Preached at Markham Baptist Church, March 18, 2001

Well that was something you don't see every day. A young person, or any person for that matter, stating openly and honestly that she loves God and wants to obey him and serve him. That would be rare enough but then Amy was also baptized. She got in that big tub of water - and that I can tell you is not easy, with every eye in this place bearing down on you. And then she openly confessed her love for God and then allowed me to lower her down into the water. What's that all about?

What's baptism all about? Wouldn't it have been fine with God if Amy said what she said from the pulpit without going down into the water? What's it all about?

It is a question that Paul addresses in his letter to the Christians who lived in Rome. Paul is writing to them in chapter 5 about the wonders of God's grace and how because of grace we are forgiven of our sin. The magnificent truth is stated in 5:20: "Where sin increased grace increased all the more." (NIV)

And you can imagine that by the time Paul comes to the end of chapter 5 someone interrupts him and says, "Well if that is the case, Paul, then why not keep sinning? If every time we sin we can experience God's grace then why not keep sinning so that God's grace can abound?"

And you can imagine Paul throwing up his hands at this point and saying, "Anyone who thinks like that doesn't understand the gospel. Don't you know what happened to you?" he asks. "Through faith in Christ you are now a new creation."

Then, using the picture of Baptism, Paul describes what has happened in a person's life when he or she became a Christian. While teaching about our standing before God Paul teaches us what Baptism is all about.

Now, we can say in general, before we study the Word of God in particular, that Baptism is not a ticket to heaven. Baptism is not about who will be welcomed into God's presence and who will not. When we get to heaven there will not be two lines, one for the baptized and one for those who have not been baptized. God will not say to us, "You have been baptized? O, well you're in." And say to others, "You haven't been baptized? Well, sorry - out of the pool." When we meet God in heaven and we stand before his judgement seat he will not ask us, "Have you been baptized?"

No, he will ask you, "Have you received Jesus Christ as your Lord and Saviour and with reliance upon his grace and strength born his fruit in your life?" It is upon Christ's goodness, his righteousness, that our relationship with God depends.

So, what's Baptism all about?

The classic definition of Baptism is that it is an outward expression of an inward reality. It expresses what Christ has done inside us. Well what significant thing has happened inside a believer to cause anyone to be baptized?

Our text points the way.

First, Baptism is about Christ performing an act of sacrifice for our sins.

We read in verse 3 and part of verse 4:

"Don't you know that all of us who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? We were therefore buried with him through baptism into death."
(Romans 6:3-4) (NIV)

I have told you about my active conscience. I find it is most acute in my relationship with God. It is said that preachers today need to spend a lot of time in their sermons convincing people that they are sinners, that we have wronged God. I don't seem to have that problem. Do you have that problem? Have you got a clean conscience before God? I don't. I am very much aware of my sin and that outside of Christ nothing good lives in me. When I hear Paul say, "All have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God." I say, "Yes, that's me."

I see this sin in me especially when I come to the foot of the cross again. For there I realize that it wasn't the Jews who put him on the cross; it wasn't the Romans who put him on the cross. It was me. It was my sin that caused him to die. Do you ever feel that way?

I know I am a sinner. And I can identify fully with Paul's lament, "What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death?" I cannot save myself from myself. I cannot cleanse myself from my own sin anymore than I can wipe mud off my shoes without getting it all over myself. Have you ever tried that? You step in a mud puddle then try to wipe off the dirt, but in the process the mud just gets spread on your pant leg, on your hands. It just becomes a greater mess.

So we cannot cleanse ourselves from sin. I need a Saviour. You need a Saviour, someone who will take away the just judgement of God. Thanks be to God for Jesus Christ who lived the perfect life, and died on the cross and took all my sin and all your sin, all the sin of those who will believe in him, to that cross. He died for you and me. So we read in I Peter 2:24

"He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree, so that we might die to sins and live for righteousness; by his wounds you have been healed."
(1 Peter2:24) (NIV)

So, I am able to say to you this morning in all confidence that in spite of our sin, in spite of our wanting our own way, in spite of our neglect of God, God hasn't neglected you. While we were still sinners he sent his sinless son to pay the debt that we were to pay, to die the death that we were to die - offer that perfect sacrifice for our sins. And we are forgiven and brought into a new relationship with the Lord our God.

