3. The Symbolism of Baptism.Baptism symbolizes the previous entrance of the believer into the communion of Christ's death and resurrection,—or, in other words, regeneration through union with Christ.A. Expansion of this statement as to the symbolism of baptism.Baptism, more particularly, is a symbol:(a) Of the death and resurrection of Christ.Rom. 6:3—“Or are ye ignorant that all we who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death?â€cf.Mat 3:13—“Then cometh Jesus from Galilee to the Jordan unto John, to be baptized of himâ€;Mark 10:38—“Are ye able to drink the cup that I drink? or to be baptized with the baptism that I am baptized with?â€;Luke 12:50—“But I have a baptism to be baptized with; and how am I straitened till it be accomplished!â€Col. 2:12—“buried with him in baptism, wherein ye were also raised with him through faith in the working of God, who raised him from the dead.â€For the meaning of these passages, see note on the baptism of Jesus, under B. (a), pages942,943.Denney, in Expositor's Greek Testament, onRom. 6:3-5—“The argumentative requirements of the passage ... demand the idea of an actual union to, or incorporation in Christ.... We were buried with him [in the act of immersion] through that baptism into his death.... If the baptism,which is a similitude of Christ's death, has had a reality answering to its obvious import, so that we have really died in it as Christ died, then we shall have a corresponding experience of resurrection. Baptism, inasmuch as one emerges from the water after being immersed, is a similitude of resurrection as well as of death.â€[pg 941](b) Of the purpose of that death and resurrection,—namely, to atone for sin, and to deliver sinners from its penalty and power.Rom. 6:4—“We were buried therefore with him through baptism into death: that like as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, so we also might walk in newness of lifeâ€;cf.7, 10, 11—“for he that hath died is justified from sin.... For the death that he died, he died unto sin once: but the life that he liveth, he liveth unto God. Even so reckon ye also yourselves to be dead unto sin, but alive unto God in Christ Jesusâ€;2 Cor. 5:14—“we thus judge, that one died for all, therefore all died.â€Baptism is therefore a confession of evangelical faith both as to sin, and as to the deity and atonement of Christ. No one is properly a Baptist who does not acknowledge these truths which baptism signifies.T. W. Chambers, in Presb. and Ref. Rev., Jan. 1890:113-118, objects that this view of the symbolism of baptism is based on two texts,Rom. 6:4andCol. 2:12, which are illustrative and not explanatory, while the great majority of passages make baptism only an act of purification. Yet Dr. Chambers concedes:“It is to be admitted that nearly all modern critical expositors (Meyer, Godet, Alford, Conybeare, Lightfoot, Beet) consider that there is a reference here [inRom. 6:4] to the act of baptism, which, as the Bishop of Durham says,‘is the grave of the old man and the birth of the new—an image of the believer's participation both in the death and in the resurrection of Christ.... As he sinks beneath the baptismal waters, the believer buries there all his corrupt affections and past sins; as he emerges thence, he rises regenerate, quickened to new hopes and a new life.’â€(c) Of the accomplishment of that purpose in the person baptized,—who thus professes his death to sin and resurrection to spiritual life.Gal. 3:27—“For as many of you as were baptized into Christ did put on Christâ€;1 Pet. 3:21—“which[water]also after a true likeness doth now save you, even baptism, not the putting away of the filth of the flesh, but the interrogation of a good conscience toward God, through the resurrection of Jesus Christâ€;cf.Gal. 2:19, 20—“For I through the law died unto the law, that I might live unto God. I have been crucified with Christ; and it is no longer I that live, but Christ liveth in me: and that life which I now live in the flesh I live in faith, the faith which is in the Son of God, who loved me, and gave himself up for meâ€;Col. 3:3—“For ye died, and your life is hid with Christ in God.â€C. H. M.:“A truly baptized person is one who has passed from the old world into the new.... The water rolls over his person, signifying that his place in nature is ignored, that his old nature is entirely set aside, in short, that he is a dead man, that the flesh with all that pertained thereto—its sins and its liabilities—is buried in the grave of Christ and can never come into God's sight again.... When the believer rises up from the water, expression is given to the truth that he comes up as the possessor of a new life, even the resurrection life of Christ, to which divine righteousness inseparably attaches.â€(d) Of the method in which that purpose is accomplished,—by union with Christ, receiving him and giving one's self to him by faith.Rom. 6:5—“For if we have become united[σÏμφυτοι]with him in the likeness of his death, we shall be also in the likeness of his resurrectionâ€â€”σÏμφυτοι, or συμπεφυκώς, is used of the man and the horse as grown together in the Centaur, by Lucian, Dial. Mort., 16:4, and by Xenophon, Cyrop., 4:3:18.Col. 2:12—“having been buried with him in baptism, wherein ye were also raised with him through faith in the working of God, who raised him from the dead.â€Dr. N. S. Burton:“The oneness of the believer and Christ is expressed by the fact that the one act of immersion sets forth the death and resurrection of both Christ and the believer.â€As the voluntary element in faith has two parts, a giving and a taking, so baptism illustrates both. Submergence = surrender to Christ; emergence = reception of Christ; see page839, (b).“Putting on Christâ€(Gal. 3:27) is the burying of the old life and the rising to a new.Cf.the active and the passive obedience of Christ (pages 749, 770), the two elements of justification (pages854-859), the two aspects of formal worship (page 23), the two divisions of the Lord's Prayer.William Ashmore holds that incorporation into Christ is the root idea of baptism, union with Christ's death and resurrection being only a part of it. We are“baptized into Christâ€(Rom. 6:3), as the Israelites were“baptized into Mosesâ€(1 Cor. 10:2). As baptism symbolizes the incorporation of the believer into Christ, so the Lord's Supper symbolizes the incorporation of Christ into the believer. We go down into the water, but the bread goes down into us. We are“in Christ,â€and Christ is“in us.â€The candidate does not baptize himself, but puts himself wholly into the hands of the administrator. This[pg 942]seems symbolic of his committing himself entirely to Christ, of whom the administrator is the representative. Similarly in the Lord's Supper, it is Christ who through his representative distributes the emblems of his death and life.E. G. Robinson regarded baptism as implying: 1. death to sin; 2. resurrection to new life in Christ; 3. entire surrender of ourselves to the authority of the triune God. Baptism“into the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spiritâ€(Mat 28:19) cannot imply supreme allegiance to the Father, and only subordinate allegiance to the Son. Baptism therefore is an assumption of supreme allegiance to Jesus Christ. N. E. Wood, in The Watchman, Dec. 3, 1896, 15—“Calvinism has its five points; but Baptists have also their own five points: the Trinity, the Atonement, Regeneration, Baptism, and an inspired Bible. All other doctrines gather round these.â€(e) Of the consequent union of all believers in Christ.Eph. 4:5—“one Lord, one faith, one baptismâ€;1 Cor. 12:13—“For in one Spirit were we all baptized into one body, whether Jews or Greeks, whether bond or free; and were all made to drink of one Spiritâ€;cf.10:3, 4—“and did all eat the same spiritual food; and did all drink the same spiritual drink: for they drank of a spiritual rock that followed them: and the rock was Christ.â€InEph. 4:5, it is noticeable that, not the Lord's Supper, but baptism, is referred to as the symbol of Christian unity. A. H. Strong, Cleveland Sermon, 1904—“Our fathers lived in a day when simple faith was subject to serious disabilities. The establishments frowned upon dissent and visited it with pains and penalties. It is no wonder that believers in the New Testament doctrine and polity felt that they must come out from what they regarded as an apostate church. They could have no sympathy with those who held back the truth in unrighteousness and persecuted the saints of God. But our doctrine has leavened all Christendom. Scholarship is on the side of immersion. Infant baptism is on the decline. The churches that once opposed us now compliment us on our stedfastness in the faith and on our missionary zeal. There is a growing spirituality in these churches, which prompts them to extend to us hands of fellowship. And there is a growing sense among us that the kingdom of Christ is wider than our own membership, and that loyalty to our Lord requires us to recognize his presence and blessing even in bodies which we do not regard as organized in complete accordance with the New Testament model. Faith in the larger Christ is bringing us out from our denominational isolation into an inspiring recognition of our oneness with the universal church of God throughout the world.â€(f) Of the death and resurrection of the body,—which will complete the work of Christ in us, and which Christ's death and resurrection assure to all his members.1 Cor. 15:12, 22—“Now if Christ is preached that he hath been raised from the dead, how say some among you that there is no resurrection of the dead?... For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive.â€In the Scripture passages quoted above, we add to the argument from the meaning of the word βαπτίζω the argument from the meaning of the ordinance. Luther wrote, in his Babylonish Captivity of the Church, section 103 (English translation in Wace and Buchheim, First Principles of the Reformation, 192):“Baptism is a sign both of death and resurrection. Being moved by this reason, I would have those that are baptized to be altogether dipped into the water, as the word means and the mystery signifies.â€See Calvin onActs 8:38; Conybeare and Howson onRom. 6:4; Boardman, in Madison Avenue Lectures, 115-135.B. Inferences from the passages referred to.(a) The central truth set forth by baptism is the death and resurrection of Christ,—and our own death and resurrection only as connected with that.The baptism of Jesus in Jordan, equally with the subsequent baptism of his followers, was a symbol of his death. It was his death which he had in mind, when he said:“Are ye able to drink the cup that I drink? or to be baptized with the baptism that I am baptized with?â€(Mark 10:38);“But I have a baptism to be baptized with; and how am I straitened till it be accomplished!â€(Luke 12:50). The being immersed and overwhelmed in waters is a frequent metaphor in all languages to express the rush of successive troubles; comparePs. 69:2—“I am come into deep waters, where the floods overflow meâ€;42:7—“All thy waves and thy billows are gone over meâ€;124:4, 5—“Then the waters had overwhelmed us, The stream had gone over our soul; Then the proud waters had gone over our soul.â€[pg 943]So the suffering, death, and burial, which were before our Lord, presented themselves to his mind as a baptism, because the very idea of baptism was that of a complete submersion under the floods of waters. Death was not to be poured upon Christ,—it was no mere sprinkling of suffering which he was to endure, but a sinking into the mighty waters, and a being overwhelmed by them. It was the giving of himself to this, which he symbolized by his baptism in Jordan. That act was not arbitrary, or formal, or ritual. It was a public consecration, a consecration to death, to death for the sins of the world. It expressed the essential nature and meaning of his earthly work: the baptism of water at the beginning of his ministry consciously and designedly prefigured the baptism of death with which that ministry was to close.Jesus' submission to John's baptism of repentance, the rite that belonged only to sinners, can be explained only upon the ground that he was“made to be sin on our behalfâ€(2 Cor. 5:21). He had taken our nature upon him, without its hereditary corruption indeed, but with all its hereditary guilt, that he might redeem that nature and reunite it to God. As one with humanity, he had in his unconscious childhood submitted to the rites of circumcision, purification, and legal redemption (Luke 2:21-24;cf.Ex. 13:2, 13; see Lange, Alford, Webster and Wilkinson onLuke 2:24)—all of them rites appointed for sinners.“Made in the likeness of menâ€(Phil. 2:7),“the likeness of sinful fleshâ€(Rom. 8:3), he was“to put away sin by the sacrifice of himselfâ€(Heb. 9:26).In his baptism, therefore, he could say,“Thus it becometh us to fulfil all righteousnessâ€(Mat. 3:15) because only through the final baptism of suffering and death, which this baptism in water foreshadowed, could he“make an end of sinsâ€and“bring in everlasting righteousnessâ€(Dan. 9:24) to the condemned and ruined world. He could not be“the Lord our Righteousnessâ€(Jer. 23:6) except by first suffering the death due to the nature he had assumed, thereby delivering it from its guilt and perfecting it forever. All this was indicated in that act by which he was first“made manifest to Israelâ€(John 1:31). In his baptism in Jordan, he was buried in the likeness of his coming death, and raised in the likeness of his coming resurrection.1 John 5:6—“This is he that came by water and blood, even Jesus Christ; not in the water only, but in the water and in the bloodâ€= in the baptism of water at the beginning of his ministry, and in the baptism of blood with which that ministry was to close.As that baptism pointed forward to Jesus' death, so our baptism points backward to the same, as the centre and substance of his redeeming work, the one death by which we live. We who are“baptized into Christâ€are“baptized into his deathâ€(Rom. 6:3), that is, into spiritual communion and participation in that death which he died for our salvation; in short, in baptism we declare in symbol that his death has become ours. On the Baptism of Jesus, see A. H. Strong, Philosophy and Religion, 226-237.(b) The correlative truth of the believer's death and resurrection, set forth in baptism, implies, first,—confession of sin and humiliation on account of it, as deserving of death; secondly,—declaration of Christ's death for sin, and of the believer's acceptance of Christ's substitutionary work; thirdly,—acknowledgment that the soul has become partaker of Christ's life, and now lives only in and for him.A false mode of administering the ordinance has so obscured the meaning of baptism that it has to multitudes lost all reference to the death of Christ, and the Lord's Supper is assumed to be the only ordinance which is intended to remind us of the atoning sacrifice to which we owe our salvation. For evidence of this, see the remarks of President Woolsey in the Sunday School Times:“Baptism it [the Christian religion] could share in with the doctrine of John the Baptist, and if a similar rite had existed under the Jewish law, it would have been regarded as appropriate to a religion which inculcated renunciation of sin and purity of heart and life. But [in the Lord's Supper] we go beyond the province of baptism to the verypenetraleof the gospel, to the efficacy and meaning of Christ's death.â€Baptism should be a public act. We cannot afford to relegate it to a corner, or to celebrate it in private, as some professedly Baptist churches of England are said to do. Like marriage, the essence of it is the joining of ourselves to another before the world. In baptism we merge ourselves in Christ, before God and angels and men. The Mohammedan stands five times a day, and prays with his face toward Mecca, caring not who sees him.Luke 12:8—“Every one who shall confess me before men, him shall the Son of man also confess before the angels of God.â€[pg 944](c) Baptism symbolizes purification, but purification in a peculiar and divine way,—namely, through the death of Christ and the entrance of the soul into communion with that death. The radical defect of sprinkling or pouring as a mode of administering the ordinance, is that it does not point to Christ's death as the procuring cause of our purification.It is a grievous thing to say by symbol, as those do say who practice sprinkling in place of immersion, that a man may regenerate himself, or, if not this, yet that his regeneration may take place without connection with Christ's death. Edward Beecher's chief argument against Baptist views is drawn fromJohn 3:22-25—“a questioning on the part of John's disciples with a Jew about purifying.â€Purification is made to be the essential meaning of baptism, and the conclusion is drawn that any form expressive of purification will answer the design of the ordinance. But if Christ's death is the procuring cause of our purification, we may expect it to be symbolized in the ordinance which declares that purification; if Christ's death is the central fact of Christianity, we may expect it to be symbolized in the initiatory rite of Christianity.(d) In baptism we show forth the Lord's death as the original source of holiness and life in our souls, just as in the Lord's Supper we show forth the Lord's death as the source of all nourishment and strength after this life of holiness has been once begun. As the Lord's Supper symbolizes the sanctifying power of Jesus' death, so baptism symbolizes its regenerating power.The truth of Christ's death and resurrection is a precious jewel, and it is given us in these outward ordinances as in a casket. Let us care for the casket lest we lose the gem. As a scarlet thread runs through every rope and cord of the British navy, testifying that it is the property of the Crown, so through every doctrine and ordinance of Christianity runs the red line of Jesus' blood. It is their common reference to the death of Christ that binds the two ordinances together.(e) There are two reasons, therefore, why nothing but immersion will satisfy the design of the ordinance: first,—because nothing else can symbolize the radical nature of the change effected in regeneration—a change from spiritual death to spiritual life; secondly,—because nothing else can set forth the fact that this change is due to the entrance of the soul into communion with the death and resurrection of Christ.Christian truth is an organism. Part is bound to part, and all together constitute one vitalized whole. To give up any single portion of that truth is like maiming the human body. Life may remain, but one manifestation of life has ceased. The whole body of Christian truth has lost its symmetry and a part of its power to save.Pfleiderer, Philos. Religion, 2:212—“In the Eleusinian mysteries, the act of reception was represented as a regeneration, and the hierophant appointed to the temple service had to take a sacramental bath, out of which he proceeded as a‘new man’with a new name, which signifies that, as they were wont to say,‘the first one was forgotten,’—that is, the old man was put off at the same time with the old name. The parallel of this Eleusinian rite with the thoughts which Paul has written about Baptism in the Epistle to the Romans, and therefore from Corinth, is so striking that a connection between the two may well be conjectured; and all the more that even in the case of the Lord's Supper, Paul has brought in the comparison with the heathen festivals, in order to give a basis for his mystical theory.â€(f) To substitute for baptism anything which excludes all symbolic reference to the death of Christ, is to destroy the ordinance, just as substituting for the broken bread and poured out wine of the communion some form of administration which leaves out all reference to the death of Christ would be to destroy the Lord's Supper, and to celebrate an ordinance of human invention.[pg 945]Baptism, like the Fourth of July, the Passover, the Lord's Supper, is a historical monument. It witnesses to the world that Jesus died and rose again. In celebrating it, we show forth the Lord's death as truly as in the celebration of the Supper. But it is more than a historical monument. It is also a pictorial expression of doctrine. Into it are woven all the essential truths of the Christian scheme. It tells of the nature and penalty of sin, of human nature delivered from sin in the person of a crucified and risen Savior, of salvation secured for each human soul that is united to Christ, of obedience to Christ as the way to life and glory. Thus baptism stands from age to age as a witness for God—a witness both to the facts and to the doctrine of Christianity. To change the form of administering the ordinance is therefore to strike a blow at Christianity and at Christ, and to defraud the world of a part of God's means of salvation. See Ebrard's view of Baptism, in Baptist Quarterly, 1869:257, and in Olshausen's Com. on N. T., 1:270, and 3:594. Also Lightfoot, Com. onColossians 2:20, and3:1.Ebrard:“Baptism = Death.â€So Sanday, Com. onRom. 6—“Immersion = Death; Submersion = Burial (the ratification of death); Emergence = Resurrection (the ratification of life).â€William Ashmore:“Solomon's Temple had two monumental pillars:Jachin,‘he shall establish,’andBoaz,‘in it is strength.’In Zechariah's vision were two olive trees on either side of the golden candlestick. In like manner, Christ has left two monumental witnesses to testify concerning himself—Baptism and the Lord's Supper.â€The lady in the street car, who had inadvertently stuck her parasol into a man's eye, very naturally begged his pardon. But he replied:“It is of no consequence, madame; I have still one eye left.â€Our friends who sprinkle or pour put out one eye of the gospel witness, break down one appointed monument of Christ's saving truth,—shall we be content to say that we have still one ordinance left? At the Rappahannock one of the Federal regiments, just because its standard was shot away, was mistaken by our own men for a regiment of Confederates, and was subjected to a murderous enfilading fire that decimated its ranks. Baptism and the Lord's Supper are the two flags of Christ's army,—we cannot afford to lose either one of them.
