Buried, Raised, and Belonging: Baptism, Union with Christ, and the Church

Oh, that rugged cross indeed.

I love the gospel of Jesus Christ.

Well, this morning we are going to pause from our series in Jonah because I would like to highlight the beauty of the sacrament of baptism.

In some ways, I'm going to be preaching to Lauren and Emily, and all y'all get to listen in.

But for those of you who are also in Christ, this is applicable to you as well.

What I would love to do in Romans 6, 1 through 14 is highlight a few things.

What is baptism?

What does it symbolize?

Why is it significant?

Why has the church throughout centuries held this sacrament so highly in the life of the local church?

One of the best passages, in my opinion, in the Bible, and capturing the spiritual significance behind baptism is what our brother Sam just read to us in Romans 6, 1 through 14.

Now, I'm going to hit you with a fire hose of information.

So for you note takers, good luck.

But to highlight what has led up to Romans 6, here's a quick summary of Romans 1 through 5.

Romans 1 through 2, Paul is making very clear that all people, all places, all times are sinners.

Gentiles and Jews are guilty before God and under his just wrath and condemnation because of sin.

In chapter 3, he doubles down on this and says that there is no one righteous, but God has made a way for sinners to be justified by grace alone, through faith alone, and Christ alone.

And then in chapter 4, he gives an example of Abraham, who was a pagan moon God worshiper, called by God as an example of faith, showing that righteousness comes by believing, by faith, and not by works.

In chapter five, Paul unpacks the doctrine of justification and its beautiful implications for the child of God, making clear that if you're justified, you have been legally declared forgiven by God.

You now have peace with God.

And where sin used to increase because of the new covenant, grace has increased even more.

Now, on the heels of chapter five, Paul, being a good pastor, anticipates his audience's interpretation of the doctrine of grace he's teaching.

He understands that some of them are going to raise the question well, wait a minute, Paul, if you say that grace abounds towards sinners, shouldn't we just keep on sinning because God gets more glory?

The more we sin, then the more sin he forgives, therefore the more glory he receives.

And that ushers us into Romans chapter six.

If you look down in your Bibles in Romans 6, chapter 1, my first point I want us to look at is if you are in Christ, you have died with Christ.

You have died with Christ.

So Paul anticipating this argument that hasn't been made, but he knows it's going to come, he says in verse 1, what should we say then?

Should we continue in sin so that grace may multiply?

This is a rhetorical question.

He knows they're wrestling with this in their hearts, and his answer in verse 2 is an emphatic, absolutely, excuse me, absolutely not.

How can we who die to sin still live in it?

Paul anticipates the question: if grace abounds where sin increases, can't we just continue in our life of sin?

And Paul's gospel logic is if you've died to sin and you've been risen with Christ, then the answer is absolutely not, because you now have a new relationship to sin, and that is you have died to it.

Therefore, if you are dead to sin, then you are now free from its enslaving power.

Therefore, to live in it, and in Paul's mind, that means a habitual, uh, unrepentant pattern of sinning with no regret, conviction, or remorse, that would be illogical for a professing child of God, is what Paul is saying.

Or to put it another way, if you come to understand the grace of Jesus Christ as found in Romans 1 through 5, and come to the conclusion that should encourage me to sin more, Paul's saying you don't understand grace.

It should have the opposite effect, in which you say, Man, look at the grace of God.

How can I sin against such grace that is shown to me, an undeserving sinner?

And this death is symbolized in baptism.

Going under the water signifies you are buried with Christ.

Rising from the water signifying you have also been resurrected with Christ, which we'll get to in a moment.

But if you look down at verse four, that just as phrase is very important.

When he says, Therefore we were buried with him by baptism into death, in order that just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, so we too may walk in the newness of life.

That just as is very important.

Paul is saying that we, followers of Jesus, are like Christ in his glorious resurrection from the dead by the power of God.

That same power that raised Christ from the dead, that same glory has been uh operating in your salvation and your sanctification.

This is a doctrine that is often overlooked in recent church history.

Union with Christ has just fallen to the wayside for some reason.

But this is what Paul is getting at.

He's saying, just as the Lord Himself was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, that same power is operative in your life as a believer.

Which means if you're a born-again child of God, at some point in history, something supernatural happened to you.

You didn't do it, you didn't even have the spiritual capacity to do it.

But I would emphasize something supernatural happened to you.

Now, everyone in this room who's a follower of Christ has a different testimony.

Some of you can remember the exact day when the Lord saved you.

Others of you grew up in a faithful Christian home, and maybe you can still pinpoint a season where you felt like the Lord was drawing you.

No matter what, the God the Father knows the day in human history where each of us transferred from the domain of sin and death and into the family of God.

And when that happened, something supernatural happened, emphasis on to you.

You didn't bring it about, you didn't earn it, you didn't present God a resume that convinced them I will hire them.

