Joe Heschmeyer examines the Biblical evidence for Baptism’s salvific power.

Transcription:

Joe:

Welcome back to Shameless Popery. I’m Joe Heschmeyer, and I want to try to convince you today of something, namely that baptism does something maybe more than you realize it does, and that this is very clear from scripture and it’s clear from the Old Testament. It’s clear from the New Testament, and as we’re going to see at the very end, it’s also clear from the universal witness of the earliest Christians. In answering this, I want to respond to a question I was asked recently over on Patreon. A guy actually wrote on behalf of his wife who asked the following, if baptism is a part of salvation, please explain the specific role that baptism plays in salvation. I believe that because my faith has saved me, I submit to baptism. This, by the way, is a very common view that we get baptized because we are saved.

Baptism doesn’t save us in any way, but then she explains to save that baptism saves me is saying I play a part in my own salvation. I believe Jesus did it wholly. He said it is finished. He said, if there’d be any other way, let this cup pass from me. So again, I think this is a pretty standard view and I think it makes a lot of sense. If you say, look, salvation is by faith alone, not by any works, and you say baptism looks like a work, then it doesn’t seem like baptism can have any role to play in the salvation process. But I want to throw two flags on the play. I want to just sound too warning signs or alarms, right? The first one is the word baptism and the noun form of baptism or in the verb form to baptize appears something like 98 times in the New Testament.

I may have missed some, I’m going off of concordances there. So it’s mentioned a lot and yet when people argue that baptism doesn’t do anything, almost invariably they point to texts that don’t mention baptism at all. Christ in the garden saying This cup can pass from me or Christ on the cross saying it is finished. And so if you’ve got something like 98 different verses explicitly about baptism and you want to understand baptism and you’re going to the verses that don’t mention baptism, that’s weird, right? I’m not saying that automatically disproves the theology, but that should be throwing off some warning signs like something’s going on here. Because if I want to understand a doctrine and scripture has dozens of references to that doctrine and I ignore those references and instead look to a different place on a different doctrine, that’s a very strange way to find out what scripture teaches about the doctrine ex say I’m trying to find out about right?

So it just shows something weird is going on in the objections to baptism because they’re not based on what scripture actually says about baptism, and there’s a reason as we’re going to see scripture is super clear that baptism actually does something. The second warning sign though is that the theology that says baptism can’t do anything, so right, it isn’t that people are saying baptism doesn’t do anything because here’s this Bible verse that says baptism doesn’t do anything. That Bible verse doesn’t exist. In fact, there are a bunch of Bible verses as we’re going to see that seemed to say the exact opposite of that, that baptism really does do something instead, the people who object to that will say, well, those verses, no matter how clear they seem to be, couldn’t be saying that because baptism can’t do anything. Baptism isn’t allowed to do anything for your salvation.

Why? Because according to this view, baptism is a work that we are actively doing for God. So that can’t have anything to do with it. On the other hand, faith is allowed. You could say faith saves you because in this view, by contrast, faith is something merely passive. So I’m going to call this kind of vision of theology, the theological blinders. What I mean by that is not that people are just presupposing, that simply plenty of people have carefully reasoned their way to those beliefs. My point is those are not beliefs about baptism. And if you want to understand what scripture actually says about baptism, you can’t be starting from your non baptismal theology and trying to fit the biblical teaching on baptism into your particular theology. If it turns out your theology is wrong, which is why it doesn’t have room for the Christian teaching on baptism.

So with that, let’s remove the theological blinders. I want to start with this line. This unnamed woman mentioned that to say that baptism saves me is saying that I play a part in my own salvation. I believe Jesus did it. Holy, he said it is finished. Let’s unpack that before we get into the what does baptism do because again, I can throw out a bunch of verses saying, here’s all this stuff that says baptism saves you, it does this, that and the other thing. And if these theological blinders are in place, you’ll say, well, that actually just means baptism is a sign of the fact you’re already saved or some other sort of reinterpretation. So let’s try to take the blinders off as much as we can. When Jesus says it is finished, what does he mean? For many evangelicals, it’s kind of taken for granted that what he’s saying is the work of salvation is done.

This is a legal debt that’s paid, and this act of our justification is complete. So all we have left to do is receive it by faith. Now, there’s two things you should know. Number one, that is not what the passage means, and we have pretty clear indications. That’s not what this means because in Romans four, St. Paul mentions that Christ was put to death for our trespasses and raised for our justification. So if your view of it is finished means that the justifying work of Christ on the cross is finished, then how do you make sense of the fact that there’s still something related to justification happening with Christ rising from the dead on Easter morning? That doesn’t sound finished, but the answer I think at a deeper level is the second thing I’d say, which is this ignores the context of what’s actually said.