3. The Symbolism of Baptism.Baptism symbolizes the previous entrance of the believer into the communion of Christ's death and resurrection,—or, in other words, regeneration through union with Christ.A. Expansion of this statement as to the symbolism of baptism.Baptism, more particularly, is a symbol:(a) Of the death and resurrection of Christ.Rom. 6:3—“Or are ye ignorant that all we who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death?â€cf.Mat 3:13—“Then cometh Jesus from Galilee to the Jordan unto John, to be baptized of himâ€;Mark 10:38—“Are ye able to drink the cup that I drink? or to be baptized with the baptism that I am baptized with?â€;Luke 12:50—“But I have a baptism to be baptized with; and how am I straitened till it be accomplished!â€Col. 2:12—“buried with him in baptism, wherein ye were also raised with him through faith in the working of God, who raised him from the dead.â€For the meaning of these passages, see note on the baptism of Jesus, under B. (a), pages942,943.Denney, in Expositor's Greek Testament, onRom. 6:3-5—“The argumentative requirements of the passage ... demand the idea of an actual union to, or incorporation in Christ.... We were buried with him [in the act of immersion] through that baptism into his death.... If the baptism,which is a similitude of Christ's death, has had a reality answering to its obvious import, so that we have really died in it as Christ died, then we shall have a corresponding experience of resurrection. Baptism, inasmuch as one emerges from the water after being immersed, is a similitude of resurrection as well as of death.â€[pg 941](b) Of the purpose of that death and resurrection,—namely, to atone for sin, and to deliver sinners from its penalty and power.Rom. 6:4—“We were buried therefore with him through baptism into death: that like as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, so we also might walk in newness of lifeâ€;cf.7, 10, 11—“for he that hath died is justified from sin.... For the death that he died, he died unto sin once: but the life that he liveth, he liveth unto God. Even so reckon ye also yourselves to be dead unto sin, but alive unto God in Christ Jesusâ€;2 Cor. 5:14—“we thus judge, that one died for all, therefore all died.â€Baptism is therefore a confession of evangelical faith both as to sin, and as to the deity and atonement of Christ. No one is properly a Baptist who does not acknowledge these truths which baptism signifies.T. W. Chambers, in Presb. and Ref. Rev., Jan. 1890:113-118, objects that this view of the symbolism of baptism is based on two texts,Rom. 6:4andCol. 2:12, which are illustrative and not explanatory, while the great majority of passages make baptism only an act of purification. Yet Dr. Chambers concedes:“It is to be admitted that nearly all modern critical expositors (Meyer, Godet, Alford, Conybeare, Lightfoot, Beet) consider that there is a reference here [inRom. 6:4] to the act of baptism, which, as the Bishop of Durham says,‘is the grave of the old man and the birth of the new—an image of the believer's participation both in the death and in the resurrection of Christ.... As he sinks beneath the baptismal waters, the believer buries there all his corrupt affections and past sins; as he emerges thence, he rises regenerate, quickened to new hopes and a new life.’â€(c) Of the accomplishment of that purpose in the person baptized,—who thus professes his death to sin and resurrection to spiritual life.Gal. 3:27—“For as many of you as were baptized into Christ did put on Christâ€;1 Pet. 3:21—“which[water]also after a true likeness doth now save you, even baptism, not the putting away of the filth of the flesh, but the interrogation of a good conscience toward God, through the resurrection of Jesus Christâ€;cf.Gal. 2:19, 20—“For I through the law died unto the law, that I might live unto God. I have been crucified with Christ; and it is no longer I that live, but Christ liveth in me: and that life which I now live in the flesh I live in faith, the faith which is in the Son of God, who loved me, and gave himself up for meâ€;Col. 3:3—“For ye died, and your life is hid with Christ in God.â€C. H. M.:“A truly baptized person is one who has passed from the old world into the new.... The water rolls over his person, signifying that his place in nature is ignored, that his old nature is entirely set aside, in short, that he is a dead man, that the flesh with all that pertained thereto—its sins and its liabilities—is buried in the grave of Christ and can never come into God's sight again.... When the believer rises up from the water, expression is given to the truth that he comes up as the possessor of a new life, even the resurrection life of Christ, to which divine righteousness inseparably attaches.â€(d) Of the method in which that purpose is accomplished,—by union with Christ, receiving him and giving one's self to him by faith.Rom. 6:5—“For if we have become united[σÏμφυτοι]with him in the likeness of his death, we shall be also in the likeness of his resurrectionâ€â€”σÏμφυτοι, or συμπεφυκώς, is used of the man and the horse as grown together in the Centaur, by Lucian, Dial. Mort., 16:4, and by Xenophon, Cyrop., 4:3:18.Col. 2:12—“having been buried with him in baptism, wherein ye were also raised with him through faith in the working of God, who raised him from the dead.â€Dr. N. S. Burton:“The oneness of the believer and Christ is expressed by the fact that the one act of immersion sets forth the death and resurrection of both Christ and the believer.â€As the voluntary element in faith has two parts, a giving and a taking, so baptism illustrates both. Submergence = surrender to Christ; emergence = reception of Christ; see page839, (b).“Putting on Christâ€(Gal. 3:27) is the burying of the old life and the rising to a new.Cf.the active and the passive obedience of Christ (pages 749, 770), the two elements of justification (pages854-859), the two aspects of formal worship (page 23), the two divisions of the Lord's Prayer.William Ashmore holds that incorporation into Christ is the root idea of baptism, union with Christ's death and resurrection being only a part of it. We are“baptized into Christâ€(Rom. 6:3), as the Israelites were“baptized into Mosesâ€(1 Cor. 10:2). As baptism symbolizes the incorporation of the believer into Christ, so the Lord's Supper symbolizes the incorporation of Christ into the believer. We go down into the water, but the bread goes down into us. We are“in Christ,â€and Christ is“in us.â€The candidate does not baptize himself, but puts himself wholly into the hands of the administrator. This[pg 942]seems symbolic of his committing himself entirely to Christ, of whom the administrator is the representative. Similarly in the Lord's Supper, it is Christ who through his representative distributes the emblems of his death and life.E. G. Robinson regarded baptism as implying: 1. death to sin; 2. resurrection to new life in Christ; 3. entire surrender of ourselves to the authority of the triune God. Baptism“into the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spiritâ€(Mat 28:19) cannot imply supreme allegiance to the Father, and only subordinate allegiance to the Son. Baptism therefore is an assumption of supreme allegiance to Jesus Christ. N. E. Wood, in The Watchman, Dec. 3, 1896, 15—“Calvinism has its five points; but Baptists have also their own five points: the Trinity, the Atonement, Regeneration, Baptism, and an inspired Bible. All other doctrines gather round these.â€(e) Of the consequent union of all believers in Christ.Eph. 4:5—“one Lord, one faith, one baptismâ€;1 Cor. 12:13—“For in one Spirit were we all baptized into one body, whether Jews or Greeks, whether bond or free; and were all made to drink of one Spiritâ€;cf.10:3, 4—“and did all eat the same spiritual food; and did all drink the same spiritual drink: for they drank of a spiritual rock that followed them: and the rock was Christ.â€InEph. 4:5, it is noticeable that, not the Lord's Supper, but baptism, is referred to as the symbol of Christian unity. A. H. Strong, Cleveland Sermon, 1904—“Our fathers lived in a day when simple faith was subject to serious disabilities. The establishments frowned upon dissent and visited it with pains and penalties. It is no wonder that believers in the New Testament doctrine and polity felt that they must come out from what they regarded as an apostate church. They could have no sympathy with those who held back the truth in unrighteousness and persecuted the saints of God. But our doctrine has leavened all Christendom. Scholarship is on the side of immersion. Infant baptism is on the decline. The churches that once opposed us now compliment us on our stedfastness in the faith and on our missionary zeal. There is a growing spirituality in these churches, which prompts them to extend to us hands of fellowship. And there is a growing sense among us that the kingdom of Christ is wider than our own membership, and that loyalty to our Lord requires us to recognize his presence and blessing even in bodies which we do not regard as organized in complete accordance with the New Testament model. Faith in the larger Christ is bringing us out from our denominational isolation into an inspiring recognition of our oneness with the universal church of God throughout the world.â€(f) Of the death and resurrection of the body,—which will complete the work of Christ in us, and which Christ's death and resurrection assure to all his members.1 Cor. 15:12, 22—“Now if Christ is preached that he hath been raised from the dead, how say some among you that there is no resurrection of the dead?... For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive.â€In the Scripture passages quoted above, we add to the argument from the meaning of the word βαπτίζω the argument from the meaning of the ordinance. Luther wrote, in his Babylonish Captivity of the Church, section 103 (English translation in Wace and Buchheim, First Principles of the Reformation, 192):“Baptism is a sign both of death and resurrection. Being moved by this reason, I would have those that are baptized to be altogether dipped into the water, as the word means and the mystery signifies.â€See Calvin onActs 8:38; Conybeare and Howson onRom. 6:4; Boardman, in Madison Avenue Lectures, 115-135.B. Inferences from the passages referred to.(a) The central truth set forth by baptism is the death and resurrection of Christ,—and our own death and resurrection only as connected with that.The baptism of Jesus in Jordan, equally with the subsequent baptism of his followers, was a symbol of his death. It was his death which he had in mind, when he said:“Are ye able to drink the cup that I drink? or to be baptized with the baptism that I am baptized with?â€(Mark 10:38);“But I have a baptism to be baptized with; and how am I straitened till it be accomplished!â€(Luke 12:50). The being immersed and overwhelmed in waters is a frequent metaphor in all languages to express the rush of successive troubles; comparePs. 69:2—“I am come into deep waters, where the floods overflow meâ€;42:7—“All thy waves and thy billows are gone over meâ€;124:4, 5—“Then the waters had overwhelmed us, The stream had gone over our soul; Then the proud waters had gone over our soul.â€[pg 943]So the suffering, death, and burial, which were before our Lord, presented themselves to his mind as a baptism, because the very idea of baptism was that of a complete submersion under the floods of waters. Death was not to be poured upon Christ,—it was no mere sprinkling of suffering which he was to endure, but a sinking into the mighty waters, and a being overwhelmed by them. It was the giving of himself to this, which he symbolized by his baptism in Jordan. That act was not arbitrary, or formal, or ritual. It was a public consecration, a consecration to death, to death for the sins of the world. It expressed the essential nature and meaning of his earthly work: the baptism of water at the beginning of his ministry consciously and designedly prefigured the baptism of death with which that ministry was to close.Jesus' submission to John's baptism of repentance, the rite that belonged only to sinners, can be explained only upon the ground that he was“made to be sin on our behalfâ€(2 Cor. 5:21). He had taken our nature upon him, without its hereditary corruption indeed, but with all its hereditary guilt, that he might redeem that nature and reunite it to God. As one with humanity, he had in his unconscious childhood submitted to the rites of circumcision, purification, and legal redemption (Luke 2:21-24;cf.Ex. 13:2, 13; see Lange, Alford, Webster and Wilkinson onLuke 2:24)—all of them rites appointed for sinners.“Made in the likeness of menâ€(Phil. 2:7),“the likeness of sinful fleshâ€(Rom. 8:3), he was“to put away sin by the sacrifice of himselfâ€(Heb. 9:26).In his baptism, therefore, he could say,“Thus it becometh us to fulfil all righteousnessâ€(Mat. 3:15) because only through the final baptism of suffering and death, which this baptism in water foreshadowed, could he“make an end of sinsâ€and“bring in everlasting righteousnessâ€(Dan. 9:24) to the condemned and ruined world. He could not be“the Lord our Righteousnessâ€(Jer. 23:6) except by first suffering the death due to the nature he had assumed, thereby delivering it from its guilt and perfecting it forever. All this was indicated in that act by which he was first“made manifest to Israelâ€(John 1:31). In his baptism in Jordan, he was buried in the likeness of his coming death, and raised in the likeness of his coming resurrection.1 John 5:6—“This is he that came by water and blood, even Jesus Christ; not in the water only, but in the water and in the bloodâ€= in the baptism of water at the beginning of his ministry, and in the baptism of blood with which that ministry was to close.As that baptism pointed forward to Jesus' death, so our baptism points backward to the same, as the centre and substance of his redeeming work, the one death by which we live. We who are“baptized into Christâ€are“baptized into his deathâ€(Rom. 6:3), that is, into spiritual communion and participation in that death which he died for our salvation; in short, in baptism we declare in symbol that his death has become ours. On the Baptism of Jesus, see A. H. Strong, Philosophy and Religion, 226-237.(b) The correlative truth of the believer's death and resurrection, set forth in baptism, implies, first,—confession of sin and humiliation on account of it, as deserving of death; secondly,—declaration of Christ's death for sin, and of the believer's acceptance of Christ's substitutionary work; thirdly,—acknowledgment that the soul has become partaker of Christ's life, and now lives only in and for him.A false mode of administering the ordinance has so obscured the meaning of baptism that it has to multitudes lost all reference to the death of Christ, and the Lord's Supper is assumed to be the only ordinance which is intended to remind us of the atoning sacrifice to which we owe our salvation. For evidence of this, see the remarks of President Woolsey in the Sunday School Times:“Baptism it [the Christian religion] could share in with the doctrine of John the Baptist, and if a similar rite had existed under the Jewish law, it would have been regarded as appropriate to a religion which inculcated renunciation of sin and purity of heart and life. But [in the Lord's Supper] we go beyond the province of baptism to the verypenetraleof the gospel, to the efficacy and meaning of Christ's death.â€Baptism should be a public act. We cannot afford to relegate it to a corner, or to celebrate it in private, as some professedly Baptist churches of England are said to do. Like marriage, the essence of it is the joining of ourselves to another before the world. In baptism we merge ourselves in Christ, before God and angels and men. The Mohammedan stands five times a day, and prays with his face toward Mecca, caring not who sees him.Luke 12:8—“Every one who shall confess me before men, him shall the Son of man also confess before the angels of God.â€[pg 944](c) Baptism symbolizes purification, but purification in a peculiar and divine way,—namely, through the death of Christ and the entrance of the soul into communion with that death. The radical defect of sprinkling or pouring as a mode of administering the ordinance, is that it does not point to Christ's death as the procuring cause of our purification.It is a grievous thing to say by symbol, as those do say who practice sprinkling in place of immersion, that a man may regenerate himself, or, if not this, yet that his regeneration may take place without connection with Christ's death. Edward Beecher's chief argument against Baptist views is drawn fromJohn 3:22-25—“a questioning on the part of John's disciples with a Jew about purifying.â€Purification is made to be the essential meaning of baptism, and the conclusion is drawn that any form expressive of purification will answer the design of the ordinance. But if Christ's death is the procuring cause of our purification, we may expect it to be symbolized in the ordinance which declares that purification; if Christ's death is the central fact of Christianity, we may expect it to be symbolized in the initiatory rite of Christianity.(d) In baptism we show forth the Lord's death as the original source of holiness and life in our souls, just as in the Lord's Supper we show forth the Lord's death as the source of all nourishment and strength after this life of holiness has been once begun. As the Lord's Supper symbolizes the sanctifying power of Jesus' death, so baptism symbolizes its regenerating power.The truth of Christ's death and resurrection is a precious jewel, and it is given us in these outward ordinances as in a casket. Let us care for the casket lest we lose the gem. As a scarlet thread runs through every rope and cord of the British navy, testifying that it is the property of the Crown, so through every doctrine and ordinance of Christianity runs the red line of Jesus' blood. It is their common reference to the death of Christ that binds the two ordinances together.(e) There are two reasons, therefore, why nothing but immersion will satisfy the design of the ordinance: first,—because nothing else can symbolize the radical nature of the change effected in regeneration—a change from spiritual death to spiritual life; secondly,—because nothing else can set forth the fact that this change is due to the entrance of the soul into communion with the death and resurrection of Christ.Christian truth is an organism. Part is bound to part, and all together constitute one vitalized whole. To give up any single portion of that truth is like maiming the human body. Life may remain, but one manifestation of life has ceased. The whole body of Christian truth has lost its symmetry and a part of its power to save.Pfleiderer, Philos. Religion, 2:212—“In the Eleusinian mysteries, the act of reception was represented as a regeneration, and the hierophant appointed to the temple service had to take a sacramental bath, out of which he proceeded as a‘new man’with a new name, which signifies that, as they were wont to say,‘the first one was forgotten,’—that is, the old man was put off at the same time with the old name. The parallel of this Eleusinian rite with the thoughts which Paul has written about Baptism in the Epistle to the Romans, and therefore from Corinth, is so striking that a connection between the two may well be conjectured; and all the more that even in the case of the Lord's Supper, Paul has brought in the comparison with the heathen festivals, in order to give a basis for his mystical theory.â€(f) To substitute for baptism anything which excludes all symbolic reference to the death of Christ, is to destroy the ordinance, just as substituting for the broken bread and poured out wine of the communion some form of administration which leaves out all reference to the death of Christ would be to destroy the Lord's Supper, and to celebrate an ordinance of human invention.[pg 945]Baptism, like the Fourth of July, the Passover, the Lord's Supper, is a historical monument. It witnesses to the world that Jesus died and rose again. In celebrating it, we show forth the Lord's death as truly as in the celebration of the Supper. But it is more than a historical monument. It is also a pictorial expression of doctrine. Into it are woven all the essential truths of the Christian scheme. It tells of the nature and penalty of sin, of human nature delivered from sin in the person of a crucified and risen Savior, of salvation secured for each human soul that is united to Christ, of obedience to Christ as the way to life and glory. Thus baptism stands from age to age as a witness for God—a witness both to the facts and to the doctrine of Christianity. To change the form of administering the ordinance is therefore to strike a blow at Christianity and at Christ, and to defraud the world of a part of God's means of salvation. See Ebrard's view of Baptism, in Baptist Quarterly, 1869:257, and in Olshausen's Com. on N. T., 1:270, and 3:594. Also Lightfoot, Com. onColossians 2:20, and3:1.Ebrard:“Baptism = Death.â€So Sanday, Com. onRom. 6—“Immersion = Death; Submersion = Burial (the ratification of death); Emergence = Resurrection (the ratification of life).â€William Ashmore:“Solomon's Temple had two monumental pillars:Jachin,‘he shall establish,’andBoaz,‘in it is strength.’In Zechariah's vision were two olive trees on either side of the golden candlestick. In like manner, Christ has left two monumental witnesses to testify concerning himself—Baptism and the Lord's Supper.â€The lady in the street car, who had inadvertently stuck her parasol into a man's eye, very naturally begged his pardon. But he replied:“It is of no consequence, madame; I have still one eye left.â€Our friends who sprinkle or pour put out one eye of the gospel witness, break down one appointed monument of Christ's saving truth,—shall we be content to say that we have still one ordinance left? At the Rappahannock one of the Federal regiments, just because its standard was shot away, was mistaken by our own men for a regiment of Confederates, and was subjected to a murderous enfilading fire that decimated its ranks. Baptism and the Lord's Supper are the two flags of Christ's army,—we cannot afford to lose either one of them.
