Why should I be baptised?
We read today of Jesus’ baptism
Baptism as a ritual washing had been practised
by Jewish communities for many years before John the Baptist came on the scene.
But John takes it to a new dimension. He is
saying that if you are baptised, you are not just washing away the rubbish from
the past, but you are identifying yourself with God, his kingdom and his ways.
When he calls people to repent he is asking
us to do more than just be sorry or turn from the bad stuff. He is calling us
to change our whole way of thinking: so that God and the desire for his kingdom
becomes the key driver in our life. It is about choosing in our minds to move
God from the edge to the centre. It is about saying that whereas before I was
nominally a fan of God (he got a ‘like’ on my Facebook page), now I identify
myself with him (I become a page on his page)
And John urges people to do that through
water baptism.
So why was Jesus baptised?
1. Jesus was baptised as an act of
obedience.
When Jesus comes to John to be baptised, John
says to him, ‘You don’t need to be baptised. You already are completely
identified with God. If anybody needs baptising, it is me – and you should baptise
me’.
But Jesus says to him: ‘Let it be so for
now; it is proper for us to this to fulfil all righteousness’. (Matthew 3:15)
In other words, Jesus is saying, ‘I am
going to be baptised as an act of obedience.'
Jesus didn't need to be baptised. But he
chose to be baptised - because he knew it was what God wanted him to do. It was
the right thing to do.
And that decision, at the very beginning of
his ministry, set the pattern for his life. He lived a life of obedience.
And of course the supreme example is when
he went to the cross. He didn't need to die on the cross. He certainly didn't wish
to die on the cross. But he chose to die on the cross in obedience to his
Father.
2. Jesus was baptised as an act of
identification.
When Jesus is baptised, he is saying, 'I
choose to identify myself with all those who have chosen to be baptised’.
That is also the way of Jesus.
When he was born, he left heaven and became
a human being to identify himself with human beings.
When he went to the cross, he chose to
identify himself with us in our sin.
When he died, the giver of life chose to
identify himself with us in the very deepest pit.
The Orthodox icon of the baptism shows Jesus at the bottom of the
pit. I'm not going to explain this in detail here (I've done that before), and
I appreciate that if you are not familiar with icons this might look very
weird.
But it is an image which tells us the story
(there is John, Jesus in the river and even an axe by a broken tree - Matt
3:10). It also helps us understand what is going in the story. Jesus, the Son
of God, has come from heaven and, as an act of obedience and humility, has gone
into the pit. This grungy bit here is very similar to how hell is depicted in
the icon of the resurrection.
No wonder the angels are looking on in
stunned, and rather sorrowful, amazement.
3. Jesus was baptised as an act of
witness.
[This is why we remember the baptism the
week after we remember the wise men.
The star revealed Jesus to the wise men]
When Jesus is baptised, the voice from
heaven reveals to us who Jesus is.
‘The heavens were opened to him, and he saw
the Spirit of God descending like a dove and coming to rest on him; and behold,
a voice from heaven said, “This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well
pleased.” (v16)
This is the first time that we are
specifically introduced to the Father. He is the true Voice. And we are
introduced to the Holy Spirit and the unique Son of God.
We need to remember that the one who was baptised
is the eternal Son of God.
He is shown in the icon as the ideal
person. He is the one on whom the Spirit rests. And he is the one who makes the
two figures in the water (symbols of the sea and river Jordan) look like
nothing. He is greater than any who pretend to be a Neptune or Poseidon or, for
that matter, any other false God.
And He is the one who blesses the pit from
within the pit. His hands are in the shape of a blessing. Light comes from them
and him and penetrates through the water. He creates life (the little fishes
here) and because of him what seems like a tomb becomes a life-giving river
that flows out to whoever stands in front of this icon.
The reason that Jesus was obedient to his
Father; the reason that Jesus, the eternal Son of God, identifies himself with
us - is so that he might bless us. He became one of us so that we might become
like him.
So what about us?
What about those who have not been baptised,
or those of us who have been baptised (whether as a child or an adult, it does
not matter).
I would
like to focus on three reasons for being baptised
1.
We are baptised in obedience
to God: Jesus commands it.
Jesus was baptised as an act of obedience,
and he commands his disciples at the end of Matthew’s gospel to ‘Go and make
disciples of all nations, to baptise them in the name of the Father, Son and
Holy Spirit’.
Peter, in Acts 2, tells his listeners when
they ask what they must do to be saved: ‘repent and be baptised’.
