When God enters into covenant with His people, there is always an adoptive element involved: He becomes their Father, and they become His children. And this has always been the case. In Scripture, even Adam’s relationship with God is expressed in terms of sonship (Hosea 6:7; Luke 3:38), highlighting the filial dimension to the covenant into which he was created. Later, after his Fall and recovery by God in Christ, that relationship was available to those who renewed their covenant with God and maintained the true worship of the Lord (Genesis 4:26). They were called sons and daughters of God, while the rest of the world were called the sons and daughters of men (Genesis 6:2).
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What Does Baptism Accomplish? Part One: Introduction
One of the questions often posed about the sacrament of Holy Baptism is: What does it actually accomplish? The answer in its most basic form is that Baptism initiates a covenant relationship with the Triune God and with each of the three Persons in particular.
In this series, I will develop this answer in some detail, but first it may be helpful to give a brief explanation and defense of its several parts.
Baptism Initiates a Covenant Relationship
Some have argued that “initiate” is too strong of a word since baptism, like circumcision, merely “acknowledges” a child’s existing covenant relationship with God, provided that he was born to at least one believing parent (1 Corinthians 7:14). Indeed, such an argument is not altogether wrong, as the LORD states that a child not circumcised on the eighth day would be “cut off from his people” for having “broken My covenant” (Genesis 17:12-14). From this passage, it is evident that every Israelite boy had a legitimate covenant status prior to his circumcision. Otherwise, how could he have broken the covenant? Or what does it mean that he is to be cut off from God’s people?
At the same time, however, we need to understand that this pre-circumcision covenant status was provisional. To use an analogy, it is like a temporary paper driver’s license issued to a new driver until the official one arrives. The paper license is real but is intended for limited and temporary use, and therefore bears the disclaimer: Not a Valid Form of ID. While imperfect, this analogy suffices. The thrust of Genesis 17:12-14 is that when the circumcision of an Israelite boy was refused or neglected by the father, the provisional covenant status of the child expired on the eighth day. Thus, the lack of circumcision annulled the status that the child enjoyed for the first eight days of his life. At minimum, this implies that birth alone—like the paper license—was not a valid form of Covenant ID in Israel.
In the same way, we might assert that any child born today to at least one believing parent has an interest in the covenant by virtue of his birth. In this sense, his covenant status is assumed but still pending. The child is holy, but with a provisional holiness (1 Corinthians 7:14). Thus, it is only when he is baptized that he enters into the church and is cleared and confirmed as a member of the body of Christ. Being baptized, his provisional covenant status is both formalized and secured.
However, while such an objection may be valid, it is nevertheless limited since it only applies to covenant children who are born within the church and fails to account for the men, women, and children who come in from the outside. For those who come from the outside have no covenant status to formalize or secure. In their case, baptism serves to confer that status for the very first time, as it unites them to Jesus Christ, brings them into the new covenant community, and incorporates them into the life of church: “For by one Spirit we were all baptized into one body” (1 Corinthians 12:12-13; cf. Acts 2:41).
Therefore, there is nothing improper in saying that baptism initiates a covenant relationship with the Triune God.
A Relationship with the Triune God
Of all the aspects of the answer provided, this is perhaps the easiest to understand. When a person is baptized, he is always baptized into the name of the Triune God. Jesus commanded the apostles to use the Trinitarian formula for Christian baptism, thus, employing a different form invalidates the rite. Unless we are baptized “into the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit” (Matthew 28:19-20), we are not baptized at all. This command has been faithfully followed by the church for nearly 2,000 years.
Unfortunately, many today question the necessity of using the Trinitarian formula, citing instances in Scripture where the apostles baptized people “in the name of Jesus” (Acts 10:48). To clarify this point, we must understand the flexibility of the term “name” (Greek: onoma). At times, it refers to a person’s reputation, as seen in Revelation 3:1: “You have a name that you are alive, but you are dead.” At other times, it denotes a person’s authority, as when Paul said to the unclean spirit: “I command you in the Name of Jesus Christ to come out of her” (Acts 16:18). In this latter sense, the apostles baptized in Jesus’ name—they acted under His authority, as His appointed representatives.
Moreover, the term “name” is used in Scripture to denote the person himself. This is evident in the Lord’s response to Moses when he asked to see the Lord’s glory (Exodus 33:18). The Lord replied, “I will make all My goodness pass before you, and I will proclaim the Name of the Lord before you” (Exodus 33:19). Subsequently, as He passed by Moses, He proclaimed His “name” by listing a number of the communicable attributes of His own nature—specifically His mercy, grace, patience, goodness, truth, and justice (Exodus 34:6-7). From this, it becomes clear that God’s Name refers to God Himself, so that to be baptized into the Name of the Triune God is to be baptized into Him. Through baptism, we are united to God in Christ, made “partakers of the divine nature” (2 Peter 1:4) and beneficiaries of His richest covenant blessings.