It was something supernatural that happened to you.

Everyone in this room who's a follower of Christ, your testimony is similar to the Apostle Paul's.

So, for example, when Paul was converted to faith, many of you are familiar with the story where he had an encounter with Jesus supernaturally on the Damascus Road.

But you know what people tend to forget?

One crucial point.

Why was Paul on the Damascus Road?

Where was he going?

Well, the Bible tells us in Acts chapter 9, verses 1 through 4.

Acts 9:1–4

It says, Now Saul was still breathing threats and murder against the disciples of the Lord.

He went to the high priest and requested letters from him to the synagogues in Damascus, so that if he found any men or women who belonged to the way, which is how they refer to Christianity at the time, he might bring them as prisoners to Jerusalem.

As he traveled and was nearing Damascus, a light from heaven suddenly flashed around him, falling to the ground, he heard a voice saying to him, Jesus speaking, Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me?

That is all of our testimony if you're in Christ.

Paul was on the road to Damascus to persecute Christians, to have them imprisoned for the faith, and yet Jesus sought after Paul.

And Paul, in humility and repentance, embraced the Lord Jesus Christ.

Think about that.

Paul was on the road to go against God's will and ended up doing God's will.

Salvation is something supernatural that happens to us.

We don't seek the Lord, He first seeks after us, which humbles us when you recognize I contributed nothing to my salvation but the sin that made it necessary.

And a quick nugget for you guys to tuck away.

This has nothing to do with my sermon, but Paul's name was not changed from Saul to Paul.

That is a common teaching in churches that is not biblical.

Excuse me, Saul was his Hebrew name, Paul was his Roman name.

So that's that's out there.

I don't know why, but that's not anywhere evidenced in scripture.

However, he was fundamentally changed on that road to Damascus.

And the transforming power of the gospel caused you, like it did Paul, to then walk in newness of life.

It's good when you learn about the background of characters in the Bible, you better appreciate what they write.

When you recognize Paul was literally, he went to the religious leaders to get permission to imprison men and women for simply worshiping Jesus.

And all of a sudden he comes to faith in Christ and he writes stuff like Romans chapter 6.

Romans 6 · chapter mention

That encourages us in our faith.

So, number one, you have, if you're in Christ, you have died with Christ, according to Paul.

But then he goes on talking about if you have died with Christ, what does your new life look like?

Or rather, what should it look like?

If you have been raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, like Christ has, so that you may walk in newness of life is the phrase he uses in verse 4, and you have been united with him in verse 5 in the likeness of his death, then how should we live?

My second point, if you're in Christ, you have been raised with Christ.

You have been raised with Christ.

Verses five through nine.

Paul says, For if we have been united with him in the likeness of his death, we will certainly be in the likeness of his resurrection.

For we know that our old self was crucified with him, so that the body ruled by sin might be rendered powerless, so that we may no longer be enslaved to sin, since a person who has died is freed from sin.

Now, if we died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with him, because we know that Christ, having been raised from the dead, will not die again.

Death no longer rules over him.

Now, if you're like me and you still wrestle with sin, I don't know about some of y'all, maybe some of you have arrived, but if you read text like this, you might say, Paul, I hear you.

I hear that you say I'm dead to sin.

It's enslaving power over me is gone, but why do I still wrestle with sin?

Why do I still find it hard to resist temptation?

Well, here's the answer: through your conversion and your union with Christ, the free gift of salvation is that by God's grace, both the power and the penalty of sin has been dealt with.

But the indwelling presence of sin still remains.

It's kind of like if you step on a cockroach and smash its head and it's dead, but it's still running around with a little bit of life.

That's like sin in us.

While sin theologically no longer rules over the Christian, it no longer has domain over you, it still resides within you, and you now live in the tension of being redeemed, but not yet fully glorified.

So Jesus on the cross, he dealt the death blow to sin.

It has no power.

You can truly choose obedience now.

You are no longer a slave to sin.

Before you were regenerate, you were a slave to sin.

You could only do sin because that was your nature.

But when Jesus saves you, you have a new nature.

You're a new creation, and the things of the Lord are now beautiful to you, and you want to joyfully obey the Father.

Therefore, when you sin, it's moments of temptation of you giving in to your old nature.

But you're no longer a slave to it, which is why sin is illogical.

It's behaving like something you no longer are.

So though sin still resides within us, it does not reign over us, and we now live in the tension of being redeemed, but not yet fully glorified, which makes the new heaven and the new earth so precious.

Number one, because we get to be with our Savior, and number two, because we have a new reality of having no sin nature whatsoever reside within us.

We will be able to walk with our Jesus without a hint of sin and temptation.

That is one of the aspects of heaven that is most cherished by believers.

So in this chapter and in the New Testament as a whole, there is a lot of union with Christ's language.

