Baptized into the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit | Rev. Malcolm G. Smith

Good morning and welcome to our adult service, both people in the room and people joining us online.

Our first reading is taken from the prophet Isaiah, chapter eleven.

And there shall come out a shaft from the trunk of Jesse, and a stem from his roots shall become fruitful, and the spirit of Jehovah shall rest on him, the spirit of wisdom and understanding, the spirit of counsel and might, the spirit of knowledge and of the fear of Jehovah, and to cause him to breathe in the sweet smell of the fear of Jehovah.

He shall not judge according to the sight of his eyes, nor shall he make decisions according to the hearing of his ears, but with justice shall he judge the poor, and with uprightness shall he make decisions for the meek of the earth, and he shall smite the earth with the rod of his mouth, and with the spirit of his lips shall he put the wicked to death, and justice shall be the belt of his loins, and faithfulness the belt of his hips, and a wolf shall sojourn with a lamb, and a leopard shall lie down with a young goat, and a calf and a young lion and a fatling together, and a little child shall lead them, and the cow and the bear shall pasture together, shall what is born of them lie down, and the lion shall eat straw as the cattle, and the nursing infant shall play upon the whole of the adder, and upon the den of the viper shall the weaned child thrust his hand.

They shall not do evil nor destroy in all the mountain of my holiness, for the earth shall be full of the knowledge of Jehovah, as the waters cover the sea.

Amen.

Reading further from the end of the Gospel of Matthew, chapter twenty eight.

And the eleven disciples went into Galilee, into the mountain where Jesus had directed them, and when they saw him, they worshipped him, and yet they doubted.

And Jesus, coming, spoke to them, saying, All authority is given to me in heaven and on earth.

Going forth, therefore, make disciples of all nations, baptizing them into the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all things that I have commanded you, and lo, I am with you all the days, even to the consummation of the age.

Amen.

And our final lesson from the Word is taken from the book Brief Exposition or Survey of Teachings of the New Church.

The existence of the divine Trinity is made very clear by the Lord's words in Matthew.

Jesus said, Go forth and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.

The reason why the Lord sent his disciples forth to baptize people in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, was that this divine Trinity existed within him in his then glorified state.

In the verse preceding the quotation from Matthew 28 just given, the Lord says, All power has been given me in heaven and on earth.

And in the verse following he says, Behold, I am with you all the days, even to the close of the age.

In these verses, then he mentions only himself and not three persons.

In John we read, There was not the Holy Spirit yet, because Jesus was not yet glorified.

He made the statement in Matthew after he was glorified, and his glorification was when he became fully united with his Father, the divinity that had been inside him since conception.

The Holy Spirit was the divine quality that emanated from him once he was glorified.

Amen.

Here end our lessons from the Lord's Word.

Blessed are those who hear the Word of God and keep it.

Amen.

We're talking today about the significance of your baptism.

Maybe you were baptized as an infant.

Maybe you were baptized as a child, a teenager, or as an adult.

Or maybe you've never been baptized.

Regardless of your circumstances, this talk will hopefully give you an opportunity to reflect on the significance of your baptism or your potential future baptism.

Because many of us don't think about our baptism that much.

It can feel like something from our past, something that happened long before we were remembering anything particularly.

But our baptism has use and significance beyond just the day on which it happened.

And like anything, it can become more precious and significant to us if we take the time to reflect on why it matters.

We're going to focus in on one particular part of the baptism sacrament, and that is the name into which you are baptized.

In the baptism service, in the liturgy, in the pews in front of you, the priest says, I baptize you into the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

So here are some of the questions we're going to explore.

Why is the Trinity mentioned in the baptism service?

What does it mean to be baptized into the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit?

And how can that be significant or meaningful to each of us?

Now, one note before we dive into this topic, we need the Lord's help to understand this.

There's a section in the last published book of the Teachings for the New Church called The True Christian Religion.

There's a section on the Trinity in this book.

And toward the beginning of that section, it acknowledges that the Trinity can be tricky to understand.

And this is what it says.

How are we to understand the three parts of the Trinity?

Are they three gods who are one God in essence and name?

Are they three distinct qualities of one underlying material, meaning that they are just qualities or attributes of a single God that have names?

Or is there some other alternative?

The only good advice tells us to turn to the Lord God our Savior and read the Word under His supervision, since He is the God of the Word.

Then we will be enlightened and see truths that even reason will acknowledge.

So let's follow that good advice.

I know we've said some prayers already today, but let's pray to the Lord for His help in understanding the Trinity.

