What
does such baptizing with water indicate?
3/13/28
Baptize
in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Following our
Lord’s mandate, the Church baptizes with water and the word. However, the manner in which baptism has been
performed has varied over the centuries.
We
have no specific evidence about how baptism was performed at the time of the
New Testament. Paul’s language in Romans
6 about being buried with Christ and then walking in new life as Christ was
raised from the dead may suggest that some churches used immersion. There may, in fact, have been a variety of
practices.
When
we begin to find archaeological evidence at the end of the third, and during
the fourth and fifth centuries we find that the fonts are located in the
ground. The individual entered water
that was up to about the waist. However,
the shape and depth of these fonts would not permit someone to be immersed.
Instead, the person stood in the water, as water was then poured over the head.
As
Christianity established itself and the population became Christian you no
longer had the great influx of adult converts.
Instead, Christian families were now having babies and bringing them to
baptism. During the medieval period and
up through the sixteenth century, fonts become very deep bowl shapes. Baptism was performed by immersion. The pastor held the infant by the feet and
plunged it into the water and brought it back up three times.
At
the end of the sixteenth century and during the seventeenth century the
practice shifted to pouring water on the infant’s head. This did not require the same depth of water,
and so over time baptismal fonts became much more shallow. This, of course, the practice that we use
today.
This
background is important for understanding the fourth question in the Small
Catechism: “What does such baptizing with water indicate?” When Martin Luther writes “such baptizing” he
is referring to the way that baptism was done in his time. He is talking
about the practice of plunging the child under the water and bringing it back
up again. This manner of baptizing is
being used to illustrate what baptism means for our life each day.
The
Small Catechism says that such baptizing with water “indicates that the Old
Adam in us should by daily contrition and repentance be drowned and die with
all sins and evil desires, and that a new man should daily emerge to live
before God in righteousness and purity forever.” There are two movements here. First there is
act of returning to our baptism as we confess our sin and repent. Second, there is the new life that emerges
and is made possible by baptism.
In
explaining this, the Small Catechism points us to Romans 6:4 where Paul says,
“We were therefore buried with Him through baptism into death in order that,
just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, we too
may live a new life.” Paul describes how
in baptism we share in the death of Jesus - we are buried with him into death.
During
Lent we prepare to follow our Lord to the cross of Good Friday. There we will see him offer himself as the
sacrifice that won forgiveness for us.
His dead body was taken down and buried in a tomb. Paul says that through baptism we have
received the saving benefits of Christ’s death for us.
But Lent and Holy Week lead us to
Easter. On the third day the tomb was
empty. God raised Jesus from the dead and
he appeared to his disciples. The
apostle tells us that we have been baptized into the death of the risen Lord. And this means that the power of Christ’s
resurrection is now at work in us because the Spirit who raised Jesus from the
dead is in us.
The Christian life is the ongoing
struggle with the old Adam. Paul told
the Galatians, “For the desires
of the flesh are against the Spirit, and the desires of the Spirit are against
the flesh, for these are opposed to each other, to keep you from doing the
things you want to do.” We continue to
see the various ways that sin is present in what we do, say, and think.
And so
we need to return to our baptism each day in faith. We return to this source of
Christ’s forgiveness. We drown the old Adam as we confess our sin, repent, and
seek to turn away from it. The Large
Catechism says, “Repentance, therefore, is nothing else than a return and
approach to baptism, to resume and practice what has earlier been begun but
abandoned.”
When we
return to baptism, we are returning to the washing of rebirth and renewal by
the Holy Spirit. We are returning to the
foundation of the ongoing work of the Spirit in our life. We are “plugging back in” as it were to the
Spirit’s power. The Large Catechism
says, “In baptism we are given the grace, Spirit, and strength to suppress the
old man so that the new man come forth and grow. Therefore baptism remains forever. Even
though someone falls from it and sins, we always have access to it so that we
may again subdue the old man.”
A daily
killing of the old man, and raising of the new man. That is how the Christian life makes use of
baptism. That is the point the Small Catechism makes when it talks about what
such baptizing with water indicates. The Large Catechism says, “This act or
ceremony consists of being dipped into the water which covers us completely,
and being drawn out again. These two
parts, being dipped under the water and emerging from it, point to the power
and effect of baptism which is nothing else than the slaying of the old Adam
and the resurrection of the new man, both of which must continue in us our
whole life long. Thus a Christian life is nothing else than a daily baptism,
begun once and continuing ever after.
For we must keep at it without ceasing, always purging whatever pertains
to the old Adam, so that whatever belongs to the new man may come forth.”
This is the action that Paul described to the
Ephesians when he said they had been taught “to put off your old man, which
belongs to your former manner of life and is corrupt through deceitful
desires, and to be renewed in the spirit of your minds, and to put
on the new man, created after the likeness of God in true
righteousness and holiness.” Baptism is
the focal point of this process because in repentance we return to the
forgiveness we find there, and we draw from it the Spirit’s continuing work in
our life.
This means that baptism needs to be part of every
day. The Large Catechism says,
“Therefore let all Christians regard their baptism as the daily garment that
they are to wear all the time. Every day
they should be found in faith and with its fruits, suppressing the old man and
growing up in the new. If we want to be
Christians, we must practice the work that makes us Christians, and let those
who fall away return to it.”
Baptism is water and the word. It works forgiveness of sin, rescues from
death and the devil, and gives eternal salvation. It gives these benefits to those who receive
them in faith. And we use it in faith
each day. We put to death the old Adam
as we confess our sin and repent. We return to the forgiveness given us in
baptism. And we emerge to live as the new man which the Spirit has created in
us through water and the word.
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