There's phrases repeated often, especially in Paul, such as believers being in Christ, being in the Lord or in him, or we are the vine, he is the branches, we are the body of Christ, we are the bride of Christ, we are crucified with Christ.

This is common language throughout the New Testament.

And that phrase in Christ or similar phrases like in him appear over 200 times in the New Testament, and with Paul alone over 160 times.

So if you see things repeated like that, it should encourage you.

What's going on here?

If this is a common theme, what is being communicated?

To be a Christian is to be united to Christ.

Like that is a summary of your salvation.

If you are saved, you have been united to Christ.

What does that mean?

Our union with Christ, I would say, lies at the very heart of the message of salvation.

And it should be held by Christians as of utmost importance.

I believe it's one of the most beautiful doctrines you could spend your Christian life coming to comprehend its teaching and its implications for your life.

Here's a helpful definition by Wayne Grudum.

He says, union with Christ is a phrase used to summarize several different relationships between believers in Christ, through which Christians receive every benefit of salvation.

These relationships include the fact that we are in Christ, Christ is in us, we are like Christ, and we are with Christ.

Or if I could summarize in my own words, union with Christ communicates every spiritual blessing you have received by way of salvation came by way of your union with Christ.

Here's a few examples.

The fact that you were chosen by God and given new life before the foundations of the earth happens by union with Christ.

Your justification, your sanctification, your new identity in this life and the next comes by way of your union with Christ.

The indwelling of the Holy Spirit, the Comforter, who illuminates God's truth to you and seals you is by way of union with Christ.

Your preservation in the faith, your perseverance in the faith is by way of union with Christ.

And your bodily resurrection in the future comes by union with Christ.

And your final glorification all come as benefits by way of being united to Christ.

Therefore, being united to Christ is really dope.

You get so many benefits just by being attached to Jesus.

And not a single one of those have we earned or done anything to deserve.

It just comes with the package.

It's not just fire insurance.

God saved you from his wrath.

I sometimes churches emphasize on God's wrath, like be scared of hell.

So trust in Jesus.

Yes, God's wrath should be terrifying, but you're also saved to something.

You're saved to this beautiful package.

God says, yes, not only did I save you from your sin, but I gave you all these rich benefits in my son.

That is glorious.

But Paul makes clear that union with Christ has spiritual implications and practical.

He says, just as Jesus physically rose from the dead, every child of God at your conversion and through baptism are risen to new life.

Literally.

And you were reborn.

This is why Jesus, when he talks to Nicodemus, says, You must be what?

Born again.

And Nicodemus didn't get it.

Paul emphasizes this in verse 6.

He says, Our old self was crucified.

Here's the union with Christ, with him, so that the body ruled by sin might be rendered powerless.

Every Christian in this room received that this morning.

Sin has been rendered powerless in your life.

This is why I want to be careful here, but as a biblical counselor, sometimes a little, I'm a little careful with, let's be careful with that word addiction sometimes.

I prefer enslaving sin or voluntary enslavement.

You can choose righteousness by the grace of Jesus Christ because its power has been rendered powerless by the mighty work of Christ in your life.

But he says, the old self, the old man, the old you before your regeneration has been crucified with Jesus Christ.

That person no longer exists.

Praise be to God.

So if you ever wrestle with your testimony, just looking back at the things you've done, if you're like me, you got saved later in life.

You can look at passages like this and say, you know what, the enemy in my flesh or or others might want to put my sin in front of me, in front of me to shame me.

But I can go to Romans chapter 6, verse 6, and read what Paul says and remind myself, the gospel hope I have.

Romans 6:6

Yep, those sins are all true.

I did do those things.

And praise be to God that the old self was crucified with my Lord and Savior, and that that same sin I'm ashamed of, that power has been rendered powerless by the blood of Jesus Christ.

So for every look you take at your sin, make sure you take ten more at Jesus on Calvary on your behalf.

Paul says, Your old self, your slave to sin days, is gone, and now he has ushered in a new season.

Your new self, who is alive to God, has come.

He says this similar language in Colossians 3 3.

He says, For you died and your life is hidden with Christ in God.

I love this language.

You died.

That's past tense.

It's done.

It's definitive.

You died, and your life is now hidden with Christ in God.

Or in 2 Corinthians 5 17, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation.

The old has passed away.

Behold, the new has come.

All that death language is past tense, isn't it?

It's done.

It can't be brought back.

God doesn't hold receipts and says, wait, hold on.

Remember, you did this.

I forfeit my love.

No, it's done.

It's past tense.

You have died.

And here's what's dope: you didn't kill yourself.

God killed the old man.

You can't undo what God has done.

This is why teachings like Christians losing their salvation are so detrimental to people's spiritual lives because it takes the focus off of the Lord preserving his children to us preserving ourselves.

