The Joy & Responsibility of Baptism

Baptism is a church’s act of affirming and portraying a believer’s union with Christ by immersing him or her in water, and a believer’s act of publicly committing him or her to Christ and His people, thereby uniting a believer to the church and marking off him or her from the world.

I. Duties of the Baptized

Acts 2:36-41

A. Declare

to declare is an 1) action, and not just any action its a 2) public one.

Baptism is the 3) first public act of the faith that receives Christ as Savior and Lord.

Notice in not just this passage but all over scripture how baptism immediately follows salvation.

If you’re a Christian, Jesus commands you to be baptized. It’s something you must do; no one else can do it for you.

What are they declaring?

Think about those who repented and were baptized at Pentecost. All those who stepped forward from the crowd to be baptized were marking themselves as Jesus’ followers.

1. Who They Follow

Think about those who repented and were baptized at Pentecost. All those who stepped forward from the crowd to be baptized were marking themselves as Jesus’ followers.

And that’s exactly what Jesus wants—followers everyone can see.

Matthew 10:32–33 ESV

So everyone who acknowledges me before men, I also will acknowledge before my Father who is in heaven, but whoever denies me before men, I also will deny before my Father who is in heaven.

Romans 10:9–10 ESV

because, if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. For with the heart one believes and is justified, and with the mouth one confesses and is saved.

There are no secret disciples of Jesus. The only way to follow Jesus is to do so openly, in plain sight, where everyone can see you.

2. What Jesus has Done for Them

Baptism is a sign of the gospel’s application. A sign in that it points to something. It’s directing us to know what happened to this person. Baptism is merely an outward demonstration/symbol of the change that has already happened on the inside. Nothing about baptism saves you.

So what happened on the inside? Scriptures says of the one who receives the gospel receives forgiveness from sin that occurred through the turning to and being united to Christ by faith. Not only has their faith brought forgiveness, but it also has granted them new life by Christ. New eternal life so that they are guaranteed a place with Christ in heaven because he has washed away their win. But also new life even today where sins power doesn’t have to win the day in that persons life. Christ died so they could be free from sin but also gave them His comforter and guide the Holy Spirit to keep them from sin and continue to mold them into His image.

But baptism doesn’t just affirm these realities; it also portrays them. Think of Christ dying, being buried, and rising again. Baptism publicly pictures someone’s union with this death, burial, and resurrection. A person is physically plunged under water and raised out of it.

Therefore, Baptism displays our death to sin and our resurrection to new life in Christ. So therefore, we can say that it draws a hard line between those that are the church and those that are the world, but it also extends an invitation, “Look, world, look church: see what God has done in me!”

B. Pledge

Acts 2:42-47

1 Peter 3:21 ESV

Baptism, which corresponds to this, now saves you, not as a removal of dirt from the body but as an appeal to God for a good conscience, through the resurrection of Jesus Christ,

baptism is not just the profession of a prior commitment; it is itself the making of a commitment. Peter in this passage is writing of how Noah and his family were saved through the waters of judgment, and then draws a comparison: “Baptism, which corresponds to this, now saves you (not the removal of the filth of the flesh, but the pledge of a good conscience toward God) through the resurrection of Jesus Christ” (1 Pet. 3:21). When Peter says that baptism “saves you,” he clarifies that what saves is not physical washing with water but the faith that baptism expresses. And Christ’s resurrection is what powers faith. It’s not that there is any power or virtue in our faith itself. Instead, by faith we take hold of the resurrected Christ.

Further, the phrase “pledge of a good conscience” could be taken as a petition, a promise, or both. Baptism is a petition, a prayer that gives voice to faith’s plea: “Save me, Lord Jesus!” By identifying with Christ’s death and resurrection in baptism, a believer publicly claims Christ as his or her Savior, asking God to make good on his promise to save. Baptism is a promise in that it publicly pledges submission to Christ as Lord. To be baptized into Christ’s name (Matt. 28:19) is to submit to his authority.

In baptism we appeal to God to accept us on the terms of his new covenant (1 Pet. 3:21), and we pledge ourselves to fulfill, by grace, all that his new covenant requires of us (Matt. 28:19). In baptism we own God as our God, and he owns us as his people. In baptism we swear the vow, “Do you take this Jesus to be your Lord and Savior?” And the response is “I do.”

At Pentecost, it was pretty clear what you were signing up for: opposition from the Jewish leaders and a whole new life among this persecuted band of the Messiah’s followers. Today, things aren’t always so clear. There are professing Christians who think that being a Christian is just to add more to their life without understanding that there is also a giving and commitment to something. A church needs to ensure that those it baptizes know that living as a Christian has everything to do with submitting to Jesus’ Lordship and everything to do with the church.

