Faith that helplessly submits to and rests in Jesus, who He is and what He has done, is alien to the man or woman who believes one must be independent and self-sufficient. We who have been part of the world system, married to the lie, find it so hard to say the yes of faith to the oath of God. The only response to life that we have ever known is to the inviolable rule that a person gets what he or she deserves. But the covenant confronts us with the God who loves us unconditionally and rewards us not according to what we have done but according to what Jesus has done. To believe this is the first radical change of mind that believing the Gospel demands of us.
In the New Testament, this act of repentance and faith in the person and work of Christ always came to focus in baptism, the dipping of a person into water, or pouring it on them, invoking the name of the Trinity. Many object to this, but I ask you to bear with me and see that baptism was unquestionably part of the salvation process in the New Testament.
Jesus included it into His instructions to the disciples regarding the content of their message when He sent them into the entire world:
And Jesus came and spoke to them, saying, “All authority has been given to Me in heaven and on earth. Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all things that I have commanded you; and lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age.”
Matthew 28:18-20
And He said to them, “Go into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature. He who believes and is baptized will be saved; but he who does not believe will be condemned.
Mark 16:15,16
Certainly the apostles understood that baptism was the act where repentance and faith came to focus. The command to be baptized is contained in the very first call to receive the Gospel; and being baptized designated as Christians those who received the message into their hearts.
Then Peter said to them, “Repent, and let every one of you be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ for the remission of sins; and you shall receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. For the promise is to you and to your children, and to all who are afar off, as many as the Lord our God will call.”
Then those who gladly received his word were baptized; and that day about three thousand souls were added to them.
Acts 2:38,39,41
Like the apostles in Jerusalem, Philip counted his converts as those who were baptized.
But when they believed Philip as he preached the things concerning the kingdom of God and the name of Jesus Christ, both men and women were baptized.
Acts 8:12
In Philip’s presentation of the Gospel to the Ethiopian, he must have given a very similar appeal as Peter had on the day of Pentecost, for upon seeing water the man asked to be baptized.
Now as they went down the road, they came to some water. And the eunuch said, “See, here is water. What hinders me from being baptized?”
Then Philip said, “If you believe with all your heart, you may.”
And he answered and said, “I believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God.”
So he commanded the chariot to stand still. And both Philip and the eunuch went down into the water, and he baptized him.
Acts 8:36-38
When Peter went to the house of Cornelius, the Holy Spirit fell upon the listeners as he was speaking. It would seem that Peter was somewhat thrown off balance; they had received the Spirit before being baptized! He quickly commanded baptism to have them properly initiated into Christ
“Can anyone forbid water, that these should not be baptized who have received the Holy Spirit just as we have?” And he commanded them to be baptized in the name of the Lord. Then they asked him to stay a few days.
Acts 10:47,48
This certainly would suggest that baptism was given a place of great importance in the infant church. With everyone in the house filled with the Spirit and praising God, one would think that the subject of baptism could be left for another day; but obviously it could not wait, and Peter commanded that it take place at once.
In Philippi, Paul and Silas were cruelly beaten, their limbs twisted and locked into the stocks; an earthquake brought about their release and was followed by preaching the Gospel to the entire household in the middle of the night, resulting in their conversion to Christ. One would think that would be enough for a night’s work! But Paul did not call closure to the night until they had all been baptized.
So they said, “Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and you will be saved, you and your household.” Then they spoke the word of the Lord to him and to all who were in his house. And he took them the same hour of the night and washed their stripes. And immediately he and all his family were baptized.
Acts 16:31-33
I have taken this amount of time to show that very obviously baptism was not an afterthought to the early church, not something that took place once or twice a year, but was the rite of initiation into the new covenant. Circumcision was the rite of initiation into the old covenant, and baptism answers to that in the new covenant.
In Him you were also circumcised with the circumcision made without hands, by putting off the body of the sins of the flesh, by the circumcision of Christ, buried with Him in baptism, in which you also were raised with Him through faith in the working of God, who raised Him from the dead. And you, being dead in your trespasses and the uncircumcision of your flesh, He has made alive together with Him, having forgiven you all trespasses.
Colossians 2:11-13
The Amplified Bible renders verse 12 to say, [Thus you were circumcised when] you were buried with Him in [your] baptism...
The Message paraphrase of this verse puts it very plainly:
If it's an initiation ritual you're after, you've already been through it by submitting to baptism. Going under the water was a burial of your old life; coming up out of it was a resurrection, God raising you from the dead as he did Christ.