God killed the old man or woman in you.

It is past tense done, and no one can revert God's decision.

All that deaf language is past tense.

I love this.

It's like a pattern.

Paul says, When Christ died, you died.

When he rose, you rose.

When he rose to new life, you rose and now walk in new life.

That is how interconnected you are to your Savior through union with Christ.

What he did, you partake in in a spiritual sense.

And let's just put this out there.

This doctrine of union with Christ is a mystery.

Like the fact that we belong to Christ, he indwells us, and we share in his life, death, and resurrection is a mystery, but it's glorious.

Just because we can't fully understand something doesn't mean we can't treasure it and worship the Lord for it.

It's similar to, for example, this language of death in the new man.

Obviously, when a caterpillar becomes a butterfly, do you see butterflies going back to crawling around like a calipillar?

Caterpillar, right?

No, you don't.

They are a new creation.

They're like, no, I'm gonna soar.

I'm a fly because I'm a butterfly.

In the same way, if you've been raised with Christ to walk in newness of life, it makes no sense to return to your old sinful ways of life.

It makes no logical gospel sense.

If your nature spiritually has fundamentally fundamentally changed, and you try to go back to your sinful ways of living and habitually live in that, something is grotesquely wrong.

You either have no understanding of the gospel or you haven't truly been regenerated.

But if your nature has changed, let me be clear we all wrestle, we all fight temptation, we're all stumbling for Forward, so to speak.

We're all beggars trying to help others find where the bread is.

So I'm not talking about that.

There's a difference in a Christian who struggles with sin and is resisting temptation, confessing and repenting, and turning and asking for the Lord's help.

That's called faithfulness, okay?

But if you profess the name of Christ and yet return to your sinful lifestyle and habitually pursue it, something is wrong.

So the connection to water baptism.

Baptism is a public declaration of your resurrection life.

It's not that you have just died to sin, but it's also signifying that you have been risen to new life.

And your union with Christ isn't just about death, it's also about resurrection and newness of life.

This new life means pursuing holiness, loving the Lord your God with all your heart, mind, soul, and strength, loving God's people, and walking in joyful obedience to your heavenly Father who has redeemed you.

Now, all of what I'm categorizing here is important because this deals with the issue of so-called re-baptisms or rededicating your life to Christ, which is common phrases in a lot of church life.

I will say this: if you're baptized, quote unquote, but still clinging to your old ways of sin, then you have misunderstood what baptism represents.

This idea of rebaptism is not biblical because true baptism is a one-time act in the life of a believer that signifies publicly a believer's union with Christ and entrance into the visible church.

Therefore, to seek a so-called re-baptism is to misunderstand the nature of baptism itself.

It's not a sign of rededication or a fresh commitment, but a declaration publicly of God's saving work that never needs to be repeated.

So if your faith was genuine when you were baptized, there is no need ever in human history for a believer to do it again.

Because God's grace in saving you hasn't changed.

What often happens is when someone gets dunked and then decides to get rebaptized, theologically what has happened is you were never served the first time.

So that first time you went under the water, you just took a bath.

Because if you weren't regenerate, if you didn't have saving faith in Jesus Christ, that was not a baptism.

A baptism is someone who goes public, they understand that they have been converted, they have turned from their sins, and they want to go public with their faith.

And a church, a local church, goes public and receiving that person's credible testimony of faith and brings them into church membership.

But this idea of rededicating our lives and re-baptisms, and I'm not, I'm not trying to be rude, I'm just saying this just communicates a misunderstanding of salvation.

So the typical example would be someone gets baptized when they're a young child, and then they live like Satan for 20 plus years.

They uh attend church or someone shares the gospel with them and they decide I want to be rebaptized because now I truly understand the gospel.

The Lord has saved me and I want to follow him in obedience.

Then I would say, okay, you just got wet the first time.

Now let's actually baptize you.

That's a proper understanding of baptism.

All right, off that soapbox.

But Paul is just giving this beautiful language of what happens spiritually when one comes to faith in Christ by way of their union with the Lord Jesus Christ, making it clear that sin no longer has reign over the child of God.

So in verses 10 through 14, he now makes clear that if you have been united with Christ, if you have been buried with Christ and risen with Christ, therefore you must live for Christ.

Verses 10 through 14.

If you've been risen with Christ, you must live for Christ.

If you look down at verse 10, he says, For the death he died, he died to sin once for all time, but the life he lives, he lives to God.

So you too consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus.

Therefore, do not let sin reign in your mortal body so that you obey its desires, and do not offer any parts of it to sin as weapons for unrighteousness, but as those who are alive from the dead, offer yourselves to God, and all the parts of yourselves to God as weapons for righteousness.

I love that language.

Weapons for righteousness.

We need that on the t-shirt.

For sin will not rule over you because you are not under the law, but under grace.