Please bow your heads with me.

Lord, you are our God and Savior.

We want to better understand you.

We want to be guided by you as we read your word, as we try to think things through, and as we try to come to a better understanding of the Trinity.

Please supervise us.

Help us to see where we're going off track and when we're on the right track.

Bring your light into our dark and clouded minds so that we can see more clearly, and so that we can see you for who you truly are.

Amen.

So let's get into that first question now.

Why is the Trinity mentioned in the baptism service?

Well, because, as we read, it's in the command the Lord gave to his disciples at the end of the Gospel of Matthew.

He said to them, Going forth, therefore, make disciples of all nations, baptizing them into the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.

We talk about the Trinity in the baptism service because the Lord said to do that.

That's reason enough.

It is worth noting, though, that this phrase is unique to the Gospel of Matthew.

None of the other Gospels mention it.

In fact, that phrase doesn't show up anywhere else in the Gospels.

There are stories in which we see a depiction of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, like when Jesus was baptized and the Spirit descends, and there's a voice from heaven.

And there are plenty of times when the Lord spoke about the Trinity, when he spoke about the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, like during the Last Supper.

But it's still intriguing that we only get this command to baptize in this threefold way in the Gospel of Matthew and nowhere else.

Another intriguing and useful thing to note is that, at least according to the record in the book of Acts, the Acts of the Apostles, the Lord's disciples never explicitly baptize people in this way.

They baptized people in the name of Jesus Christ and in the name of the Lord Jesus and in the name of the Lord, but never in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.

Now maybe the disciples got it wrong, and they never baptized people the way the Lord wanted to, but that's probably unlikely.

It seems more likely that they correctly understood that the name of the Father and of the Son and the Holy Spirit is Jesus Christ.

And this is actually a helpful key for and a shorthand for understanding the Trinity.

The Father, Son, and the Holy Spirit have one name, and that name is Jesus Christ.

As Paul said in one of his letters, in him dwells all the fullness of the Godhead bodily.

But this brings us back to our question again.

If the point was to baptize people into the name of Jesus Christ, why did the Lord tell his disciples in Matthew to baptize into the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit?

Well, in that chapter in True Christian Religion on baptism, it lists three uses or functions of baptism.

And one of them is this: to allow Christians to know and acknowledge the Lord Jesus Christ as Redeemer and Savior and to follow him.

Baptism is meant to help us learn about the person into whose name we're being baptized.

And part of what we need to learn more about, if we really want to understand Jesus Christ, is the Trinity.

So sorry, we're going into the Trinity today.

That's what we're going to do.

So again, here are two statements from true Christian religion about the importance of this.

Only through understanding the Trinity can we gain a just idea of God.

And in the church, a just idea of God is like the sanctuary and the altar in a church building.

The divine Trinity ought to shine like a lamp in the minds of people in the church, since God in his Trinity and in the unity of that Trinity is all in all that is holy in heaven and in the church.

So why is the Trinity mentioned in the baptism service?

Because it communicates something important and essential for understanding Jesus Christ.

If we're being baptized into his name, we want to really understand who he is.

And this brings us to our next questions.

What does it mean to be baptized into the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit?

And how can that be meaningful to each of us?

Well, let's start by talking about what it does not mean.

It does not mean being baptized into the name of three separate persons of God who are somehow all one God.

This is the interpretation of almost all Christian churches: God in three persons.

Three persons of God with three separate functions that are somehow all still one.

That is not the New Church understanding of the Trinity.

However, it is important to note, the New Church does believe in the Trinity.

I have met people who've grown up in the New Church who get confused about this and think, no, no, in the New Church we don't believe in the Trinity, right?

No, there is a divine Trinity.

It's very clear in the Lord's Word.

The Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are real, they're just all in Jesus Christ.

One person, not three persons.

As we said together in our recitation, God is one in whom is a divine trinity, and the Lord God, the Savior, Jesus Christ, is that one.

And the teachings for the New Church explain that the best way to understand the Trinity in the Lord is to think about a similar Trinity in a normal human being.

We read this can anyone fail to see how the Trinity is in the Lord if they consider the Trinity in any human being?

Every person has a soul, a body, and activity, likewise the Lord.

Therefore, there is a divine trinity in the Lord and a human one in us.

If the Father means the soul of the Lord Jesus Christ, the Son means his body, and the Holy Spirit means his activity, what is the significance of being baptized into the name of the soul, body, and activity of Jesus Christ?