Baptism is about Christ performing an act of sacrifice for our sins. When we go down into the water, we testify to that fact - we are saying this is what God has done to us; He has put sin to death in us. You see, it's as if Christ comes to us, takes all of our pride, all of our ungodly longings, and takes them up to the cross with him and nails them there so that they are done away with, and buried and rendered powerless.

That's what it's about. That's why Amy was baptized the way she was this morning. She went down into the water, symbolizing death. The death of her old self, the death of the power of sin over her life.

Christ performing an act of sacrifice on the cross for our sins.

You will have noticed, however, that when I lowered Amy down into the water I did not leave her there. She came back up out of the water. This is important! For this speaks of the next fact of what Baptism is all about - Baptism is about the transforming power of Christ at work in the believer. This is what we learn in verses 4 through 10 of our text. We have been buried with Christ; our sin has been put to death. And now we have risen into newness of life. He has transformed us.

Verse 4:

"We were therefore buried with him through baptism into death in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, we too may live a new life."
(Romans 6:4) (NIV)

You know the old prayer which Martin Luther King used to delight to quote, the old slaves' prayer, "Lord, I ain't what I ought to be; I ain't what I'm gonna be; but thanks be to you, I ain't what I used to be."

And that is the testimony of everyone who has been touched by the grace of Jesus Christ. We are new creations. For not only has Christ gathered up all that sin in our lives and nailed it to the cross, he has put in its place his spirit, his will, his desires, and his life.

Arthur John Gossip, a great Scottish preacher of the previous generation, tells of how he was preaching to a huge congregation in the county of Yorkshire England. And he'd barely gotten started in his sermon when suddenly a coal miner in the audience leapt to his feet and began to shout, "Hallelujah, Praise the Lord," and then led the congregation in the singing of Praise God from Whom all Blessings Flow. And the service was over and John Gossip said, "I sank down to my seat like a deflated tire."

And after the service this coal miner came up to him and apologized for what he had done. He said, "You know, I simply can't help it; I've only been a Christian for six months and I'm so full of the joy of the Lord that I want to stand up and sing and dance wherever I am." And then he said this, "You know I used to be a drunkard. And I was so addicted to it that I used to go home and brutalize my wife and children. I pawned all the furniture in my home to sustain my habit. It was a living hell. Then Christ changed my life completely and now all things are new."

Then Gossip said to him, "How do you get along with your fellow workers down in the coal mine? What do the other men say when they see such a big difference in your life?"

"Oh well," he said, "they pull my leg about it and some give me a rough time, and joke - for example last week one of them said to me, 'Come on Joe, you don't believe that Christian stuff do you? You don't believe that story about Jesus changing water into wine do you?'"

And Gossip asked, "What did you say?"

"Well I said to him, I'm not an educated man., I don't know anything about changing water into wine. But let me tell you this, I know in my life Christ changed beer into furniture and that's a big enough miracle for me."

The power of God to transform a life - we are new creations. Thanks be to God for this miracle that he has brought about in our lives. It is a steadfast truth.

The sad part is that many of us forget that we are new creations and we still let sin have control of us. We still let that old nature dominate - when in fact it has been put to death. It is so sad to hear of Christians who continue to live in such a way that the life and love of Christ is not evident in them. That the way they do business now, as a Christian, is the same way they did business before they gave their lives to Christ. That the way they talk and treat their spouse is the same way they treated and talked to their spouse before they gave their life to Christ.