When Jesus is on the cross, he doesn’t sign a contract saying it is finished. Look at the actual text in John chapter 19, Jesus knowing that all was now fulfilled. So notice something has now been fulfilled, said to fulfill the scripture, I thirst. Okay? So if you want to understand what’s happening in John 19 verses 28 to 30, the fact that Jesus has said I thirst is going to be really important, John has just flagged that He says this is to fulfill the scripture. And so they give Jesus a bowl full of vinegar that they then put on his sip, his is what they used during the Passover and sprinkling the blood on the door and then they hold it to his mouth and then we’re told when Jesus had received the vinegar, he said it is finished. So notice there the context is him drinking a cup with a lot of, excuse me, Passover sort of imagery.

So if you want a much deeper dive on this, I would suggest the fourth cup Scott Hahn has, which very simply, without going into any of the details of this at all in the Passover there were four cups. When you see the institution of the Eucharist, this is the cup of blessing. St. Paul calls it that in one Corinthians that’s the third of the four cups, which means there was still one more cup for the Passover liturgy. So it is finished is not a reference to a legal debt being paid The way a lawyer like John Calvin reads it, it is finished, is a reference to this Jewish liturgical action of the Passover, which is how the New Testament presents it. And so if you are taking it is finished as therefore baptism can’t do anything. You’ve taken one line out of its proper biblical context and read it in this wildly inaccurate sort of way. And I don’t say this by any means to insult the wife of someone paying me money on Patreon. I mean this to suggest that so many of us can fall into this trap and that this is a recurring theme that we find when people argue against baptism. So I’ll give you an example from God questions ministries because they’re not giving me money because I think they’re pretty representative of the kind of arguments that we see that baptism cannot do anything for salvation,

CLIP:

Requiring anything in addition to faith in Jesus Christ for salvation is a works-based salvation. To have anything to the gospel is to say that Jesus’ death on the cross was not sufficient to purchase our salvation. To say that baptism is necessary for salvation is to say we must add our good works and obedience to Christ’s death in order to make it sufficient for salvation. Jesus’s death alone paid for our sin, Jesus’s payment for our sins is appropriate to our accountant by faith alone. See Ephesians chapter two verses eight through nine.

Joe:

So remember the two warnings that I suggested earlier? First, you’ll notice that in making these arguments about what baptism cannot do, he looks to two passages, Romans five, eight and Ephesians two, eight to nine, neither of which even mentions baptism. But then the second warning sign that this is based on the idea and this I think becomes very clear in that video, this idea that this is a work. So if you believe baptism saves you, that is a workspace salvation because it’s assumed baptism is a work in the biblical sense, and by contrast, faith isn’t a work, it’s merely something passive. I want to suggest that is very clearly wrong from a biblical perspective. Let’s unpack both halves of that. First is baptism a work? The people who are opposed to baptism seem universally convinced that it is, it’s us doing something for God. That’s not at all how scripture speaks about it though.

For instance, in Galatians two, St. Paul says, we ourselves who are Jews by birth and not Gentile sinners yet who know that a man is not justified by works of the law but through faith in Jesus Christ. So let’s stop right there and say, what is a work? Well, according to St. Paul when he’s talking about works, he’s talking about works of the law, and you might say what law in Galatians three, he clarifies, he means the law of Moses. He describes it coming 430 years after the time of Abraham. This is why he’s talking about this in the context of Jews and Gentiles. His argument is not Gentiles are incapable of doing nice things. His argument is that the Gentiles didn’t know the mosaic law and the question that the early Christians were facing, and we see this explicitly in places like Acts 15, is what role does the Mosaic law have for Christians, for Jewish Christians, for Gentile Christians?

Paul answers that repeatedly throughout Romans, Galatians, Ephesians and so on. And so is baptism a work? Well, it’s certainly not a work of the mosaic law. There’s nothing in the mosaic law that says you need to get baptized. That’s just not there. So if you understand works in the way St. Paul does, no, it’s clearly not a work. But some people will argue, well, baptism is a good work and that’s also condemned somewhere in terms of being important for salvation. It’s not clear to me that passage actually exists, but occasionally people will find these references. Paul has to works where he doesn’t specify works of the law and say he must actually mean good works. I still think that’s taking him out of context. I still think he means works of the law, but fine, we’ll assume that. Is baptism even a good work? Well, it’s not clear that it is in any way.