Nevertheless, as previously noted, the church remains committed to baptizing in the authority of Jesus Christ, who commissioned His disciples to baptize “in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.” This practice is essential to uphold.
With Each Person of the Trinity
Here we transition from the “one” to the “many” and return to where we began. God is indeed one, yet He is one in three Persons. Therefore, while baptism initiates a covenant relationship with the Triune God, there are necessarily three distinct aspects to that relationship, each corresponding to one of the three Persons of the Trinity. As it pertains to the Father, the relationship is adoptive; as it pertains to the Son, it is marital; and as it pertains to the Holy Spirit, it is ministerial. Thus, baptism (serving simultaneously as an adoption, marriage, and ordination ceremony) at once incorporates the baptized person into the family of God, the bride of Christ, and the universal priesthood of the Christian church.
In the following three installments, I will take up and defend these propositions in turn, beginning with the assertion that Christian baptism is an adoption ceremony. This foundational aspect not only underscores our identity in Christ but also invites us into the profound and transformative relationship that God extends to each of His covenant children.
A Husband’s Love
“Husbands, love your wives and do not become bitter with them.” ~Colossians 3:19
Marriage has been a fight for survival from the beginning of time. The present-day battle of the sexes is nothing new. Feminists rail against biblical marriage because the thought of submitting to a husband is barbaric and demeaning. But Feminism, with all its evils, is not the primary problem. The lack of masculine leadership is the principal problem; it has been since the Garden. Modern men respond to Feminism not by assuming masculine responsibility and seeking to win women back with strong, confident leadership but by agreeing with them that marriage is a bad deal for men as well. “The courts are stacked against us. A woman can take almost everything I have, including my children. Marriage is a bad deal for men.” Black-pilled (at least in the area of marriage) MGTOWs (Men Going Their Own Way) have blamed women for everything, becoming resentful. “Masculine” influencers encourage young men never to get married; in other words, never truly love a woman.
Marriage is risky. It always has been. You are entrusting yourself to another person, opening yourself up to the possibility of the greatest pain you can ever experience. But it is also true that you may experience some of the deepest joys known to a man. Masculine men take risks and take on responsibility. Effeminate men hide behind all the excuses of everything being against them, whine, and refuse to fight for what is good. Real men take the risk of loving a woman genuinely and deeply.
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The Submission of Wives
“Strong Independent Woman” has been a meme in our culture since the 1970s, and not a funny one. The character developed within the Feminist movement has leavened Western culture so that now this is the cultural ideal. Women who refuse this title are backward and old-fashioned in the worst possible way. The Strong Independent Woman “don’t need no man” and must never do anything for the express purpose of pleasing a man. If she happens to choose marriage, she will remain on a separate path from her husband. Her subservient husband (whom she will call an “equal partner”) supports her independence so that she can achieve her hopes and dreams.
Enter Paul’s words to Christian wives: “Wives, submit to your husbands, as is fitting in the Lord” (Col 3:18). The words come as so out of place to some Christian commentators that they see Paul’s command as “culturally bound” and can’t be translated into our more enlightened twenty-first-century context. Reading this part of what is called “the household code” must be only to “unmask them as texts promoting patriarchal violence.” (Fiorenza in David Garland, Colossians, 253).
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The Death of Dispensationalism
Dispensationalism is not faulty because of its adherents. As the prevailing evangelical ethos in our country, I have met thousands of faithful, Bible-believing, zealous saints who subscribe to various dispensational features. It’s the mode of operation of the American church.
But the system of Dispensationalism is faulty for ten reasons:
1) Literalizes the text in places where literal readings are unnecessary. This approach overlooks the Bible’s rich, genre-saturated literary nature, which is a source of profound enrichment to the Christian reader.
2) Separates theological paradigms like law and gospel and thus misses the gracious nature of the law and the command-driven imperatives of the gospel.
3) Fails to see the compelling nature of Israel’s story as a preparation for the story of the new Israel. Israel is the seed planted in the parched desert places, nourished by priests, prophets, and kings, and flourished under the reign of the One Priest, Prophet, and King.
4) Truncates biblical categories that demand far more glory and weight in the text. It minimizes covenantal realities into stages rather than the maturation of history.
5) Subjectivizes and moralizes historical characters instead of seeing their typological and historical function in the text.
