Baptism and Ecclesiology

Baptism and Ecclesiology Rev. Dr. G.P. Wagenfuhr Baptism is the means of entry into the people of God, the church. That means, if we have the wrong idea about baptism, we probably have a flawed concept of the church and vice versa. For example, if baptism is viewed as a service the church renders to families or to individuals, it has turned the meaning of church on its head. Baptism is the giving up of the self to be joined with Christ. The Church is the Gospel The church is the body of Christ (Rom. 12, 1 Cor. 12, Eph. 3:6). It is the embodied continuation of the presence of God within his creation. It is empowered by the Holy Spirit. It is the revelation of the kingdom of God to the world (Matt. 5:14–16). The church is the community of reconciled people who are busy reconciling all things to God in Christ. The fullness of the church is the desperate longing of all creation (Rom 8:19). If the church is the body of Christ, and Christ is the substance of the gospel, and we are united to Christ through participation in his death by baptism (Rom 6:4), then we may rightly see that the church is the gospel and baptism the means of joining this good news. Church, Baptism, Gospel Confusion But such a claim stands in stands in stark contrast with many visions of the gospel as expressed today. In many versions of Evangelicalism, for example, the gospel is a lifetransforming personal relationship with Jesus. This came around for good reasons. For generations of Christendom, many attended church because that was the thing to do, but they lacked a living faith. To that lamentable situation of nominal Christianity was introduced the need for personal faith. Many movements throughout church history have expressed this need, from the earliest monks to the Jesuits, from the German Pietists and John Wesley to later revivalism. Beginning in the twentieth century it was seen in Pentecostalism, Evangelicalism, and the Charismatic movements. Going to church wasn’t enough, you had to have a personal relationship with Jesus. But now generations have come and gone and the fruit of this reaction to nominal Christianity is now ripened. The fruit of the personal relationship with Jesus gospel has proven bittersweet. It has contributed to church decline as it transforms the way we imagine and practice church. If the gospel is about me and Jesus, then what do I need the church for? An individualistic gospel will create individualistic churches that become service-providers. 32 They offer services to aid the faith of the individual. They offer life-transforming lessons, coaching through discipleship programs, intellectual stimulation in Sunday School. They offer meaningful experiences of worship. They offer programs to help people thrive in life. They pursue the common good of their cities. In short, they exist to provide services, rather than put forth the call to lay down one’s life to join it to Christ. These good works are important, of course! But unsurprisingly, churches that operate primarily as serviceproviders have created an environment in which church-shopping is the natural result. Churches have become consumer-driven and market-focused. They specialize to try and meet the spiritual demands of this or that subgroup of people. A church that tries to appeal to people will naturally attract people who want to be catered to, and so a selfperpetuating feedback loop begins in which consumers attend service-providing churches, and service-providing churches work hard to meet the market demands to attract and form people into a consumer-based faith. It is a vicious cycle in which none can be satisfied. Churches are always having to change, retool, rebrand. Consumers get easily dissatisfied and often don’t stick around long enough for the real benefits to kick in. If we were to invent a ceremony of baptism to fit such a church, what would it look like? Baptism would become a celebration of a personal spiritual life choice, organized and orchestrated by the ministry of the church. Baptism would become one of the greatest evidences of success and flourishing, used to show the efficacy of the ministry of the church in helping the individual achieve life transformation. And it would still not necessarily require a life of deep accountability to the commitment made at that time. If such a baptism did not last forever, and a person’s faith or commitment lagged, a repetition of the experience would be readily available to start again. It would even be desirable for churches to rebaptize as often as possible to boost their statistical performance! Such church practices have become plausible in our time but would be unrecognizable to most of the history of Christianity. This is a broken understanding of baptism, the church, and the gospel. Reforming the Gospel, Baptism, and the Church If we want to do both the church and baptism rightly, we must reform our gospel. To do this, we must return to the source: to Scripture which alone has supreme authority for us. First of all, the notion of a personal relationship with Jesus that makes the church optional is entirely out of line with the teachings of all of the authors of the New Testament. Consider the following: “For where two or three are gathered in my name, there am I among them” (Matt. 18:20). In context, Jesus is talking about accountability and confrontation about sin. He is referring back to the Old Testament teaching that two or three witnesses were needed Baptism and Ecclesiology 33 to convict someone of a crime (Deut. 17:6, 19:15). Deuteronomy goes on to say that a single witness is not valid for convicting anyone. The implication of Jesus saying is that a single person does not constitute the church and is not normally able to be a trusted witness. How much more so if we’re asking individuals to witness to the faith alone? Jesus is present in the communion of saints, not in isolated individuals. On that, Paul says in Ephesians 3:16-19: …that according to the riches of his glory he may grant you to be strengthened with power through his Spirit in your (plural) inner being, 17 so that Christ may dwell in your (plural) hearts through faith—that you (plural), being rooted and grounded in love, 18 may have strength to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, 19 and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fullness of God. Note that Paul sees the indwelling of Christ as something that happens for the individual only as part of the church. To confirm this, we can look to the immediately preceding context of Ephesians 3:7-11: Of this gospel I was made a minister according to the gift of God’s grace, which was given me by the working of his power. 