Water is the substance of life. We cannot live without it. Plants and animals cannot survive without it. We drink water to keep ourselves from dehydrating and dying of thirst. We use water for cooking and cleaning. We use water to wash ourselves, to make ourselves clean.
So, it makes perfect sense that God would use something in our everyday lives, something that gives us physical life, to bring us eternal life. In the same way that we cannot have physical life without water, neither can we have spiritual life without water, for God chooses to use water to bring us the spiritual life that only He can give.
Through water, God gives us a lifetime of learning and remembering. When you wash your face in the morning, remember how God washed away your sins in the waters of holy baptism. When you drink a glass of water, replenishing your physical being, remember how God gave you spiritual life in the water of holy baptism.
Yes, remember your baptism. The Greek work baptizo, from where we get our English word baptize, means “to wash.” And that’s what baptism is: It’s a washing, a washing of purification, a washing that is combined with the Word of God. It is as the Small Catechism says: “Baptism is not merely water. It is water used according to God’s command and connected with His word.”
In the New-Testament Gospels, we learn that the Jews of Jesus’ day baptized their pots and pans. They ceremonially washed them, so they would become ceremonially clean. Today, we move from the sink to the font, where we became washed, where we became clean. Today, we remember our baptism and what God does in and through the waters of baptism.
At the font, God cleansed us from the stain and curse of sin. That’s how God gives us spiritual life when only spiritual death once held dominion. That’s because baptism removes from us the sting of eternal death because our Lord took on death and hell to save us. For our benefit, Jesus placed Himself under the Law and its curse. Today, we learn that Jesus even submitted Himself to the baptism of John the Baptizer.
God had called John to preach a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. That’s the gift that baptism also works for us. Jesus went into the Jordan River to receive John’s baptism. John had to be scratching his head at this. “John tried to stop [Jesus], saying, I need to be baptized by you, and yet you come to me’” (Matthew 3:14). John knew that Jesus didn’t need baptism. He was the one person who didn’t need His sins forgiven, for Jesus was the one person who was sinless!
“Jesus replied, ‘This is the way it has to be now. This is needed to fulfill all righteousness.’ So John agreed to baptize Jesus” (Matthew 3:15). Jesus willingly submitted Himself to John’s baptism, making Himself the sinner who needed forgiveness, although He was the sinless One.
Through John’s baptism, Jesus placed Himself under the Law, all so we wouldn’t have to feel the full curse of the Law. So then, who is in need of baptism? Everyone who is a sinner, that’s who. Sinners need the sin-cleansing, conscious-clearing, life-giving bath of baptism that Jesus instituted. We need that washing. After all, we’ve all inherited a sinful condition from our first parents, Adam and Eve. We carry their sin still with us. But we also carry our own sin because we’ve all thought and done what is wrong in God’s eyes.
The damage that our sin brings to us is unspeakable. But the Apostle Paul deals with it head on. “What should we say then? Should we continue in sin so grace may increase? That’s unthinkable! How can we who died to sin still live in it?” (Romans 6:1-2).
Yet we still sin, as if our baptism never happened. For the Old Adam in us never goes down without a fight. And so we continue to sin against God in our thoughts, words, and deeds.
Oh, God has still saved and forgiven us in the waters of baptism, but each of us still has a heathen living within us. That’s why the old Adam, the stubborn heathen still living in us, must die its death every day. We do this by returning to our baptism when we confess our sins, running to the forgiveness only found in Christ Jesus.
Paul goes on: “Don’t you know that all of us who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death?” (Romans 6:3). You were baptized into Christ’s death. The Lord willingly and freely submitted to John’s baptism, placing Himself under the Law and its curse for you. The One who knew no sin entered the water clean, but came out of the water dirty. He became dirty for you, dirty with all your sin. He then carried your sins all the way to the cross, dying for them. Baptism connects you to Jesus’ death, and the salvation His death gives you.
That’s why Jesus commanded His Apostles to baptize. For when you are baptized, you don’t just get wet. No, it’s as Paul says:
We were buried with Him through baptism, so that just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, we too may walk in newness of life. For if we have become united with him in the likeness of his death, we will also be united with him in the likeness of his resurrection. For we know that our old self was crucified with him so that the body of sin would no longer dominate us, that we should no longer be slaves to sin [Romans 6:4-6].
In baptism, the Old Adam in us dies, and the new man, the resurrected man in Christ Jesus, emerges and arises to walk in newness of life.
This newness of life comes to us each day in the forgiveness of sins. By the Holy Spirit, we come to our heavenly Father, confessing our sins each day. And each day, the Old Adam in us drowns as our gracious God forgives our sins because of what Jesus did, and does, for us. We call this living in your baptism.
Martin Luther says in the Large Catechism:
If you live in repentance, you are walking in baptism, which not only announces this new life, but also produces, begins, and promotes it. In baptism, we are given grace, the Spirit, and strength to suppress the old Adam, so the new man may come forth and grow strong.
That is why baptism remains forever. Even if someone should fall from it and sin, we always have access to it, so we may again subdue the old Adam…. Repentance, then, is nothing else than a return and approach to baptism, to resume and practice what we had earlier begun but abandoned [LC IV 75-79].
Jesus not only died, but He has also risen from the dead. Tying that truth into baptism, the Apostle Paul wrote to the church in Colossae:
In Christ, you were also circumcised. This wasn’t a circumcision performed by human hands; it was a removal of the corrupt nature in the circumcision performed by Christ. This happened when you buried with him in baptism and raised with him through faith in the power of God, who raised him from the dead. When you were dead in your sins and your uncircumcised corrupt nature, God made you alive with Christ, forgiving all your trespasses [Colossians 2:11-13].
Indeed, it is as our Epistle reading for today states:
Now if we have died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with him. For we know that since Christ has been raised from the dead, he cannot die again. Death no longer has dominion over Him. For the death that he died, he died to sin once for all; but the life that he lives, he lives to God [Romans 6:8-10].
It is our Lord’s resurrection that gives baptism its power. But it’s His Word that attaches His power to baptism so it can do what it does–save us! From start to finish, baptism is all God’s doing. As the Apostle Peter tells us: “Baptism now saves you, not by removing the dirt from your body, but because it [that is, baptism] is the appeal of a clear conscience toward God. It [baptism] saves you by the resurrection of Jesus Christ” (1 Peter 3:21).
God called John to preach a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. Now, our risen Lord has given His bride, the Church, the charge to do likewise, to bring people into the body of Christ. The Lord has given the Church the only mission statement she will ever need: “Disciple all the nations by baptizing them into the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to keep all that I have commanded you” (Matthew 28:19-20).
Jesus commanded His Apostles to baptize and teach others into the kingdom of God. And this mandate lives on in Christ’s Church even to this day, until the day when Christ returns on the Last Day. In the Church, our charge is to bring others in, so they too may hear God’s life-creating Word, trust in Jesus Christ as their Lord and Savior, and become baptized into the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit.
We bring in our children. We bring in the elderly. It matters not how old or young they are, for God wants to make them all His children. And we rejoice when they then join us by living under God’s rule and reign of grace, so they would, through faith, one day enter His eternity of glory. Toward that reality, the old Adam is drowned here in the waters of baptism. Toward that reality, in every Divine Service, we return to our baptism as we confess our sins and receive God’s forgiveness. May God grant this to us all because of His Son, Jesus. Amen.