2. We are baptised to identify ourselves
with Jesus
Jesus identifies himself with us in his
baptism
We identify ourselves with him in our
baptism
Paul says something like this in Romans
6:2-3
'Do you not know that all of us who have
been baptised into Christ Jesus were baptised into his death? We were buried
therefore with him by baptism into death, in order that, just as Christ was
raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness
of life.'
And what I find helpful in the icon is that
it is not really John baptising Jesus. Rather, it is as if John is placing his
hand on Jesus’ head and identifying himself with Jesus in his baptism.
And when you are baptised, you are
identified with Jesus when he was baptised. It is like wearing a T-shirt with
the words, ‘I am with Him’ emblazoned across your chest. ‘I am with the one who
is the eternal Son of God, who was one with his Father in heaven, but who in
obedience chose to strip himself of everything, to become a human being, to
suffer and die – even die on a cross – in order to bless human beings and this
creation’.
And you are saying, ‘I too am stripping
myself of all that I treasure or take pride in: my achievements, my success, my
goodness, my qualifications, my possessions, my knowledge, my securities, my
ambitions – in order that I may trust in Him for my all, go wherever he leads
and do whatever he calls me to do’.
When we are baptised we are identified
completely with Jesus Christ.
3. We are baptised as a witness to Jesus
When a person is baptised as an adult, they
publicly declare that Jesus Christ is the eternal Son of God, and they identify
themselves with Jesus.
At the baptism event they are asked:
Do you turn to Christ as your Saviour?
Do you submit to Christ as your Lord?
Do you come to Christ, the way, the truth and the
life?
Some of the most powerful moments, when heaven
is opened and God is revealed, is when people formally and publicly declare
themselves to be followers of Jesus, and identify themselves with Jesus. It
might happen at a baptism, or – if someone was baptised as an infant – at
confirmation.
The early Christians insisted on the need
for everyone who was a follower of Jesus Christ to have received water baptism,
and so identify themselves with Jesus. They made one exception, and that was for
martyrs – people who had become Christians but had had no time to be baptised,
because they were arrested and, because of their faith, were taken to the
arenas. They were treated as people who had been baptised - not with water, but
with their own blood. And the word martyr comes from the Greek and means simply
‘witness’.
I suspect that few, if any, of us here will
be called to physically give up our life for Jesus Christ.
But even if we are not, please remember
that when you were baptised you did exactly that. Paul, we saw earlier, says
that when we are baptised we die to ourselves, and come alive to him. He says
of himself, ‘It is no longer I who live but Christ who lives in me’. If I'm being dramatic and I want to make the
point, I sometimes say to people who have asked for a christening or baptism that
at our baptism, when the water is poured over us, or we go down into the water,
it is as if we are putting ourselves or our child into their coffin. We die,
they die. From now on they are dead to the world, but alive to God. And then we
or they come up as completely new people.
So the witness is not just the act of
baptism. When we live as someone who has been baptised, as someone who is learning
to daily die to ourselves and come alive to God, then your life and my life
declares that Jesus Christ is the Son of God.
And that really leads me to my final point
Baptism is both an event and a state.
It is like marriage. There is the event of
marriage and the state of marriage. You have the event of marriage, when you
make the vows, but for your marriage to have any meaning you need to live those
vows out with your partner as one who is in a marriage.
In the same way, there is the event of
baptism, when the vows are made, but if that baptism is to have any meaning or
power then it needs to be lived out. We need to live with Jesus as one who is baptised.
And that means living a lifestyle of obedience to Jesus, of identification with
Jesus and of witness to Jesus.
For some people the event of baptism can be immensely costly. Saiffee was a young
man from a Muslim background who became a Christian. When he was baptised, they
considered that he had betrayed the family, cut him off and even placed death
threats on him. But even for people who come from a nominal Christian background,
the decision to be baptised can have some painful consequences: people think
you have betrayed your family, want to better yourself or think that you are saying
that you are above them. And you can experience hostility.
And for all of us, there will be times when
living in the state of baptism will
be immensely costly
There will be times when God takes us down
deep into the water. Maybe he asks us to let go of all that we find comfortable
and secure and precious. Maybe when he calls us to do something that we would
far rather not do. And we have to make the decision whether we are going to be
obedient, identify ourselves with Jesus and witness to him.
But the baptism of Jesus also shows us that
it really is worth it:
It is worth it because of the blessing it
can bring other people.
It is worth it to hear, with Jesus, our Heavenly
Father say to the host of heaven, to open-mouthed angels, to all of creation, ‘This
is my child, whom I love. With him, with her, I am well pleased’.
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