3. The Symbolism of Baptism.Baptism symbolizes the previous entrance of the believer into the communion of Christ's death and resurrection,—or, in other words, regeneration through union with Christ.A. Expansion of this statement as to the symbolism of baptism.Baptism, more particularly, is a symbol:(a) Of the death and resurrection of Christ.Rom. 6:3—“Or are ye ignorant that all we who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death?â€cf.Mat 3:13—“Then cometh Jesus from Galilee to the Jordan unto John, to be baptized of himâ€;Mark 10:38—“Are ye able to drink the cup that I drink? or to be baptized with the baptism that I am baptized with?â€;Luke 12:50—“But I have a baptism to be baptized with; and how am I straitened till it be accomplished!â€Col. 2:12—“buried with him in baptism, wherein ye were also raised with him through faith in the working of God, who raised him from the dead.â€For the meaning of these passages, see note on the baptism of Jesus, under B. (a), pages942,943.Denney, in Expositor's Greek Testament, onRom. 6:3-5—“The argumentative requirements of the passage ... demand the idea of an actual union to, or incorporation in Christ.... We were buried with him [in the act of immersion] through that baptism into his death.... If the baptism,which is a similitude of Christ's death, has had a reality answering to its obvious import, so that we have really died in it as Christ died, then we shall have a corresponding experience of resurrection. Baptism, inasmuch as one emerges from the water after being immersed, is a similitude of resurrection as well as of death.â€[pg 941](b) Of the purpose of that death and resurrection,—namely, to atone for sin, and to deliver sinners from its penalty and power.Rom. 6:4—“We were buried therefore with him through baptism into death: that like as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, so we also might walk in newness of lifeâ€;cf.7, 10, 11—“for he that hath died is justified from sin.... For the death that he died, he died unto sin once: but the life that he liveth, he liveth unto God. Even so reckon ye also yourselves to be dead unto sin, but alive unto God in Christ Jesusâ€;2 Cor. 5:14—“we thus judge, that one died for all, therefore all died.â€Baptism is therefore a confession of evangelical faith both as to sin, and as to the deity and atonement of Christ. No one is properly a Baptist who does not acknowledge these truths which baptism signifies.T. W. Chambers, in Presb. and Ref. Rev., Jan. 1890:113-118, objects that this view of the symbolism of baptism is based on two texts,Rom. 6:4andCol. 2:12, which are illustrative and not explanatory, while the great majority of passages make baptism only an act of purification. Yet Dr. Chambers concedes:“It is to be admitted that nearly all modern critical expositors (Meyer, Godet, Alford, Conybeare, Lightfoot, Beet) consider that there is a reference here [inRom. 6:4] to the act of baptism, which, as the Bishop of Durham says,‘is the grave of the old man and the birth of the new—an image of the believer's participation both in the death and in the resurrection of Christ.... As he sinks beneath the baptismal waters, the believer buries there all his corrupt affections and past sins; as he emerges thence, he rises regenerate, quickened to new hopes and a new life.’â€(c) Of the accomplishment of that purpose in the person baptized,—who thus professes his death to sin and resurrection to spiritual life.Gal. 3:27—“For as many of you as were baptized into Christ did put on Christâ€;1 Pet. 3:21—“which[water]also after a true likeness doth now save you, even baptism, not the putting away of the filth of the flesh, but the interrogation of a good conscience toward God, through the resurrection of Jesus Christâ€;cf.Gal. 2:19, 20—“For I through the law died unto the law, that I might live unto God. I have been crucified with Christ; and it is no longer I that live, but Christ liveth in me: and that life which I now live in the flesh I live in faith, the faith which is in the Son of God, who loved me, and gave himself up for meâ€;Col. 3:3—“For ye died, and your life is hid with Christ in God.â€C. H. M.:“A truly baptized person is one who has passed from the old world into the new.... The water rolls over his person, signifying that his place in nature is ignored, that his old nature is entirely set aside, in short, that he is a dead man, that the flesh with all that pertained thereto—its sins and its liabilities—is buried in the grave of Christ and can never come into God's sight again.... When the believer rises up from the water, expression is given to the truth that he comes up as the possessor of a new life, even the resurrection life of Christ, to which divine righteousness inseparably attaches.â€(d) Of the method in which that purpose is accomplished,—by union with Christ, receiving him and giving one's self to him by faith.Rom. 6:5—“For if we have become united[σÏμφυτοι]with him in the likeness of his death, we shall be also in the likeness of his resurrectionâ€â€”σÏμφυτοι, or συμπεφυκώς, is used of the man and the horse as grown together in the Centaur, by Lucian, Dial. Mort., 16:4, and by Xenophon, Cyrop., 4:3:18.Col. 2:12—“having been buried with him in baptism, wherein ye were also raised with him through faith in the working of God, who raised him from the dead.â€Dr. N. S. Burton:“The oneness of the believer and Christ is expressed by the fact that the one act of immersion sets forth the death and resurrection of both Christ and the believer.â€As the voluntary element in faith has two parts, a giving and a taking, so baptism illustrates both. Submergence = surrender to Christ; emergence = reception of Christ; see page839, (b).“Putting on Christâ€(Gal. 3:27) is the burying of the old life and the rising to a new.Cf.the active and the passive obedience of Christ (pages 749, 770), the two elements of justification (pages854-859), the two aspects of formal worship (page 23), the two divisions of the Lord's Prayer.William Ashmore holds that incorporation into Christ is the root idea of baptism, union with Christ's death and resurrection being only a part of it. We are“baptized into Christâ€(Rom. 6:3), as the Israelites were“baptized into Mosesâ€(1 Cor. 10:2). As baptism symbolizes the incorporation of the believer into Christ, so the Lord's Supper symbolizes the incorporation of Christ into the believer. We go down into the water, but the bread goes down into us. We are“in Christ,â€and Christ is“in us.â€The candidate does not baptize himself, but puts himself wholly into the hands of the administrator. This[pg 942]seems symbolic of his committing himself entirely to Christ, of whom the administrator is the representative. Similarly in the Lord's Supper, it is Christ who through his representative distributes the emblems of his death and life.E. G. Robinson regarded baptism as implying: 1. death to sin; 2. resurrection to new life in Christ; 3. entire surrender of ourselves to the authority of the triune God. Baptism“into the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spiritâ€(Mat 28:19) cannot imply supreme allegiance to the Father, and only subordinate allegiance to the Son. Baptism therefore is an assumption of supreme allegiance to Jesus Christ. N. E. Wood, in The Watchman, Dec. 3, 1896, 15—“Calvinism has its five points; but Baptists have also their own five points: the Trinity, the Atonement, Regeneration, Baptism, and an inspired Bible. All other doctrines gather round these.â€(e) Of the consequent union of all believers in Christ.Eph. 4:5—“one Lord, one faith, one baptismâ€;1 Cor. 12:13—“For in one Spirit were we all baptized into one body, whether Jews or Greeks, whether bond or free; and were all made to drink of one Spiritâ€;cf.10:3, 4—“and did all eat the same spiritual food; and did all drink the same spiritual drink: for they drank of a spiritual rock that followed them: and the rock was Christ.â€InEph. 4:5, it is noticeable that, not the Lord's Supper, but baptism, is referred to as the symbol of Christian unity. A. H. Strong, Cleveland Sermon, 1904—“Our fathers lived in a day when simple faith was subject to serious disabilities. The establishments frowned upon dissent and visited it with pains and penalties. It is no wonder that believers in the New Testament doctrine and polity felt that they must come out from what they regarded as an apostate church. They could have no sympathy with those who held back the truth in unrighteousness and persecuted the saints of God. But our doctrine has leavened all Christendom. Scholarship is on the side of immersion. Infant baptism is on the decline. The churches that once opposed us now compliment us on our stedfastness in the faith and on our missionary zeal. There is a growing spirituality in these churches, which prompts them to extend to us hands of fellowship. And there is a growing sense among us that the kingdom of Christ is wider than our own membership, and that loyalty to our Lord requires us to recognize his presence and blessing even in bodies which we do not regard as organized in complete accordance with the New Testament model. Faith in the larger Christ is bringing us out from our denominational isolation into an inspiring recognition of our oneness with the universal church of God throughout the world.â€(f) Of the death and resurrection of the body,—which will complete the work of Christ in us, and which Christ's death and resurrection assure to all his members.1 Cor. 15:12, 22—“Now if Christ is preached that he hath been raised from the dead, how say some among you that there is no resurrection of the dead?... For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive.â€In the Scripture passages quoted above, we add to the argument from the meaning of the word βαπτίζω the argument from the meaning of the ordinance. Luther wrote, in his Babylonish Captivity of the Church, section 103 (English translation in Wace and Buchheim, First Principles of the Reformation, 192):“Baptism is a sign both of death and resurrection. Being moved by this reason, I would have those that are baptized to be altogether dipped into the water, as the word means and the mystery signifies.â€See Calvin onActs 8:38; Conybeare and Howson onRom. 6:4; Boardman, in Madison Avenue Lectures, 115-135.B. Inferences from the passages referred to.(a) The central truth set forth by baptism is the death and resurrection of Christ,—and our own death and resurrection only as connected with that.The baptism of Jesus in Jordan, equally with the subsequent baptism of his followers, was a symbol of his death. It was his death which he had in mind, when he said:“Are ye able to drink the cup that I drink? or to be baptized with the baptism that I am baptized with?â€(Mark 10:38);“But I have a baptism to be baptized with; and how am I straitened till it be accomplished!â€(Luke 12:50). The being immersed and overwhelmed in waters is a frequent metaphor in all languages to express the rush of successive troubles; comparePs. 69:2—“I am come into deep waters, where the floods overflow meâ€;42:7—“All thy waves and thy billows are gone over meâ€;124:4, 5—“Then the waters had overwhelmed us, The stream had gone over our soul; Then the proud waters had gone over our soul.â€[pg 943]So the suffering, death, and burial, which were before our Lord, presented themselves to his mind as a baptism, because the very idea of baptism was that of a complete submersion under the floods of waters. Death was not to be poured upon Christ,—it was no mere sprinkling of suffering which he was to endure, but a sinking into the mighty waters, and a being overwhelmed by them. It was the giving of himself to this, which he symbolized by his baptism in Jordan. That act was not arbitrary, or formal, or ritual. It was a public consecration, a consecration to death, to death for the sins of the world. It expressed the essential nature and meaning of his earthly work: the baptism of water at the beginning of his ministry consciously and designedly prefigured the baptism of death with which that ministry was to close.Jesus' submission to John's baptism of repentance, the rite that belonged only to sinners, can be explained only upon the ground that he was“made to be sin on our behalfâ€(2 Cor. 5:21). He had taken our nature upon him, without its hereditary corruption indeed, but with all its hereditary guilt, that he might redeem that nature and reunite it to God. As one with humanity, he had in his unconscious childhood submitted to the rites of circumcision, purification, and legal redemption (Luke 2:21-24;cf.Ex. 13:2, 13; see Lange, Alford, Webster and Wilkinson onLuke 2:24)—all of them rites appointed for sinners.“Made in the likeness of menâ€(Phil. 2:7),“the likeness of sinful fleshâ€(Rom. 8:3), he was“to put away sin by the sacrifice of himselfâ€(Heb. 9:26).In his baptism, therefore, he could say,“Thus it becometh us to fulfil all righteousnessâ€(Mat. 3:15) because only through the final baptism of suffering and death, which this baptism in water foreshadowed, could he“make an end of sinsâ€and“bring in everlasting righteousnessâ€(Dan. 9:24) to the condemned and ruined world. He could not be“the Lord our Righteousnessâ€(Jer. 23:6) except by first suffering the death due to the nature he had assumed, thereby delivering it from its guilt and perfecting it forever. All this was indicated in that act by which he was first“made manifest to Israelâ€(John 1:31). In his baptism in Jordan, he was buried in the likeness of his coming death, and raised in the likeness of his coming resurrection.1 John 5:6—“This is he that came by water and blood, even Jesus Christ; not in the water only, but in the water and in the bloodâ€= in the baptism of water at the beginning of his ministry, and in the baptism of blood with which that ministry was to close.As that baptism pointed forward to Jesus' death, so our baptism points backward to the same, as the centre and substance of his redeeming work, the one death by which we live. We who are“baptized into Christâ€are“baptized into his deathâ€(Rom. 6:3), that is, into spiritual communion and participation in that death which he died for our salvation; in short, in baptism we declare in symbol that his death has become ours. On the Baptism of Jesus, see A. H. Strong, Philosophy and Religion, 226-237.(b) The correlative truth of the believer's death and resurrection, set forth in baptism, implies, first,—confession of sin and humiliation on account of it, as deserving of death; secondly,—declaration of Christ's death for sin, and of the believer's acceptance of Christ's substitutionary work; thirdly,—acknowledgment that the soul has become partaker of Christ's life, and now lives only in and for him.A false mode of administering the ordinance has so obscured the meaning of baptism that it has to multitudes lost all reference to the death of Christ, and the Lord's Supper is assumed to be the only ordinance which is intended to remind us of the atoning sacrifice to which we owe our salvation. For evidence of this, see the remarks of President Woolsey in the Sunday School Times:“Baptism it [the Christian religion] could share in with the doctrine of John the Baptist, and if a similar rite had existed under the Jewish law, it would have been regarded as appropriate to a religion which inculcated renunciation of sin and purity of heart and life. But [in the Lord's Supper] we go beyond the province of baptism to the verypenetraleof the gospel, to the efficacy and meaning of Christ's death.â€Baptism should be a public act. We cannot afford to relegate it to a corner, or to celebrate it in private, as some professedly Baptist churches of England are said to do. Like marriage, the essence of it is the joining of ourselves to another before the world. In baptism we merge ourselves in Christ, before God and angels and men. The Mohammedan stands five times a day, and prays with his face toward Mecca, caring not who sees him.Luke 12:8—“Every one who shall confess me before men, him shall the Son of man also confess before the angels of God.â€[pg 944](c) Baptism symbolizes purification, but purification in a peculiar and divine way,—namely, through the death of Christ and the entrance of the soul into communion with that death. The radical defect of sprinkling or pouring as a mode of administering the ordinance, is that it does not point to Christ's death as the procuring cause of our purification.It is a grievous thing to say by symbol, as those do say who practice sprinkling in place of immersion, that a man may regenerate himself, or, if not this, yet that his regeneration may take place without connection with Christ's death. Edward Beecher's chief argument against Baptist views is drawn fromJohn 3:22-25—“a questioning on the part of John's disciples with a Jew about purifying.â€Purification is made to be the essential meaning of baptism, and the conclusion is drawn that any form expressive of purification will answer the design of the ordinance. But if Christ's death is the procuring cause of our purification, we may expect it to be symbolized in the ordinance which declares that purification; if Christ's death is the central fact of Christianity, we may expect it to be symbolized in the initiatory rite of Christianity.(d) In baptism we show forth the Lord's death as the original source of holiness and life in our souls, just as in the Lord's Supper we show forth the Lord's death as the source of all nourishment and strength after this life of holiness has been once begun. As the Lord's Supper symbolizes the sanctifying power of Jesus' death, so baptism symbolizes its regenerating power.The truth of Christ's death and resurrection is a precious jewel, and it is given us in these outward ordinances as in a casket. Let us care for the casket lest we lose the gem. As a scarlet thread runs through every rope and cord of the British navy, testifying that it is the property of the Crown, so through every doctrine and ordinance of Christianity runs the red line of Jesus' blood. It is their common reference to the death of Christ that binds the two ordinances together.(e) There are two reasons, therefore, why nothing but immersion will satisfy the design of the ordinance: first,—because nothing else can symbolize the radical nature of the change effected in regeneration—a change from spiritual death to spiritual life; secondly,—because nothing else can set forth the fact that this change is due to the entrance of the soul into communion with the death and resurrection of Christ.Christian truth is an organism. Part is bound to part, and all together constitute one vitalized whole. To give up any single portion of that truth is like maiming the human body. Life may remain, but one manifestation of life has ceased. The whole body of Christian truth has lost its symmetry and a part of its power to save.Pfleiderer, Philos. Religion, 2:212—“In the Eleusinian mysteries, the act of reception was represented as a regeneration, and the hierophant appointed to the temple service had to take a sacramental bath, out of which he proceeded as a‘new man’with a new name, which signifies that, as they were wont to say,‘the first one was forgotten,’—that is, the old man was put off at the same time with the old name. The parallel of this Eleusinian rite with the thoughts which Paul has written about Baptism in the Epistle to the Romans, and therefore from Corinth, is so striking that a connection between the two may well be conjectured; and all the more that even in the case of the Lord's Supper, Paul has brought in the comparison with the heathen festivals, in order to give a basis for his mystical theory.â€(f) To substitute for baptism anything which excludes all symbolic reference to the death of Christ, is to destroy the ordinance, just as substituting for the broken bread and poured out wine of the communion some form of administration which leaves out all reference to the death of Christ would be to destroy the Lord's Supper, and to celebrate an ordinance of human invention.[pg 945]Baptism, like the Fourth of July, the Passover, the Lord's Supper, is a historical monument. It witnesses to the world that Jesus died and rose again. In celebrating it, we show forth the Lord's death as truly as in the celebration of the Supper. But it is more than a historical monument. It is also a pictorial expression of doctrine. Into it are woven all the essential truths of the Christian scheme. It tells of the nature and penalty of sin, of human nature delivered from sin in the person of a crucified and risen Savior, of salvation secured for each human soul that is united to Christ, of obedience to Christ as the way to life and glory. Thus baptism stands from age to age as a witness for God—a witness both to the facts and to the doctrine of Christianity. To change the form of administering the ordinance is therefore to strike a blow at Christianity and at Christ, and to defraud the world of a part of God's means of salvation. See Ebrard's view of Baptism, in Baptist Quarterly, 1869:257, and in Olshausen's Com. on N. T., 1:270, and 3:594. Also Lightfoot, Com. onColossians 2:20, and3:1.Ebrard:“Baptism = Death.â€So Sanday, Com. onRom. 6—“Immersion = Death; Submersion = Burial (the ratification of death); Emergence = Resurrection (the ratification of life).â€William Ashmore:“Solomon's Temple had two monumental pillars:Jachin,‘he shall establish,’andBoaz,‘in it is strength.’In Zechariah's vision were two olive trees on either side of the golden candlestick. In like manner, Christ has left two monumental witnesses to testify concerning himself—Baptism and the Lord's Supper.â€The lady in the street car, who had inadvertently stuck her parasol into a man's eye, very naturally begged his pardon. But he replied:“It is of no consequence, madame; I have still one eye left.â€Our friends who sprinkle or pour put out one eye of the gospel witness, break down one appointed monument of Christ's saving truth,—shall we be content to say that we have still one ordinance left? At the Rappahannock one of the Federal regiments, just because its standard was shot away, was mistaken by our own men for a regiment of Confederates, and was subjected to a murderous enfilading fire that decimated its ranks. Baptism and the Lord's Supper are the two flags of Christ's army,—we cannot afford to lose either one of them.
