But my main confusion is related to another aspect of what is being argued…namely that because Paul (*if *Paul indeed) did not mean the “water ritual” in every instance where he speaks of Baptism, that the “water ritual” is therefore not necessary.
I’m no scholar…just a layman, so still I tend to fall back on “no Christian held this understanding until recently in Christian history”. But is there something more substantial I could offer to get the point across?
Dave, Paul wrote much about the relationship between Christ and baptized believers … between Christ and the Church.
Recall that sometimes the church is referred to as the “Bride of Christ”. Jesus is the Bridegroom, and the Church, His Bride. Paul wrote explicitly about that relationship in his letter to the Ephesians (5:25-30). That’s pretty specific; but to be sure there’s no misunderstanding, in v.31 Paul then quotes from the Genesis account of Creation (Genesis 2:24 – God’s standard for marriage) and in v. 32 he confirms the significance of this passage in his context (“… I am saying it refers to Christ and the church”).
So in Paul’s understanding, a man and woman come together in marriage, and as husband and wife they are joined together in an inseparable unity; they’re together in everything, through thick and thin … which Paul then declares is just like the relationship between Christ and His Church. We come together in the same way, and unite together into an inseparable oneness – like a bride and groom, for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health, till death do us …
No. Wait!!! Not even death has the power to separate us from Christ!! And THIS is exactly the point Paul makes in Romans 6. Our unity with Christ is so permanent that it survives everything, including death! Not that death is the only important thing, but we cannot ignore the fact that our oneness with Christ is so all-encompassing that sharing in His death is an unavoidable part of the whole package.
In his first letter to the Corinthians, written about a year earlier, Paul had more to say about this baptism. (I Cor.12:12-14,26,27). Read the whole chapter for a fuller understanding; but there are three things worth noting in these few verses.
(1) Paul emphasizes that in this union with Christ, we never lose our personal identity. There is no hint in his writing that we’re swallowed up by, or absorbed into, or immersed into this body of Christ. We are, each of us, individually, separate parts of the body. We retain our own identities.
(2) We are baptized by the One Spirit into the One Body of Christ Jesus. There’s the same phrase as in Romans 6:3, but amplified for us. It is the Holy Spirit that produces this union. The Holy Spirit, working in and through us, points us to Christ, draws us to Christ and joins us to Him. That joining process is baptism.
(3) A point he develops further in Romans 6 is that, if one part of the body suffers, we all suffer.
In Romans 6, Paul reaffirms the idea that, as Christ suffered and died, so as parts of His body we also suffer and die. His death becomes our death. We die to sin, and to the power that sin once held over us; and we die to the old self, and the lusts and passions that once drove us. So, still united with Christ, we pass through the experience of death, and we are raised with Him to new life – eternal life – never to die again!
Some people accept only water baptism, and insist that Paul’s reference to being “baptized into Christ” is a metaphor for the real thing (immersion in water). But for Paul, it is clear that the baptism of believers by the One Holy Spirit into the One Body of Christ … THIS IS the real thing! It happens on a spiritual level, but it is just as real. There are no metaphors here; there are two distinct realities: the earthly and the spiritual. It is this baptism into Christ, and the resulting unity we have in Him, that is the subject of Paul’s continued teaching.
Paul uses the outward and visible, the earthly and familiar, like marriage between husband and wife, and a human body with many parts, to describe the inward and spiritual baptism into Christ. (It’s a proven formula … that’s how Christ taught, in parables – earthly stories with heavenly meanings.) And that’s the sacramental outlook of a sacramental church.
You may discover that the main difference you encounter in doctrines of baptism stems from the fact that along with the Catholic church, many mainline Protestant churches also hold baptism as a sacrament … while others, such as Baptist and Pentecostal, do not have sacraments. They regard baptism as an ordinance of the church, a ceremony performed because Christ commanded it, but having no connection with any “inward and spiritual grace”. This radically affects your belief.