Faith cannot be merely a matter of the mind; there is much that we hold as true in our minds but never commit ourselves to. Each one of us is more than a mind, and faith must include the whole person. Faith may include intense feelings but is far more than feeling; it is possible to have overwhelming feelings while we are in an emotionally charged meeting but the next morning to live as if nothing ever happened.
Faith is the moving of one’s whole person to rest in Christ and what He has accomplished for us, and that must be a movement of spirit, mind, emotion, and body. Our glory as humans made in His image is that we are spirits united to and functioning in and through the dust of the earth. We are more than invisible spirits; our faith and obedience need an expression that is more than mental or verbal. The first couple fell by a physical act of eating from the forbidden tree. Although the sin was an act of the spirit, it was not complete until the whole human was involved in a physical act. Faith must have a physical expression, or the mental transaction or the feelings of the moment become ethereal and remote.
The modern Christian recognizes this but strangely has avoided baptism and substituted other physical actions to express faith in Christ. To accept Christ, people are told to raise their hand, walk down to the front of the church, or even to look up into the face of the evangelist. Children and teens at summer camps are often challenged to throw a stick into the fire.
All these actions are the attempt to involve our physical bodies in our faith. Why not simply do as Jesus commanded? Why invent new and strange ways? But these various substitutes for baptism emphasize the human acceptance of salvation. Raising the hand and like responses place the whole emphasis on the human decision to accept what God has done, a kind of giving a vote of confidence in Jesus and His salvation. It becomes a rather strange means of saying to God and my fellow believers, “Me too—I have accepted Him as well.”
But in baptism, we are passive; it is something we submit to; it is a rite that is done to us by another. It is the dynamic action of the faith by
which we helplessly present ourselves to the Holy Spirit for God’s acceptance through the cross and resurrection of the Lord Jesus.
Even a cursory reading of the New Testament shows that to the early church, baptism was a lot more than the symbol by which one announced to God and humans that he or she had accepted Christ. Something happens in baptism. It is a symbol, but a symbol by which the Spirit actually conveys to us what the rite symbolizes. Baptism is where the Spirit lays hold upon us and declares that we are included into the covenant and joined to Christ; He is saying, “This one is Mine!”
The New Testament speaks of baptism both as an act performed in water and also as the work of the Spirit connecting the believer to the work of Christ. We come to baptism as to the doorway into the death of Christ, that by the action of the Spirit we may rise joined to the living Christ.
Notice the wording of the verse we discussed above:
...by putting off the body of the sins[a] of the flesh, by the circumcision of Christ, buried with Him in baptism, in which you also were raised with Him through faith in the working of God, who raised Him from the dead.
Colossians 2:11,12
Baptism was the event in which the convert released faith in the working of God and experienced resurrection with Christ. This is further stated in Romans 6.
Or do you not know that as many of us as were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into His death? 4 Therefore we were buried with Him through baptism into death, that just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in newness of life.
Romans 6:3,4
Paul testified of how Ananias ministered to him after his meeting with Jesus on the Damascus road with the words "And now why are you waiting? Arise and be baptized, and wash away your sins, calling on the name of the Lord." (Acts 22:16).
We know that water cannot wash away sins! Then what did Ananias mean by the phrase “be baptized and wash away your sins”? There is nothing magic in water! Without faith and the work of the Spirit, nothing is accomplished—except maybe an unnecessary bath. But for faith, baptism is the physical doorway to the covenant through which we walk in the power of the Spirit. All that is happening physically in baptism is also happening through the Spirit at the deepest level of our beings.
Many years ago, I was the pastor of a church in New York. One day a person named Joey slipped into the back pew. I later found out that Joey was a drug addict and lived the lifestyle that included petty thieving, selling drugs, and living in a drug-induced high. His world was a network of young men and women whose world from dawn until late into the night was the pursuit of getting high. He continued to come back week after week, eagerly listening to the preaching of the Gospel.
We had a baptismal service almost every Sunday; and after hearing the Gospel and being awakened by the Spirit to faith in Christ, Joey asked for baptism. He sent out invitations to his family and the network of persons who made up his world that read simply, “You are invited to Joey’s funeral and resurrection on Sunday night.” They came, curious and confused. Joey stood by the baptismal water and addressed his stunned family and friends with the words, “Goodbye, I am leaving the world that all of us know for real life in Jesus. You will see me around, and we will talk, and I hope I will continue to be your friend. But the Joey you have known has died and in a few minutes will be buried; the man you will be talking to is somebody who has risen from the dead and for the first time in his life is really alive! And seeing as he is dead, Joey will not be selling drugs anymore and will not be joining you to shoot up or be at the parties.”
