WE come to our third reading in Chapter 45 – Romans Six Reckoning and an important point to ponder. Our author will reference baptism as it relates to our Union with Christ, and here I should comment that – in my opinion- it matters little on our view as to the mode of baptism that we may hold; the principle is the same, pointing to our new identity to Christ by faith at the point of the Cross.
ALSO, in the point our author is making here, he alludes to the fact that this holds less than its full meaning to the believer until he has apprehended the identification truths. One of the overlooked usage or definitions of the Greek word from which baptism is translated relates to the dying of a garment in the ancient world to change its color or appearance, thus its “identity.” So yes, baptism’s primary definitions include washing, cleaning, immersion; but it does have varied application and usage, and implications. A thoughtful reading of 1Cor 10:1-2ff causes one to pause in seeing how the term baptism is used in a way that one would not normally understand the word and its strict usage.
HOPEFULLY this is helpful. Whereas
“All things in Scripture are not alike plain in themselves, nor alike clear unto all: yet those things which are necessary to be known, believed, and observed for salvation, are so clearly propounded, and opened in some place of Scripture or other, that not only the learned, but the unlearned, in a due use of the ordinary means, may attain unto a sufficient understanding of them” (WCF I.VII).
SO it is with many basic teachings like baptism. There is a “clearly propounded” side, yet not so clearly understood nuanced side for the hungry heart to grow thereby in the pursuit of deeper understanding (Deut. 29:29).
WITH that said, we’ll take our next reading from this chapter, picking up where we left off in the previous reading.
In the inexorable riches of Christ,
Joe
Neh. 8:10, Isa 30:15, Jas 1:2; Prov. 21:30
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Chapter 45—Romans Six Reckoning – Part 3
Look carefully at Colossians 3:3 (KJV): “For ye are dead, and your life is hid with Christ in God.” However, we are not dead, but alive. Neither is self dead, but judicially crucified. We have forever passed beyond death. The American Standard Version brings out the past tense: “For ye died, and your life is hid with Christ in God.” All the difference in the world! Once we see that our death unto sin is in the past tense, completed, we are free to count ourselves alive unto God in Christ Jesus, and to live—in the present tense!
The principle of life out of death is pictured both in our public baptism and in the Lord’s Supper. Actually, our water baptism is to be a testimony of our reckoning. We count ourselves to have been baptized into (placed in union with) the Lord Jesus by the Spirit, and therefore we died unto sin with Him, were buried with Him, and arose in Him (Rom. 6:3, 4). The testimony of this reckoning is carried out in pictorial form by our being baptized in (placed in) water, which covers us in burial, from which we arise to “walk in newness of life.” We are confessing that we died and were buried, as far as the old source of life is concerned, and now are risen as new creations to walk in the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus. Water baptism, therefore, holds less than its full meaning to the believer until he has apprehended the identification truths.
