Global Anglican Theological Institute

Let us begin our study of Holy Baptism with a prayer, asking God to make real in our lives what he gives in baptism.

Living God, pour out upon us, we pray, your Holy Spirit, that we may be empowered to receive the great blessings you have promised to us in Baptism, and that from this day forward, we may walk faithfully in these blessings to the glory of your name. All this we ask through Jesus Christ the Lord. Amen.

The purpose of this introductory essay on Holy Baptism is to present a theological perspective by which we can understand and rightly respond to the baptismal rite. To do that, let us begin with a quotation from Scripture, the classic biblical text on Christian baptism, given by Jesus when he appeared to his disciples in the resurrection.

And Jesus came and said to them, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age.” (Matthew 28:18-20).

This passage begins with two ideas, that Jesus has all authority, and second, that the disciples are commanded to go and make disciples. These two ideas are connected – the authority of Jesus is manifested in that he authorizes the apostles to make disciples and to baptize. As they do this, he will be with them always. Being with them always means he will act as they teach and baptize, and as he acts, he will be true to himself, creating the salvation that he had accomplished by his life, death, and resurrection. This salvation, as we shall see, is intimately connected to baptism. The authority to baptize and teach is not only true for the original disciples. It is true of all those who follow in the path of the apostles, that is, all who believe the apostolic testimony found in Scripture, and put it into practice. In other words, the church is called and authorized to make disciples, baptize, and teach those who believe and intend to keep Christ’s commands. When believers obey those commands, the Kingdom comes. Above all, the Kingdom comes as believers know Jesus for, as he says, “I am with you always, to the end of the age.” We may formulate the first point of this essay in these words: The church is authorized by Christ to make disciples, to baptize, and to teach so that believers will know Christ forever.

The word “baptism,” in this context does not mean the bare rite alone, the washing of the water, but the entire complex of events leading up to baptism and coming forth from it. As the passage from Matthew and other biblical passages make clear, men and women were baptized in response to apostolic preaching and teaching. Hearing, believing, being baptized, and beginning the Christian life in obedience to Christian teaching is a single unfolding event with component aspects. All of these aspects need to be included in the act of water baptism. As a consequence, before a person is baptized, there must be preaching and teaching and it must be believed. In this regard, the matter of infant baptism will be discussed in a subsequent lesson.

Baptism is in the “name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.” By this statement we know that a name is given in baptism. In a previous lesson, The Consecration of Space and Time, we discussed how God chose particular times and places to establish his Name. When God’s people came to those places at the appointed time, God promised to be there, speaking, acting, and appearing. Because of this, the Name could not be profaned, for one cannot treat God casually when he speaks or appears. Since God is present and active when his Name is proclaimed, baptism is a holy event. In baptism, the Lord Jesus binds himself to his people, promising to act in the event of baptism as the holy Name is proclaimed.

The Name that is proclaimed in baptism is that of “the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.” This Name reveals that God is a living, dynamic person in which the Father sends the Son to save, and this salvation is made real in contemporary experience by the Holy Spirit. This has been described in several essays on this website, especially the lessons Trinity and Incarnation and In Remembrance of Me. Let me encourage the reader to read those two lessons as an indispensable foundation for what follows.

The lesson, ”Trinity and Incarnation,”, in its analysis of John’s gospel, described how God the transcendent Father sent his Word who became incarnate in the man Jesus Christ. As the incarnation of God, Jesus Christ was divine, possessing a divine nature. As a man, he possessed a human nature, and both the human and the divine natures were unified as one single person, Jesus Christ. The essay also described how words could convey the reality of a person across space and time. For that reason, the apostolic witness to Jesus conveyed the person of Jesus to those who heard the testimony, even if they had never seen or heard Jesus in the flesh. As they heard and received this testimony, they received the one person of Christ in his human and divine natures. Since Christ was divine, the incarnation of God, believers came to know the transcendent God, the living Father who sent his Son. As this happened by the power of the Spirit, God the Father and the Son would make their home with believers in an intimate fellowship of love (John 14-23). This intimate relation of love was mystical in the sense that believers could hear and see the transcendent God, but not mystical in the sense that the self dissolved into the divine nature.(1) Rather, the words and deeds that witnessed to Jesus took on a living quality that set forth the person of Jesus Christ, and through him, the living God of love.

With this in mind, and in reference to Matthew 28:28-30, the gospel that was proclaimed by the apostles as they went throughout the world making disciples set forth the very person of Christ, and through him, the living God. For example, in Luke 9:1-6, Jesus sent his disciples to proclaim the Kingdom, giving them the authority to heal and cast out demons. As they exercised this authority and preached the gospel (Luke 9:6), their words and deeds conveyed Christ because they could only do these deeds of power in his Name, that is, only when he was present and active in their words and deeds. In Matthew’s account of the sending of the disciples, Jesus says, “Whoever receives you receives me, and whoever receives me receives him who sent me” (Matthew 10:40). In other words, the person of Christ is conveyed by the apostolic witness. To receive the witness is to receive the Lord Jesus, and similarly, to receive Jesus Christ is to receive the Father who sent him. Or Mark will begin his gospel with the words, “The beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God” (Mark 1:1). The words “beginning of the gospel” can refer to the beginning of the literary text of Mark, but it can also mean that the very person of Christ is beginning to be set forth as one begins to read the text. Or Paul will say in Romans 1:16, “For I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek.” For Paul, Christ is the true power of God for salvation, and the gospel is also that power since the gospel sets forth the person of Christ. From these examples and many more it can be said that the gospel is Jesus Christ in verbal form since it conveys his very person. Let us consider two quotations from the Interpreters Dictionary of the Bible. The first is from an article describing the biblical meaning of the word “gospel, the second from an article on the biblical meaning of the word “word.”

