Always God's Plan

Always God’s Plan: Sacraments #2 Colossians 2:8-14 Have you ever tried putting a puzzle together without the picture? When it’s finished, it could be a picture of the Empire State Building, the Mona Lisa, a clown and his dog, or a Disney princess. You don’t have the whole picture, and you don’t know what the end result will be. You just have dozens of puzzle pieces that you are trying to fit together at random. For a long time, that’s the way I approached the Bible. I read it through multiple times in my young days, memorized lots of Bible verses, heard hundreds of sermons and Bible lessons. I had so many puzzle pieces laid before me. But I never saw the box top. The picture that the pieces formed came to me at random, and I fit them together how I could. For a while, the pieces I was most concerned with had to do with the End Times. Then it was apologetics and making a coherent case for the faith. I remember one summer I read Galatians over and over and over and had a personal Reformation in which I bemoaned the legalism of the Christian high school I attended. Spiritual gifts, world missions, passionate worship—you name it, I had a season of being really excited about it. The pieces were there, but I couldn’t see the box top. Then in my 20s, I came across a book by a theologian named Edmund Clowney called The Unfolding Mystery. I remember distinctly reading a passage in which he explained Moses striking the Rock in the wilderness in Exodus. After miraculous salvation from Egypt, God’s people had rebelled against him. They sinned and their sin had to be dealt with. God told Moses to take his staff of judgment and strike a rock in the wilderness, and from it water would pour out. Growing up I had always thought this was a cool story, showed God’s power and goodness to Israel. But Clowney pointed to all the passages in the Bible that spoke Christ as THE Rock. Then he pointed to 1 Corinthians 10:1-4: For I do not want you to be unaware, brothers, that our fathers were all under the cloud, and all passed through the sea, and all were baptized into Moses in the cloud and in the sea, and all ate the same spiritual food, and all drank the same spiritual drink. For they drank from the spiritual Rock that followed them, and the Rock was Christ. When I read it, it was like the picture, the boxtop I had been searching for my entire life was suddenly put on display before my eyes. The Rock was Christ! Moses is about Jesus! The whole Bible is about Jesus! Colossians 1:17 says that Christ is “before all things, and in him all things hold together.” Ephesians 1:4, which we looked at last week, says that God planned to redeem us in Christ “before the foundation of the world.” Our redemption and reconciliation to God through Christ was always God’s plan. Everything in the OT points forward to the unveiling of that plan. Everything in the NT shows how that plan has come to fruition. We are in a series on the Sacraments, and we’ll be talking today about baptism. The big idea I want us to walk away with today is that baptism was always God’s plan. Colossians 2:8-12 link OT circumcision with NT baptism. My goal today is to dive into the deep biblical connection between these two things and show that baptism into Christ by faith was always God’s plan for his people. I won’t be able to give this as full a treatment as it deserves. We have made available both online and in printed form a short paper from a church in NYC, Redeemer, that explains this in more detail. Please, if you have questions or want to learn more, pick up a copy on the back table. And let’s be in conversation about this! 1. Baptism Fulfills Circumcision If we want to understand baptism, we have to understand circumcision. In our passage, St. Paul links these two things together, showing that Jesus is the boxtop picture to both! In him also you were circumcised with a circumcision made without hands, by putting off the body of the flesh, by the circumcision of Christ, having been buried with him in baptism, in which you were also raised with him through faith in the powerful working of God, who raised him from the dead. (Colossians 2:11-12) Circumcision is a piece of the Christ-centered puzzle. But we don’t still circumcise our baby boys as a sign of anything spiritual. Why? God said to Abraham, “Any uncircumcised male who is not circumcised in the flesh of his foreskin shall be cut off from his people; he has broken my covenant” (Genesis 17:14). So why don’t we circumcise our males as a sign that they belong to God’s people? We don’t circumcise because baptism fulfills circumcision. Baptism was always God’s plan, even when he gave circumcision. He knew that, in Christ, he would give us baptism to fulfill circumcision. 1) Circumcision: Sacrament of God’s Grace Circumcision was the OT sacrament, the sign and seal of participation in the life of God through God’s promise. In other words, circumcision was the way to enter into God’s covenant of grace with Abraham. We call it a covenant of grace because it depended, not on Abraham’s work, but on God’s promise. Abraham didn’t deserve God’s promise—God freely gave it. Listen to the one-sided nature of the covenant in Genesis 17:4-8: Behold, my covenant is with you, and you shall be the father of a multitude of nations. No longer shall your name be called Abram, but your name shall be Abraham, for I have made you the father of a multitude of nations. I will make you exceedingly fruitful, and I will make you into nations, and kings shall come from you. And I will establish my covenant between me and you and your offspring after you throughout their generations for an everlasting covenant, to be God to you and to your offspring after you. And I will give to you and to your offspring after you the land of your sojournings, all the land of Canaan, for an everlasting possession, and I will be their God.” Listen to the one-sided nature of the covenant: I will give, I will make, I will bless, I will be their God! It is ALL grace! Abraham needs merely to take hold of grace, to participate with God in it through God’s given means. The promise is sure—Abraham’s participation doesn’t add anything. It is a privileged taking hold of eternity, a receiving of the gift, a participation in God himself. 