He walked the streets in Brooklyn, seeing the old haunts and friends, but although in the world he was not of it. He was a man who had been joined to Christ; he had returned home from his own funeral to see the world and all of life through resurrected eyes.
As we come out of the waters of baptism, the Father announces to us as surely as He did to Jesus, “This is My beloved son in whom I am well pleased.” The Spirit, who came upon Him, came upon Him for us; and as we enter the family of God, the Spirit comes and enfolds us in the arms of God’s love.
We become partakers of God’s life, His everlasting life. The divine life is added by grace to our humanity; we are reborn, and our lives begin again on a totally different plain. We are moved out of the domain of the lie and the darkness to be at home in the new creation founded on the new covenant in Jesus.
Giving thanks to the Father who has qualified us to be partakers of the inheritance of the saints in the light. He has delivered us from the power of darkness and conveyed us into the kingdom of the Son of His love, in whom we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of sins. He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation.
Colossians 1:12-15
What of the person who has not been baptized? I believe the Scripture is plain that the Spirit-energized rite stands at the beginning of our salvation. Often those who trek to “get saved” every time an evangelist comes through town are trying to nail down an ethereal faith that exists in vague thoughts and fleeting feelings. Baptism integrates the whole person in the act of faith that abandons to God and His work for us in Christ while the Spirit initiates us into Christ and the new covenant. And so to those not baptized, as Ananias said to Paul, “Arise and be baptized!”
Is a person saved if he or she is not baptized? Questions like this turn the grace of God into law. It is a pointless question that any Pharisee would have loved! God commands it; so do it, and stop discussing how many angels can stand on a pinhead.
When I began to teach the covenant in the church in Brooklyn, a number of the older members came and asked, “When I was baptized, I did not understand all of this! Do I have to get baptized again?” My answer was “No, because baptism is the Holy Spirit’s working out the mystery of joining you to Christ; it is not your making an adequate act of faith that will make something happen. Do you fully understand today the mystery of the covenant, that you are in Christ and that He is in you? Then give thanks to God that He took you and said, ‘This one is Mine!’”
We do not get re-baptized every time we see more clearly the nature of our salvation, but we humbly thank God for what He did even though we did not understand. Our whole salvation depends on Him, not on our clear understanding; otherwise, none of us would be saved! We do not pass exams in the laws of electricity to enjoy switching on the light, and we do not need to know how He does it to know that we are in Christ and He is in us.
Chapter 11: The Covenant Meal
In Jesus Christ the mystery of God, who is the love that is for others, has come and taken up residence with us. In so doing He has opened up a new world foreign to all that we have known, a world where selfishness, pride, greed, envy, violence, and hatred do not rule but are swallowed up by His almighty love that gives itself away for the other person.
In this God-love, meaning has been given to existence, and the addictions and private hells that men and women have made for themselves by seeking to find meaning in the creature and the created are dismissed. He has been to the bottom of death and hell and come out of it in resurrection, bringing us with Him; in Him is a new humankind, in whom all things are possible and potential.
To be joined to Him is to be reborn, part of that new race, and alive with that eternal life, a participant in that almighty love. The way we were still haunts us, and the world we were once a part of is all around us; but in Him, we have come to the ultimate reality. The reality that is in Him makes that old life and our old selves to be seen for what they were, a shadow of true life, the walking dead inhabiting the domain of darkness.
It was into a new company of people that the Spirit plunged us when we came into Christ, a company that is made up of men and women who all believe that He is the final reality. A company who believe that the world they were once part of is finished and in process of passing away, that His love is stronger than selfishness and indifference, that His life has swallowed
up death and by us His love will fill the earth.
We gather with our people—this company of lost prodigals now found, forgiven, made new, and crazy with joy at the thought of His love—to worship and give Him thanks. In our gathering and encouraging one another, the Spirit is present, establishing us in the reality and causing the unreality to increasingly be seen for what it is.
At the center of this worship is the meal of the covenant, where we meet with the eternal God, partake of His death-conquering life, are embraced by His love, and participate in the covenant promises. It is known by many names: the Holy Communion, the Eucharist (or the great thanksgiving), the Lord’s Supper, or the Mass.
Tragically, this meal has been the battleground of believers through the centuries; for many, it is the most misunderstood practice of the Christian faith. In many seeker-friendly churches, it has been marginalized and nearly forgotten. In conversations with many charismatic and evangelical pastors, I have realized that they do not know what to do with the meal. They intuitively know that it is important and cannot do away with it; but they do not know what it means or where it fits, so it becomes an awkward postscript to the programs of the church.
Power of the Blood Covenant: Uncover the Secret Strength of God's Eternal Oath Page 15