What does Paul say about baptism?

Further "as many of us as were baptised to Christ Jesus were baptised to His death". To introduce the notion of regeneration into Baptism is as absurd as it is misleading and destructive. Every Scripture passage which speaks of Baptism shows death to be set forth, therein, not life. In the power of a new life received we renounce the old, and we take our place in Baptism as once and forever outside all that Christ is outside of. This separates us definitely from the whole world-system. Its aims, its pleasures, its politics, its honours and rewards, are henceforward for us reckoned amongst the "things which are behind" (Phil. 3:13). But are we really prepared for such a clean sweep as this? This is what our Baptism means, but do we mean it? It is easy to boast of a correct mode, while in heart refusing all that Baptism stands for. This lands us in unreality scarcely to be distinguished from that which the Lord condemned so unsparingly in the Pharisees of His time.

"For you, as many as were baptized unto Christ, clothed yourselves with Christ." The Apostle assumes that every one in the assemblies in Galatia had received baptism. Every believer in those days, whether Jew or Gentile, gladly accepted this very blessed sign of having part with Christ. Baptism cannot save us, or take our sins away. "Without shedding of blood is no remission (of sin)." Heb. 9:22. But baptism is the mark that a man is a Christian. When a man is baptized he takes upon him the name of Christ; he puts on Christ: he clothes himself with Christ. This is all outward, and it may be nothing more than profession without true change of heart, for baptism is like the door that lets us enter into that great circle of profession which we call "Christianity." Thank God, there are many in this great circle who are true; but, alas, there are very many who are false, who bear the name, but they have never been born again, born into the family of God: they are not truly sons. But these believers in Galatia were baptized "unto Christ." This is not at all a question of law. Christian baptism supposes man to be dead; and nobody asks a dead man to keep the law. The only death that can deliver man from his own death is the death of Christ. Therefore, when a man is baptized, he is not baptized unto his own death; he is baptized unto Christ's death. So when believers in Galatia were baptized, at that moment they "put on Christ," or "clothed themselves with Christ."

Every true believer is clothed with Christ. When God looks at me, He sees me in Christ, clothed with Christ. And when I have been baptized, and man looks at me, he says, That man has been baptized; he is a Christian; he bears the name of Christ; he has put on Christ: he has clothed himself with Christ. And this is true of every believer, Jew and Greek, slave and free, male and female. We all have put on Christ. When God looks at us, He sees Christ. So the Apostle exclaims: "There is neither Jew nor Greek; there is neither slave nor free; there is neither male and female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus." All is Christ and only Christ. It is not an old creation, but a new creation. In the old creation there were all these differences, but this is something entirely new. We are all one in Christ: and if you are Christ's, what need to be circumcised? You do not want to become the children of Abraham — Jews in that sense: the fleshly sense. The Apostle now closes this part of the argument saying, "But if you are of Christ, then you are Abraham's seed, heirs according to promise." Of Christ: you are part of Christ: you are members of Christ: not merely the property of Christ, but you are identified with Christ. See Gal. 5:24: "But the ones of Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh." These Galatian believers are already Abraham's seed, entirely apart from any question of circumcision or the law; and more than that they are "heirs according to promise." The Apostle has shown that Christ is the one true Seed; so if we are a part of that one true Seed, then we are Abraham's seed, Abraham's children, heirs according to promise, and all without law or circumcision.

Baptism is here brought in, being a sign of our having part thus with the dead and risen Christ. "For as many of you as have been baptized to Christ have put on Christ" (ver. 27). It is not implied that some had not been baptized. No such idea must be inferred from this passage. In early days, when love was fresh and warm, and the commands of the Lord were more exactly obeyed, those who were used of God in the gospel of His Son baptized forthwith those who believed, or saw to the matter, that it was done by other approved men. J.N.D.'s reading may be preferred in this place, "for ye, as many as have been baptized to Christ, etc." The apostle means the whole body of those to whom he was writing. He shews them by the well-known ordinance of baptism, that they had part with Christ, as a rebuke to their hankering after a bygone state of things — the bondage of law.