2) Believers Circumcision How will Abraham participate? God tells him in the following verses (9-13): As for you, you shall keep my covenant, you and your offspring after you throughout their generations. This is my covenant, which you shall keep, between me and you and your offspring after you: Every male among you shall be circumcised. You shall be circumcised in the flesh of your foreskins, and it shall be a sign of the covenant between me and you. He who is eight days old among you shall be circumcised. Every male throughout your generations, whether born in your house or bought with your money from any foreigner who is not of your offspring, both he who is born in your house and he who is bought with your money, shall surely be circumcised. So shall my covenant be in your flesh an everlasting covenant. Now, I want to point something out about that. God makes it clear that baby boys are to be circumcised on the 8th day. But what about the grown-ups? Abraham believed God and was counted righteous in Genesis 15:6. He already has faith. He is already a believer. But he hasn’t received the covenant sign yet. What should he do? Verses 26-27 tell us that Abraham and his son 13 year-old son, Ishmael, and every male in his household was circumcised. 99% of Israelite males in the OT received infant circumcision. But in the first generation of the covenant, Abraham received believers circumcision. No doubt this was excruciatingly painful. But he was so amazed by grace and so wanted to take hold of God’s covenant promises for him by faith, that he gladly went through believers circumcision. Now, I’ve never heard anyone say those two words together: “Believers circumcision.” But it is EXACTLY what Paul describes in Romans 4:9-11: Is this blessing then only for the circumcised, or also for the uncircumcised? For we say that faith was counted to Abraham as righteousness. How then was it counted to him? Was it before or after he had been circumcised? It was not after, but before he was circumcised. He received the sign of circumcision as a seal of the righteousness that he had by faith while he was still uncircumcised. In circumcision, part of you was literally cut off. There was blood. There was a kind of death. But in that death, if it was coupled with faith, there was also life. Every child born of male seed was, so to speak, marked by the promise, devoted to the Lord from birth. And that devotion to God, that participation in the blessings of His covenant promises, were then passed on to every male born into a believing household. 3) Baptism Fulfills Circumcision for Both Infants and Believers With the boxtop of Christ revealed in the NT, we know that baptism was always God’s plan. And it has a fuller significance than circumcision. Baptism fulfills circumcision—both for infants and for adult believers. Listen again to Colossians 2:11-12: In him also you were circumcised with a circumcision made without hands, by putting off the body of the flesh, by the circumcision of Christ, having been buried with him in baptism, in which you were also raised with him through faith in the powerful working of God, who raised him from the dead. (Colossians 2:11-12) Circumcision signified death; so does baptism. Circumcision was a participation in Christ; so is baptism. Circumcision was made effective by faith; so is baptism! Baptism was always God’s plan, and it fulfills circumcision for both infants and believers. Circumcision marked you as part of God’s covenant people. God didn’t make covenant promises to Boaz or Elijah or Solomon. But they participated in the promises God made to Abraham through the sign and seal of circumcision. They were made full participants in his family—Israel—through the physical sign applied to them on their 8th day of life. The same is true of baptism!!! Listen to Galatians 3:27-29:  For as many of you as were baptized into Christ have put on Christ. There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is no male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus. And if you are Christ’s, then you are Abraham’s offspring, heirs according to promise. When we are baptized—as an infant or as an adult—we are made participants in Abraham’s family, God’s covenant people, the church! You are adopted into Abraham’s household! You are one of his kids! The promised inheritance that God lavished on Abraham now belongs to you and me! Our adoption into his family, our entrance in his household is sealed in our baptism. Baptism is NOT primarily about my work, my choice, my agency or active identification with Christ. No! It is GOD’s initiative, GOD’s mercy, GOD’s promises, GOD’s choosing me, GOD’s infinite love, GOD’s sacrifice of his only Son, GOD’s miraculous, earth-changing, heaven-shaking, sinner-redeeming grace that defines baptism. It is GOD’s covenant into which we are invited to participate through baptism. And just as baby Isaac and baby Jacob and baby David and baby Jesus were all circumcised and made participants in God’s covenant of grace with Abraham, so we, when we baptize our children, invite God to pour out that same grace upon the little ones he has blessed us with. They haven’t grown to maturity yet. But they ARE part of the church. They ARE part of this family. Infant baptism is simply a recognition of that reality. Apart from faith, baptism cannot save. But baptism is like a downpayment on future faith, a present participation and communal hope that one day that baptism will be made effective in their lives when God fills their hearts with faith by his Spirit. 