Paul is now applying gospel logic to the church in Rome.

He says, if you've died to sin with Christ, if you've been made new, if you've been raised with him, then live like it.

Consider yourself, think about that language.

He's appealing to their logic.

He's saying, if all this gospel truth, if all this theology I'm unpacking before you is true for you as a Christian, then here's the logical conclusion.

Consider yourself dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus.

He's essentially saying, if this is true of you and I'm describing, then live like it's true.

This is actually the first commandment in the chapter.

He's saying, act like someone who has died and has risen again.

Practically, that means rejecting sin, pursuing holiness, and living a life of righteousness towards Christ.

One of my favorite passages in the entire Bible, Galatians 2.20, when Paul says, speaking of all of these truths, I'm unpacking this morning, he testifies, I have been crucified with Christ.

I no longer live, but Christ lives in me.

That is just a beautiful summary of what salvation leads to in our Christian lives.

I have been crucified with Christ.

When my Savior died, I died with him, and I've been made new.

And the new life I live, I no longer live it, but Christ lives in me.

Everything I do as a child of God is now empowered by my union with Christ.

So to return, to do the opposite of what Paul says when he says, So then consider yourselves dead to sin in a life to God.

The opposite of that is to say, I am a child of God.

I lay claim to all the benefits of union with Christ, but I'm gonna live in my habitual sin that I claim Jesus saved me from.

To illustrate this, this reminds me of, you know, so some of you might be familiar, after the Civil War, when slavery was emancipated, there was some who struggle with this new reality of I am now free.

So for example, older slaves who were slaves their entire lives still wrestled with, I know legally it's been declared, I am free, but when their master would come around, they still had this fear of I must obey.

That's like similar in the spiritual capacity of we've been set free, but we still like flirt with sin and temptation as if we're still enslaved to it.

Because we don't understand our new identity.

We have been set free.

We are crucified with Christ, and we no longer live, but Christ lives in us.

Paul is saying again, past tense, you were a slave to sin, but you've been set free.

And if that's true, why, Christian, would you ever go back?

That's like the the Israelites when God delivered them by a mighty hand out of Egypt.

And then they're they're in the wilderness and they're like, Man, didn't we have it better when we were in Egypt?

It's like, what did you forget the 400 years of oppression and being abused?

And just because you got it a little hard wandering around in the desert, you actually think it would be better to go back to that?

Think about that, because we're just like them.

Don't please don't read Exodus and think you're better than the Israelites.

Like they literally witnessed God deliver them through supernatural means, and yet they still harden their hearts towards God and said, Wasn't it better when we were in Egypt?

We can do the same thing when we forget the grace of our heavenly Father.

We were slaves to sin, but God has set us free.

And Paul makes it clear, and if that's true of you, if sin no longer has dominion over you, it resides in you, but it does not rule over you, how should you live in verse 12?

Well, number one, start with your thought life.

Therefore, do not let sin reign in your mortal body.

That is a commandment.

What he's saying there is we're all human, we're fully embodied beings.

Don't use your capacities to do stupid stuff.

If you're a child of God, use your capacities for righteousness.

Don't use, and I'm using capacities intentionally, I'm talking mind, I'm talking your actual body, your hands, what you choose to do.

He's saying all of you should no longer be a weapon for unrighteousness, but as those who are alive from the dead, offer yourselves to God and all the parts of yourselves to God.

I love this language, as weapons of righteousness.

So you really are in the Lord's army.

If you don't like that song, that's fine.

But theologically, according to Paul, you are in the Lord's army.

Offer your all of yourselves to God as weapons for righteousness.

And then verse 14, he gives the reason.

For sin will not rule over you.

That is a promise.

That is not a fortune cookie Christianity, you know, making you feel encouraged.

That is a promise.

For sin will not rule over you.

Why?

Because you're not under the law, but under grace.

The Pharisees misunderstood the law.

They failed to realize that the purpose of the law was not for them to customize it and bring it down a notch so that they could check some boxes and think that they were right with God.

The purpose of the law was to actually reveal humanity's sinfulness, therefore preparing them for their Messiah.

To recognize we can never keep this God.

And God would have said, Now you get it.

That's why the Messiah needs to come.

He fulfills the law on your behalf.

The law, as Paul says in Galatians, was supposed to be a tutor preparing them for the Messiah.

Now, to give a brief primer on how a lot of this connects to baptism and even how churches throughout church history have practiced the sacrament of baptism in the local church.

I'll start by saying this the New Testament knows nothing of an unbaptized Christian.

Baptism is a natural response of obedience, declaring publicly your allegiance to Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior.

It's more than personal, it's how the church, by Christ's command, welcomes new believers into the body.

And I'm not referring to the universal church, big sea church.

I'm referring to local churches, little sea.