It isn’t like in getting baptized you’ve helped an old lady cross the street or fed the hungry or taking care of the poor. Any of the things Jesus talks about as being selfishly important when he’s talking about the separation of the sheep and the goats, instead, the role of salvation with baptism is pretty different. In the biblical depiction in one Peter chapter three, St. Peter says, baptism saves you, but he clarifies that it saves you not as a removal of dirt from the body, but as an appeal to God for a clear conscience. If your argument is appealing to God for a clear conscience is a work that isn’t allowed in salvation, then you seemingly have to say faith isn’t allowed as playing a role in salvation. If I can’t appeal to God, if I can’t cry for help, that’s too active, that’s too much of a work, well then there’s no room for faith either.

And so understood in the biblical light, baptism is not a work of the law and it’s not even a good work. It is a cry for help. That’s one Peter three’s description of how salvation works with baptism. Now we’ll get into more of that passage later on, but right now I just want to flag that this idea that baptism is a work is flatly unbiblical. It is not coming from the Bible. What about the flip side, the idea that faith can have the role to play in salvation because it’s merely passive that it’s not a work? Well, here again, this is kind of being imposed on scripture, not drawn out of scripture because the Bible speaks in a very different way. For instance, James chapter two, after talking about how Abraham, our father was justified by works when he offered his son Isaac upon the altar, James writes, you see that faith was active along with his works and faith was completed by works.

So the biblical concept of faith is not just a passive reception, it’s something active that you are acting upon what you believe. So if faith which is active is able to play a role in salvation, you can’t also say activities. What we would normally call works are not allowed. If on the other hand you say, well no, I don’t mean the kind of faith that James means and active faith, I just mean belief. I don’t know why you would say that, but if you did, James has a rebuttal. He says, you believe that God is one you do well, even the demons belief and shudder. So if by faith you just mean belief, well then the devil would be in heaven. If that’s all it took to be saved, that would be enough, right? Because the devil has a better knowledge than you do that Jesus is Lord.

He’s gotten to know him up close and personal in a way that we have not yet. And as a result we can say faith in the biblical sense of a saving faith is more than simply belief. Now some people will say, oh, that’s just James St. Paul says something else. And I would say, no, I don’t think so. And I would point here to St. Paul’s epistle to the Romans. He opens the epistle to the Romans with a very long sentence that goes from Romans one verse one to Romans one verse seven, and in it he talks about how Jesus Christ our Lord, it is through his resurrection we’ve received grace and apostleship to what to bring about the obedience of faith for the sake of his name among all the nations. So the kind of faith that St. Paul is talking about throughout Romans is not simply ascending to theological propositions like the devil could do.

It is trusting in God and obeying which the devil doesn’t do. And that’s not just the first paragraph of Romans one, it’s also the last paragraph of Romans 16, the very last. So it’s the beginning and the end of the epistle to the Romans. St. Paul reiterates that it’s now disclosed and through the prophetic writings is made known to all nations according to the command of the eternal God, to bring about the obedience of faith. So faith in the biblical sense in both Paul and James’s usage is something obedient and something active. So go back to that second warning sign I had that this is based on the idea that baptism can’t do anything. It’s not allowed to do anything for salvation because it’s a work not biblically speaking, it’s an appeal for help and faith can do something for salvation because it’s merely passive.

Again, not biblically faith in the biblical sense is active and obedient. Now, we can apply all of this to baptism directly. Remember, my complaint after all is there’s a lot of talk about what baptism can and can’t do without looking at the passages, actually talking about baptism. So wouldn’t it be great if St. Paul in the midst of talking about faith and works also mentioned the role of baptism? And fortunately he does. In Galatians chapter three, he writes that the law was our custodian. Pedago, I believe is a Greek word there. It’s like a teaching slave, like a rich family would have a slave who was in charge of teaching their kids. And the idea was you had to obey as like a babysitter you had to obey until you grew up. So that’s what’s meant there by custodian. So the law was our custodian until Christ came that we might be justified by faith, but now that faith has come, we are no longer under a custodian for in Christ Jesus.

You’re all sons of God through faith. And if it stopped there, you might say, okay, I don’t see any room for baptism there, but it doesn’t stop there. The very next verse says, for as many as you as were baptized Christ have put on Christ. So how do we receive Christ Jesus through faith? Well, through baptism. That’s what Paul says. He doesn’t seem to think well if baptism then not faith. He views by faith through baptism. He’s showing you there that we’ve put on Christ, not simply through belief, but specifically as many of us as we’re baptized into Christ have put on Christ that baptism is actually doing something. And what it’s doing here is it’s us putting on Christ. Alright, so I would suggest that a good question to ask someone who has these theological blinders on is when were you saved? And I’ve heard different answers to this.

