy in Latin, or sacred. It highlights the aspect of gospel mystery.
Background and Institution
There were baptisms before Jesus commanded the church to baptize. As a matter of fact, when Naman went to wash his leprous skin in the Jordan River, the Septuagint of 2 Kings 5:14 reads that he “dipped himself (ἐβαπτίσατο).” Scholars can even tell you all about various kinds of “washings” conducted for religious purposes among the pagans: “In religion, all of antiquity attributed a symbolic meaning to water.”1 Or one could simply recall that John the Baptist didn’t get that name for nothing. Indeed it was he who baptized Jesus (Mat. 3:13-17) and a good argument can be made that the expression, “John’s baptism” (Acts 19:3),2 while signifying distinctions between it and that practiced by the constituted church, is not wholly different,3 though one could point to the distinction between “a baptism of repentance” (Acts 19:4) of the former, as opposed to the fullness of the gospel message.4 At any rate, “the essential identity of the Johannine and Christian baptism” was affirmed by the great Reformed theologians, John Calvin, Francis Turretin, Petrus van Mastricht, Wilhelmus à Brakel, and Herman Bavinck.
Jesus instituted baptism for the church in the Great Commission passage:
“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” (Mat. 28:19-20).
Much could be said about this passage by way of correction to modern Evangelical practice. I will limit myself only to the relationship between the act of “making disciples” and the act of “baptizing them.” Modern Baptists see this as an obvious defeater for baptizing anyone who is not a disciple by virtue of some credible profession of faith. In other words, they see the relationship between these two actions as not a relation between two actions at all. Rather, an action is related to an identity—baptizing them. In other words, the Baptist is occupied with the “fact” that one must be a disciple first.
However, that leads to some odd conclusions when one thinks it through. Precisely when should we begin discipling someone under our care? Should we begin discipling them once they are a disciple first? If ever there was a cart to be put before a horse in our ecclesiology, I suggest that we have found it here. A loving parent does not begin praying or memorizing Scripture with their child only once they have done it well enough. They do those things that they may be done well enough. That is what discipleship is. The leader leads. “Disciple” is not an engraving on a deer tag. It is fundamentally an immediate and ongoing commitment of teacher and learner, such that, in the commission the making of disciples is the general program, the other actions following being clauses. Baptizing is simply the first clause because it is the sign of inclusion.
Baptism is the New Testament sign and seal of the covenant of grace, whereas circumcision functioned that way in the Old Testament. So it marks out one as belonging to the community of God’s covenant people. Since it is a visible sign, it matches perfectly to the visible sense of the community. This is crucial in understanding the ecclesiological background that divides Presbyterians and Baptists, even where the latter want to subscribe to covenant theology.
Substance and Sign
Whatever other relationship a sign has with its substance (and controversies will emerge over this), all reasonable parties should at least agree that the substance has a greater reality than the sign. Sometimes this “greater” reality refers to the substance being the end goal off in the future: some fulfillment of a promise. Other times that which is “greater” is greater by the greatest degree. In other words, an eternal reality or a supernatural action is being represented in a way that those in space and time can best process the information. The sacraments are said to be a mystery first of all in that the infinite and eternal God Himself is He who ultimately performs the action. When Joel 2 speaks of God pouring cleansing water out on sinners, or when Colossians 2 speaks of the circumcision not made by hands, we are not being brought to the sign as an end in itself but to the substance.
The reason that baptism must be performed “in the name of” the triune God is because God is authorizing the giving of the sign in His stead—that is, as a means of participating in the substance in a gracious accommodation or condescension. There is a simple dramatization that everyone can understand. While it is not “just a sign,” since the sign cannot be divorced from its proper substance, neither is it “the thing itself.”
The answer to Question 94 of the Westminster Shorter Catechism concisely summarizes what we have introduced thus far:
“Baptism is a Sacrament, wherein the washing with water, in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost, doth signify and seal our ingrafting into Christ, and partaking of the benefits of the covenant of grace, and our engagement to be the Lord’s.”
We see this most clearly in the main physical element involved: water.
There is a surface incongruity in this practice. Water represents in the sign what blood does in reality. But this is not a difficult obstacle. The cleansing of water is the easy part. We do it all the time with our hands before meals or in the shower. How blood cleanses is the more difficult idea. But that is what analogies are meant to do. They help us understand a more difficult concept by means of an easier concept, provided that the relevant commonality really does hold. The New Testament is abundantly clear that it is the blood of Jesus that accomplishes something like the washing away of our sin: “the blood of Jesus his Son cleanses us from all sin” (1 Jn. 1:7).