"For as many of you as have been baptized into Christ have put on Christ." The great point of the whole argument was, that the seed was risen, the seed Isaac, after he had been appointed to die, and actually under the knife, but now risen from the dead in figure, to show that this is the condition into which we Gentiles are admitted as having to do with Christ. Was Christ under the law when He rose from the dead? Nothing of the kind. So, says the apostle, it is with us Christians now. You have nothing to do with the Jewish schoolmaster. Faith has come in alike for us, and for you Gentiles; you have become sons of God without passing under the law at all. "For as many of you as have been baptized into Christ have put on Christ." Do you not know what your baptism meant? What does a man confess when he is baptized? That he belongs to a Saviour who died and rose again. "So many of us as were baptized unto Jesus Christ (says our apostle elsewhere) were baptized unto His death." And the death of Christ is that which for ever dissolves even a Jew's connection with the law. Up to death, the law had a righteous claim upon the Jew, but the moment he confessed Jesus dead and risen, even he at once passed out of it into a wholly new condition. With a Saviour who is risen from the dead as his life and Lord, his business is to walk as a man that is united to Him: the connection is broken with the old husband, and he belongs to another. Were he to attempt to have Christ and law together afterwards, it would be like a woman having two husbands; that is, spiritual adultery. The effect of it, too, is most palpable. Who has not seen a Christian one day joyous, the next day very much cast down in spirit, not sure whether he have eternal life or not; trembling at the thought of the Lord's coming; and yet that same man admiring, loving, adoring Christ? How comes this? He knows not death to the law. No wonder, then, he is in a miserable plight. The law presses him to death, and Christ is only known enough to keep his head above water, but with constant tendency to fall under it. How good for his soul to learn that God has broken all such ties by the death of Christ! My very baptism is the confession that, even had I been a Jew, I am dead to the law — "being dead to that wherein we were held." "Wherefore ye are become dead to the law by the body of Christ; that ye should be married to another, even to him who is raised from the dead." Of course, if dead to the law, it would be a most unhappy state not to be married to another. How great would be the danger of thinking oneself at liberty to do what one liked! But if belonging to Christ, then come the new feelings of one who is thus near to Him. Now, I belong to Him, and I am to do what He likes; our husband gives us liberty to do His will, not to do our own — "to bring forth fruit unto God." This is what baptism sets forth in a Christian; it is the confession of the death and resurrection of Christ. The believer should know, then, that he has done with the law, and is called to live unto God. "As many of you as have been baptized into Christ have put on Christ" — not the law, but Christ.

Christian Profession. — But not only is it Christian teaching that we have died to sin, our Christian profession acknowledges it likewise. So the apostle proceeds: "Or know ye not that so many of us as were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into His death. Therefore we are buried with Him by baptism into death; that like as Christ was raised up from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in newness of life" (3, 4). Here Christian baptism with water is introduced, and the teaching about it set forth. We may learn then of what such baptism speaks, and how to apply the teaching of it. For whether it be Peter (1 Peter 3:21), or Paul who refers to it (Rom. 6:3-4; Col. 2:12), it is in each case introduced in connection with Christian position in this world, and as bearing on Christian walk, and is an expression, as St. Paul teaches us, of burial to death. Not of life, nor of death does baptism speak. Burial, and that to death, and burial with Christ is the real meaning of the rite to which St. Paul submitted, but of which St. Peter had no need. To what had the converts in Rome submitted? Was it not to Christian baptism? Of what did that speak? Of burial with Christ to death. By that rite, then, they were put professedly into the company of Christ, who has actually died, through being thereby buried with Him. They had died with Christ through being in Him. They were buried with Him by baptism to death. How then go on in sin to which not only He had died, but to which they, as in Him, had died, and had professed to have been buried with Him to death? Christian condition, and Christian profession alike forbid such a course.

In Romans 6 the way of righteousness is set before us, and in Romans 8, the way of life, but both are very closely bound together. When we were sinners Christ died for us, and was raised again as our justification, and in Him risen from the dead we found righteousness before we had done one act of righteousness ourselves. But the mind of God for us was that we should be set free from the service of sin. Now sin reigns over every man who is alive in the world, that is to say, who lives in the natural life of flesh. There is no way of getting free from the bondage of sin except by death. Now there are two things in the sixth chapter I want my reader to consider. Our old man is said to have been crucified with Him, that the body of sin might be destroyed, that henceforth, we should not serve sin; and we are buried with Him by baptism unto death. This gives us the position we are to take up with regard to sin. The death of Christ has been the end of all that we were as in Adam in the judgment of God, and we have been placed upon the ground of death in baptism. I am entitled to take this ground, because our old man has been crucified with Him, and because I have been buried with Him in baptism, and I am enabled to take it, because I am empowered by the Spirit. Christ is the example, “In that He died, He died to sin once, and in that He liveth, He liveth unto God.” And now I am to reckon myself dead to sin and alive to God in Him. I am discharged from sin by death as a slave is discharged from his master’s service when he dies. I was slave to sin, but I take up the ground of dead to it and am discharged from its service. It is the ground God gives me, because baptism was not my act. No one but God could give me title to take up such a position as dead to sin. I never ought to serve it, but dead to it is another matter. He that is dead is freed from sin. I am to reckon myself as to sin—dead as to God—alive in Christ.