2. Sacramental Participation in Our Heavenly Citizenship A few months ago, I had the privilege to attend Vanessa Tam’s naturalization ceremony at the Paramount in Oakland. Hundreds of people there to hear speakers, listen to legal jargon, take an oath, and receive a certificate marking her as a citizen. Now everyone who went through that process has the right to vote, the obligation to serve in the military, and the privilege of passing on their citizenship to their children. Every child born in a citizen’s household IS a citizen. They won’t have the right to vote until they can make an informed decision—age 18(?). But they have the right to a passport and the protection that citizenship provides. In Philippians 3:20-21, Paul says this: But our citizenship is in heaven, and from it we await a Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ, who will transform our lowly body to be like his glorious body, by the power that enables him even to subject all things to himself. To become a citizen of the U.S., Vanessa had to go through the naturalization ceremony. To become a citizen of heaven, we receive the gift of baptism and are united to Christ by faith. It was always God’s plan to make us citizens of heaven, to welcome us into union with himself through the work of his Son. Baptism is our passport showing we are citizens of heaven. Baptism is sacramental participation in our heavenly citizenship. 1) Earthly Participation in Heavenly Citizenship When you become a U.S. citizen, you are told to leave your old citizenship behind. You were a citizen of Belgium or Bangladesh, but now you are a citizen here. This is where your real allegiance, your primary identity, should lie. How much more our heavenly citizenship! Baptism is earthly participation in heavenly citizenship! Have you been baptized? Then, according to Col. 2:12, you have “been buried with him in baptism, in which you were also raised with him through faith in the powerful working of God, who raised him from the dead.” Christ is seated in the heavenlies, and “you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God” (Col. 3:3). Paul says we wait “FROM” heaven. I’m not in heaven now, but in a real sense I AM because that is where my real life is—with Christ forever. 2) Present Participation in Eternal Life And that means I participate right here right now in his eternal life. Baptism is present participation in eternal life. Christ Jesus promised that in him we would have life and have it abundantly. Baptism is present sacramental participation in the eternal life that is mine in Christ! Romans 6:4 makes that clear: “We were buried therefore with him by baptism into death, in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life.” You only need to become a naturalized citizen once for it to “work.” In the same way, you only need to be baptized once to receive this “newness of life” in Christ. You might have been baptized last year, as a teenager, or as an infant. You might have believed when you were baptized, or thought you believed but didn’t really, or have been too young to understand. Paul says we were baptized so that we can walk NOW in newness of life. We presently participate in eternal life because we were baptized. It doesn’t need to be repeated to be effective. 3) Individual Participation in God’s Covenant People In our passage, Paul writes, See to it that no one takes you captive by philosophy and empty deceit, according to human tradition, according to the elemental spirits of the world, and not according to Christ. For in him the whole fullness of deity dwells bodily, and you have been filled in him, who is the head of all rule and authority. (Col. 2:8-10) We talked last week about rationalism, and how it undermines our sacramental participation in the life of God. I find it interesting that Paul puts these verses against rationalism—against dividing physical from spiritual—right next to his discussion of the relationship between circumcision and baptism. Rationalism puts me and my knowledge above spiritual mysteries I can’t fully grasp. It puts me and my rights above us and our communal identity. But baptism is individual participation in God’s covenant people. Abraham was circumcised, and then his whole household. In Acts, in precisely the same way, when the head of a household trusted in Christ, they were baptized with their whole household. God has always worked to redeem a people for himself. God doesn’t make promises to ME. He makes promises to US and invites me to participate in those promises through the waters of baptism! It was always God’s plan for baptism to be my way of participating individually in these communal realities. 4) Human Participation in the Triune Community Jesus told the disciples to baptize in the name of the “Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.” God Himself is Trinity, 3 persons, 1 God, plurality in perfect union, community in perfect harmony. And when we are baptized, we as humans participate in the Triune community. It was always God’s plan for us to be welcomed by God into the community of the Trinity. From the day he made us in his image, he planned to invite us into HIMSELF. He gave circumcision as a distant pointer to that future reality. It was always God’s plan for circumcision to be fulfilled in baptism, for our baptism to make us participants in his heavenly, eternal, covenant people who would be caught up into his own divine life. And now, when we look back at our baptism, we remember that God has stamped us. Marked us. Sealed us with his own promised blessing of participation in HIMSELF. Granted us the privilege as humans to partake in some small way of the Triune community. That was always God’s plan! And it was always God’s plan to give us access to these things in baptism. It’s his plan for all who believe. But the promise isn’t just for us. The promise is for us and for our children, “and for all who are far off, everyone whom the Lord our God calls to himself” (Acts 2:39).