** Provisional Transcript **

THE MEANING OF BAPTISM

Dr. W. A. Criswell

Romans 6:1-5

9-19-54     7:30 a.m.

  

Turn to the sixth chapter of the Book of Romans.  And the message tonight is from the first five verses of the sixth chapter of the Book of Romans.  Sunday mornings, practically all of our people bring their Bibles to the house of God.  I wonder, tonight, how many in the evening hour of you also bring your Bible with you to church.  I’ve never asked.  I’d like to see.  If you have your Bible with you, wherever you are—upstairs or down—just hold it up, if you have your Bible.  Oh, there’s a multitude of us.  Good for you!  You can use it to follow the message, as you turn to it in your Bibles. Turn to Romans 6:1-5:

 

What shall we say then?  Shall we continue in sin, that grace may abound.

God forbid.  How shall we, that are dead to sin, live any longer therein?

Know ye not, that so many of us as were baptized into Jesus Christ 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 should also walk in newness of life.

For if we have planted together in the likeness of his death, we shall also be—someday, some glorious day—in the likeness of his resurrection.

 

            That’s the text for tonight.  And the sermon is entitled “Baptism Has a Meaning”—The Meaning of Baptism.  Now, to the meaning of the Scripture: In the passage that I read, Paul is not speaking directly of baptism.  That is, in the sixth chapter of Romans here, his purpose is not to present an exegesis and an exposition of the purpose and mode and meaning of baptism.  He’s doing something else.  He’s talking about something else.  And he uses baptism as an illustration of that something.  But, the way he uses that illustration is so important, so pointed, so appropriate, so apropos, that it is useable in the hands of any man of God to present just exactly what baptism is—what it ought to be, its meaning and its method. 

Now, what Paul is speaking of at the start of this chapter—the sixth of Romans.  The sixth chapter of Romans is about the multiplication of sin in this age, and about how, where sin abounded, grace also abounds.  The more sin, the more grace; the more sinfulness and wickedness, the more the forgiveness and mercy from God overcome it. Then, he says in the sixth chapter: “What shall we say then?”  The more sin, the more grace—So, let us sin more that grace might abound more?  The way this is set up, it sounds like: the more we sin, the more God can love us and the more God can forgive us, for God can make His grace abound all around us.  He goes on to say: “Shall we continue in sin that grace may abound?”  It’s preposterous.  It’s unthinkable.  It’s impossible that it should be so.  There is a very important historical reason: we have died to sin.  We can’t live that way any longer because we are dead to the world and we have died to sin.  It is not possible for us to live that way any longer.

And then, he uses the illustration of baptism.  Baptism, says God, is a burial.  It’s a burial.  It is a submersion and it is a burial plot.  It’s the burial of an old life and an old body, an old outlook, an old love, an old sin.  It’s a burying.  It’s a burial—a taking away, a getting out of sight. But, baptism is also a resurrection, a raising again.  What is it?  Baptism is a resurrection to a new life, a new phase, a new hope, a new goal, a new life, a new triumph, a new victory in Christ Jesus.  So, he takes the illustration of baptism and says:

 

Know ye not, that so many of us as were baptized into Jesus Christ 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 also we should walk—gloriously, triumphantly—in newness of life.

For if we have been planted together in the likeness of his death, we shall be also in the likeness of his resurrection.

 

            From the days of the future, we shall return to the great past of Paul’s message here about the triumphant Christian life.  But, tonight we are turning aside to talk about death—the death of the Christian to the world—the death to sin and all that it could never offer and resurrection to the glory of the new life we have in Jesus Christ.  And baptism—the best illustration of that, I say, is baptism.  Baptism, then, has a meaning and that meaning is found in its mode.  It is found in its form.  And it has changed—it has changed the significance of baptism.  It is the pattern that the omnipotent God has made in heaven.   The meaning of baptism, I repeat, is in its sign, in its mode, its pattern, which was made in heaven.  In the eighth chapter of the Book of Romans—Hebrews, the author of Hebrews says, in the fifth verse:

 

… Moses was admonished of God when he was about to make the tabernacle;

for, See, saith he, that thou make all things according to the pattern showed to thee in the mount.