Here's the truth: sin has been put to death in you by faith in Christ. So how can we let sin still have control of us? Paul says in verse 11, "Count yourselves dead to sin but alive to God in Christ Jesus." To be sure, we "ain't what we ought to be." We should not expect perfection this side of heaven, but there should be a growth toward it. So that people can look at us and say because of Christ in his/her life "he/she ain't what he/she used to be."

III

But, I am getting ahead of myself, for this leads us to the last sentence. What's it all about? Baptism is about Christ performing an act of sacrifice for our sins. It's about the transforming power of Jesus Christ, and then this, Baptism is about a believer seeking to live for Christ.

So Paul says, this is the amazing truth of what has happened to you. Sin has been put to death. You have now been made new. So therefore, in verse 12 and 13:

"Do not let sin reign in your mortal body so that you obey its evil desires. Do not offer the parts of your body to sin, as instruments of wickedness, but rather offer yourselves to God, as those who have been brought from death to life; and offer the parts of your body to him as instruments of righteousness."
(Romans 6:12-13) (NIV)

The act of Baptism is itself an act of obedience to Christ's command to be baptized. Do you know that Jesus Christ never said that baptism doesn't matter? He never said that it was a mere ritual that you can ignore and put off if you feel like. Jesus commanded it and called us to submit to it. It is an act of obedience. And so, baptism symbolizes a desire on Amy's part and anyone who is baptized, to submit to God's will to tell him she loves him and wants to follow in the steps of his son.

It is a fundamental truth that a Christian wants to obey Christ. The first question of a newly born Christian is the one put by Paul as he walked the Damascus road - here he is walking down the road, and miraculously had a vision of Jesus and a conversation with Him. As soon as Paul learned that it was Jesus who was speaking to him, the first question he asked was, "Lord, what is it that you would have me do?"

The Christian wants to know that Christ wants done.

It would be a serious error on the part of a soldier if he obeyed certain commands of his superior officer and discarded the others saying, "I do not like those, I will reject them." It would be a serious error if the pharmacist, looked over the carefully prepared prescription of the capable physician and said, "Here are some elements that I will discard. I will cast them aside. I will fix up the prescription as I please."

That would be a great mistake. And it would be a serious mistake for us to say to Christ: "I hesitate here; I delay here; I refuse here."

Through Baptism, we say to Christ and to the world, I belong to him and I'm going to live my life for him. All that I am and all that I have I will lay at his feet. Wherever he calls me I will go; whatever he asks me to do I will do. I belong to Christ, and take my stand with him.

What's it all about? It's about Christ performing an act of salvation on the cross, Christ transforming our dead selves to all the fullness of life - it's about responding to those amazing truths and seeking to obey his word so that his life can shine through us.

That's what it's all about. But still you may ask if I could prove the truth of all this. Well, as in science, so with Christianity, the proof is in the experiment. Someone asked Coleridge the same question, "Can you prove it?" to which came the reply, "Why certainly, try it."

If Christ should come down to this pulpit this morning I think he would tell me to stand aside and he would say confidently to us all, "Come and see; come and try me and see if I am not able to transform your life. Come and test me and see if I am not able to give you life to the fullest. Put me to the extreme test. Come and test me for yourself and see if I do not give you salvation and life abundant. Come and test me, and you will know, and when your fellows ask you what has happened you will reply, "I used to ask, 'What's it all about?' but now I know - it's about Christ and his love for me. I was blind but now I see."

Lord God we thank you that in Jesus Christ we find forgiveness of our sin, and life - life to the full. We thank you for Amy's testimony of your goodness, mercy and grace this morning. We would pray for those hearts you have touched this morning through your word - Lord help them to pray these words - Lord Jesus Christ I recognize my need for your forgiveness and life in my life. I ask you to be my Lord and Saviour. I give myself to you.

Thank you Lord for your presence here this morning. Amen.

If you have accepted Jesus Christ as Lord and Saviour this morning for the first time, I would invite you to seal your decision by speaking to myself or to one of the deacons today.