So whether there's debate about the meaning of baptism and all these things, Christ's command is clear.

Obedience to the commandment to be baptized is not optional.

It's the first thing I like to say Jesus puts on a Christian's to-do list when you come to faith is to be baptized into a local church.

As one scholar puts it, in terms of obedience, we simply need to note that baptism is in fact commanded.

Many Christians eagerly talk of fulfilling the Great Commission given by Christ in Matthew 28, but rarely note that baptizing is one of the activities that is to characterize the making of the disciples.

We must obey Christ in baptizing to fulfill the Great Commission.

The sermon that marked the birth of the church concluded with the command, repent and be baptized.

A command the church obeyed as the gospel went forth.

In short, when someone publicly joins the local church through baptism, it's their faith going public.

They are publicly declaring, I followed my Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.

And keep in mind, this is a part that gets neglected.

And you, members of Redeemer Church, you also are going public saying we believe that this individual has a credible profession of faith, and we are going public with that as we receive them through the sacrament of baptism into our church family.

And why is it important for followers of Christ to publicly declare their allegiance to Jesus?

Because Jesus said in Matthew 10, Therefore, everyone who will acknowledge me before others, I will also acknowledge him before my Father in heaven.

But whoever denies me before others, I will also deny him before my Father in heaven.

If you are too ashamed of Jesus to publicly declare your allegiance to him, well then Jesus will not publicly declare you before his father.

Now let me be clear.

I am not saying baptism saves, it does not.

But Jesus makes it very clear: a Christian who is not willing to publicly declare their allegiance to him out of shame of their savior probably don't know the Savior.

Or let me illustrate it this way: every last one of you in this room has either been married or has attended a wedding.

When the bride and the groom exchange rings, does the ring, when they put it on, does that make them married?

No.

It's just a sign, it's a symbol of an inward reality.

When they make their public vows before the Lord, that creates the covenant of marriage, not the wedding ring.

Refusing baptism is like refusing the ring.

For someone to truly be in Christ, regenerate, born again, and yet refusing to move forward in baptism, is almost like, well, I say I'm married to Jesus, but I refuse to wear the ring.

Now, let me be clear.

Now there's situations where you know maybe someone just hasn't been instructed in the word yet to understand what baptism is and that they're called to pursue that.

So I want to make sure we have a caveat for that.

But the normative pattern in the scripture, when one understands the scriptures, is that one is to be baptized into the local church.

Now, to touch on the local church part, Jesus gives kingdom authority to local churches.

When Jesus handed the keys of the kingdom in Matthew 18, or when he handed the keys of the kingdom to Peter and the apostles, he was giving them the authority to affirm true confessions of faith and recognize true believers publicly.

So in Matthew 18, to uh to bind, so you hear this language of binding and loosing the keys of the kingdom, Jesus uses in Matthew 18.

Some misinterpret that text and say, well, he's he's referring to when two or more are gathered, you can have a prayer gathering.

No, God is all present, he doesn't need more than one person to hear your prayers.

In context, when you read Matthew 18, Jesus is talking about the role and authority of church members in regards to church membership and church discipline.

He gives the keys to members.

So to bind in Matthew 18 is to affirm someone's confession of faith and to bring them into the body.

To loose is to reject their confession and to remove them.

That's church discipline.

If it reaches the last step where someone is living in an habitual sin, they're unrepentant, there's efforts to call them to redemptive repentance and they refuse.

The church has a biblical authority by Jesus in Matthew 18 to loose them, to remove them from membership.

And you're not saying you're not a Christian because you're not God, you can't see people's soul.

But what you're saying is as a congregation, we can no longer use our authority to affirm your profession of faith.

Therefore, we ask that you do not participate in the Lord's Supper.

That's what church discipline is, that's what excommunication is.

You are barring that person from the Lord's Supper.

And you're saying as a church body, we can no longer give you the team jersey of Christian because we have questions about the credibility of your profession.

Now, in the positive sense, when someone comes to join the church, especially through baptism, a church is going public to exercise their authority to say, we affirm this brother or sister's testimony of faith, and therefore we extend our authority to them to be baptized into our church family.

This is a teaching that for some reason is not very prevalent in a lot of churches.

Churches sometimes just baptize people because they just want to be baptized.

They'll conclude a service and say, if anybody, anybody wants to walk down and be baptized today, come on down.

And I'm not saying those aren't genuine conversions, but it misses the point that the baptism and the Lord's Supper are sacraments given to the local church by Jesus Christ, not to individual Christians, not to youth camps, not small groups taking the Lord's Supper and all these things, not parents baptizing their children on their own at home.

It's a sacrament given to the local church.

And you church members have that authority to exercise, to affirm or to not affirm professions of faith.

Here's an example.

If you look at uh Acts chapter 2, for example, where the church was birthed at Pentecost.