3. The Symbolism of Baptism.Baptism symbolizes the previous entrance of the believer into the communion of Christ's death and resurrection,—or, in other words, regeneration through union with Christ.A. Expansion of this statement as to the symbolism of baptism.Baptism, more particularly, is a symbol:(a) Of the death and resurrection of Christ.Rom. 6:3—“Or are ye ignorant that all we who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death?â€cf.Mat 3:13—“Then cometh Jesus from Galilee to the Jordan unto John, to be baptized of himâ€;Mark 10:38—“Are ye able to drink the cup that I drink? or to be baptized with the baptism that I am baptized with?â€;Luke 12:50—“But I have a baptism to be baptized with; and how am I straitened till it be accomplished!â€Col. 2:12—“buried with him in baptism, wherein ye were also raised with him through faith in the working of God, who raised him from the dead.â€For the meaning of these passages, see note on the baptism of Jesus, under B. (a), pages942,943.Denney, in Expositor's Greek Testament, onRom. 6:3-5—“The argumentative requirements of the passage ... demand the idea of an actual union to, or incorporation in Christ.... We were buried with him [in the act of immersion] through that baptism into his death.... If the baptism,which is a similitude of Christ's death, has had a reality answering to its obvious import, so that we have really died in it as Christ died, then we shall have a corresponding experience of resurrection. Baptism, inasmuch as one emerges from the water after being immersed, is a similitude of resurrection as well as of death.â€[pg 941](b) Of the purpose of that death and resurrection,—namely, to atone for sin, and to deliver sinners from its penalty and power.Rom. 6:4—“We were buried therefore with him through baptism into death: that like as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, so we also might walk in newness of lifeâ€;cf.7, 10, 11—“for he that hath died is justified from sin.... For the death that he died, he died unto sin once: but the life that he liveth, he liveth unto God. Even so reckon ye also yourselves to be dead unto sin, but alive unto God in Christ Jesusâ€;2 Cor. 5:14—“we thus judge, that one died for all, therefore all died.â€Baptism is therefore a confession of evangelical faith both as to sin, and as to the deity and atonement of Christ. No one is properly a Baptist who does not acknowledge these truths which baptism signifies.T. W. Chambers, in Presb. and Ref. Rev., Jan. 1890:113-118, objects that this view of the symbolism of baptism is based on two texts,Rom. 6:4andCol. 2:12, which are illustrative and not explanatory, while the great majority of passages make baptism only an act of purification. Yet Dr. Chambers concedes:“It is to be admitted that nearly all modern critical expositors (Meyer, Godet, Alford, Conybeare, Lightfoot, Beet) consider that there is a reference here [inRom. 6:4] to the act of baptism, which, as the Bishop of Durham says,‘is the grave of the old man and the birth of the new—an image of the believer's participation both in the death and in the resurrection of Christ.... As he sinks beneath the baptismal waters, the believer buries there all his corrupt affections and past sins; as he emerges thence, he rises regenerate, quickened to new hopes and a new life.’â€(c) Of the accomplishment of that purpose in the person baptized,—who thus professes his death to sin and resurrection to spiritual life.Gal. 3:27—“For as many of you as were baptized into Christ did put on Christâ€;1 Pet. 3:21—“which[water]also after a true likeness doth now save you, even baptism, not the putting away of the filth of the flesh, but the interrogation of a good conscience toward God, through the resurrection of Jesus Christâ€;cf.Gal. 2:19, 20—“For I through the law died unto the law, that I might live unto God. I have been crucified with Christ; and it is no longer I that live, but Christ liveth in me: and that life which I now live in the flesh I live in faith, the faith which is in the Son of God, who loved me, and gave himself up for meâ€;Col. 3:3—“For ye died, and your life is hid with Christ in God.â€C. H. M.:“A truly baptized person is one who has passed from the old world into the new.... The water rolls over his person, signifying that his place in nature is ignored, that his old nature is entirely set aside, in short, that he is a dead man, that the flesh with all that pertained thereto—its sins and its liabilities—is buried in the grave of Christ and can never come into God's sight again.... When the believer rises up from the water, expression is given to the truth that he comes up as the possessor of a new life, even the resurrection life of Christ, to which divine righteousness inseparably attaches.â€(d) Of the method in which that purpose is accomplished,—by union with Christ, receiving him and giving one's self to him by faith.Rom. 6:5—“For if we have become united[σÏμφυτοι]with him in the likeness of his death, we shall be also in the likeness of his resurrectionâ€â€”σÏμφυτοι, or συμπεφυκώς, is used of the man and the horse as grown together in the Centaur, by Lucian, Dial. Mort., 16:4, and by Xenophon, Cyrop., 4:3:18.Col. 2:12—“having been buried with him in baptism, wherein ye were also raised with him through faith in the working of God, who raised him from the dead.â€Dr. N. S. Burton:“The oneness of the believer and Christ is expressed by the fact that the one act of immersion sets forth the death and resurrection of both Christ and the believer.â€As the voluntary element in faith has two parts, a giving and a taking, so baptism illustrates both. Submergence = surrender to Christ; emergence = reception of Christ; see page839, (b).“Putting on Christâ€(Gal. 3:27) is the burying of the old life and the rising to a new.Cf.the active and the passive obedience of Christ (pages 749, 770), the two elements of justification (pages854-859), the two aspects of formal worship (page 23), the two divisions of the Lord's Prayer.William Ashmore holds that incorporation into Christ is the root idea of baptism, union with Christ's death and resurrection being only a part of it. We are“baptized into Christâ€(Rom. 6:3), as the Israelites were“baptized into Mosesâ€(1 Cor. 10:2). As baptism symbolizes the incorporation of the believer into Christ, so the Lord's Supper symbolizes the incorporation of Christ into the believer. We go down into the water, but the bread goes down into us. We are“in Christ,â€and Christ is“in us.â€The candidate does not baptize himself, but puts himself wholly into the hands of the administrator. This[pg 942]seems symbolic of his committing himself entirely to Christ, of whom the administrator is the representative. Similarly in the Lord's Supper, it is Christ who through his representative distributes the emblems of his death and life.E. G. Robinson regarded baptism as implying: 1. death to sin; 2. resurrection to new life in Christ; 3. entire surrender of ourselves to the authority of the triune God. Baptism“into the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spiritâ€(Mat 28:19) cannot imply supreme allegiance to the Father, and only subordinate allegiance to the Son. Baptism therefore is an assumption of supreme allegiance to Jesus Christ. N. E. Wood, in The Watchman, Dec. 3, 1896, 15—“Calvinism has its five points; but Baptists have also their own five points: the Trinity, the Atonement, Regeneration, Baptism, and an inspired Bible. All other doctrines gather round these.â€(e) Of the consequent union of all believers in Christ.Eph. 4:5—“one Lord, one faith, one baptismâ€;1 Cor. 12:13—“For in one Spirit were we all baptized into one body, whether Jews or Greeks, whether bond or free; and were all made to drink of one Spiritâ€;cf.10:3, 4—“and did all eat the same spiritual food; and did all drink the same spiritual drink: for they drank of a spiritual rock that followed them: and the rock was Christ.â€InEph. 4:5, it is noticeable that, not the Lord's Supper, but baptism, is referred to as the symbol of Christian unity. A. H. Strong, Cleveland Sermon, 1904—“Our fathers lived in a day when simple faith was subject to serious disabilities. The establishments frowned upon dissent and visited it with pains and penalties. It is no wonder that believers in the New Testament doctrine and polity felt that they must come out from what they regarded as an apostate church. They could have no sympathy with those who held back the truth in unrighteousness and persecuted the saints of God. But our doctrine has leavened all Christendom. Scholarship is on the side of immersion. Infant baptism is on the decline. The churches that once opposed us now compliment us on our stedfastness in the faith and on our missionary zeal. There is a growing spirituality in these churches, which prompts them to extend to us hands of fellowship. And there is a growing sense among us that the kingdom of Christ is wider than our own membership, and that loyalty to our Lord requires us to recognize his presence and blessing even in bodies which we do not regard as organized in complete accordance with the New Testament model. Faith in the larger Christ is bringing us out from our denominational isolation into an inspiring recognition of our oneness with the universal church of God throughout the world.â€(f) Of the death and resurrection of the body,—which will complete the work of Christ in us, and which Christ's death and resurrection assure to all his members.1 Cor. 15:12, 22—“Now if Christ is preached that he hath been raised from the dead, how say some among you that there is no resurrection of the dead?... For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive.â€In the Scripture passages quoted above, we add to the argument from the meaning of the word βαπτίζω the argument from the meaning of the ordinance. Luther wrote, in his Babylonish Captivity of the Church, section 103 (English translation in Wace and Buchheim, First Principles of the Reformation, 192):“Baptism is a sign both of death and resurrection. Being moved by this reason, I would have those that are baptized to be altogether dipped into the water, as the word means and the mystery signifies.â€See Calvin onActs 8:38; Conybeare and Howson onRom. 6:4; Boardman, in Madison Avenue Lectures, 115-135.B. Inferences from the passages referred to.(a) The central truth set forth by baptism is the death and resurrection of Christ,—and our own death and resurrection only as connected with that.The baptism of Jesus in Jordan, equally with the subsequent baptism of his followers, was a symbol of his death. It was his death which he had in mind, when he said:“Are ye able to drink the cup that I drink? or to be baptized with the baptism that I am baptized with?â€(Mark 10:38);“But I have a baptism to be baptized with; and how am I straitened till it be accomplished!â€(Luke 12:50). The being immersed and overwhelmed in waters is a frequent metaphor in all languages to express the rush of successive troubles; comparePs. 69:2—“I am come into deep waters, where the floods overflow meâ€;42:7—“All thy waves and thy billows are gone over meâ€;124:4, 5—“Then the waters had overwhelmed us, The stream had gone over our soul; Then the proud waters had gone over our soul.â€[pg 943]So the suffering, death, and burial, which were before our Lord, presented themselves to his mind as a baptism, because the very idea of baptism was that of a complete submersion under the floods of waters. Death was not to be poured upon Christ,—it was no mere sprinkling of suffering which he was to endure, but a sinking into the mighty waters, and a being overwhelmed by them. It was the giving of himself to this, which he symbolized by his baptism in Jordan. That act was not arbitrary, or formal, or ritual. It was a public consecration, a consecration to death, to death for the sins of the world. It expressed the essential nature and meaning of his earthly work: the baptism of water at the beginning of his ministry consciously and designedly prefigured the baptism of death with which that ministry was to close.Jesus' submission to John's baptism of repentance, the rite that belonged only to sinners, can be explained only upon the ground that he was“made to be sin on our behalfâ€(2 Cor. 5:21). He had taken our nature upon him, without its hereditary corruption indeed, but with all its hereditary guilt, that he might redeem that nature and reunite it to God. As one with humanity, he had in his unconscious childhood submitted to the rites of circumcision, purification, and legal redemption (Luke 2:21-24;cf.Ex. 13:2, 13; see Lange, Alford, Webster and Wilkinson onLuke 2:24)—all of them rites appointed for sinners.“Made in the likeness of menâ€(Phil. 2:7),“the likeness of sinful fleshâ€(Rom. 8:3), he was“to put away sin by the sacrifice of himselfâ€(Heb. 9:26).In his baptism, therefore, he could say,“Thus it becometh us to fulfil all righteousnessâ€(Mat. 3:15) because only through the final baptism of suffering and death, which this baptism in water foreshadowed, could he“make an end of sinsâ€and“bring in everlasting righteousnessâ€(Dan. 9:24) to the condemned and ruined world. He could not be“the Lord our Righteousnessâ€(Jer. 23:6) except by first suffering the death due to the nature he had assumed, thereby delivering it from its guilt and perfecting it forever. All this was indicated in that act by which he was first“made manifest to Israelâ€(John 1:31). In his baptism in Jordan, he was buried in the likeness of his coming death, and raised in the likeness of his coming resurrection.1 John 5:6—“This is he that came by water and blood, even Jesus Christ; not in the water only, but in the water and in the bloodâ€= in the baptism of water at the beginning of his ministry, and in the baptism of blood with which that ministry was to close.As that baptism pointed forward to Jesus' death, so our baptism points backward to the same, as the centre and substance of his redeeming work, the one death by which we live. We who are“baptized into Christâ€are“baptized into his deathâ€(Rom. 6:3), that is, into spiritual communion and participation in that death which he died for our salvation; in short, in baptism we declare in symbol that his death has become ours. On the Baptism of Jesus, see A. H. Strong, Philosophy and Religion, 226-237.(b) The correlative truth of the believer's death and resurrection, set forth in baptism, implies, first,—confession of sin and humiliation on account of it, as deserving of death; secondly,—declaration of Christ's death for sin, and of the believer's acceptance of Christ's substitutionary work; thirdly,—acknowledgment that the soul has become partaker of Christ's life, and now lives only in and for him.A false mode of administering the ordinance has so obscured the meaning of baptism that it has to multitudes lost all reference to the death of Christ, and the Lord's Supper is assumed to be the only ordinance which is intended to remind us of the atoning sacrifice to which we owe our salvation. For evidence of this, see the remarks of President Woolsey in the Sunday School Times:“Baptism it [the Christian religion] could share in with the doctrine of John the Baptist, and if a similar rite had existed under the Jewish law, it would have been regarded as appropriate to a religion which inculcated renunciation of sin and purity of heart and life. But [in the Lord's Supper] we go beyond the province of baptism to the verypenetraleof the gospel, to the efficacy and meaning of Christ's death.â€Baptism should be a public act. We cannot afford to relegate it to a corner, or to celebrate it in private, as some professedly Baptist churches of England are said to do. Like marriage, the essence of it is the joining of ourselves to another before the world. In baptism we merge ourselves in Christ, before God and angels and men. The Mohammedan stands five times a day, and prays with his face toward Mecca, caring not who sees him.Luke 12:8—“Every one who shall confess me before men, him shall the Son of man also confess before the angels of God.â€[pg 944](c) Baptism symbolizes purification, but purification in a peculiar and divine way,—namely, through the death of Christ and the entrance of the soul into communion with that death. The radical defect of sprinkling or pouring as a mode of administering the ordinance, is that it does not point to Christ's death as the procuring cause of our purification.It is a grievous thing to say by symbol, as those do say who practice sprinkling in place of immersion, that a man may regenerate himself, or, if not this, yet that his regeneration may take place without connection with Christ's death. Edward Beecher's chief argument against Baptist views is drawn fromJohn 3:22-25—“a questioning on the part of John's disciples with a Jew about purifying.â€Purification is made to be the essential meaning of baptism, and the conclusion is drawn that any form expressive of purification will answer the design of the ordinance. But if Christ's death is the procuring cause of our purification, we may expect it to be symbolized in the ordinance which declares that purification; if Christ's death is the central fact of Christianity, we may expect it to be symbolized in the initiatory rite of Christianity.(d) In baptism we show forth the Lord's death as the original source of holiness and life in our souls, just as in the Lord's Supper we show forth the Lord's death as the source of all nourishment and strength after this life of holiness has been once begun. As the Lord's Supper symbolizes the sanctifying power of Jesus' death, so baptism symbolizes its regenerating power.The truth of Christ's death and resurrection is a precious jewel, and it is given us in these outward ordinances as in a casket. Let us care for the casket lest we lose the gem. As a scarlet thread runs through every rope and cord of the British navy, testifying that it is the property of the Crown, so through every doctrine and ordinance of Christianity runs the red line of Jesus' blood. It is their common reference to the death of Christ that binds the two ordinances together.(e) There are two reasons, therefore, why nothing but immersion will satisfy the design of the ordinance: first,—because nothing else can symbolize the radical nature of the change effected in regeneration—a change from spiritual death to spiritual life; secondly,—because nothing else can set forth the fact that this change is due to the entrance of the soul into communion with the death and resurrection of Christ.Christian truth is an organism. Part is bound to part, and all together constitute one vitalized whole. To give up any single portion of that truth is like maiming the human body. Life may remain, but one manifestation of life has ceased. The whole body of Christian truth has lost its symmetry and a part of its power to save.Pfleiderer, Philos. Religion, 2:212—“In the Eleusinian mysteries, the act of reception was represented as a regeneration, and the hierophant appointed to the temple service had to take a sacramental bath, out of which he proceeded as a‘new man’with a new name, which signifies that, as they were wont to say,‘the first one was forgotten,’—that is, the old man was put off at the same time with the old name. The parallel of this Eleusinian rite with the thoughts which Paul has written about Baptism in the Epistle to the Romans, and therefore from Corinth, is so striking that a connection between the two may well be conjectured; and all the more that even in the case of the Lord's Supper, Paul has brought in the comparison with the heathen festivals, in order to give a basis for his mystical theory.â€(f) To substitute for baptism anything which excludes all symbolic reference to the death of Christ, is to destroy the ordinance, just as substituting for the broken bread and poured out wine of the communion some form of administration which leaves out all reference to the death of Christ would be to destroy the Lord's Supper, and to celebrate an ordinance of human invention.[pg 945]Baptism, like the Fourth of July, the Passover, the Lord's Supper, is a historical monument. It witnesses to the world that Jesus died and rose again. In celebrating it, we show forth the Lord's death as truly as in the celebration of the Supper. But it is more than a historical monument. It is also a pictorial expression of doctrine. Into it are woven all the essential truths of the Christian scheme. It tells of the nature and penalty of sin, of human nature delivered from sin in the person of a crucified and risen Savior, of salvation secured for each human soul that is united to Christ, of obedience to Christ as the way to life and glory. Thus baptism stands from age to age as a witness for God—a witness both to the facts and to the doctrine of Christianity. To change the form of administering the ordinance is therefore to strike a blow at Christianity and at Christ, and to defraud the world of a part of God's means of salvation. See Ebrard's view of Baptism, in Baptist Quarterly, 1869:257, and in Olshausen's Com. on N. T., 1:270, and 3:594. Also Lightfoot, Com. onColossians 2:20, and3:1.Ebrard:“Baptism = Death.â€So Sanday, Com. onRom. 6—“Immersion = Death; Submersion = Burial (the ratification of death); Emergence = Resurrection (the ratification of life).â€William Ashmore:“Solomon's Temple had two monumental pillars:Jachin,‘he shall establish,’andBoaz,‘in it is strength.’In Zechariah's vision were two olive trees on either side of the golden candlestick. In like manner, Christ has left two monumental witnesses to testify concerning himself—Baptism and the Lord's Supper.â€The lady in the street car, who had inadvertently stuck her parasol into a man's eye, very naturally begged his pardon. But he replied:“It is of no consequence, madame; I have still one eye left.â€Our friends who sprinkle or pour put out one eye of the gospel witness, break down one appointed monument of Christ's saving truth,—shall we be content to say that we have still one ordinance left? At the Rappahannock one of the Federal regiments, just because its standard was shot away, was mistaken by our own men for a regiment of Confederates, and was subjected to a murderous enfilading fire that decimated its ranks. Baptism and the Lord's Supper are the two flags of Christ's army,—we cannot afford to lose either one of them.
3. The Symbolism of Baptism.Baptism symbolizes the previous entrance of the believer into the communion of Christ's death and resurrection,—or, in other words, regeneration through union with Christ.A. Expansion of this statement as to the symbolism of baptism.Baptism, more particularly, is a symbol:(a) Of the death and resurrection of Christ.Rom. 6:3—“Or are ye ignorant that all we who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death?â€cf.Mat 3:13—“Then cometh Jesus from Galilee to the Jordan unto John, to be baptized of himâ€;Mark 10:38—“Are ye able to drink the cup that I drink? or to be baptized with the baptism that I am baptized with?â€;Luke 12:50—“But I have a baptism to be baptized with; and how am I straitened till it be accomplished!â€Col. 2:12—“buried with him in baptism, wherein ye were also raised with him through faith in the working of God, who raised him from the dead.â€For the meaning of these passages, see note on the baptism of Jesus, under B. (a), pages942,943.Denney, in Expositor's Greek Testament, onRom. 6:3-5—“The argumentative requirements of the passage ... demand the idea of an actual union to, or incorporation in Christ.... We were buried with him [in the act of immersion] through that baptism into his death.... If the baptism,which is a similitude of Christ's death, has had a reality answering to its obvious import, so that we have really died in it as Christ died, then we shall have a corresponding experience of resurrection. Baptism, inasmuch as one emerges from the water after being immersed, is a similitude of resurrection as well as of death.â€[pg 941](b) Of the purpose of that death and resurrection,—namely, to atone for sin, and to deliver sinners from its penalty and power.Rom. 6:4—“We were buried therefore with him through baptism into death: that like as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, so we also might walk in newness of lifeâ€;cf.7, 10, 11—“for he that hath died is justified from sin.... For the death that he died, he died unto sin once: but the life that he liveth, he liveth unto God. Even so reckon ye also yourselves to be dead unto sin, but alive unto God in Christ Jesusâ€;2 Cor. 5:14—“we thus judge, that one died for all, therefore all died.â€Baptism is therefore a confession of evangelical faith both as to sin, and as to the deity and atonement of Christ. No one is properly a Baptist who does not acknowledge these truths which baptism signifies.T. W. Chambers, in Presb. and Ref. Rev., Jan. 1890:113-118, objects that this view of the symbolism of baptism is based on two texts,Rom. 6:4andCol. 2:12, which are illustrative and not explanatory, while the great majority of passages make baptism only an act of purification. Yet Dr. Chambers concedes:“It is to be admitted that nearly all modern critical expositors (Meyer, Godet, Alford, Conybeare, Lightfoot, Beet) consider that there is a reference here [inRom. 6:4] to the act of baptism, which, as the Bishop of Durham says,‘is the grave of the old man and the birth of the new—an image of the believer's participation both in the death and in the resurrection of Christ.... As he sinks beneath the baptismal waters, the believer buries there all his corrupt affections and past sins; as he emerges thence, he rises regenerate, quickened to new hopes and a new life.’â€(c) Of the accomplishment of that purpose in the person baptized,—who thus professes his death to sin and resurrection to spiritual life.Gal. 3:27—“For as many of you as were baptized into Christ did put on Christâ€;1 Pet. 3:21—“which[water]also after a true likeness doth now save you, even baptism, not the putting away of the filth of the flesh, but the interrogation of a good conscience toward God, through the resurrection of Jesus Christâ€;cf.Gal. 2:19, 20—“For I through the law died unto the law, that I might live unto God. I have been crucified with Christ; and it is no longer I that live, but Christ liveth in me: and that life which I now live in the flesh I live in faith, the faith which is in the Son of God, who loved me, and gave himself up for meâ€;Col. 3:3—“For ye died, and your life is hid with Christ in God.