 

            Now, back in the Book of Exodus—in the twenty-fourth chapter of the Book of Exodus, God says to Moses, “I have talked to you 40 days and 40 nights about the tabernacle.”  When it closes, God says to Moses, “Look, make all these things as I have showed thee, according to the pattern I showed thee in the mount.”   Now in the thirty-ninth chapter of the Book of Exodus, after they have worked according to the revealed will of God, they brought the tabernacle—the tent—unto Moses, with the furniture, the boards, the bars, the pillars, the sockets, the covering of rams’ skins; the ark; the table, the showbread, the lamps, the oil, the golden altar, the brazen altar, the hangings, the cords, the pins, the vessels of service.  Then, it closes:

 

… According to all that the Lord commanded Moses, so the children of Israel made all the work.

And Moses did look on all the work, and, behold, they had done it as the Lord has commanded, even so had they done it… .

 

            The pattern was in heaven.  The sign was in the mind of God.  And the Lord spake to Moses, and for 40 days and nights, he said, “Moses, you shall do this and this and this—just so, just so, just so.” And Moses gave this commandment to the people.  And the people were painfully lost.  That’s why they desperately needed the pattern from heaven that God gave Moses.  At that time, there was no sense of the meaning of the pattern for the children of Israel.  What did the golden laver—the golden altar stand for?  What did that stand for?  What does the seven-pronged lampstand stand for?  What is the mystery of the Day of Atonement?  It is all according to God’s pattern—all of those things—received from God in heaven.  It had all been given to Moses: the specifications of how the tabernacle was to be built and how all its ordinances were to be observed.  God had a meaning.  God had a pattern.  And the meaning and the pattern is exactly according to what the Lord had shown Moses in the mountain. So it is with baptism.  Baptism is a pattern.  It is a sign.  It is a picture.  Like the tabernacle, there is a pattern in heaven. In the twenty-first chapter of the Book of Matthew, Jesus asked the Israelites:

 

The baptism of John, whence was it? from heaven, or of men? 

And they reasoned with themselves, saying,

If we shall say, From heaven, he will say, why then did you not believe him?

 

And in the first chapter of his Gospel, the Apostle John tells of John the Baptist baptizing in the Jordan River.  And the priests and Levites from Jerusalem came out to him in the wilderness.  And they asked him, “Are you the Christ?”

And John said, “I am not.”

And they asked, “Are you Elijah?”

And he said, “I am not.”

And they asked him, “Are you the prophet that is to come?”

And he said, “I am not him.”

And they asked him, “Why, then, do you baptize, if you are not the Christ, or Elijah, or the prophet?”

This was the first time in the history of the world that one man had baptized another man: when John baptized in the Jordan River.  There were many situations in which a man would bathe himself ritually.  There were many conditions in which a man would immerse himself.  That signified purification.But, that was always done by the person himself.  When a man bathed, he bathed himself.  When a man baptized, he baptized himself.  This was the first time that the world ever saw one man immerse another man, when John the Baptist did it in the Jordan River. That is why the Jewish leaders in Jerusalem were amazed by this new ceremony.  That is why they sent the priests and Levites to see what was happening and to ask, “Are you the Christ?  Are you Elijah?  Are you the prophet who is to come?” When John said, “I am not,” he went on to explain why he had initiated this new religious rite.  And the answer of John was clear and plain: “I baptize with water; but there standeth one among you, whom ye knew not.”  Speaking of Jesus, he said:

 

This is he of whom I said, After me cometh a man which is preferred before me; for he was before me.

And I knew him not; but that he should be made manifest to Israel, therefore am I come baptizing with water.

And John bare record, saying, I saw the Spirit descending from heaven like a dove, and it abode upon him.

And I knew him not; but he that sent me to baptize with water, the same said unto me. Upon whom thou shalt see the Spirit descending, and remaining on him, the same is he which baptizeth with the Holy Spirit.

 

            Now, this baptism of John the Baptist was a pattern and it came from heaven.  When John was baptizing in the wilderness of Judea, when he carried out that form, that sign, that ordinance, he did not know what it meant.  He just was faithful in carrying out the pattern that God had set forth from heaven.

            And when, finally, we come to know the meaning of the form, the pattern, from heaven, it means three things.  First, it is a picture of the victory of the resurrection; that, like as Christ was raised up from the dead, by the glory of the Father, we were buried with Him in the likeness of His death and then raised in the likeness of His resurrection.  When, finally, we came to know what the form meant, what the ordinance meant that John the Baptist carried out, it is, first of all, a picture of the glorious death and resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ.  In baptism, we are buried in the likeness of His death and raised in the likeness of His resurrection. 