“Baptism is a statement by two parties, not one—the baptizer and the baptizee”

Those that are getting baptized today couldn’t have just woken up one morning, said I’ve got to get baptized, gone over to their bathtub or pool and dunked themselves. This isnt a biblical baptism. Its wrong because that duty falls to the church.

II. Duties of the Church

A. Affirm

Affirm what?

In baptism a church affirms a believer’s profession of faith in Christ. It affirms that someone who claims to be united to Christ in his death and resurrection, so far as they can discern, is.

Why the church?

People today tend to think that baptism is a symbol that people can simply choose to place upon themselves, like deciding to buy a shirt at the store and then wearing it in public. It doesn’t so much matter who is doing the baptizing, like it doesn’t matter much who the clerk at the checkout counter happens to be.

Think about what a judge does when he pounds his gavel. He doesn’t write the law. He doesn’t make the defendant innocent or guilty. Rather, he looks at the law. He looks at the evidence. And then he declares a public—and binding—verdict.

Who is this judge? Who is given this authority? Look back into Matthew 16 and 18,

where Jesus gives the keys of the kingdom first to the apostles, and then to local churches. The keys of the kingdom are for binding on earth what’s bound in heaven, and loosing on earth what’s loosed in heaven. This means that the apostles and gathered churches both have the authority to make public a declaration or verdict on Jesus’ behalf.

Looking at Matthew 18 who can see this clearly.

Matthew 18:20 ESV

For where two or three are gathered in my name, there am I among them.”

What’s the context of Matthew 18:20, starting in verses 15, its the well known passage about church discipline. Verse 18 of the same passage reads… Matthew 18:17

Matthew 18:17 ESV

If he refuses to listen to them, tell it to the church. And if he refuses to listen even to the church, let him be to you as a Gentile and a tax collector.

What gives the church the right and the authority to do such a thing. When two or three are gathered in my name, there I am (there my authority rests) with them. This passage isn’t about simply presence of God, or the idea of small groups. It’s a verse that describes the authority of the local church authorized by the Lord Himself.

Since the baptism is performed by an individual, the church acts through a representative, but baptism is still a church’s act. The church therefore goes on record. They are making a public statement and verdict and that verdict is to affirm that this one is indeed a child of God.

B. Accept

Bring them in,

Look at the verbage of Acts 2:41 “So those who received his word were baptized, and there were added that day about three thousand souls.”

When we say bring them in we are saying to everyone , the world included, that this one belongs to Christ and therefore belongs to the church. The were added to the official record and number.

How do we know who is part of us? By holding a ceremony of public declaration. Think of the military. Where does a potential soldiers initiation into the military begin? At his swearing in. Who holds this ceremony? A representative of the military.

Think of baptism as the swearing-in ceremony.

when Jesus inaugurated the kingdom of heaven on earth, he established the church as an embassy of that kingdom. He gave the church the “keys of the kingdom” in order to identify its citizens before the world by affirming the professions of those who credibly confess faith in him (Matt. 16:19; 18:18–19). And the initial and initiating means by which the church identifies individuals as kingdom citizens is baptism (Matt. 28:19).

Baptism marks off Christians as Christians, which means baptism is necessary for church membership. A church simply isn’t authorized to recognize someone as a member of Jesus’ team until that person puts on the jersey.

When we read of someone being added to the numbers… that a theological term for membership.

This relation of church membership is evident in the New Testament in that some people are “inside” the church and others are “outside” (1 Cor. 5:12).

So therefore baptism draws a line around the church, binding one to many. It adds a believer to the public company of the people of God on earth.

There is a transaction that occurs in baptism. The believer, as we have already, stated makes a pledge: “I hereby pledge myself to Christ and to you, his people.” The church also conveys a commitment.

“We hereby affirm your profession and pledge ourselves to you, a member of Christ’s body.” In baptism the believer speaks to God and the church, and the church speaks for God to the individual.

Being joined to the rest, comes with it’s benefits as well as responsibilities from the church. What are these responsibilities…

protect and defend them, raise them up to maturity, hold them to their the vows and commitments, pledge to do all they can to walk alongside them.

Again we read that in Acts 2:42

Acts 2:42 ESV

And they devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers.

They devoted themselves to others.

Today, we are privileged to bear witness to a true and incredible miracle. It is a miracle in the sense that no man can do this on his own. Only God can raise the dead to life. Only God can fix what is fully broken. Only God can bring back the one that is fully lost in sin. Only God can buy back the one that has fully been enslaved in sin and evil. Man cannot save Himself, only God. And today we bear witness that God continues to do so. He saves!

But today we are also reminded through the sign of baptism of our responsibilities both to remember our own baptisms and pledges to Christ as well as our responsibilites to look after and love our new family members in Christ.

May God be praise as we do this together.