â€C. H. M.:“A truly baptized person is one who has passed from the old world into the new.... The water rolls over his person, signifying that his place in nature is ignored, that his old nature is entirely set aside, in short, that he is a dead man, that the flesh with all that pertained thereto—its sins and its liabilities—is buried in the grave of Christ and can never come into God's sight again.... When the believer rises up from the water, expression is given to the truth that he comes up as the possessor of a new life, even the resurrection life of Christ, to which divine righteousness inseparably attaches.â€(d) Of the method in which that purpose is accomplished,—by union with Christ, receiving him and giving one's self to him by faith.Rom. 6:5—“For if we have become united[σÏμφυτοι]with him in the likeness of his death, we shall be also in the likeness of his resurrectionâ€â€”σÏμφυτοι, or συμπεφυκώς, is used of the man and the horse as grown together in the Centaur, by Lucian, Dial. Mort., 16:4, and by Xenophon, Cyrop., 4:3:18.Col. 2:12—“having been buried with him in baptism, wherein ye were also raised with him through faith in the working of God, who raised him from the dead.â€Dr. N. S. Burton:“The oneness of the believer and Christ is expressed by the fact that the one act of immersion sets forth the death and resurrection of both Christ and the believer.â€As the voluntary element in faith has two parts, a giving and a taking, so baptism illustrates both. Submergence = surrender to Christ; emergence = reception of Christ; see page839, (b).“Putting on Christâ€(Gal. 3:27) is the burying of the old life and the rising to a new.Cf.the active and the passive obedience of Christ (pages 749, 770), the two elements of justification (pages854-859), the two aspects of formal worship (page 23), the two divisions of the Lord's Prayer.William Ashmore holds that incorporation into Christ is the root idea of baptism, union with Christ's death and resurrection being only a part of it. We are“baptized into Christâ€(Rom. 6:3), as the Israelites were“baptized into Mosesâ€(1 Cor. 10:2). As baptism symbolizes the incorporation of the believer into Christ, so the Lord's Supper symbolizes the incorporation of Christ into the believer. We go down into the water, but the bread goes down into us. We are“in Christ,â€and Christ is“in us.â€The candidate does not baptize himself, but puts himself wholly into the hands of the administrator. This[pg 942]seems symbolic of his committing himself entirely to Christ, of whom the administrator is the representative. Similarly in the Lord's Supper, it is Christ who through his representative distributes the emblems of his death and life.E. G. Robinson regarded baptism as implying: 1. death to sin; 2. resurrection to new life in Christ; 3. entire surrender of ourselves to the authority of the triune God. Baptism“into the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spiritâ€(Mat 28:19) cannot imply supreme allegiance to the Father, and only subordinate allegiance to the Son. Baptism therefore is an assumption of supreme allegiance to Jesus Christ. N. E. Wood, in The Watchman, Dec. 3, 1896, 15—“Calvinism has its five points; but Baptists have also their own five points: the Trinity, the Atonement, Regeneration, Baptism, and an inspired Bible. All other doctrines gather round these.â€(e) Of the consequent union of all believers in Christ.Eph. 4:5—“one Lord, one faith, one baptismâ€;1 Cor. 12:13—“For in one Spirit were we all baptized into one body, whether Jews or Greeks, whether bond or free; and were all made to drink of one Spiritâ€;cf.10:3, 4—“and did all eat the same spiritual food; and did all drink the same spiritual drink: for they drank of a spiritual rock that followed them: and the rock was Christ.â€InEph. 4:5, it is noticeable that, not the Lord's Supper, but baptism, is referred to as the symbol of Christian unity. A. H. Strong, Cleveland Sermon, 1904—“Our fathers lived in a day when simple faith was subject to serious disabilities. The establishments frowned upon dissent and visited it with pains and penalties. It is no wonder that believers in the New Testament doctrine and polity felt that they must come out from what they regarded as an apostate church. They could have no sympathy with those who held back the truth in unrighteousness and persecuted the saints of God. But our doctrine has leavened all Christendom. Scholarship is on the side of immersion. Infant baptism is on the decline. The churches that once opposed us now compliment us on our stedfastness in the faith and on our missionary zeal. There is a growing spirituality in these churches, which prompts them to extend to us hands of fellowship. And there is a growing sense among us that the kingdom of Christ is wider than our own membership, and that loyalty to our Lord requires us to recognize his presence and blessing even in bodies which we do not regard as organized in complete accordance with the New Testament model. Faith in the larger Christ is bringing us out from our denominational isolation into an inspiring recognition of our oneness with the universal church of God throughout the world.â€(f) Of the death and resurrection of the body,—which will complete the work of Christ in us, and which Christ's death and resurrection assure to all his members.1 Cor. 15:12, 22—“Now if Christ is preached that he hath been raised from the dead, how say some among you that there is no resurrection of the dead?... For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive.â€In the Scripture passages quoted above, we add to the argument from the meaning of the word βαπτίζω the argument from the meaning of the ordinance. Luther wrote, in his Babylonish Captivity of the Church, section 103 (English translation in Wace and Buchheim, First Principles of the Reformation, 192):“Baptism is a sign both of death and resurrection. Being moved by this reason, I would have those that are baptized to be altogether dipped into the water, as the word means and the mystery signifies.â€See Calvin onActs 8:38; Conybeare and Howson onRom. 6:4; Boardman, in Madison Avenue Lectures, 115-135.B. Inferences from the passages referred to.(a) The central truth set forth by baptism is the death and resurrection of Christ,—and our own death and resurrection only as connected with that.The baptism of Jesus in Jordan, equally with the subsequent baptism of his followers, was a symbol of his death. It was his death which he had in mind, when he said:“Are ye able to drink the cup that I drink? or to be baptized with the baptism that I am baptized with?â€(Mark 10:38);“But I have a baptism to be baptized with; and how am I straitened till it be accomplished!â€(Luke 12:50). The being immersed and overwhelmed in waters is a frequent metaphor in all languages to express the rush of successive troubles; comparePs. 69:2—“I am come into deep waters, where the floods overflow meâ€;42:7—“All thy waves and thy billows are gone over meâ€;124:4, 5—“Then the waters had overwhelmed us, The stream had gone over our soul; Then the proud waters had gone over our soul.â€[pg 943]So the suffering, death, and burial, which were before our Lord, presented themselves to his mind as a baptism, because the very idea of baptism was that of a complete submersion under the floods of waters. Death was not to be poured upon Christ,—it was no mere sprinkling of suffering which he was to endure, but a sinking into the mighty waters, and a being overwhelmed by them. It was the giving of himself to this, which he symbolized by his baptism in Jordan. That act was not arbitrary, or formal, or ritual. It was a public consecration, a consecration to death, to death for the sins of the world. It expressed the essential nature and meaning of his earthly work: the baptism of water at the beginning of his ministry consciously and designedly prefigured the baptism of death with which that ministry was to close.Jesus' submission to John's baptism of repentance, the rite that belonged only to sinners, can be explained only upon the ground that he was“made to be sin on our behalfâ€(2 Cor. 5:21). He had taken our nature upon him, without its hereditary corruption indeed, but with all its hereditary guilt, that he might redeem that nature and reunite it to God. As one with humanity, he had in his unconscious childhood submitted to the rites of circumcision, purification, and legal redemption (Luke 2:21-24;cf.Ex. 13:2, 13; see Lange, Alford, Webster and Wilkinson onLuke 2:24)—all of them rites appointed for sinners.“Made in the likeness of menâ€(Phil. 2:7),“the likeness of sinful fleshâ€(Rom. 8:3), he was“to put away sin by the sacrifice of himselfâ€(Heb. 9:26).In his baptism, therefore, he could say,“Thus it becometh us to fulfil all righteousnessâ€(Mat. 3:15) because only through the final baptism of suffering and death, which this baptism in water foreshadowed, could he“make an end of sinsâ€and“bring in everlasting righteousnessâ€(Dan. 9:24) to the condemned and ruined world. He could not be“the Lord our Righteousnessâ€(Jer. 23:6) except by first suffering the death due to the nature he had assumed, thereby delivering it from its guilt and perfecting it forever. All this was indicated in that act by which he was first“made manifest to Israelâ€(John 1:31). In his baptism in Jordan, he was buried in the likeness of his coming death, and raised in the likeness of his coming resurrection.1 John 5:6—“This is he that came by water and blood, even Jesus Christ; not in the water only, but in the water and in the bloodâ€= in the baptism of water at the beginning of his ministry, and in the baptism of blood with which that ministry was to close.As that baptism pointed forward to Jesus' death, so our baptism points backward to the same, as the centre and substance of his redeeming work, the one death by which we live. We who are“baptized into Christâ€are“baptized into his deathâ€(Rom. 6:3), that is, into spiritual communion and participation in that death which he died for our salvation; in short, in baptism we declare in symbol that his death has become ours. On the Baptism of Jesus, see A. H. Strong, Philosophy and Religion, 226-237.(b) The correlative truth of the believer's death and resurrection, set forth in baptism, implies, first,—confession of sin and humiliation on account of it, as deserving of death; secondly,—declaration of Christ's death for sin, and of the believer's acceptance of Christ's substitutionary work; thirdly,—acknowledgment that the soul has become partaker of Christ's life, and now lives only in and for him.A false mode of administering the ordinance has so obscured the meaning of baptism that it has to multitudes lost all reference to the death of Christ, and the Lord's Supper is assumed to be the only ordinance which is intended to remind us of the atoning sacrifice to which we owe our salvation. For evidence of this, see the remarks of President Woolsey in the Sunday School Times:“Baptism it [the Christian religion] could share in with the doctrine of John the Baptist, and if a similar rite had existed under the Jewish law, it would have been regarded as appropriate to a religion which inculcated renunciation of sin and purity of heart and life. But [in the Lord's Supper] we go beyond the province of baptism to the verypenetraleof the gospel, to the efficacy and meaning of Christ's death.â€Baptism should be a public act. We cannot afford to relegate it to a corner, or to celebrate it in private, as some professedly Baptist churches of England are said to do. Like marriage, the essence of it is the joining of ourselves to another before the world. In baptism we merge ourselves in Christ, before God and angels and men. The Mohammedan stands five times a day, and prays with his face toward Mecca, caring not who sees him.Luke 12:8—“Every one who shall confess me before men, him shall the Son of man also confess before the angels of God.â€[pg 944](c) Baptism symbolizes purification, but purification in a peculiar and divine way,—namely, through the death of Christ and the entrance of the soul into communion with that death. The radical defect of sprinkling or pouring as a mode of administering the ordinance, is that it does not point to Christ's death as the procuring cause of our purification.It is a grievous thing to say by symbol, as those do say who practice sprinkling in place of immersion, that a man may regenerate himself, or, if not this, yet that his regeneration may take place without connection with Christ's death. Edward Beecher's chief argument against Baptist views is drawn fromJohn 3:22-25—“a questioning on the part of John's disciples with a Jew about purifying.â€Purification is made to be the essential meaning of baptism, and the conclusion is drawn that any form expressive of purification will answer the design of the ordinance. But if Christ's death is the procuring cause of our purification, we may expect it to be symbolized in the ordinance which declares that purification; if Christ's death is the central fact of Christianity, we may expect it to be symbolized in the initiatory rite of Christianity.(d) In baptism we show forth the Lord's death as the original source of holiness and life in our souls, just as in the Lord's Supper we show forth the Lord's death as the source of all nourishment and strength after this life of holiness has been once begun. As the Lord's Supper symbolizes the sanctifying power of Jesus' death, so baptism symbolizes its regenerating power.The truth of Christ's death and resurrection is a precious jewel, and it is given us in these outward ordinances as in a casket. Let us care for the casket lest we lose the gem. As a scarlet thread runs through every rope and cord of the British navy, testifying that it is the property of the Crown, so through every doctrine and ordinance of Christianity runs the red line of Jesus' blood. It is their common reference to the death of Christ that binds the two ordinances together.(e) There are two reasons, therefore, why nothing but immersion will satisfy the design of the ordinance: first,—because nothing else can symbolize the radical nature of the change effected in regeneration—a change from spiritual death to spiritual life; secondly,—because nothing else can set forth the fact that this change is due to the entrance of the soul into communion with the death and resurrection of Christ.Christian truth is an organism. Part is bound to part, and all together constitute one vitalized whole. To give up any single portion of that truth is like maiming the human body. Life may remain, but one manifestation of life has ceased. The whole body of Christian truth has lost its symmetry and a part of its power to save.Pfleiderer, Philos. Religion, 2:212—“In the Eleusinian mysteries, the act of reception was represented as a regeneration, and the hierophant appointed to the temple service had to take a sacramental bath, out of which he proceeded as a‘new man’with a new name, which signifies that, as they were wont to say,‘the first one was forgotten,’—that is, the old man was put off at the same time with the old name. The parallel of this Eleusinian rite with the thoughts which Paul has written about Baptism in the Epistle to the Romans, and therefore from Corinth, is so striking that a connection between the two may well be conjectured; and all the more that even in the case of the Lord's Supper, Paul has brought in the comparison with the heathen festivals, in order to give a basis for his mystical theory.â€(f) To substitute for baptism anything which excludes all symbolic reference to the death of Christ, is to destroy the ordinance, just as substituting for the broken bread and poured out wine of the communion some form of administration which leaves out all reference to the death of Christ would be to destroy the Lord's Supper, and to celebrate an ordinance of human invention.[pg 945]Baptism, like the Fourth of July, the Passover, the Lord's Supper, is a historical monument. It witnesses to the world that Jesus died and rose again. In celebrating it, we show forth the Lord's death as truly as in the celebration of the Supper. But it is more than a historical monument. It is also a pictorial expression of doctrine. Into it are woven all the essential truths of the Christian scheme. It tells of the nature and penalty of sin, of human nature delivered from sin in the person of a crucified and risen Savior, of salvation secured for each human soul that is united to Christ, of obedience to Christ as the way to life and glory. Thus baptism stands from age to age as a witness for God—a witness both to the facts and to the doctrine of Christianity. To change the form of administering the ordinance is therefore to strike a blow at Christianity and at Christ, and to defraud the world of a part of God's means of salvation. See Ebrard's view of Baptism, in Baptist Quarterly, 1869:257, and in Olshausen's Com. on N. T., 1:270, and 3:594. Also Lightfoot, Com. onColossians 2:20, and3:1.Ebrard:“Baptism = Death.â€So Sanday, Com. onRom. 6—“Immersion = Death; Submersion = Burial (the ratification of death); Emergence = Resurrection (the ratification of life).â€William Ashmore:“Solomon's Temple had two monumental pillars:Jachin,‘he shall establish,’andBoaz,‘in it is strength.’In Zechariah's vision were two olive trees on either side of the golden candlestick. In like manner, Christ has left two monumental witnesses to testify concerning himself—Baptism and the Lord's Supper.â€The lady in the street car, who had inadvertently stuck her parasol into a man's eye, very naturally begged his pardon. But he replied:“It is of no consequence, madame; I have still one eye left.â€Our friends who sprinkle or pour put out one eye of the gospel witness, break down one appointed monument of Christ's saving truth,—shall we be content to say that we have still one ordinance left? At the Rappahannock one of the Federal regiments, just because its standard was shot away, was mistaken by our own men for a regiment of Confederates, and was subjected to a murderous enfilading fire that decimated its ranks. Baptism and the Lord's Supper are the two flags of Christ's army,—we cannot afford to lose either one of them.
3. The Symbolism of Baptism.Baptism symbolizes the previous entrance of the believer into the communion of Christ's death and resurrection,—or, in other words, regeneration through union with Christ.A. Expansion of this statement as to the symbolism of baptism.Baptism, more particularly, is a symbol:(a) Of the death and resurrection of Christ.Rom. 6:3—“Or are ye ignorant that all we who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death?â€cf.Mat 3:13—“Then cometh Jesus from Galilee to the Jordan unto John, to be baptized of himâ€;Mark 10:38—“Are ye able to drink the cup that I drink? or to be baptized with the baptism that I am baptized with?â€;Luke 12:50—“But I have a baptism to be baptized with; and how am I straitened till it be accomplished!â€Col. 2:12—“buried with him in baptism, wherein ye were also raised with him through faith in the working of God, who raised him from the dead.â€For the meaning of these passages, see note on the baptism of Jesus, under B. (a), pages942,943.Denney, in Expositor's Greek Testament, onRom. 6:3-5—“The argumentative requirements of the passage ... demand the idea of an actual union to, or incorporation in Christ.... We were buried with him [in the act of immersion] through that baptism into his death.... If the baptism,which is a similitude of Christ's death, has had a reality answering to its obvious import, so that we have really died in it as Christ died, then we shall have a corresponding experience of resurrection. Baptism, inasmuch as one emerges from the water after being immersed, is a similitude of resurrection as well as of death.â€[pg 941](b) Of the purpose of that death and resurrection,—namely, to atone for sin, and to deliver sinners from its penalty and power.Rom. 6:4—“We were buried therefore with him through baptism into death: that like as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, so we also might walk in newness of lifeâ€;cf.7, 10, 11—“for he that hath died is justified from sin.... For the death that he died, he died unto sin once: but the life that he liveth, he liveth unto God. Even so reckon ye also yourselves to be dead unto sin, but alive unto God in Christ Jesusâ€;2 Cor. 5:14—“we thus judge, that one died for all, therefore all died.â€Baptism is therefore a confession of evangelical faith both as to sin, and as to the deity and atonement of Christ. No one is properly a Baptist who does not acknowledge these truths which baptism signifies.T. W. Chambers, in Presb. and Ref. Rev., Jan. 1890:113-118, objects that this view of the symbolism of baptism is based on two texts,Rom. 6:4andCol. 2:12, which are illustrative and not explanatory, while the great majority of passages make baptism only an act of purification. Yet Dr. Chambers concedes:“It is to be admitted that nearly all modern critical expositors (Meyer, Godet, Alford, Conybeare, Lightfoot, Beet) consider that there is a reference here [inRom. 6:4] to the act of baptism, which, as the Bishop of Durham says,‘is the grave of the old man and the birth of the new—an image of the believer's participation both in the death and in the resurrection of Christ.... As he sinks beneath the baptismal waters, the believer buries there all his corrupt affections and past sins; as he emerges thence, he rises regenerate, quickened to new hopes and a new life.’â€(c) Of the accomplishment of that purpose in the person baptized,—who thus professes his death to sin and resurrection to spiritual life.Gal. 3:27—“For as many of you as were baptized into Christ did put on Christâ€;1 Pet. 3:21—“which[water]also after a true likeness doth now save you, even baptism, not the putting away of the filth of the flesh, but the interrogation of a good conscience toward God, through the resurrection of Jesus Christâ€;cf.Gal. 2:19, 20—“For I through the law died unto the law, that I might live unto God. I have been crucified with Christ; and it is no longer I that live, but Christ liveth in me: and that life which I now live in the flesh I live in faith, the faith which is in the Son of God, who loved me, and gave himself up for meâ€;Col. 3:3—“For ye died, and your life is hid with Christ in God.â€C. H. M.:“A truly baptized person is one who has passed from the old world into the new.... The water rolls over his person, signifying that his place in nature is ignored, that his old nature is entirely set aside, in short, that he is a dead man, that the flesh with all that pertained thereto—its sins and its liabilities—is buried in the grave of Christ and can never come into God's sight again.... When the believer rises up from the water, expression is given to the truth that he comes up as the possessor of a new life, even the resurrection life of Christ, to which divine righteousness inseparably attaches.â€(d) Of the method in which that purpose is accomplished,—by union with Christ, receiving him and giving one's self to him by faith.Rom. 6:5—“For if we have become united[σÏμφυτοι]with him in the likeness of his death, we shall be also in the likeness of his resurrectionâ€â€”σÏμφυτοι, or συμπεφυκώς, is used of the man and the horse as grown together in the Centaur, by Lucian, Dial. Mort., 16:4, and by Xenophon, Cyrop., 4:3:18.Col. 2:12—“having been buried with him in baptism, wherein ye were also raised with him through faith in the working of God, who raised him from the dead.â€Dr. N. S. Burton:“The oneness of the believer and Christ is expressed by the fact that the one act of immersion sets forth the death and resurrection of both Christ and the believer.â€As the voluntary element in faith has two parts, a giving and a taking, so baptism illustrates both. Submergence = surrender to Christ; emergence = reception of Christ; see page839, (b).“Putting on Christâ€(Gal. 3:27) is the burying of the old life and the rising to a new.Cf.the active and the passive obedience of Christ (pages 749, 770), the two elements of justification (pages854-859), the two aspects of formal worship (page 23), the two divisions of the Lord's Prayer.William Ashmore holds that incorporation into Christ is the root idea of baptism, union with Christ's death and resurrection being only a part of it. We are“baptized into Christâ€(Rom. 6:3), as the Israelites were“baptized into Mosesâ€(1 Cor. 10:2). As baptism symbolizes the incorporation of the believer into Christ, so the Lord's Supper symbolizes the incorporation of Christ into the believer. We go down into the water, but the bread goes down into us. We are“in Christ,â€and Christ is“in us.â€The candidate does not baptize himself, but puts himself wholly into the hands of the administrator. This[pg 942]seems symbolic of his committing himself entirely to Christ, of whom the administrator is the representative. Similarly in the Lord's Supper, it is Christ who through his representative distributes the emblems of his death and life.E. G. Robinson regarded baptism as implying: 1. death to sin; 2. resurrection to new life in Christ; 3. entire surrender of ourselves to the authority of the triune God. Baptism“into the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spiritâ€(Mat 28:19) cannot imply supreme allegiance to the Father, and only subordinate allegiance to the Son. Baptism therefore is an assumption of supreme allegiance to Jesus Christ. N. E. Wood, in The Watchman, Dec. 3, 1896, 15—“Calvinism has its five points; but Baptists have also their own five points: the Trinity, the Atonement, Regeneration, Baptism, and an inspired Bible. All other doctrines gather round these.â€(e) Of the consequent union of all believers in Christ.Eph. 4:5—“one Lord, one faith, one baptismâ€;1 Cor. 12:13—“For in one Spirit were we all baptized into one body, whether Jews or Greeks, whether bond or free; and were all made to drink of one Spiritâ€;cf.10:3, 4—“and did all eat the same spiritual food; and did all drink the same spiritual drink: for they drank of a spiritual rock that followed them: and the rock was Christ.â€InEph. 4:5, it is noticeable that, not the Lord's Supper, but baptism, is referred to as the symbol of Christian unity. A. H. Strong, Cleveland Sermon, 1904—“Our fathers lived in a day when simple faith was subject to serious disabilities. The establishments frowned upon dissent and visited it with pains and penalties. It is no wonder that believers in the New Testament doctrine and polity felt that they must come out from what they regarded as an apostate church. They could have no sympathy with those who held back the truth in unrighteousness and persecuted the saints of God. But our doctrine has leavened all Christendom. Scholarship is on the side of immersion. Infant baptism is on the decline. The churches that once opposed us now compliment us on our stedfastness in the faith and on our missionary zeal. There is a growing spirituality in these churches, which prompts them to extend to us hands of fellowship. And there is a growing sense among us that the kingdom of Christ is wider than our own membership, and that loyalty to our Lord requires us to recognize his presence and blessing even in bodies which we do not regard as organized in complete accordance with the New Testament model. Faith in the larger Christ is bringing us out from our denominational isolation into an inspiring recognition of our oneness with the universal church of God throughout the world.