            Second, it is a picture of the gospel message of Jesus Christ.  There are two ordinances in the church.  The first ordinance is baptism and the second is the breaking of bread of the Lord’s Supper.  The breaking of bread signifies the broken body of Jesus Christ for us, and the cup represents the blood poured out for us. The initial ordinance has a tremendous meaning: we are buried with the Lord in the likeness of His death and we are raised with the Lord in the likeness of His resurrection.  And Paul says that is a picture of the gospel. What does a missionary preach, when we send him out to China, or Africa or South America, to preach the gospel?  What does he preach when a man  preaches the gospel?   In the fifteenth chapter of 1 Corinthians, Paul says:

 

… Brethren, I make known unto you the gospel which I preached unto you…

… How that Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures;

And that he was buried, and that he rose again the third day according to the scriptures.

 

            The gospel is this: preaching the Lord Jesus, coming to die for our sins, buried and raised for our justification.  And the initial ordinance of baptism is a picture of the gospel message of the Lord Jesus Christ: We died and were buried, like Christ was buried, and we were resurrected, like Christ was resurrected.  In baptism, we see beautifully paraphrased gospel message of the death and resurrection of Jesus.

            It has a second meaning, this ordinance of baptism: We have been raised, through resurrection, to a new spiritual life in Jesus Christ.  No longer are we identified with the world.  We are now separated and holy and called out to a completely new kind of life.   When they make fun of you for not staring at the worldly amusements that they do, remember that you have been separated by Christ to live a new life.  You have died to sin.  You have died to the world.  You have died to that life and all that if offers, in order to rise to walk in newness of life.  My interests are different now.  I don’t do the things I did before.  Now, I say, “I’ll see you there on Sunday night.”  I’m interested in going to church.  I’m liberated from their music and ballrooms and drinking and gambling and all the so-called “happy things.”  Those things don’t interest me any longer, because I have a new life in Jesus Christ.

You love the church.  You love the Sunday school.  You love the training union.  You are no longer of the world.  You are raised to a new life—a new life in Jesus Christ.

            And then, it has another—a last meaning: “For if we have been planted together in the likeness of his death, we shall also be in the likeness of his resurrection.”  Baptism is a hope.  It’s a promise.  It’s a commitment from God.  And that commitment is this: if I tarry, and then my body dies—in the dust of the ground and the heart of the earth, I believe, someday, the trumpet shall sound and the Lord shall appear and the dead shall come to life and meet Him in the air. 

            This is the last thing about being baptized in the Lord Jesus: we believe in the resurrection of the dead.  We have been buried in the likeness of Christ’s death, in the hope that, someday, we shall rise in the likeness of His glorious resurrection.  “For if we have been planted together in the likeness of his death, we shall be—someday, some glorious day—also in the likeness of his resurrection.”  So, when you receive the ordinance of baptism, you receive it as a promise.  It is also a commitment of your life.

            Baptism is sign, a pattern, given from heaven.  And when it was finally understood what the sign meant—what the pattern meant—it focused on three things: the victory of Christ over the grave; the gospel message—Jesus Christ died, was buried and rose again and the picture of our spiritual resurrection—of our dying, being buried and being raised with Christ; and finally, the great hope we have of our future resurrection.  If we die and are buried, we shall be raised in the likeness of our Lord, triumphant and glorious.

            Baptism has a meaning.  And that meaning is found in its form, in its mode, in its pattern.  If you change the mode—if you change the pattern, you do violence to its meaning and its significance.  If the heavenly pattern is broken, it leaves nothing at all.

            How blessed—how blessed it is to keep this ordinance, which goes back to John, and which was kept by the Lord Jesus, and which was left for our keeping, according to the heavenly pattern of the ordinance!

            Now, for just a moment, may I speak of that heavenly ordinance of baptism, just one or two things?  One: Baptism is accorded that high honor.  Only one place in Holy Scripture is the Trinity seen related to baptism: in the baptism of Jesus, the Son submitted, the Holy Spirit descended and the Father commended: “This is my Son in whom I am well pleased.”  And the Spirit descended in the form of a dove and lighted upon Him.  And the Son submitted to the ordinance of baptism.

            The first recorded words of our Savior are, “Suffer it to be so now, for I have come to fulfill all righteousness.  And he suffered him.”  Those are the first recorded words in the public ministry of Jesus.

            And the last recorded words of our Lord in the Gospels are:

Go and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit;

Teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I commanded you; and, lo, I am with you always, even unto the end of the age.