Water, Water Everywhere

1 Peter 3:18-22

I love baptism because it always brings us back to the gospel, the good news, the stupendous news the Christian faith proclaims that God Himself, the Creator of all is a powerful King and a perfect Judge who saves sinners like us. Baptism pictures this for us.

One of the great early preachers, Augustine, said that the sacraments, the signs of the new covenant, baptism and the Lord’s Supper, are visible demonstrations, tangible signs of God’s promise, they are visible words. We hear the Word proclaimed to us, we hear it read to us, and we can see it in baptism, we can feel it in the water and in the Lord’s Supper we can taste the gospel and hold it in our hands. Baptism and the Lord’s Supper are tangible, sensible signs and seals of God’s promise. They are tangible ways God communicates to us in all our senses of His goodness and His grace to us in Christ.

And what better demonstration of that than in a child? A child who is totally dependent on his or her parents for food, clothing, shelter, and life itself. That is us, helpless, needy, dependent. In Baptism, God says to us in a tangible way all that he says to our ears, that He comes to save sinners, and He washes us from our sins, and He brings us into His family and makes us a part of His Kingdom.

Because baptism is such a beautiful picture of the gospel, the Westminster Larger Catechism says in Q.167: The needful but much neglected duty of improving our Baptism, is to be performed by us all our life long especially in the time of temptation, and when we are present at the administration of it to others. Improving your baptism means making good use of it. It means thinking through and living out the meaning and implications of our baptism. There is a danger that we who practice the baptism of covenant children may fall into the trap of thinking of our baptism as just ceremony that happened long ago with no present abiding relevance to us. That is a great mistake – we are missing out on so much blessing that God means us to have through making good use of baptism.

There are several ways Scripture says we should make good use of our baptism. One way is to “think about its meaning.” It is clear from Romans 6:3-5 that Paul expected his readers to think about their baptism and its meaning. One essential meaning from this passage is that “baptism is not a sign of our repentance or our personal commitment to Jesus Christ – it is a sign and seal of God’s commitment to us.”

Another clear way to make us of your baptism is to “remember it in times of temptation.” Paul underlines this way in Romans 6:4. Baptism is a sign and seal of the biblical truth that in Christ we died to sin and have been raised to spiritual life. In other words, especially in times of temptation, we should remember who we are and whose we are.

This Sunday morning as we watch the baptizing of one of God’s covenant children, we will be shown once again the beauty of the gospel. Then we will look at 1 Peter 3:18-22, in which Peter makes a powerful declaration of baptism, and we will ask, how this truth proclaims the glorious gospel of Jesus Christ. See you Sunday morning.

In Christ,

Pastor Wayne