8 To me, though I am the very least of all the saints, this grace was given, to preach to the Gentiles the unsearchable riches of Christ, 9 and to bring to light for everyone what is the plan of the mystery hidden for ages in God, who created all things, 10 so that through the church the manifold wisdom of God might now be made known to the rulers and authorities in the heavenly places. 11 This was according to the eternal purpose that he has realized in Christ Jesus our Lord… Note here that the eternal purpose of God that is realized in Jesus is the revelation of God’s wisdom through the church. The Creator predestined people, not to salvation (only), but to be part of his people and conformed to the image of Jesus. So, in Romans 8:29 Paul says, For those whom he foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, in order that he might be the firstborn among many brothers. Note that this classic predestination passage, if read carefully, reveals that Paul is talking about the communion of saints, and the image of God. The eternal election of God is not about going to heaven when we die, but is about becoming like Christ, together. The image of God, as Paul sees it, is something only Jesus represents fully, and which we can attain by participation in the body of Christ. It is together that we become the temple of the Holy Spirit. In Ephesians 2:19-22, Paul explains that Christ has enabled us to come together in the one household of God. This fits with his notion of predestination as adoption in Ephesians 1. We are adopted, not to a personal father-child relationship, but to a father-household relationship. 34 Adoption in the New Testament is not quite the same thing as modern practices. In New Testament times it was usually practiced by social superiors adopting inferiors to gain inheritors, as was famously done by Octavian (who became Caesar Augustus) by Julius Caesar. We move from being “strangers and aliens” to “fellow citizens” with God’s people. This people is built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, on what would later be called “the communion of saints.” So, it is only when the whole structure works together that it becomes the temple of the Holy Spirit. Again, God does not indwell us alone. There can be no me-and-Jesus personal, private relationship. No one can become the image of God in Christ alone. The entire goal of creation is the adoption of God’s people together as children, to form a household, a body, that is for the reconciling of all things. Finally, the gospel is about the body of Christ. For Paul, becoming a believer is joining the body of Christ. This is not simply a metaphor, as though it were a nice image to help us understand some other reality. The body of Christ is fully realized in us, such that the sin of one member leads to the whole body participating in sin. So, in 1 Corinthians 6 Paul explains that sexual immorality actually joins the body of Christ to a prostitute (6:14–18)! He says, “He who is joined to the Lord becomes one spirit with him.” Our physical bodies (plural) together are the temple of the Holy Spirit, which means we are not our own. Our bodies belong to Christ as we join together in the church (1 Cor. 6:19–20). Just as a husband and wife’s bodies are not their own, but now are united in the flesh to one another, so too the body of Christ is united (Eph. 5:25–32). We must present our bodies as a living sacrifice to God. This is how Paul begins his teaching in Romans 12 about the body of Christ. Joining with the body of Christ requires us to die to ourselves and to the patterns or forms of the world (12:2). When we do that, we can be united to Christ individually as members of a whole working body. Individually we are not the body of Christ. Our unique gifts and abilities are submitted to the church (as also in Eph. 4). It is only within the life of the church that our uniqueness is rightly used. God has not uniquely gifted us for our own individual benefit, or for a uniquely individual calling, but to build up the church. So also in 1 Corinthians 12 Paul again explains the body of Christ and the relationship of the individual to it. We are the body of Christ and individually members of it who cannot rightly perform the function of the whole, nor operate independently. We need one another, and the unity of the body is of paramount concern. Baptism in The Church-Gospel Thus, the church is the gospel in which baptism makes sense. Baptism is the rite through which one goes to enter into the body of Christ. Baptism is the claiming of the promises of God from the foundations of the world that we are predestined to become Christlike together. Baptism is not about joining an institution, but joining the catholic Baptism and Ecclesiology 35 church—the united church throughout space, time, and tribe. It is about entering into the very purpose that God has created us for, to be the image of God. This is not something we can have, do, or be alone. The image of God is the representation of God, and this happens only through his family of adopted children. This means that baptism is not about personal life-transformation, it’s about the abandonment of self and culturally constructed identities to take on the identity of Christ. It is truly a conversion, a new birth. To become a Christian is to become a “little Christ.” It is to “put on Christ” as the robes in which we are clothed (Rom. 13:14, Gal. 3:27, Rev. 7:13). Entry into the body of Christ can only come by death of the self. In that way, the gospel is not about finding our true selves, or about authenticity, but about coming to know ourselves as crucified with Christ (Gal. 2:20). Baptism is about receiving an identity in a relationship, not about putting forth an identity we have chosen. Baptism is not a badge of honor, a merit badge, or a tattoo. It is not a piece of flair that helps define who we are. Baptism is a complete stripping away of everything that we otherwise might be. In order to be clothed with Christ, we have to first be naked. 36