â€(f) Of the death and resurrection of the body,—which will complete the work of Christ in us, and which Christ's death and resurrection assure to all his members.1 Cor. 15:12, 22—“Now if Christ is preached that he hath been raised from the dead, how say some among you that there is no resurrection of the dead?... For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive.â€In the Scripture passages quoted above, we add to the argument from the meaning of the word βαπτίζω the argument from the meaning of the ordinance. Luther wrote, in his Babylonish Captivity of the Church, section 103 (English translation in Wace and Buchheim, First Principles of the Reformation, 192):“Baptism is a sign both of death and resurrection. Being moved by this reason, I would have those that are baptized to be altogether dipped into the water, as the word means and the mystery signifies.â€See Calvin onActs 8:38; Conybeare and Howson onRom. 6:4; Boardman, in Madison Avenue Lectures, 115-135.B. Inferences from the passages referred to.(a) The central truth set forth by baptism is the death and resurrection of Christ,—and our own death and resurrection only as connected with that.The baptism of Jesus in Jordan, equally with the subsequent baptism of his followers, was a symbol of his death. It was his death which he had in mind, when he said:“Are ye able to drink the cup that I drink? or to be baptized with the baptism that I am baptized with?â€(Mark 10:38);“But I have a baptism to be baptized with; and how am I straitened till it be accomplished!â€(Luke 12:50). The being immersed and overwhelmed in waters is a frequent metaphor in all languages to express the rush of successive troubles; comparePs. 69:2—“I am come into deep waters, where the floods overflow meâ€;42:7—“All thy waves and thy billows are gone over meâ€;124:4, 5—“Then the waters had overwhelmed us, The stream had gone over our soul; Then the proud waters had gone over our soul.â€[pg 943]So the suffering, death, and burial, which were before our Lord, presented themselves to his mind as a baptism, because the very idea of baptism was that of a complete submersion under the floods of waters. Death was not to be poured upon Christ,—it was no mere sprinkling of suffering which he was to endure, but a sinking into the mighty waters, and a being overwhelmed by them. It was the giving of himself to this, which he symbolized by his baptism in Jordan. That act was not arbitrary, or formal, or ritual. It was a public consecration, a consecration to death, to death for the sins of the world. It expressed the essential nature and meaning of his earthly work: the baptism of water at the beginning of his ministry consciously and designedly prefigured the baptism of death with which that ministry was to close.Jesus' submission to John's baptism of repentance, the rite that belonged only to sinners, can be explained only upon the ground that he was“made to be sin on our behalfâ€(2 Cor. 5:21). He had taken our nature upon him, without its hereditary corruption indeed, but with all its hereditary guilt, that he might redeem that nature and reunite it to God. As one with humanity, he had in his unconscious childhood submitted to the rites of circumcision, purification, and legal redemption (Luke 2:21-24;cf.Ex. 13:2, 13; see Lange, Alford, Webster and Wilkinson onLuke 2:24)—all of them rites appointed for sinners.“Made in the likeness of menâ€(Phil. 2:7),“the likeness of sinful fleshâ€(Rom. 8:3), he was“to put away sin by the sacrifice of himselfâ€(Heb. 9:26).In his baptism, therefore, he could say,“Thus it becometh us to fulfil all righteousnessâ€(Mat. 3:15) because only through the final baptism of suffering and death, which this baptism in water foreshadowed, could he“make an end of sinsâ€and“bring in everlasting righteousnessâ€(Dan. 9:24) to the condemned and ruined world. He could not be“the Lord our Righteousnessâ€(Jer. 23:6) except by first suffering the death due to the nature he had assumed, thereby delivering it from its guilt and perfecting it forever. All this was indicated in that act by which he was first“made manifest to Israelâ€(John 1:31). In his baptism in Jordan, he was buried in the likeness of his coming death, and raised in the likeness of his coming resurrection.1 John 5:6—“This is he that came by water and blood, even Jesus Christ; not in the water only, but in the water and in the bloodâ€= in the baptism of water at the beginning of his ministry, and in the baptism of blood with which that ministry was to close.As that baptism pointed forward to Jesus' death, so our baptism points backward to the same, as the centre and substance of his redeeming work, the one death by which we live. We who are“baptized into Christâ€are“baptized into his deathâ€(Rom. 6:3), that is, into spiritual communion and participation in that death which he died for our salvation; in short, in baptism we declare in symbol that his death has become ours. On the Baptism of Jesus, see A. H. Strong, Philosophy and Religion, 226-237.(b) The correlative truth of the believer's death and resurrection, set forth in baptism, implies, first,—confession of sin and humiliation on account of it, as deserving of death; secondly,—declaration of Christ's death for sin, and of the believer's acceptance of Christ's substitutionary work; thirdly,—acknowledgment that the soul has become partaker of Christ's life, and now lives only in and for him.A false mode of administering the ordinance has so obscured the meaning of baptism that it has to multitudes lost all reference to the death of Christ, and the Lord's Supper is assumed to be the only ordinance which is intended to remind us of the atoning sacrifice to which we owe our salvation. For evidence of this, see the remarks of President Woolsey in the Sunday School Times:“Baptism it [the Christian religion] could share in with the doctrine of John the Baptist, and if a similar rite had existed under the Jewish law, it would have been regarded as appropriate to a religion which inculcated renunciation of sin and purity of heart and life. But [in the Lord's Supper] we go beyond the province of baptism to the verypenetraleof the gospel, to the efficacy and meaning of Christ's death.â€Baptism should be a public act. We cannot afford to relegate it to a corner, or to celebrate it in private, as some professedly Baptist churches of England are said to do. Like marriage, the essence of it is the joining of ourselves to another before the world. In baptism we merge ourselves in Christ, before God and angels and men. The Mohammedan stands five times a day, and prays with his face toward Mecca, caring not who sees him.Luke 12:8—“Every one who shall confess me before men, him shall the Son of man also confess before the angels of God.â€[pg 944](c) Baptism symbolizes purification, but purification in a peculiar and divine way,—namely, through the death of Christ and the entrance of the soul into communion with that death. The radical defect of sprinkling or pouring as a mode of administering the ordinance, is that it does not point to Christ's death as the procuring cause of our purification.It is a grievous thing to say by symbol, as those do say who practice sprinkling in place of immersion, that a man may regenerate himself, or, if not this, yet that his regeneration may take place without connection with Christ's death. Edward Beecher's chief argument against Baptist views is drawn fromJohn 3:22-25—“a questioning on the part of John's disciples with a Jew about purifying.â€Purification is made to be the essential meaning of baptism, and the conclusion is drawn that any form expressive of purification will answer the design of the ordinance. But if Christ's death is the procuring cause of our purification, we may expect it to be symbolized in the ordinance which declares that purification; if Christ's death is the central fact of Christianity, we may expect it to be symbolized in the initiatory rite of Christianity.(d) In baptism we show forth the Lord's death as the original source of holiness and life in our souls, just as in the Lord's Supper we show forth the Lord's death as the source of all nourishment and strength after this life of holiness has been once begun. As the Lord's Supper symbolizes the sanctifying power of Jesus' death, so baptism symbolizes its regenerating power.The truth of Christ's death and resurrection is a precious jewel, and it is given us in these outward ordinances as in a casket. Let us care for the casket lest we lose the gem. As a scarlet thread runs through every rope and cord of the British navy, testifying that it is the property of the Crown, so through every doctrine and ordinance of Christianity runs the red line of Jesus' blood. It is their common reference to the death of Christ that binds the two ordinances together.(e) There are two reasons, therefore, why nothing but immersion will satisfy the design of the ordinance: first,—because nothing else can symbolize the radical nature of the change effected in regeneration—a change from spiritual death to spiritual life; secondly,—because nothing else can set forth the fact that this change is due to the entrance of the soul into communion with the death and resurrection of Christ.Christian truth is an organism. Part is bound to part, and all together constitute one vitalized whole. To give up any single portion of that truth is like maiming the human body. Life may remain, but one manifestation of life has ceased. The whole body of Christian truth has lost its symmetry and a part of its power to save.Pfleiderer, Philos. Religion, 2:212—“In the Eleusinian mysteries, the act of reception was represented as a regeneration, and the hierophant appointed to the temple service had to take a sacramental bath, out of which he proceeded as a‘new man’with a new name, which signifies that, as they were wont to say,‘the first one was forgotten,’—that is, the old man was put off at the same time with the old name. The parallel of this Eleusinian rite with the thoughts which Paul has written about Baptism in the Epistle to the Romans, and therefore from Corinth, is so striking that a connection between the two may well be conjectured; and all the more that even in the case of the Lord's Supper, Paul has brought in the comparison with the heathen festivals, in order to give a basis for his mystical theory.â€(f) To substitute for baptism anything which excludes all symbolic reference to the death of Christ, is to destroy the ordinance, just as substituting for the broken bread and poured out wine of the communion some form of administration which leaves out all reference to the death of Christ would be to destroy the Lord's Supper, and to celebrate an ordinance of human invention.[pg 945]Baptism, like the Fourth of July, the Passover, the Lord's Supper, is a historical monument. It witnesses to the world that Jesus died and rose again. In celebrating it, we show forth the Lord's death as truly as in the celebration of the Supper. But it is more than a historical monument. It is also a pictorial expression of doctrine. Into it are woven all the essential truths of the Christian scheme. It tells of the nature and penalty of sin, of human nature delivered from sin in the person of a crucified and risen Savior, of salvation secured for each human soul that is united to Christ, of obedience to Christ as the way to life and glory. Thus baptism stands from age to age as a witness for God—a witness both to the facts and to the doctrine of Christianity. To change the form of administering the ordinance is therefore to strike a blow at Christianity and at Christ, and to defraud the world of a part of God's means of salvation. See Ebrard's view of Baptism, in Baptist Quarterly, 1869:257, and in Olshausen's Com. on N. T., 1:270, and 3:594. Also Lightfoot, Com. onColossians 2:20, and3:1.Ebrard:“Baptism = Death.â€So Sanday, Com. onRom. 6—“Immersion = Death; Submersion = Burial (the ratification of death); Emergence = Resurrection (the ratification of life).â€William Ashmore:“Solomon's Temple had two monumental pillars:Jachin,‘he shall establish,’andBoaz,‘in it is strength.’In Zechariah's vision were two olive trees on either side of the golden candlestick. In like manner, Christ has left two monumental witnesses to testify concerning himself—Baptism and the Lord's Supper.â€The lady in the street car, who had inadvertently stuck her parasol into a man's eye, very naturally begged his pardon. But he replied:“It is of no consequence, madame; I have still one eye left.â€Our friends who sprinkle or pour put out one eye of the gospel witness, break down one appointed monument of Christ's saving truth,—shall we be content to say that we have still one ordinance left? At the Rappahannock one of the Federal regiments, just because its standard was shot away, was mistaken by our own men for a regiment of Confederates, and was subjected to a murderous enfilading fire that decimated its ranks. Baptism and the Lord's Supper are the two flags of Christ's army,—we cannot afford to lose either one of them.
Baptism symbolizes the previous entrance of the believer into the communion of Christ's death and resurrection,—or, in other words, regeneration through union with Christ.
A. Expansion of this statement as to the symbolism of baptism.Baptism, more particularly, is a symbol:(a) Of the death and resurrection of Christ.Rom. 6:3—“Or are ye ignorant that all we who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death?â€cf.Mat 3:13—“Then cometh Jesus from Galilee to the Jordan unto John, to be baptized of himâ€;Mark 10:38—“Are ye able to drink the cup that I drink? or to be baptized with the baptism that I am baptized with?â€;Luke 12:50—“But I have a baptism to be baptized with; and how am I straitened till it be accomplished!â€Col. 2:12—“buried with him in baptism, wherein ye were also raised with him through faith in the working of God, who raised him from the dead.â€For the meaning of these passages, see note on the baptism of Jesus, under B. (a), pages942,943.Denney, in Expositor's Greek Testament, onRom. 6:3-5—“The argumentative requirements of the passage ... demand the idea of an actual union to, or incorporation in Christ.... We were buried with him [in the act of immersion] through that baptism into his death.... If the baptism,which is a similitude of Christ's death, has had a reality answering to its obvious import, so that we have really died in it as Christ died, then we shall have a corresponding experience of resurrection. Baptism, inasmuch as one emerges from the water after being immersed, is a similitude of resurrection as well as of death.â€[pg 941](b) Of the purpose of that death and resurrection,—namely, to atone for sin, and to deliver sinners from its penalty and power.Rom. 6:4—“We were buried therefore with him through baptism into death: that like as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, so we also might walk in newness of lifeâ€;cf.7, 10, 11—“for he that hath died is justified from sin.... For the death that he died, he died unto sin once: but the life that he liveth, he liveth unto God. Even so reckon ye also yourselves to be dead unto sin, but alive unto God in Christ Jesusâ€;2 Cor. 5:14—“we thus judge, that one died for all, therefore all died.â€Baptism is therefore a confession of evangelical faith both as to sin, and as to the deity and atonement of Christ. No one is properly a Baptist who does not acknowledge these truths which baptism signifies.T. W. Chambers, in Presb. and Ref. Rev., Jan. 1890:113-118, objects that this view of the symbolism of baptism is based on two texts,Rom. 6:4andCol. 2:12, which are illustrative and not explanatory, while the great majority of passages make baptism only an act of purification. Yet Dr. Chambers concedes:“It is to be admitted that nearly all modern critical expositors (Meyer, Godet, Alford, Conybeare, Lightfoot, Beet) consider that there is a reference here [inRom. 6:4] to the act of baptism, which, as the Bishop of Durham says,‘is the grave of the old man and the birth of the new—an image of the believer's participation both in the death and in the resurrection of Christ.... As he sinks beneath the baptismal waters, the believer buries there all his corrupt affections and past sins; as he emerges thence, he rises regenerate, quickened to new hopes and a new life.’â€(c) Of the accomplishment of that purpose in the person baptized,—who thus professes his death to sin and resurrection to spiritual life.Gal. 3:27—“For as many of you as were baptized into Christ did put on Christâ€;1 Pet. 3:21—“which[water]also after a true likeness doth now save you, even baptism, not the putting away of the filth of the flesh, but the interrogation of a good conscience toward God, through the resurrection of Jesus Christâ€;cf.Gal. 2:19, 20—“For I through the law died unto the law, that I might live unto God. I have been crucified with Christ; and it is no longer I that live, but Christ liveth in me: and that life which I now live in the flesh I live in faith, the faith which is in the Son of God, who loved me, and gave himself up for meâ€;Col. 3:3—“For ye died, and your life is hid with Christ in God.â€C. H. M.:“A truly baptized person is one who has passed from the old world into the new.... The water rolls over his person, signifying that his place in nature is ignored, that his old nature is entirely set aside, in short, that he is a dead man, that the flesh with all that pertained thereto—its sins and its liabilities—is buried in the grave of Christ and can never come into God's sight again.... When the believer rises up from the water, expression is given to the truth that he comes up as the possessor of a new life, even the resurrection life of Christ, to which divine righteousness inseparably attaches.â€(d) Of the method in which that purpose is accomplished,—by union with Christ, receiving him and giving one's self to him by faith.Rom. 6:5—“For if we have become united[σÏμφυτοι]with him in the likeness of his death, we shall be also in the likeness of his resurrectionâ€â€”σÏμφυτοι, or συμπεφυκώς, is used of the man and the horse as grown together in the Centaur, by Lucian, Dial. Mort., 16:4, and by Xenophon, Cyrop., 4:3:18.Col. 2:12—“having been buried with him in baptism, wherein ye were also raised with him through faith in the working of God, who raised him from the dead.â€Dr. N. S. Burton:“The oneness of the believer and Christ is expressed by the fact that the one act of immersion sets forth the death and resurrection of both Christ and the believer.â€As the voluntary element in faith has two parts, a giving and a taking, so baptism illustrates both. Submergence = surrender to Christ; emergence = reception of Christ; see page839, (b).“Putting on Christâ€(Gal. 3:27) is the burying of the old life and the rising to a new.Cf.the active and the passive obedience of Christ (pages 749, 770), the two elements of justification (pages854-859), the two aspects of formal worship (page 23), the two divisions of the Lord's Prayer.William Ashmore holds that incorporation into Christ is the root idea of baptism, union with Christ's death and resurrection being only a part of it. We are“baptized into Christâ€(Rom. 6:3), as the Israelites were“baptized into Mosesâ€(1 Cor. 10:2). As baptism symbolizes the incorporation of the believer into Christ, so the Lord's Supper symbolizes the incorporation of Christ into the believer. We go down into the water, but the bread goes down into us. We are“in Christ,â€and Christ is“in us.â€The candidate does not baptize himself, but puts himself wholly into the hands of the administrator. This[pg 942]seems symbolic of his committing himself entirely to Christ, of whom the administrator is the representative. Similarly in the Lord's Supper, it is Christ who through his representative distributes the emblems of his death and life.E. G. Robinson regarded baptism as implying: 1. death to sin; 2. resurrection to new life in Christ; 3. entire surrender of ourselves to the authority of the triune God. Baptism“into the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spiritâ€(Mat 28:19) cannot imply supreme allegiance to the Father, and only subordinate allegiance to the Son. Baptism therefore is an assumption of supreme allegiance to Jesus Christ. N. E. Wood, in The Watchman, Dec. 3, 1896, 15—“Calvinism has its five points; but Baptists have also their own five points: the Trinity, the Atonement, Regeneration, Baptism, and an inspired Bible. All other doctrines gather round these.â€(e) Of the consequent union of all believers in Christ.Eph. 4:5—“one Lord, one faith, one baptismâ€;1 Cor. 12:13—“For in one Spirit were we all baptized into one body, whether Jews or Greeks, whether bond or free; and were all made to drink of one Spiritâ€;cf.10:3, 4—“and did all eat the same spiritual food; and did all drink the same spiritual drink: for they drank of a spiritual rock that followed them: and the rock was Christ.â€InEph. 4:5, it is noticeable that, not the Lord's Supper, but baptism, is referred to as the symbol of Christian unity. A. H. Strong, Cleveland Sermon, 1904—“Our fathers lived in a day when simple faith was subject to serious disabilities. The establishments frowned upon dissent and visited it with pains and penalties. It is no wonder that believers in the New Testament doctrine and polity felt that they must come out from what they regarded as an apostate church. They could have no sympathy with those who held back the truth in unrighteousness and persecuted the saints of God. But our doctrine has leavened all Christendom. Scholarship is on the side of immersion. Infant baptism is on the decline. The churches that once opposed us now compliment us on our stedfastness in the faith and on our missionary zeal. There is a growing spirituality in these churches, which prompts them to extend to us hands of fellowship. And there is a growing sense among us that the kingdom of Christ is wider than our own membership, and that loyalty to our Lord requires us to recognize his presence and blessing even in bodies which we do not regard as organized in complete accordance with the New Testament model. Faith in the larger Christ is bringing us out from our denominational isolation into an inspiring recognition of our oneness with the universal church of God throughout the world.â€(f) Of the death and resurrection of the body,—which will complete the work of Christ in us, and which Christ's death and resurrection assure to all his members.1 Cor. 15:12, 22—“Now if Christ is preached that he hath been raised from the dead, how say some among you that there is no resurrection of the dead?... For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive.â€In the Scripture passages quoted above, we add to the argument from the meaning of the word βαπτίζω the argument from the meaning of the ordinance. Luther wrote, in his Babylonish Captivity of the Church, section 103 (English translation in Wace and Buchheim, First Principles of the Reformation, 192):“Baptism is a sign both of death and resurrection. Being moved by this reason, I would have those that are baptized to be altogether dipped into the water, as the word means and the mystery signifies.â€See Calvin onActs 8:38; Conybeare and Howson onRom. 6:4; Boardman, in Madison Avenue Lectures, 115-135.
Baptism, more particularly, is a symbol:
(a) Of the death and resurrection of Christ.
Rom. 6:3—“Or are ye ignorant that all we who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death?â€cf.Mat 3:13—“Then cometh Jesus from Galilee to the Jordan unto John, to be baptized of himâ€;Mark 10:38—“Are ye able to drink the cup that I drink? or to be baptized with the baptism that I am baptized with?â€;Luke 12:50—“But I have a baptism to be baptized with; and how am I straitened till it be accomplished!â€Col. 2:12—“buried with him in baptism, wherein ye were also raised with him through faith in the working of God, who raised him from the dead.â€For the meaning of these passages, see note on the baptism of Jesus, under B. (a), pages942,943.Denney, in Expositor's Greek Testament, onRom. 6:3-5—“The argumentative requirements of the passage ... demand the idea of an actual union to, or incorporation in Christ.... We were buried with him [in the act of immersion] through that baptism into his death.... If the baptism,which is a similitude of Christ's death, has had a reality answering to its obvious import, so that we have really died in it as Christ died, then we shall have a corresponding experience of resurrection. Baptism, inasmuch as one emerges from the water after being immersed, is a similitude of resurrection as well as of death.â€
Rom. 6:3—“Or are ye ignorant that all we who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death?â€cf.Mat 3:13—“Then cometh Jesus from Galilee to the Jordan unto John, to be baptized of himâ€;Mark 10:38—“Are ye able to drink the cup that I drink? or to be baptized with the baptism that I am baptized with?â€;Luke 12:50—“But I have a baptism to be baptized with; and how am I straitened till it be accomplished!â€Col. 2:12—“buried with him in baptism, wherein ye were also raised with him through faith in the working of God, who raised him from the dead.â€For the meaning of these passages, see note on the baptism of Jesus, under B. (a), pages942,943.
Denney, in Expositor's Greek Testament, onRom. 6:3-5—“The argumentative requirements of the passage ... demand the idea of an actual union to, or incorporation in Christ.... We were buried with him [in the act of immersion] through that baptism into his death.... If the baptism,which is a similitude of Christ's death, has had a reality answering to its obvious import, so that we have really died in it as Christ died, then we shall have a corresponding experience of resurrection. Baptism, inasmuch as one emerges from the water after being immersed, is a similitude of resurrection as well as of death.â€
(b) Of the purpose of that death and resurrection,—namely, to atone for sin, and to deliver sinners from its penalty and power.