Acts 2 · chapter mention

So Peter stands up under the influence of the Holy Spirit and preaches to a large audience after they had just crucified their Savior.

And in Acts chapter 2, beginning at verse 37, here's the audience's response when they hear Peter unpack the gospel.

Acts 2 · chapter mention

It says, When they heard this, they were pierced to the heart and said to Peter and the rest of the apostles, brothers, what should we do?

So they're convicted by the gospel they just heard and they want to obey.

Verse 38, Peter replied, Repent and be baptized, each of you.

So right there, believe, that's what repentance is, believe and then be baptized.

But he says, Repent and be baptized, each of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins, and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit.

For the promise is for you and for your children and for all who are far off, as many as the Lord our God will call.

With many other words, he testified and strongly urged them, saying, Be saved from this corrupt generation.

Now pay attention to verse 41.

So those who accepted his message, so not all of them did, but for those who accepted his message were baptized, and that day about 3,000 people were added to them.

Or in some of your translations, it might say, their number.

That last phrase is very important.

The author is not saying that they were added to the universal church, that they were baptized into the ether.

They were baptized into the church of Jerusalem.

Some might like to use the Ethiopian eunuch as an example.

It's like, well, number one, that's not prescriptive.

That's a rare circumstance.

But even my man Philip was actually endorsed and commissioned by the leadership in the church of Jerusalem to go serve the Lord.

What I'm trying to get at is baptism is always connected to church membership.

You are baptized into a church family who will care for your soul, where you will have pastors who have charge over you to love and lead you, and a congregation who will help you follow Jesus as they follow Jesus.

Which is why we would encourage everyone, do not pursue baptism.

If little Johnny in the eighth grade has an encounter with the Lord because he hears the gospel at a youth camp, praise God for that.

But encourage little Johnny to find a healthy local church who can go public with affirming his testimony of faith to bring him into church membership instead of just dunking little Johnny at youth camp, and there's no congregation that has any concern for his soul, no pastors over him, he just gets dunked and goes back to his ways of life.

Now, am I saying that's not a valid baptism?

Absolutely not.

If little Johnny fully understands the gospel and he's going forth in obedience to God's word to go public and say, I follow Jesus, well, praise God.

I'm saying ideally what's normative in the New Testament is Christians are baptized into local churches.

Now, you know me, I'm not, I mean, technically we're Baptists, we're a Baptist church.

I really don't care about the whole denominational banner stuff.

But Baptists have been known for holding what is called believers' baptism, which is not really unique to Baptists.

That's just if you read the Bible, it's very clear, you extend baptism only to those who are born-again believers.

So I don't want to be crude to my Presbyterian brothers, but that is the most confusing part of their theology when it comes to baptism, is that they are okay with baptizing unregenerate people into the local church.

So Presbyterians are content with knowing that we have a church body that is made up of both believers and unbelievers.

To me, that is very dangerous.

You could potentially be giving people assurance of salvation who should not have it, let alone all the examples in the New Testament of people actually being immersed in water.

And every every Presbyterian scholar would agree that the Greek word for baptism, baptizo, means to immerse fully in water.

Or if you look at the examples of when Jesus was baptized, the text says he emerged from the water.

The Ethiopian eunuch, similar language, he emerged from the water.

He said, Look, there's water here.

Now I'm no expert, but I mean, if you're gonna sprinkle people, I'm pretty sure you could baptize like 200 people with a little bit of water.

So I think it's pretty unique that the Ethiopian eunuch got into the water.

So baptism is.

By immersion, and then the other argument I would make is just the spiritual reality that immersion communicates.

So what we read in Romans 6, Paul is clear, you are you have been buried with Christ, you have been raised with Christ, you have died.

To me, being immersed in water better communicates that spiritual reality rather than I just dip my fingers in some water and just be like, boom, you've been raised with Christ.

Like, okay, well, it doesn't feel like it, you know.

But, anyways, but here we we would believe, we believe that the Bible teaches that baptism is a prerequisite for church membership.

That's why I love that passage in Acts 2.

Paul said, repent and be baptized.

Baptism serves as the visible initiatory sign of entering the new covenant community.

In Acts 2 2, 2 41, those who received the word were both baptized.

So they believed first, they repented and believed, then they were baptized and added to the church.

So when it says 3,000 were added to the number, that means somebody counted.

The church in Jerusalem understood who were of us and who was not, who believed and were baptized and joined and who did not.

Someone counted.

So baptism, then, I would say, is the front door for church membership.

Without baptism, there is no credible, visible affirmation of a person's faith in Christ and their union with Christ, therefore, no basis for church membership.

Some of you have heard me use this illustration.

If I were to go overseas to, you know, the UK or something and lose my passport, I could run around and tell people I'm a U.S.

citizen.

I was born in Los Angeles, I was raised in Riverside, California.