But Jesus is more than the first recipient and the propagator of the good news. In his ministry, he is himself the good announced. He is God’s power and wisdom (1 Cor. 1:24); our peace (Eph. 2:14); the end of the law (Rom. 10:4); our righteousness, consecration, and redemption (1 Cor. 1:30). The great “I am” statements in John (6:35; 10:7, 11; 14:6; 15:1) have the same function. In his whole ministry, Jesus himself is the gospel. (2)

There is an intimate connection between Christ and the word of which he was first the author and then the theme (cf. Heb. 2:3). This is shown by the way in which the word “preach” (κηρύσσειν) can have as object “the word” (Rom. 10:8; 2 Tim. 4:2); “the gospel” (Gal. 2:2; Col. 1:23; 1 Thess. 2:9); “Jesus” (2 Cor. 11:4); “Christ” (1 Cor. 1:23; 15:12; Phil. 1:15); “Jesus Christ” (2 Cor. 1:19). Moreover, the word is not a formula, but something living and dynamic (cf. Heb. 4:12); it was accompanied by manifestations of divine power (cf. Heb. 2:4), both in the case of Christ and in that of his apostles. It is the “power of God” (1 Cor. 1:18; cf. 1 Cor. 2:4: “My speech (λόγος) and my message (κήρυγμά) were not in plausible words of wisdom but in demonstrations of the Spirit and power’”); and a little further on, Paul describes Christ as the “power of God” (1 Cor. 1:24). This intimate connection of Christ and the word makes less surprising their eventual identification. (3)

When Paul preached, he preached the word, the gospel, Jesus, Christ, and Jesus Christ, because Jesus Christ was the Word, the gospel, the saving message, the living person of Christ in verbal form. Because the risen Christ, conveyed by proclamation, is alive and doing today what he did in the days of his flesh, the church’s preaching can become “living and dynamic.”

This needs to be emphasized because baptism is a response to a person, the person of Christ. It is not simply a rite without reference to a personal relationship. The same was said about the Holy Eucharist as described in the essay, In Remembrance of Me. This lesson described how the person of Jesus Christ is conveyed by the Holy Eucharist so that believers known Christ and through him meet the living God. To grasp the beauty of this more fully, let us listen to what Richard Hooker says about preaching, baptism, and Eucharist.

Is God alone the Father of spirits? Are not souls the purchase of Jesus Christ? What angel in Heaven could have said to man as our Lord unto Peter, “Feed my sheep: Preach: Baptize: Do this in remembrance of me: Whose sins ye retain they are retained: and their offences in heaven pardoned whose faults you shall on earth forgive?” What think we? Are these terrestrial sounds, or else are they voices uttered out of the clouds above? The power of the ministry of God translates out of darkness into glory, it raises men from the earth and brings God himself down from heaven, by blessing visible elements it makes them invisible grace, it gives daily the Holy Ghost, it gives of that flesh which was given for the life of the world and that blood which was poured out to redeem souls, when it pours malediction upon the heads of the wicked they perish, when it revokes the same they revive. O wretched blindness if we admire not so great power, more wretched if we consider it aright and notwithstanding imagine that any but God can bestow it! (4)

The ministries of God exercised by the church bring souls out of darkness into glory, raise earth to heaven, bring God to his people, make real the work of the Holy Spirit, redeem lost souls, bring judgment upon the impenitent, and revive the penitent with pardon, and all these things are done because the words and deeds of the Church are not only human words and deeds, but “voices uttered out of the clouds above,” bestowing things that none “but God can bestow.” When thinking of these things in relation to baptism, it is well to keep in mind that these heavenly and terrestrial realities encompass the whole of the baptismal event, from preaching and teaching, to the specific act of water baptism, to further teaching, and to a life of continuous obedience to the commands of Christ. All these, begun by the gospel, convey the person of Christ himself to those who are baptized. We may formulate the second essential point of this essay in these words: Baptism is an unified event in which the person of Christ is made real through the proclamation of the gospel in the power of the Spirit, and in response to Jesus Christ, persons are baptized as the first step in a life of obedience which brings believers home to God.

1. See the essay Knowing the Christian God.
2. The Interpreters Dictionary of the Bible, George Arthus Buttrick, ed. (Volume II, New Work: Abingdon Press, 1962), pp. 445-6.
3. The Interpreters Dictionary of the Bible, Volume IV, p. 871.
4. Richard Hooker, Of the Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity, Volume III, collected by John Keble (Ellicott City: Facsimile Reprint by Via Media, Inc., 1994), V.lxxii.1. I have slightly modernized Hooker’s English.

The Rev. Robert J. Sanders, Ph.D.
dr.sanders@globalanglican