6) Reject eschatological realities that were declared in the first century to be true and tangible by futurizing them into a future millennium.
7) Differentiates Israel and the Church without reading the Messianic story as a recapitulation of the Israel story.
8) Spiritualizes this age and thus fails to see the earthly transformative effects of the vindication of Jesus.
9) Transforms piety into an introspective paradigm that sees the salvation of souls as the sine qua non of the Christian experience.
10) Fragmentizes the biblical story and thus fails to see each biblical text as a part of the overarching whole.
Dispensationalism is a system that is slowly perishing. As a mode of interpretation, it cannot survive the test of time or the present tests of biblical scholarship.
Singing the Psalms with Jesus
“Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly, in all wisdom teaching and admonishing one another with Psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs singing with grace in your hearts to God.”
~Colossians 3:16
Everybody loves Psalm 23. Many Christians do not know, and still fewer love and will sing Psalms 109 and 137. When it comes to a few Psalms, Christians become Marcionites. (He was a second-century theologian who pitted the vengeful God of the Old Testament with the loving God of the New Testament revealed in Jesus. Consequently, he cut the Old Testament out of the biblical canon and highly edited the New Testament.) Christians will rightly appeal to Psalm 139 to declare that the unborn are persons and shouldn’t be aborted, but they might ignore the last part of that Psalm that declares that we hate our enemies with a perfect hatred. This hatred reflects God’s own hatred, as declared in Psalms 5 and 11.
“This is not what Jesus taught,” you may hear. But in Colossians (along with a parallel in Ephesians 5:19), Paul says that the Psalms are “the word of Christ” that is to “dwell in [the church] richly.” We are to teach and admonish one another with these Psalms. Paul is not contradicting Jesus. Singing the Psalms is a clear command of Scripture, so it is incumbent upon us to obey the command and seek to better understand as we obey.
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The Cult of Reformed & Evangelical Churches?
On more than one occasion, I have heard the CREC and particular churches within the denomination labeled as “a cult.” This puts us right there with the Jehovah’s Witnesses, Mormons, Jim Jones, and David Koresh. Apparently, we are a dangerous heterodox group of over-zealous extremists following some sort of charismatic personality. Our Book of Confessions puts us in the stream of Reformational Christianity, but somehow, we are still labeled as a cult. Maybe it is our acceptance of paedocommunion, but that is far from new to the Christian faith. Maybe it is our optimistic eschatology, but many Christians have been optimistic about the kingdom of God in history. Perhaps it is because we have Doug Wilson, and, well, they just don’t like him. I don’t really think any of those particulars cause people to label us as a cult.
From my own observation (and this is my personal opinion), what seems to chafe the average American Christian about the CREC is the commitment. The commitment level of the average CREC family to attend worship regularly, participate in the church’s life, and live out the faith in a counter-American-cultural way is staggering for the modern American Christian.
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Forgiveness & Healing
“I asked for forgiveness. He said he forgave me. Everything ought to be alright.” Not necessarily.
Forgiveness is an essential grace that we must be willing to extend to our brothers and sisters in Christ. If we don’t forgive one another, God will not forgive us (Mt 6:14-15; 18:21-35). When addressing both the Ephesians and the Colossians, Paul speaks of forgiveness as an expression of love vital to the church’s continuing, growing life (Eph 4:32; Col 3:12-14). We must be willing to release others from the legitimate debt they’ve incurred by their sin against us. We must refuse to take revenge, seeking to “make them pay” for what they’ve done to us.
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The Five Faces of Anger
Anger characterizes our present culture. We live in a victimized, aggrieved, and, therefore, angry society. Anger is always simmering beneath the surface and frequently erupts. We will see more volcanic activity as campaigns ramp up and elections draw near. Battle lines are drawn. People will yell and scream at one another in person and online.
Our capitalist culture has learned to monetize anger. Anger is good business for social media influencers, whether non-Christian or Christian. Rage bait receives clicks; clicks are traffic, and traffic means money and fame. Anger is big business.
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The Circumcision of Christ
Circumcision is not a subject usually talked about in polite conversation. It can be a bit awkward as you are reading aloud through the Scriptures with your young children, and circumcision is the focus of the text. The discussion of circumcision makes something that is private and shameful (that is, exposing nakedness) public. Paul’s cryptic phrase in Philippians 3:18, “whose glory is their shame,” may be referring to the Jews bragging about their circumcision. Exposing your private parts before all is shameful.
Nevertheless, circumcision plays a significant role in the redemption of the world and is a prominent theme in Scripture.
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