I could give all these facts and they might think, yeah, he sounds credible.

I think he he is a U.S.

citizen, but I have no authoritative body affirming that until I go to the U.S.

Embassy, which has the authority to represent the kingdom of the United States, so to speak, in a small local expression in the UK, they can use their authority to issue me a passport.

And now when I go around saying I'm a U.S.

citizen, a local authoritative body has exercised their right to affirm my profession.

Therefore, now my profession carries more weight because they have publicly affirmed with me Cameron is a U.S.

citizen.

So when we receive someone into baptism as a church, we are like a local embassy of God's heavenly kingdom, exercising our authority to say we extend to this brother or sister the team jersey of Christian.

So now they can go anywhere in the world and say, I am a member of Redeemer Church who affirmed my profession that I truly am a follower of Jesus, which is why the Bible has no category for an unbaptized Christian.

You're like a free agent running around saying, I am a follower of Jesus.

And we're not saying we don't believe you, but we're saying what local body has used their authority to affirm your profession, saying, We see the fruits of repentance in their life, therefore we have extended the sacrament of baptism to them.

So to summarize theologically, baptism makes a clear public boundary between the church and the world.

Without baptism, there is no formal recognition of one's inclusion into the body of Christ.

It is the front door to church membership.

So to admit someone into membership of a local church without baptism would be to undermine the very ordinance Christ gave to visibly mark off his people from the world.

And it was very, keep this in mind, it was very hard to join a church in the first couple of centuries.

Because to publicly be baptized into a church was also to put a death sentence on you.

Because persecution existed.

You could lose your job, you could lose your home, you could even lose your life, and many did.

So those who went forward, they understood what they were doing.

They were publicly marking themselves off from the world and saying, I now belong to the kingdom of my God and Savior.

This is why 1 Corinthians 12, 13 teaches that we were baptized into one body, meaning the local expression of Christ's church.

So thus baptism precedes membership because it is the church's public declaration that this person belongs to Christ and by extension to Christ's body, the local church.

To receive someone into membership without baptism is to act without biblical authority and to diminish the church's role in affirming credible professions of faith.

Now, if you want to go deeper into this, sign up for the Redeemer Institute next year.

Quick plug.

But just a word of encouragement to anyone in the room.

If you haven't been baptized and you know that you have trusted in Jesus for salvation, my encouragement to you would be just wrestle with the question: why have you not been baptized yet?

It is a joyful, celebratory act by which you get to go public and a local church gets to go public with you to say, This is a follower of Jesus.

Praise be to God for their salvation.

One theologian said to refuse baptism is not a small matter.

It is to reject the appointed way in which Christ has commanded his people to publicly identify with him.

Friends, this is a privileged sacrament we get to participate in.

It's not something we get to individualize ourselves and walk around as if we have the authority individually to dunk people.

It is something Jesus has given to his church to demonstrate visibly the power and the beauty of the gospel of Jesus Christ.

So to recap, by way of our union with Christ, according to Paul in Romans 6, if you are in Christ, if you have been born again, you have died with Christ, past tense, sin no longer owns you, you have been raised with Christ, you now have the new life in him, and therefore you must live for Christ, walking in the power of resurrection life.

And to encourage every single sinner in this room, you will do so imperfectly, you will struggle, you will fall, you will wrestle, but do so by being faithful.

And if you wrestle with sin and temptation, join the club.

This is the best church to join, because not a single one of us has arrived.

We are all seeking the Lord's help to follow him.

And I'm sure some of you here today are hearing this, and you have not yet past tense died to your sin and have been risen with Christ.

Man, you can have picked a better Sunday to worship with us.

Everything I'm talking about, and what you're about to see visually communicates the heart of our God, that he is so gracious and just that he will judge sin, but he is so gracious that he has provided a way of escape through the mercy of his son Jesus Christ.

As I read in Acts chapter 2, if you feel even in this moment your heart pierced, and you can echo the words of those Jewish men and women, like what should we do?

Acts 2 · chapter mention

Repent and be baptized, each and every one of you.

Because God shows mercy to sinners like me.

I want to close with this.

When you watch these baptisms today, I don't want you to just see water and people getting wet.

I want you to see death and resurrection.

If you're in Christ, I want you to reflect on when that happened to you, when Jesus saved your soul and showed you infinite grace and mercy.

And ask yourself, have I died to my sin?

We often say through our service, our goal is to have the gospel and God's word be central to every single thing we do, from the opening welcome to the last song we sing.

You hear the word, we pray the word, we sing the word, and today we get to see the word through baptism and the Lord's Supper.

And each of these is visually proclaiming the good news of Jesus.

John Piper once said, Baptism is the visible sermon of the gospel.

When someone is baptized, they are visibly proclaiming I was buried with Christ, and now I have been raised with him.

Amen.