Rom. 6:4—“We were buried therefore with him through baptism into death: that like as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, so we also might walk in newness of lifeâ€;cf.7, 10, 11—“for he that hath died is justified from sin.... For the death that he died, he died unto sin once: but the life that he liveth, he liveth unto God. Even so reckon ye also yourselves to be dead unto sin, but alive unto God in Christ Jesusâ€;2 Cor. 5:14—“we thus judge, that one died for all, therefore all died.â€Baptism is therefore a confession of evangelical faith both as to sin, and as to the deity and atonement of Christ. No one is properly a Baptist who does not acknowledge these truths which baptism signifies.T. W. Chambers, in Presb. and Ref. Rev., Jan. 1890:113-118, objects that this view of the symbolism of baptism is based on two texts,Rom. 6:4andCol. 2:12, which are illustrative and not explanatory, while the great majority of passages make baptism only an act of purification. Yet Dr. Chambers concedes:“It is to be admitted that nearly all modern critical expositors (Meyer, Godet, Alford, Conybeare, Lightfoot, Beet) consider that there is a reference here [inRom. 6:4] to the act of baptism, which, as the Bishop of Durham says,‘is the grave of the old man and the birth of the new—an image of the believer's participation both in the death and in the resurrection of Christ.... As he sinks beneath the baptismal waters, the believer buries there all his corrupt affections and past sins; as he emerges thence, he rises regenerate, quickened to new hopes and a new life.’â€
Rom. 6:4—“We were buried therefore with him through baptism into death: that like as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, so we also might walk in newness of lifeâ€;cf.7, 10, 11—“for he that hath died is justified from sin.... For the death that he died, he died unto sin once: but the life that he liveth, he liveth unto God. Even so reckon ye also yourselves to be dead unto sin, but alive unto God in Christ Jesusâ€;2 Cor. 5:14—“we thus judge, that one died for all, therefore all died.â€Baptism is therefore a confession of evangelical faith both as to sin, and as to the deity and atonement of Christ. No one is properly a Baptist who does not acknowledge these truths which baptism signifies.
T. W. Chambers, in Presb. and Ref. Rev., Jan. 1890:113-118, objects that this view of the symbolism of baptism is based on two texts,Rom. 6:4andCol. 2:12, which are illustrative and not explanatory, while the great majority of passages make baptism only an act of purification. Yet Dr. Chambers concedes:“It is to be admitted that nearly all modern critical expositors (Meyer, Godet, Alford, Conybeare, Lightfoot, Beet) consider that there is a reference here [inRom. 6:4] to the act of baptism, which, as the Bishop of Durham says,‘is the grave of the old man and the birth of the new—an image of the believer's participation both in the death and in the resurrection of Christ.... As he sinks beneath the baptismal waters, the believer buries there all his corrupt affections and past sins; as he emerges thence, he rises regenerate, quickened to new hopes and a new life.’â€
(c) Of the accomplishment of that purpose in the person baptized,—who thus professes his death to sin and resurrection to spiritual life.
Gal. 3:27—“For as many of you as were baptized into Christ did put on Christâ€;1 Pet. 3:21—“which[water]also after a true likeness doth now save you, even baptism, not the putting away of the filth of the flesh, but the interrogation of a good conscience toward God, through the resurrection of Jesus Christâ€;cf.Gal. 2:19, 20—“For I through the law died unto the law, that I might live unto God. I have been crucified with Christ; and it is no longer I that live, but Christ liveth in me: and that life which I now live in the flesh I live in faith, the faith which is in the Son of God, who loved me, and gave himself up for meâ€;Col. 3:3—“For ye died, and your life is hid with Christ in God.â€C. H. M.:“A truly baptized person is one who has passed from the old world into the new.... The water rolls over his person, signifying that his place in nature is ignored, that his old nature is entirely set aside, in short, that he is a dead man, that the flesh with all that pertained thereto—its sins and its liabilities—is buried in the grave of Christ and can never come into God's sight again.... When the believer rises up from the water, expression is given to the truth that he comes up as the possessor of a new life, even the resurrection life of Christ, to which divine righteousness inseparably attaches.â€
Gal. 3:27—“For as many of you as were baptized into Christ did put on Christâ€;1 Pet. 3:21—“which[water]also after a true likeness doth now save you, even baptism, not the putting away of the filth of the flesh, but the interrogation of a good conscience toward God, through the resurrection of Jesus Christâ€;cf.Gal. 2:19, 20—“For I through the law died unto the law, that I might live unto God. I have been crucified with Christ; and it is no longer I that live, but Christ liveth in me: and that life which I now live in the flesh I live in faith, the faith which is in the Son of God, who loved me, and gave himself up for meâ€;Col. 3:3—“For ye died, and your life is hid with Christ in God.â€
C. H. M.:“A truly baptized person is one who has passed from the old world into the new.... The water rolls over his person, signifying that his place in nature is ignored, that his old nature is entirely set aside, in short, that he is a dead man, that the flesh with all that pertained thereto—its sins and its liabilities—is buried in the grave of Christ and can never come into God's sight again.... When the believer rises up from the water, expression is given to the truth that he comes up as the possessor of a new life, even the resurrection life of Christ, to which divine righteousness inseparably attaches.â€
(d) Of the method in which that purpose is accomplished,—by union with Christ, receiving him and giving one's self to him by faith.
Rom. 6:5—“For if we have become united[σÏμφυτοι]with him in the likeness of his death, we shall be also in the likeness of his resurrectionâ€â€”σÏμφυτοι, or συμπεφυκώς, is used of the man and the horse as grown together in the Centaur, by Lucian, Dial. Mort., 16:4, and by Xenophon, Cyrop., 4:3:18.Col. 2:12—“having been buried with him in baptism, wherein ye were also raised with him through faith in the working of God, who raised him from the dead.â€Dr. N. S. Burton:“The oneness of the believer and Christ is expressed by the fact that the one act of immersion sets forth the death and resurrection of both Christ and the believer.â€As the voluntary element in faith has two parts, a giving and a taking, so baptism illustrates both. Submergence = surrender to Christ; emergence = reception of Christ; see page839, (b).“Putting on Christâ€(Gal. 3:27) is the burying of the old life and the rising to a new.Cf.the active and the passive obedience of Christ (pages 749, 770), the two elements of justification (pages854-859), the two aspects of formal worship (page 23), the two divisions of the Lord's Prayer.William Ashmore holds that incorporation into Christ is the root idea of baptism, union with Christ's death and resurrection being only a part of it. We are“baptized into Christâ€(Rom. 6:3), as the Israelites were“baptized into Mosesâ€(1 Cor. 10:2). As baptism symbolizes the incorporation of the believer into Christ, so the Lord's Supper symbolizes the incorporation of Christ into the believer. We go down into the water, but the bread goes down into us. We are“in Christ,â€and Christ is“in us.â€The candidate does not baptize himself, but puts himself wholly into the hands of the administrator. This[pg 942]seems symbolic of his committing himself entirely to Christ, of whom the administrator is the representative. Similarly in the Lord's Supper, it is Christ who through his representative distributes the emblems of his death and life.E. G. Robinson regarded baptism as implying: 1. death to sin; 2. resurrection to new life in Christ; 3. entire surrender of ourselves to the authority of the triune God. Baptism“into the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spiritâ€(Mat 28:19) cannot imply supreme allegiance to the Father, and only subordinate allegiance to the Son. Baptism therefore is an assumption of supreme allegiance to Jesus Christ. N. E. Wood, in The Watchman, Dec. 3, 1896, 15—“Calvinism has its five points; but Baptists have also their own five points: the Trinity, the Atonement, Regeneration, Baptism, and an inspired Bible. All other doctrines gather round these.â€
Rom. 6:5—“For if we have become united[σÏμφυτοι]with him in the likeness of his death, we shall be also in the likeness of his resurrectionâ€â€”σÏμφυτοι, or συμπεφυκώς, is used of the man and the horse as grown together in the Centaur, by Lucian, Dial. Mort., 16:4, and by Xenophon, Cyrop., 4:3:18.Col. 2:12—“having been buried with him in baptism, wherein ye were also raised with him through faith in the working of God, who raised him from the dead.â€Dr. N. S. Burton:“The oneness of the believer and Christ is expressed by the fact that the one act of immersion sets forth the death and resurrection of both Christ and the believer.â€As the voluntary element in faith has two parts, a giving and a taking, so baptism illustrates both. Submergence = surrender to Christ; emergence = reception of Christ; see page839, (b).“Putting on Christâ€(Gal. 3:27) is the burying of the old life and the rising to a new.Cf.the active and the passive obedience of Christ (pages 749, 770), the two elements of justification (pages854-859), the two aspects of formal worship (page 23), the two divisions of the Lord's Prayer.
William Ashmore holds that incorporation into Christ is the root idea of baptism, union with Christ's death and resurrection being only a part of it. We are“baptized into Christâ€(Rom. 6:3), as the Israelites were“baptized into Mosesâ€(1 Cor. 10:2). As baptism symbolizes the incorporation of the believer into Christ, so the Lord's Supper symbolizes the incorporation of Christ into the believer. We go down into the water, but the bread goes down into us. We are“in Christ,â€and Christ is“in us.â€The candidate does not baptize himself, but puts himself wholly into the hands of the administrator. This[pg 942]seems symbolic of his committing himself entirely to Christ, of whom the administrator is the representative. Similarly in the Lord's Supper, it is Christ who through his representative distributes the emblems of his death and life.
E. G. Robinson regarded baptism as implying: 1. death to sin; 2. resurrection to new life in Christ; 3. entire surrender of ourselves to the authority of the triune God. Baptism“into the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spiritâ€(Mat 28:19) cannot imply supreme allegiance to the Father, and only subordinate allegiance to the Son. Baptism therefore is an assumption of supreme allegiance to Jesus Christ. N. E. Wood, in The Watchman, Dec. 3, 1896, 15—“Calvinism has its five points; but Baptists have also their own five points: the Trinity, the Atonement, Regeneration, Baptism, and an inspired Bible. All other doctrines gather round these.â€
(e) Of the consequent union of all believers in Christ.
Eph. 4:5—“one Lord, one faith, one baptismâ€;1 Cor. 12:13—“For in one Spirit were we all baptized into one body, whether Jews or Greeks, whether bond or free; and were all made to drink of one Spiritâ€;cf.10:3, 4—“and did all eat the same spiritual food; and did all drink the same spiritual drink: for they drank of a spiritual rock that followed them: and the rock was Christ.â€InEph. 4:5, it is noticeable that, not the Lord's Supper, but baptism, is referred to as the symbol of Christian unity. A. H. Strong, Cleveland Sermon, 1904—“Our fathers lived in a day when simple faith was subject to serious disabilities. The establishments frowned upon dissent and visited it with pains and penalties. It is no wonder that believers in the New Testament doctrine and polity felt that they must come out from what they regarded as an apostate church. They could have no sympathy with those who held back the truth in unrighteousness and persecuted the saints of God. But our doctrine has leavened all Christendom. Scholarship is on the side of immersion. Infant baptism is on the decline. The churches that once opposed us now compliment us on our stedfastness in the faith and on our missionary zeal. There is a growing spirituality in these churches, which prompts them to extend to us hands of fellowship. And there is a growing sense among us that the kingdom of Christ is wider than our own membership, and that loyalty to our Lord requires us to recognize his presence and blessing even in bodies which we do not regard as organized in complete accordance with the New Testament model. Faith in the larger Christ is bringing us out from our denominational isolation into an inspiring recognition of our oneness with the universal church of God throughout the world.â€
Eph. 4:5—“one Lord, one faith, one baptismâ€;1 Cor. 12:13—“For in one Spirit were we all baptized into one body, whether Jews or Greeks, whether bond or free; and were all made to drink of one Spiritâ€;cf.10:3, 4—“and did all eat the same spiritual food; and did all drink the same spiritual drink: for they drank of a spiritual rock that followed them: and the rock was Christ.â€
InEph. 4:5, it is noticeable that, not the Lord's Supper, but baptism, is referred to as the symbol of Christian unity. A. H. Strong, Cleveland Sermon, 1904—“Our fathers lived in a day when simple faith was subject to serious disabilities. The establishments frowned upon dissent and visited it with pains and penalties. It is no wonder that believers in the New Testament doctrine and polity felt that they must come out from what they regarded as an apostate church. They could have no sympathy with those who held back the truth in unrighteousness and persecuted the saints of God. But our doctrine has leavened all Christendom. Scholarship is on the side of immersion. Infant baptism is on the decline. The churches that once opposed us now compliment us on our stedfastness in the faith and on our missionary zeal. There is a growing spirituality in these churches, which prompts them to extend to us hands of fellowship. And there is a growing sense among us that the kingdom of Christ is wider than our own membership, and that loyalty to our Lord requires us to recognize his presence and blessing even in bodies which we do not regard as organized in complete accordance with the New Testament model. Faith in the larger Christ is bringing us out from our denominational isolation into an inspiring recognition of our oneness with the universal church of God throughout the world.â€
(f) Of the death and resurrection of the body,—which will complete the work of Christ in us, and which Christ's death and resurrection assure to all his members.
1 Cor. 15:12, 22—“Now if Christ is preached that he hath been raised from the dead, how say some among you that there is no resurrection of the dead?... For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive.â€In the Scripture passages quoted above, we add to the argument from the meaning of the word βαπτίζω the argument from the meaning of the ordinance. Luther wrote, in his Babylonish Captivity of the Church, section 103 (English translation in Wace and Buchheim, First Principles of the Reformation, 192):“Baptism is a sign both of death and resurrection. Being moved by this reason, I would have those that are baptized to be altogether dipped into the water, as the word means and the mystery signifies.â€See Calvin onActs 8:38; Conybeare and Howson onRom. 6:4; Boardman, in Madison Avenue Lectures, 115-135.
1 Cor. 15:12, 22—“Now if Christ is preached that he hath been raised from the dead, how say some among you that there is no resurrection of the dead?... For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive.â€In the Scripture passages quoted above, we add to the argument from the meaning of the word βαπτίζω the argument from the meaning of the ordinance. Luther wrote, in his Babylonish Captivity of the Church, section 103 (English translation in Wace and Buchheim, First Principles of the Reformation, 192):“Baptism is a sign both of death and resurrection. Being moved by this reason, I would have those that are baptized to be altogether dipped into the water, as the word means and the mystery signifies.â€See Calvin onActs 8:38; Conybeare and Howson onRom. 6:4; Boardman, in Madison Avenue Lectures, 115-135.
B. Inferences from the passages referred to.(a) The central truth set forth by baptism is the death and resurrection of Christ,—and our own death and resurrection only as connected with that.The baptism of Jesus in Jordan, equally with the subsequent baptism of his followers, was a symbol of his death. It was his death which he had in mind, when he said:“Are ye able to drink the cup that I drink? or to be baptized with the baptism that I am baptized with?â€(Mark 10:38);“But I have a baptism to be baptized with; and how am I straitened till it be accomplished!â€(Luke 12:50). The being immersed and overwhelmed in waters is a frequent metaphor in all languages to express the rush of successive troubles; comparePs. 69:2—“I am come into deep waters, where the floods overflow meâ€;42:7—“All thy waves and thy billows are gone over meâ€;124:4, 5—“Then the waters had overwhelmed us, The stream had gone over our soul; Then the proud waters had gone over our soul.â€[pg 943]So the suffering, death, and burial, which were before our Lord, presented themselves to his mind as a baptism, because the very idea of baptism was that of a complete submersion under the floods of waters. Death was not to be poured upon Christ,—it was no mere sprinkling of suffering which he was to endure, but a sinking into the mighty waters, and a being overwhelmed by them. It was the giving of himself to this, which he symbolized by his baptism in Jordan. That act was not arbitrary, or formal, or ritual. It was a public consecration, a consecration to death, to death for the sins of the world. It expressed the essential nature and meaning of his earthly work: the baptism of water at the beginning of his ministry consciously and designedly prefigured the baptism of death with which that ministry was to close.Jesus' submission to John's baptism of repentance, the rite that belonged only to sinners, can be explained only upon the ground that he was“made to be sin on our behalfâ€(2 Cor. 5:21). He had taken our nature upon him, without its hereditary corruption indeed, but with all its hereditary guilt, that he might redeem that nature and reunite it to God. As one with humanity, he had in his unconscious childhood submitted to the rites of circumcision, purification, and legal redemption (Luke 2:21-24;cf.Ex. 13:2, 13; see Lange, Alford, Webster and Wilkinson onLuke 2:24)—all of them rites appointed for sinners.“Made in the likeness of menâ€(Phil. 2:7),“the likeness of sinful fleshâ€(Rom. 8:3), he was“to put away sin by the sacrifice of himselfâ€(Heb. 9:26).In his baptism, therefore, he could say,“Thus it becometh us to fulfil all righteousnessâ€(Mat. 3:15) because only through the final baptism of suffering and death, which this baptism in water foreshadowed, could he“make an end of sinsâ€and“bring in everlasting righteousnessâ€(Dan. 9:24) to the condemned and ruined world. He could not be“the Lord our Righteousnessâ€(Jer. 23:6) except by first suffering the death due to the nature he had assumed, thereby delivering it from its guilt and perfecting it forever. All this was indicated in that act by which he was first“made manifest to Israelâ€(John 1:31). In his baptism in Jordan, he was buried in the likeness of his coming death, and raised in the likeness of his coming resurrection.1 John 5:6—“This is he that came by water and blood, even Jesus Christ; not in the water only, but in the water and in the bloodâ€= in the baptism of water at the beginning of his ministry, and in the baptism of blood with which that ministry was to close.As that baptism pointed forward to Jesus' death, so our baptism points backward to the same, as the centre and substance of his redeeming work, the one death by which we live. We who are“baptized into Christâ€are“baptized into his deathâ€(Rom. 6:3), that is, into spiritual communion and participation in that death which he died for our salvation; in short, in baptism we declare in symbol that his death has become ours. On the Baptism of Jesus, see A. H. Strong, Philosophy and Religion, 226-237.(b) The correlative truth of the believer's death and resurrection, set forth in baptism, implies, first,—confession of sin and humiliation on account of it, as deserving of death; secondly,—declaration of Christ's death for sin, and of the believer's acceptance of Christ's substitutionary work; thirdly,—acknowledgment that the soul has become partaker of Christ's life, and now lives only in and for him.A false mode of administering the ordinance has so obscured the meaning of baptism that it has to multitudes lost all reference to the death of Christ, and the Lord's Supper is assumed to be the only ordinance which is intended to remind us of the atoning sacrifice to which we owe our salvation. For evidence of this, see the remarks of President Woolsey in the Sunday School Times:“Baptism it [the Christian religion] could share in with the doctrine of John the Baptist, and if a similar rite had existed under the Jewish law, it would have been regarded as appropriate to a religion which inculcated renunciation of sin and purity of heart and life. But [in the Lord's Supper] we go beyond the province of baptism to the verypenetraleof the gospel, to the efficacy and meaning of Christ's death.â€Baptism should be a public act. We cannot afford to relegate it to a corner, or to celebrate it in private, as some professedly Baptist churches of England are said to do. Like marriage, the essence of it is the joining of ourselves to another before the world. In baptism we merge ourselves in Christ, before God and angels and men. The Mohammedan stands five times a day, and prays with his face toward Mecca, caring not who sees him.Luke 12:8—“Every one who shall confess me before men, him shall the Son of man also confess before the angels of God.â€[pg 944](c) Baptism symbolizes purification, but purification in a peculiar and divine way,—namely, through the death of Christ and the entrance of the soul into communion with that death. The radical defect of sprinkling or pouring as a mode of administering the ordinance, is that it does not point to Christ's death as the procuring cause of our purification.It is a grievous thing to say by symbol, as those do say who practice sprinkling in place of immersion, that a man may regenerate himself, or, if not this, yet that his regeneration may take place without connection with Christ's death. Edward Beecher's chief argument against Baptist views is drawn fromJohn 3:22-25—“a questioning on the part of John's disciples with a Jew about purifying.â€Purification is made to be the essential meaning of baptism, and the conclusion is drawn that any form expressive of purification will answer the design of the ordinance. But if Christ's death is the procuring cause of our purification, we may expect it to be symbolized in the ordinance which declares that purification; if Christ's death is the central fact of Christianity, we may expect it to be symbolized in the initiatory rite of Christianity.(d) In baptism we show forth the Lord's death as the original source of holiness and life in our souls, just as in the Lord's Supper we show forth the Lord's death as the source of all nourishment and strength after this life of holiness has been once begun. As the Lord's Supper symbolizes the sanctifying power of Jesus' death, so baptism symbolizes its regenerating power.The truth of Christ's death and resurrection is a precious jewel, and it is given us in these outward ordinances as in a casket. Let us care for the casket lest we lose the gem. As a scarlet thread runs through every rope and cord of the British navy, testifying that it is the property of the Crown, so through every doctrine and ordinance of Christianity runs the red line of Jesus' blood. It is their common reference to the death of Christ that binds the two ordinances together.(e) There are two reasons, therefore, why nothing but immersion will satisfy the design of the ordinance: first,—because nothing else can symbolize the radical nature of the change effected in regeneration—a change from spiritual death to spiritual life; secondly,—because nothing else can set forth the fact that this change is due to the entrance of the soul into communion with the death and resurrection of Christ.Christian truth is an organism. Part is bound to part, and all together constitute one vitalized whole. To give up any single portion of that truth is like maiming the human body. Life may remain, but one manifestation of life has ceased. The whole body of Christian truth has lost its symmetry and a part of its power to save.Pfleiderer, Philos. Religion, 2:212—“In the Eleusinian mysteries, the act of reception was represented as a regeneration, and the hierophant appointed to the temple service had to take a sacramental bath, out of which he proceeded as a‘new man’with a new name, which signifies that, as they were wont to say,‘the first one was forgotten,’—that is, the old man was put off at the same time with the old name. The parallel of this Eleusinian rite with the thoughts which Paul has written about Baptism in the Epistle to the Romans, and therefore from Corinth, is so striking that a connection between the two may well be conjectured; and all the more that even in the case of the Lord's Supper, Paul has brought in the comparison with the heathen festivals, in order to give a basis for his mystical theory.â€(f) To substitute for baptism anything which excludes all symbolic reference to the death of Christ, is to destroy the ordinance, just as substituting for the broken bread and poured out wine of the communion some form of administration which leaves out all reference to the death of Christ would be to destroy the Lord's Supper, and to celebrate an ordinance of human invention.[pg 945]Baptism, like the Fourth of July, the Passover, the Lord's Supper, is a historical monument. It witnesses to the world that Jesus died and rose again. In celebrating it, we show forth the Lord's death as truly as in the celebration of the Supper. But it is more than a historical monument. It is also a pictorial expression of doctrine. Into it are woven all the essential truths of the Christian scheme. It tells of the nature and penalty of sin, of human nature delivered from sin in the person of a crucified and risen Savior, of salvation secured for each human soul that is united to Christ, of obedience to Christ as the way to life and glory. Thus baptism stands from age to age as a witness for God—a witness both to the facts and to the doctrine of Christianity. To change the form of administering the ordinance is therefore to strike a blow at Christianity and at Christ, and to defraud the world of a part of God's means of salvation. See Ebrard's view of Baptism, in Baptist Quarterly, 1869:257, and in Olshausen's Com. on N. T., 1:270, and 3:594. Also Lightfoot, Com. onColossians 2:20, and3:1.Ebrard:“Baptism = Death.â€So Sanday, Com. onRom. 6—“Immersion = Death; Submersion = Burial (the ratification of death); Emergence = Resurrection (the ratification of life).â€William Ashmore:“Solomon's Temple had two monumental pillars:Jachin,‘he shall establish,’andBoaz,‘in it is strength.’In Zechariah's vision were two olive trees on either side of the golden candlestick. In like manner, Christ has left two monumental witnesses to testify concerning himself—Baptism and the Lord's Supper.â€The lady in the street car, who had inadvertently stuck her parasol into a man's eye, very naturally begged his pardon. But he replied:“It is of no consequence, madame; I have still one eye left.â€Our friends who sprinkle or pour put out one eye of the gospel witness, break down one appointed monument of Christ's saving truth,—shall we be content to say that we have still one ordinance left? At the Rappahannock one of the Federal regiments, just because its standard was shot away, was mistaken by our own men for a regiment of Confederates, and was subjected to a murderous enfilading fire that decimated its ranks. Baptism and the Lord's Supper are the two flags of Christ's army,—we cannot afford to lose either one of them.
