Romans 6:3

UNION WITH CHRIST

‘Baptized into Jesus Christ.’

Romans 6:3

Try and think what baptism is, how it is a real part of living theology. I do want you to have firmly fixed in your mind the main idea about Holy Baptism. What is it?

I. It is union with Christ.—In that great sacrament of baptism we are put in a different state from that in which we were before; we are brought into actual contact with our Lord Himself. Thus, you may see, the Church is perfectly right when she says this sacrament is generally necessary to salvation. She cannot go behind our Lord’s own words, and therefore we may well think there is something wrong in any teaching or preaching where baptism does not have a foremost place, because it is a sacrament which brings us into union with Christ Himself. That is contrary to very much of what we call the modern gospel. Conversion, of course, is necessary, but it must not be confounded with the change of state at baptism. Remember this, that all the promises of the Gospel are made to those who already are, as the expression goes, in Christ. Union, of course, is inoperative without faith. It is perfectly true that we may be brought into union with Him, and yet it may be inoperative; but it does not depend upon faith, it is there whether we believe it or not. It is perfectly true, of course, that repentance and faith may be given in the case of adults before Holy Baptism. There may be true conversion of the heart before it. We mean, then, when we say ‘members of Christ,’ Christ living in us because we have been brought into union with Him in Holy Baptism. There can be no true life unless we abide in Him; remain in that union to which we have been brought in Holy Baptism.

II. What follows?—Let us notice what follows on this: the remission of sins. This must be so if we are brought into union with Christ; and so, as we have asserted in our creed, we ‘acknowledge one baptism for the remission of sins.’ And the symbolism of the water reminds us that there is a cleansing connected with Holy Baptism. When our Blessed Lord used the word water, His hearers would understand what He meant. They had learned by John the Baptist’s baptism that there was a cleansing use connected with it. Flesh may attain to great degrees of holiness, as it did in the case of John the Baptist, but remember what our Lord said of him: ‘The least in the Kingdom of Heaven is greater than he,’ that is, on a higher scale of being even than was John the Baptist.

III. Practical application.—To be practical—

(a) Let us think more of the great sacrament of baptism. Is sufficient reverence and honour paid to that sacrament? Is there not a tendency, not only in our branch of the Church but elsewhere, to have this sacrament of Holy Baptism administered in too much of a hole-and-corner way? Our Prayer Book is quite clear; it is to be public baptism. Every one of us ought from time to time to take an opportunity of being present at the sacrament of Holy Baptism. It is not a matter of indifference.

(b) It ought to be oftener that we remember our vows. Let our minds go back, although we cannot recollect it ourselves, to the fact that we have been baptized, that certain promises were made in our name, and that, at the moment of our baptism, we were innocent. Let us struggle as far as we can to keep that innocence, and, if we have lost it, to regain it by repentance, by keeping our conscience tender, and being on our guard against all those little sins which come in and defile the soul; and then, not only that, but let us stir up that gift which is in us through the waters of Holy Baptism, remembering that we are not our own.

Christ has claimed us as His own, having bought us with a price, and therefore we are to glorify Him in our bodies and in our spirits which are His.

—Archdeacon J. R. Vincent.

Illustration

‘Baptism is one of the foundation truths of the doctrines of Christ, which every Christian ought to know about, yet, for all that, you are perfectly well aware that there is a great deal of indefiniteness about this sacrament, and there is so much in the popular teaching of the day which goes clean contrary to the teaching of the Church on this subject—nay, to the teaching of Holy Scripture itself—that we have to be careful. Holy Baptism, to the ordinary man, is just a kind of form which babies have to go through, to be got over in as quick and easy a way as possible. The father may stay at home; the mother, who cannot help herself, will just come and bring the child to the font at the most convenient time to her, and then it is all done with; and I suppose to a great many of us baptism is something which is past and gone. It has really no practical bearing upon our lives to-day. That ought not so to be.’