“How much more, then, will the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered himself unblemished to God, cleanse our consciences from acts that lead to death, so that we may serve the living God! … In fact, the law requires that nearly everything be cleansed with blood, and without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness” (Heb. 9:14, 22).
It is worth pondering deeply about something as simple as water. If we did not so quickly gloss over it, we might think twice about our dogmatism with respect to the exact mode. Hodge remarks, “The only necessary thing is to make such an application of water to the person, as shall render the act significant of the purification of the soul.”5 Sprinkling, dipping, or immersion all do that. If someone replies that immersion does so more effectively, two replies might be given.
The first is to remind them that Peter said the same to Jesus about the footwashing he was given: “Lord, not my feet only but also my hands and my head!” (Jn. 13:9) How did Jesus respond? “The one who has bathed does not need to wash, except for his feet, but is completely clean. And you are clean” (v. 10).
A second reply is to point out the irony. The modern Baptist is keen to promote full immersion, and only for the believer, in order to be rid of sacramentalism; yet in order to do so, he must warn us that unless this happens just so, then the “nothing” of grace that happens will not properly happen. While I admire my Baptist brethren’s purism, I cannot bring myself to get tied up in his logical knots.
If we want to make the case about what is most fitting, taking the blood as the substance and water as the sign, it would seem that pouring and sprinkling even have a better pedigree. Note that his blood was “poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins” (Mat. 26:28), and it is also called “the sprinkled blood” (Heb. 12:24).
Hodge delivers the punchline as to what really matters here.
“Besides, to make anything so purely circumstantial as the manner in which water is used in the act of cleansing, essential to a Christian sacrament, which, according to some, is absolutely necessary to salvation; and, according to others, is essential to membership in the visible Church of Christ, is opposed to the whole nature of the Gospel.”6
Baptism is finally a gospel sign. Like gospel preaching it is a window out toward Christ’s work for us. It is not a mirror. That is, the recipient adds nothing to its grace by internal or external merits. It is also not a hall of mirrors. That is, neither the ministers nor the circumstances lend to the sacrament any efficacy. As we have seen with the water itself, some elements are more essential than others. When we begin stacking up other things as essential, we are a short step from making that which is non-essential into another gospel.
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1. Herman Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics, Volume Four: Holy Spirit, Church, and New Creation (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2008), 500.
2. Difficulty is introduced to the case for the unity of John’s baptism with that instituted by Christ in this, that, even if we grant that the new converts at Ephesus in Acts 19 were ignorant in calling John’s baptism by that name, Paul still had them rebaptized, now, “in the name of the Lord Jesus” (v. 5).
3. Bavinck’s thoughts on this are noteworthy: “John’s baptism, therefore, was an indictment against and a condemnation of the Jews, a message of their ‘damn-worthiness.’ but—let us not forget this—also something more. It was incontrovertible proof that God remembered his covenant and fulfilled his promise … John the Baptist, therefore, must not be viewed as the last of the Old Testament prophets, ‘for all the prophets and the law prophesied until John ‘ (Matt. 11:13); he is to be regarded, rather, as the announcer of the coming kingdom (Mat. 3:2), as the messenger of the approaching good news (Luke 3:18), as the one who prepared the way for Christ (Mark 1:2), as the witness to the rising light (John 1:7, 29, 34, 36; cf. Matt. 3:11; Mark 1:7; Luke 3:16; Acts 19:4) who will soon make room for the One who is mightier than he [John], and who leads his disciples to Christ (John 1:35ff.; 3:27ff.).” He further argues that since errors had crept into the following of John, those converts in Ephesus were not being “rebaptized,” but rather baptized legitimately for the first time. After all, to become a John the Baptist follower by this point did not require that these were among the original followers. They were Greeks in Ephesus. Consequently, this would easily reconcile the Apostle’s insistence of their baptism with the original of John’s being at one with that instituted by Jesus. Reformed Dogmatics, IV:500; 502.
4. Such is the rationale of the note in the ESV Study Bible, in its notes for Acts 19:3-5.
5. Charles Hodge, Systematic Theology, Volume III: Soteriology (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson Publishers, 2008), 526.
6. Hodge, Systematic Theology, III:526.