Only mark, it is not the future death of our bodies, should we die, but this — “How shall we that are dead to sin live any longer therein?” What does this mean, “we that are dead to sin”? Do you say, “It may mean those who have attained to perfection?” Is there such a thought? Nay, in order to show how assuredly this applies to all Christians, the apostle says, “Know ye not, that so many of us as were baptised into Jesus Christ, were baptised into his death? Therefore we are buried with him by baptism into death; that like as Christ was raised up from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in newness of life.” (Ver. 3.) So that he is careful to show that this principle of deliverance from sin by death applies to all who have been truly baptised to the death of Christ. Nothing could be more plain, and yet nothing is less known. It ought surely to be well understood, for the apostle says, “Know ye not?”

Mark well, then, the deliverance from sin is not the improvement of self, or an evil nature — the flesh, but “we are buried with him by baptism into death.” We are not baptised to the work of the Spirit in us, but to His death, who died for us, and rose again. The death, then, that delivers from sin is not a death to sin we attain to, but the death of Christ on the cross, and our identification with it — “buried with him.” And you will notice, there is no thought of baptism communicating life. Baptism is to death, and life in the risen Christ is beyond it. For Christ not only died, was actually dead, but He is “raised from the dead by the glory of the Father.” How glorious the new creation! Christ, the beginning of that new creation, raised from the dead by the glory of the Father. “Even so we should walk in newness of life.” Not only old things are passed away, and all become new, but we are in that new creation by the glory of the Father. “For if we have been planted together in the likeness of his death, we shall be also in the likeness of his resurrection.” The resurrection side of this subject is brought out more fully in Colossians 2, only here let us note, that baptism to His death is the chief point to show what all Christians should know — the truth of deliverance by death.

But now we have to meet the perverse reasoning of the human mind in Romans 6:1: "If our sin does but magnify the grace of God, we will go on sinning that grace may abound." Such is the flesh; but it is much more sad when professing Christians speak thus. How often, when the blessed truth of the believer's security in Christ is spoken of, we hear such expressions, "Dangerous doctrine; if you know you are saved, you can go and sin, and do just as you like!" But how does the Spirit of God meet such objections? In a way that at once completely refutes the wretched reasonings of the flesh, and at the same time, brings out a most blessed truth which many believers even have never laid hold of. "Shall we continue in sin, that grace may abound? God forbid. How shall we, that are dead to sin, live any longer therein?" (v. 2.) It is a contradiction of terms. How can you live in a thing to which you have died? The very profession of their faith as Christians denied such a doctrine: "Know ye not, that so many of us as were baptized into Jesus Christ were baptized into His death?" It is to a Christ that had died to sin (v. 10) that they were baptized, and we are buried with Him by baptism unto death. John baptized to a living Messiah on earth; Christian baptism is to a Christ that has died and risen again. For this reason the disciples of John in Acts 19 had to be baptized again in the name of the Lord Jesus - the one who had died and was risen, and that God had made Lord and Christ. It is not "we that ought to be dead to sin," but "we that are dead to sin." If you were to ask the majority of Christians the question, "Are you dead to sin?" what would be the answer? "Oh, no, I am sure I am not dead to sin! I find it in me every day, and it is a great trouble to me." But this verse states the fact: "We that are dead to sin."* Scripture always looks at a Christian as having died to sin, and this is how we are delivered from the sinful nature - from ourselves and the apostle goes on to speak of it in this chapter. In Romans 4 we see how we are delivered from sins; in this chapter how we are delivered from the old nature - sin: F. K.

The one baptism is necessarily Christian baptism and is our committal to all that is involved in the truth of Christ Jesus (Romans 6:3). It announces our identification. with the death of our Lord Jesus Christ in all its bearings and implies our obligation to walk in newness of life. The water under which we are passed is an emblem of death and an understanding of our identification with Christ dead and risen again, teaches us that we are no more at liberty to be under sin's dominion, no more available for sin's control. He — Christ — lives unto God; every pulsation, every movement of His risen manhood is Godward; for the accomplishment of God's will and pleasure.