Well, part of what it does is it highlights who the Lord is and the process he went through over the course of his life on earth.

To get into more of the details of that, let's go back to the passage we read in our lessons from the teachings for the New Church.

We read this: the reason why the Lord sent his disciples forth to baptize people in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit was that this divine trinity existed within him in his then glorified state.

We need to unpack this a bit.

There are three times we need to understand.

Before God came into the world as Jesus Christ, after God came into the world as Jesus Christ, but before he was fully glorified, and then after Jesus Christ was fully glorified.

The first time, before God came into the world as Jesus Christ, there was no Trinity.

Many other Christian churches teach something different.

They teach that God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Spirit were three persons of God existing from eternity.

The New Church instead teaches that the Trinity was something that came into being through the process the Lord went through over the course of his life in the world.

In the Gospel of John, the language used to describe that process is called being glorified.

This was the process of Jesus Christ from his divine soul within him, making every part of himself fully divine or fully glorified.

So there was a time before that process had begun.

Then there was a time while that process was going on, and then there was a time when that process was complete.

Process started, not done, so therefore not Holy Spirit in the same sense as when it's done.

But after the process was complete, then we read statements like the one from Matthew 28, where the Lord said, All authority is given to me in heaven and on earth.

With that in mind, let's read more from that lesson we read at the beginning.

The Lord made the statement in Matthew after he was glorified, and his glorification was when he became fully united with his Father, the divinity that had been inside him since conception.

The Holy Spirit was the divine quality that emanated from him once he was glorified.

So, after the Lord was fully glorified, fully divine, that was when he sent out his disciples and told them to baptize the nations into the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

And in so doing, there was a built-in reminder of who Jesus Christ really was.

And we can appreciate the significance of this if we think through what it would be like to not know about any of the parts of the Trinity.

So if we were baptized in the name of Jesus Christ without knowing about the Father or the divine soul within him, we might be inclined to think of Jesus Christ as just a really good, important person who had a positive impact on the world, but not anyone divine.

You know, like Moses or John the Baptist or some modern person who people look up to as having done lots of good in the world.

We might be inclined to think, oh, Jesus Christ, yeah, that guy who said those things, those were good, and he did some good things for the world, and he.

But we can know that the Lord Jesus Christ was and is a whole lot more than just a really good guy.

He is the God of the Old Testament and the God of the universe who took on flesh to be God with us in this world.

He has the Father within him.

Now, if we were just baptized without knowing about the Son of God, what would we be missing then?

Well, in this case, we might miss that God is in human form, that God is someone who we can picture and have a relationship with.

The children of Israel had a ritual they went through to show their connection to God.

They were circumcised.

And that did something, but it did not give them the same sense of close connection with their God that baptism later allowed Christians to have.

Being baptized into the name of the Son reminds us of all the things our God did as a love in human form, all the healing, teaching, casting out demons, caring for people with compassion, wisdom, and love.

All of that embodied love.

That's what we can think about when we're thinking about being baptized in the name of the Son.

And then finally, if we were just baptized without knowing about the Lord's Holy Spirit, what would be missing?

Well, the Lord, when he commanded them to go baptize people, he also commanded his disciples to teach people to observe all things that he had commanded them.

And sometimes, when we're trying to do the work of following the Lord and living according to his commands, the Lord can seem pretty far away, like we're kind of on our own, doing our own thing.

And in those times we need to remember that he is with us always.

Jesus Christ's Holy Spirit is with us, even when we can't see him physically.

To borrow language from the Old Testament, it is the Spirit of wisdom and understanding, the spirit of counsel and might, the spirit of knowledge and the fear of Jehovah.

The Holy Spirit is the activity of Jesus Christ, and He is very active in our lives.

To be baptized in the name of the Holy Spirit is to be reminded of that reality.

So to wrap this up, when the first people were baptized by the disciples in the name of Jesus Christ, who is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, they were becoming part of a whole new spiritual era that was just beginning.

A spiritual era marked by this revolutionary new ability to join together with our loving human God.

He had always been loving and human, but now people could know that and connect with him as that.

And even though, since then, billions of people have now experienced it, when each person gets baptized, it is still an amazing thing, including if and when it happens for you.

The Trinity can be hard to understand, but it can also shine like a lamp in our minds and help us to better see, understand, and connect with our God and Savior.

You can be baptized into the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, who has the divine soul of God within him, who took on flesh to dwell among us, and whose spirit is with you always.

You can be baptized into name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.

Amen.