You can imagine any number of different answers. It could be a pivotal moment in your life. It could be when you got baptized. It could be when you prayed the sinner’s prayer. It could be any number of things. The one answer I’ve never heard in all my years asking this question, I’ve never heard anyone say, I got saved on Good Friday that the sufficiency of Christ’s death on the cross didn’t mean that I was saved in 33 ad there still had to be something in my life in which what happened that the work Christ has done had to be applied into my life in some way. That application doesn’t say, Jesus, your work wasn’t enough and it would be outrageous to accuse someone of saying that since Catholics, Protestants, evangelicals reformed, whoever you are, you’ve got to recognize that Christ’s work on good Friday needs to be applied in your life.

And that by the way, is the biblical way of speaking about it and the biblical way of speaking about being saved. To give just one example because again, this kind of a rabbit trail, I’m not going to go all the way down it. I’m going to peek that way. St. Paul writing to Timothy says, take heed to yourself and to your teaching. Hold to that for by so doing, you will save both yourself and your heroes. Now notice St. Paul seems totally content with the idea that you might have something to do related to your own salvation. I don’t know another way of reading the phrase, save yourself that doesn’t involve you having some kind of role somewhere in the process. But moreover, notice that in Paul’s conception, he’s running the Timothy who already is a Christian. Salvation isn’t just a one and done thing in the past.

Similarly, in Colossians one I said one verse, I meant two my bad. He says, I rejoice in my sufferings for your sake and in my flesh I complete what is lacking in Christ affliction for the sake of his body. That is the church. So I want to go back to the language, got questions used where it’s this very, I don’t think it’s intentionally emotionally manipulative, but it’s pretty emotionally manipulative language. If you think you have anything to do, you’re denying Christ’s sufficiency. All of those accusations could be brought against St. Paul, and I think that should tell us those are badly formed objections. So all of that is, I know a long kind of preamble to doing the deep dive on baptism, but I think we have to do that because if you start reading the biblical text on baptism by saying baptism can’t possibly do anything because of my views on justification and you refuse to challenge that, then you’re never going to understand what the Bible says about baptism because it doesn’t fit with a certain conception of justification.

It doesn’t fit with a certain conception of the role of works. I get that that is a misconception of works, a misconception of baptism, a misconception of faith and a misconception of justification. And unless you’re willing to put all those things on the table, you’re just not going to be able to understand the teaching. But if you are willing to challenge those theological blinders and to say at least for the sake of argument, well let’s start with just seeing what the Bible says about baptism and then worrying later about whether I can fit it into my preexisting theology, that would be a better place to start. So let’s do that if you’re open to it and start with actually the Old Testament with four promises that God makes. I want to look here particularly at the prophet Ezekiel and God’s promises through Ezekiel, he says, and by the way, at this point we don’t know whether this is or isn’t about baptism.

I’m not asking you to assume it’s about baptism. I’m asking you to consider four promises. He says in Ezekiel 36, I will sprinkle clean water upon you and you shall be clean from all your un cleanliness and from all your idols. I will cleanse you a new heart I will give you and a new spirit I’ll put within you and I’ll take out of your flesh, the heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh and I’ll put my spirit within you and cause you to walk in my statutes and be careful to observe my ordinances. You shall dwell in the land which I gave to your fathers, and you shall be my people and I will be your God. Now there’s a lot there, but I want to highlight four promises in particular. Number one, there’s a promise of cleansing of sin through water, right? I will sprinkle clean water upon you and you shall be clean from all your own cleanliness and from all your idols. I will cleanse you. So cleansing of sin through water. Number two, spiritual rebirth. You’re going to be born again, a new heart I will give you and a new spirit I’ll put within you.

Number three, the gift of the Holy Spirit. I will put my spirit within you and cause you to walk in my statutes and be careful to observe my ordinances. And the fourth promise is the entrance into the people of God. You will be of my people and I will be your God. So as I say, I don’t ask you to presuppose that that’s about baptism, but I hope you’re open to asking the following questions. Does baptism cleanse us from sin? Are we born again in baptism? Do we receive the Holy Spirit in baptism? And fourth is baptism our entrance into the people of God. What does the New Testament say in relation to these four promises that we see laid out in Ezekiel? Number one, does baptism cleanse us from sin? Here I want to turn to St. Paul himself because even though St. Paul is often marshaled against the idea that baptism does something that’s very clearly not his own understanding.

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