Musings: Notes From My Daybook

Some of my colleagues are working on some material to foster spiritual growth.  Of course, just writing some paragraphs isn't necessarily going to form Christian people.  However, writing paragraphs does force one to think deeply about what you really  believe and how you might persuade others to give a hearing to your beliefs.  And one of the things that is emerging out of the conversations is that discipleship is a process.

It doesn't happen overnight, or in the twinkling of an eye.

This probably isn't a new or radical thought for most folk.  But a related theme might be.  If following Jesus isn't a one time event, then salvation may not be either.

What do I mean?  What I mean is that rather than think that salvation is a momentary event that comes upon us during a special prayer or when you were baptised misses the rich diversity and texture of the word salvation.  Deliverance, or salvation, is not a one time event; it is the process of God who "delivers" us from the kingdom of darkness into the kingdom of light.  And frankly, the path between the two is not negotiated in minutes--but in lifetimes.

That is where the questions about baptism begin to emerge.  Often baptism is seen as a symbolic relic of the past--beautiful and and touching--but irrelevant  to Christian practice.  Or, on the other hand, baptism is  an almost magical event that places you into a safe place so you don't have to worry about hell--fire insurance, someone once called it.

But is being formed into the image of Christ is a lifetime of Spirit-powered work in the life of the believer, then both views fall short.  There is more to faith than jumping through the baptism hoop and there is more the work of the Spirit than to blow baptism off.

Both viewpoints suffer from the same lack of theological vision.  Baptism is only getting wet, a washing of the body, unless we understand its connection to the person and message of Jesus.  This connection is a vital one as nearly every New Testament text on baptism makes clear.   “Baptism now saves you. . . . .through the resurrection of Jesus Christ” (1 Peter 3.21).  The powerful and gracious action of God is brought into particular relationship to a person through baptismal waters.

Thus baptism is more than symbolic, though it is symbol.  Yet baptism is not magical, though mystery is attached to baptism.    Baptism is the sign of God’s action in the life a believing person that ushers one into Jesus Christ.

As G.R. Beasley-Murray, a noted New Testment scholar, states:  "As truly as Christ was the object of the working of God's almight power in the resurrection, so is the believer the object of that same working of God in baptism.  The sacrament is the occasion of God's personal dealing with a man in such  fashion that he henceforth lives a new existence in the power and in the fellowship of God.  The death and resurrection of Christ are not alone the acts of God for man's redemption, they are the pattern of the acts of God in man's experience of redeeming grace."

 More later.