(a) The central truth set forth by baptism is the death and resurrection of Christ,—and our own death and resurrection only as connected with that.
The baptism of Jesus in Jordan, equally with the subsequent baptism of his followers, was a symbol of his death. It was his death which he had in mind, when he said:“Are ye able to drink the cup that I drink? or to be baptized with the baptism that I am baptized with?â€(Mark 10:38);“But I have a baptism to be baptized with; and how am I straitened till it be accomplished!â€(Luke 12:50). The being immersed and overwhelmed in waters is a frequent metaphor in all languages to express the rush of successive troubles; comparePs. 69:2—“I am come into deep waters, where the floods overflow meâ€;42:7—“All thy waves and thy billows are gone over meâ€;124:4, 5—“Then the waters had overwhelmed us, The stream had gone over our soul; Then the proud waters had gone over our soul.â€[pg 943]So the suffering, death, and burial, which were before our Lord, presented themselves to his mind as a baptism, because the very idea of baptism was that of a complete submersion under the floods of waters. Death was not to be poured upon Christ,—it was no mere sprinkling of suffering which he was to endure, but a sinking into the mighty waters, and a being overwhelmed by them. It was the giving of himself to this, which he symbolized by his baptism in Jordan. That act was not arbitrary, or formal, or ritual. It was a public consecration, a consecration to death, to death for the sins of the world. It expressed the essential nature and meaning of his earthly work: the baptism of water at the beginning of his ministry consciously and designedly prefigured the baptism of death with which that ministry was to close.Jesus' submission to John's baptism of repentance, the rite that belonged only to sinners, can be explained only upon the ground that he was“made to be sin on our behalfâ€(2 Cor. 5:21). He had taken our nature upon him, without its hereditary corruption indeed, but with all its hereditary guilt, that he might redeem that nature and reunite it to God. As one with humanity, he had in his unconscious childhood submitted to the rites of circumcision, purification, and legal redemption (Luke 2:21-24;cf.Ex. 13:2, 13; see Lange, Alford, Webster and Wilkinson onLuke 2:24)—all of them rites appointed for sinners.“Made in the likeness of menâ€(Phil. 2:7),“the likeness of sinful fleshâ€(Rom. 8:3), he was“to put away sin by the sacrifice of himselfâ€(Heb. 9:26).In his baptism, therefore, he could say,“Thus it becometh us to fulfil all righteousnessâ€(Mat. 3:15) because only through the final baptism of suffering and death, which this baptism in water foreshadowed, could he“make an end of sinsâ€and“bring in everlasting righteousnessâ€(Dan. 9:24) to the condemned and ruined world. He could not be“the Lord our Righteousnessâ€(Jer. 23:6) except by first suffering the death due to the nature he had assumed, thereby delivering it from its guilt and perfecting it forever. All this was indicated in that act by which he was first“made manifest to Israelâ€(John 1:31). In his baptism in Jordan, he was buried in the likeness of his coming death, and raised in the likeness of his coming resurrection.1 John 5:6—“This is he that came by water and blood, even Jesus Christ; not in the water only, but in the water and in the bloodâ€= in the baptism of water at the beginning of his ministry, and in the baptism of blood with which that ministry was to close.As that baptism pointed forward to Jesus' death, so our baptism points backward to the same, as the centre and substance of his redeeming work, the one death by which we live. We who are“baptized into Christâ€are“baptized into his deathâ€(Rom. 6:3), that is, into spiritual communion and participation in that death which he died for our salvation; in short, in baptism we declare in symbol that his death has become ours. On the Baptism of Jesus, see A. H. Strong, Philosophy and Religion, 226-237.
The baptism of Jesus in Jordan, equally with the subsequent baptism of his followers, was a symbol of his death. It was his death which he had in mind, when he said:“Are ye able to drink the cup that I drink? or to be baptized with the baptism that I am baptized with?â€(Mark 10:38);“But I have a baptism to be baptized with; and how am I straitened till it be accomplished!â€(Luke 12:50). The being immersed and overwhelmed in waters is a frequent metaphor in all languages to express the rush of successive troubles; comparePs. 69:2—“I am come into deep waters, where the floods overflow meâ€;42:7—“All thy waves and thy billows are gone over meâ€;124:4, 5—“Then the waters had overwhelmed us, The stream had gone over our soul; Then the proud waters had gone over our soul.â€
So the suffering, death, and burial, which were before our Lord, presented themselves to his mind as a baptism, because the very idea of baptism was that of a complete submersion under the floods of waters. Death was not to be poured upon Christ,—it was no mere sprinkling of suffering which he was to endure, but a sinking into the mighty waters, and a being overwhelmed by them. It was the giving of himself to this, which he symbolized by his baptism in Jordan. That act was not arbitrary, or formal, or ritual. It was a public consecration, a consecration to death, to death for the sins of the world. It expressed the essential nature and meaning of his earthly work: the baptism of water at the beginning of his ministry consciously and designedly prefigured the baptism of death with which that ministry was to close.
Jesus' submission to John's baptism of repentance, the rite that belonged only to sinners, can be explained only upon the ground that he was“made to be sin on our behalfâ€(2 Cor. 5:21). He had taken our nature upon him, without its hereditary corruption indeed, but with all its hereditary guilt, that he might redeem that nature and reunite it to God. As one with humanity, he had in his unconscious childhood submitted to the rites of circumcision, purification, and legal redemption (Luke 2:21-24;cf.Ex. 13:2, 13; see Lange, Alford, Webster and Wilkinson onLuke 2:24)—all of them rites appointed for sinners.“Made in the likeness of menâ€(Phil. 2:7),“the likeness of sinful fleshâ€(Rom. 8:3), he was“to put away sin by the sacrifice of himselfâ€(Heb. 9:26).
In his baptism, therefore, he could say,“Thus it becometh us to fulfil all righteousnessâ€(Mat. 3:15) because only through the final baptism of suffering and death, which this baptism in water foreshadowed, could he“make an end of sinsâ€and“bring in everlasting righteousnessâ€(Dan. 9:24) to the condemned and ruined world. He could not be“the Lord our Righteousnessâ€(Jer. 23:6) except by first suffering the death due to the nature he had assumed, thereby delivering it from its guilt and perfecting it forever. All this was indicated in that act by which he was first“made manifest to Israelâ€(John 1:31). In his baptism in Jordan, he was buried in the likeness of his coming death, and raised in the likeness of his coming resurrection.1 John 5:6—“This is he that came by water and blood, even Jesus Christ; not in the water only, but in the water and in the bloodâ€= in the baptism of water at the beginning of his ministry, and in the baptism of blood with which that ministry was to close.
As that baptism pointed forward to Jesus' death, so our baptism points backward to the same, as the centre and substance of his redeeming work, the one death by which we live. We who are“baptized into Christâ€are“baptized into his deathâ€(Rom. 6:3), that is, into spiritual communion and participation in that death which he died for our salvation; in short, in baptism we declare in symbol that his death has become ours. On the Baptism of Jesus, see A. H. Strong, Philosophy and Religion, 226-237.
(b) The correlative truth of the believer's death and resurrection, set forth in baptism, implies, first,—confession of sin and humiliation on account of it, as deserving of death; secondly,—declaration of Christ's death for sin, and of the believer's acceptance of Christ's substitutionary work; thirdly,—acknowledgment that the soul has become partaker of Christ's life, and now lives only in and for him.
A false mode of administering the ordinance has so obscured the meaning of baptism that it has to multitudes lost all reference to the death of Christ, and the Lord's Supper is assumed to be the only ordinance which is intended to remind us of the atoning sacrifice to which we owe our salvation. For evidence of this, see the remarks of President Woolsey in the Sunday School Times:“Baptism it [the Christian religion] could share in with the doctrine of John the Baptist, and if a similar rite had existed under the Jewish law, it would have been regarded as appropriate to a religion which inculcated renunciation of sin and purity of heart and life. But [in the Lord's Supper] we go beyond the province of baptism to the verypenetraleof the gospel, to the efficacy and meaning of Christ's death.â€Baptism should be a public act. We cannot afford to relegate it to a corner, or to celebrate it in private, as some professedly Baptist churches of England are said to do. Like marriage, the essence of it is the joining of ourselves to another before the world. In baptism we merge ourselves in Christ, before God and angels and men. The Mohammedan stands five times a day, and prays with his face toward Mecca, caring not who sees him.Luke 12:8—“Every one who shall confess me before men, him shall the Son of man also confess before the angels of God.â€
A false mode of administering the ordinance has so obscured the meaning of baptism that it has to multitudes lost all reference to the death of Christ, and the Lord's Supper is assumed to be the only ordinance which is intended to remind us of the atoning sacrifice to which we owe our salvation. For evidence of this, see the remarks of President Woolsey in the Sunday School Times:“Baptism it [the Christian religion] could share in with the doctrine of John the Baptist, and if a similar rite had existed under the Jewish law, it would have been regarded as appropriate to a religion which inculcated renunciation of sin and purity of heart and life. But [in the Lord's Supper] we go beyond the province of baptism to the verypenetraleof the gospel, to the efficacy and meaning of Christ's death.â€
Baptism should be a public act. We cannot afford to relegate it to a corner, or to celebrate it in private, as some professedly Baptist churches of England are said to do. Like marriage, the essence of it is the joining of ourselves to another before the world. In baptism we merge ourselves in Christ, before God and angels and men. The Mohammedan stands five times a day, and prays with his face toward Mecca, caring not who sees him.Luke 12:8—“Every one who shall confess me before men, him shall the Son of man also confess before the angels of God.â€
(c) Baptism symbolizes purification, but purification in a peculiar and divine way,—namely, through the death of Christ and the entrance of the soul into communion with that death. The radical defect of sprinkling or pouring as a mode of administering the ordinance, is that it does not point to Christ's death as the procuring cause of our purification.
It is a grievous thing to say by symbol, as those do say who practice sprinkling in place of immersion, that a man may regenerate himself, or, if not this, yet that his regeneration may take place without connection with Christ's death. Edward Beecher's chief argument against Baptist views is drawn fromJohn 3:22-25—“a questioning on the part of John's disciples with a Jew about purifying.â€Purification is made to be the essential meaning of baptism, and the conclusion is drawn that any form expressive of purification will answer the design of the ordinance. But if Christ's death is the procuring cause of our purification, we may expect it to be symbolized in the ordinance which declares that purification; if Christ's death is the central fact of Christianity, we may expect it to be symbolized in the initiatory rite of Christianity.
It is a grievous thing to say by symbol, as those do say who practice sprinkling in place of immersion, that a man may regenerate himself, or, if not this, yet that his regeneration may take place without connection with Christ's death. Edward Beecher's chief argument against Baptist views is drawn fromJohn 3:22-25—“a questioning on the part of John's disciples with a Jew about purifying.â€Purification is made to be the essential meaning of baptism, and the conclusion is drawn that any form expressive of purification will answer the design of the ordinance. But if Christ's death is the procuring cause of our purification, we may expect it to be symbolized in the ordinance which declares that purification; if Christ's death is the central fact of Christianity, we may expect it to be symbolized in the initiatory rite of Christianity.
(d) In baptism we show forth the Lord's death as the original source of holiness and life in our souls, just as in the Lord's Supper we show forth the Lord's death as the source of all nourishment and strength after this life of holiness has been once begun. As the Lord's Supper symbolizes the sanctifying power of Jesus' death, so baptism symbolizes its regenerating power.
The truth of Christ's death and resurrection is a precious jewel, and it is given us in these outward ordinances as in a casket. Let us care for the casket lest we lose the gem. As a scarlet thread runs through every rope and cord of the British navy, testifying that it is the property of the Crown, so through every doctrine and ordinance of Christianity runs the red line of Jesus' blood. It is their common reference to the death of Christ that binds the two ordinances together.
The truth of Christ's death and resurrection is a precious jewel, and it is given us in these outward ordinances as in a casket. Let us care for the casket lest we lose the gem. As a scarlet thread runs through every rope and cord of the British navy, testifying that it is the property of the Crown, so through every doctrine and ordinance of Christianity runs the red line of Jesus' blood. It is their common reference to the death of Christ that binds the two ordinances together.
(e) There are two reasons, therefore, why nothing but immersion will satisfy the design of the ordinance: first,—because nothing else can symbolize the radical nature of the change effected in regeneration—a change from spiritual death to spiritual life; secondly,—because nothing else can set forth the fact that this change is due to the entrance of the soul into communion with the death and resurrection of Christ.
Christian truth is an organism. Part is bound to part, and all together constitute one vitalized whole. To give up any single portion of that truth is like maiming the human body. Life may remain, but one manifestation of life has ceased. The whole body of Christian truth has lost its symmetry and a part of its power to save.Pfleiderer, Philos. Religion, 2:212—“In the Eleusinian mysteries, the act of reception was represented as a regeneration, and the hierophant appointed to the temple service had to take a sacramental bath, out of which he proceeded as a‘new man’with a new name, which signifies that, as they were wont to say,‘the first one was forgotten,’—that is, the old man was put off at the same time with the old name. The parallel of this Eleusinian rite with the thoughts which Paul has written about Baptism in the Epistle to the Romans, and therefore from Corinth, is so striking that a connection between the two may well be conjectured; and all the more that even in the case of the Lord's Supper, Paul has brought in the comparison with the heathen festivals, in order to give a basis for his mystical theory.â€
Christian truth is an organism. Part is bound to part, and all together constitute one vitalized whole. To give up any single portion of that truth is like maiming the human body. Life may remain, but one manifestation of life has ceased. The whole body of Christian truth has lost its symmetry and a part of its power to save.
Pfleiderer, Philos. Religion, 2:212—“In the Eleusinian mysteries, the act of reception was represented as a regeneration, and the hierophant appointed to the temple service had to take a sacramental bath, out of which he proceeded as a‘new man’with a new name, which signifies that, as they were wont to say,‘the first one was forgotten,’—that is, the old man was put off at the same time with the old name. The parallel of this Eleusinian rite with the thoughts which Paul has written about Baptism in the Epistle to the Romans, and therefore from Corinth, is so striking that a connection between the two may well be conjectured; and all the more that even in the case of the Lord's Supper, Paul has brought in the comparison with the heathen festivals, in order to give a basis for his mystical theory.â€
(f) To substitute for baptism anything which excludes all symbolic reference to the death of Christ, is to destroy the ordinance, just as substituting for the broken bread and poured out wine of the communion some form of administration which leaves out all reference to the death of Christ would be to destroy the Lord's Supper, and to celebrate an ordinance of human invention.
Baptism, like the Fourth of July, the Passover, the Lord's Supper, is a historical monument. It witnesses to the world that Jesus died and rose again. In celebrating it, we show forth the Lord's death as truly as in the celebration of the Supper. But it is more than a historical monument. It is also a pictorial expression of doctrine. Into it are woven all the essential truths of the Christian scheme. It tells of the nature and penalty of sin, of human nature delivered from sin in the person of a crucified and risen Savior, of salvation secured for each human soul that is united to Christ, of obedience to Christ as the way to life and glory. Thus baptism stands from age to age as a witness for God—a witness both to the facts and to the doctrine of Christianity. To change the form of administering the ordinance is therefore to strike a blow at Christianity and at Christ, and to defraud the world of a part of God's means of salvation. See Ebrard's view of Baptism, in Baptist Quarterly, 1869:257, and in Olshausen's Com. on N. T., 1:270, and 3:594. Also Lightfoot, Com. onColossians 2:20, and3:1.Ebrard:“Baptism = Death.â€So Sanday, Com. onRom. 6—“Immersion = Death; Submersion = Burial (the ratification of death); Emergence = Resurrection (the ratification of life).â€William Ashmore:“Solomon's Temple had two monumental pillars:Jachin,‘he shall establish,’andBoaz,‘in it is strength.’In Zechariah's vision were two olive trees on either side of the golden candlestick. In like manner, Christ has left two monumental witnesses to testify concerning himself—Baptism and the Lord's Supper.â€The lady in the street car, who had inadvertently stuck her parasol into a man's eye, very naturally begged his pardon. But he replied:“It is of no consequence, madame; I have still one eye left.â€Our friends who sprinkle or pour put out one eye of the gospel witness, break down one appointed monument of Christ's saving truth,—shall we be content to say that we have still one ordinance left? At the Rappahannock one of the Federal regiments, just because its standard was shot away, was mistaken by our own men for a regiment of Confederates, and was subjected to a murderous enfilading fire that decimated its ranks. Baptism and the Lord's Supper are the two flags of Christ's army,—we cannot afford to lose either one of them.
Baptism, like the Fourth of July, the Passover, the Lord's Supper, is a historical monument. It witnesses to the world that Jesus died and rose again. In celebrating it, we show forth the Lord's death as truly as in the celebration of the Supper. But it is more than a historical monument. It is also a pictorial expression of doctrine. Into it are woven all the essential truths of the Christian scheme. It tells of the nature and penalty of sin, of human nature delivered from sin in the person of a crucified and risen Savior, of salvation secured for each human soul that is united to Christ, of obedience to Christ as the way to life and glory. Thus baptism stands from age to age as a witness for God—a witness both to the facts and to the doctrine of Christianity. To change the form of administering the ordinance is therefore to strike a blow at Christianity and at Christ, and to defraud the world of a part of God's means of salvation. See Ebrard's view of Baptism, in Baptist Quarterly, 1869:257, and in Olshausen's Com. on N. T., 1:270, and 3:594. Also Lightfoot, Com. onColossians 2:20, and3:1.
Ebrard:“Baptism = Death.â€So Sanday, Com. onRom. 6—“Immersion = Death; Submersion = Burial (the ratification of death); Emergence = Resurrection (the ratification of life).â€William Ashmore:“Solomon's Temple had two monumental pillars:Jachin,‘he shall establish,’andBoaz,‘in it is strength.’In Zechariah's vision were two olive trees on either side of the golden candlestick. In like manner, Christ has left two monumental witnesses to testify concerning himself—Baptism and the Lord's Supper.â€The lady in the street car, who had inadvertently stuck her parasol into a man's eye, very naturally begged his pardon. But he replied:“It is of no consequence, madame; I have still one eye left.â€Our friends who sprinkle or pour put out one eye of the gospel witness, break down one appointed monument of Christ's saving truth,—shall we be content to say that we have still one ordinance left? At the Rappahannock one of the Federal regiments, just because its standard was shot away, was mistaken by our own men for a regiment of Confederates, and was subjected to a murderous enfilading fire that decimated its ranks. Baptism and the Lord's Supper are the two flags of Christ's army,—we cannot afford to lose either one of them.