Mediocre Coffee and Cheap Donuts

22 November 2022

In Acts 2, Peter preaches that God has made Jesus both Lord and Christ. When they ask “What do we do?” it’s because they believe what Peter said. If they didn’t believe him that Jesus is Messiah, then there’s no need to ask for instructions. Then Peter gives the instructions: “Repent, and let every one of you be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ for the remission of sins; and you shall receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. For the promise is to you and to your children, and to all who are afar off, as many as the Lord our God will call.”

Does this mean everybody needs to get dunked to go to heaven? Some people have thought so. Others have tried to engineer some kind of special circumstance for this audience that would no longer apply today: they were under the unique curse of blaspheming the Holy Spirit; the baptism is required because they crucified the Messiah; they were in a transitional dispensational period; baptism was for Jews, not Gentiles, etc.

But no; no special pleading is required. But you do need a robust biblical theology of baptism. If baptism is the New Covenant analog of the Flood (as Peter will later write in 1 Peter 3:21), then baptism delivers you from the judgment that is coming upon the wicked world, and delivers you into a new one, just like the Flood did with Noah. That’s not some transitional/dispensationally unique item for this moment in Acts; that’s just what baptism does.

For these specific people in Acts 2 (who were lately shouting “Give us Barabbas!”), the judgment they have coming is about crucifying the Messiah, sure. But it’s not as if (say) the Ephesian Gentiles Paul preached to didn’t have their own judgment to deal with: they “were by nature children of wrath” until God saved them. There’s always plenty judgment to go around, and the consequences of sin are always deadly (cf. James 1).

For the Acts 2 Jerusalemites, the water baptism was the Christian community in Jerusalem receiving them into itself. If they heeded the warnings of Hebrews, baptism saved their lives, because when the Jewish revolt began, the Christian community fled the city, correctly believing Jesus’ promise that it would be destroyed. If they did not heed the warnings of Hebrews and returned to Judaism, then they were swept up in the revolt and–as promised in Hebrews–suffered a fate far worse than stoning.

For the Ephesians, and for us, baptism joins us to the Christian community. For most evangelicals, that really means nothing, because most evangelicals have no community to speak of, and therefore nothing to join. It would be a mistake to read that defect in our praxis into our theology. Our sin in this matter is entirely foreign to the New Testament. The life of the Body in the NT is a thick, substantial, literally life-saving community, and that’s the backdrop for this text.

Live like the heathens outside the community, and all the judgments that fall on the heathens outside the community will fall on you: “because of these things the wrath of God is coming upon the sons of disobedience; therefore do not be partakers with them.” Join the community and come under its discipline and rule of life, and you get to skip all that. Baptism admits you to the community (just as excommunication excludes you from it.)

Take Carlos for example: when I met him, Carlos was living on the street, addicted to anything that would numb him out. He’d been badly hurt, and he’d done a lot of damage to other people too, and he was running from all of it. I led him to Christ, and then found out he was suicidal, and I’d just helped him be sure he’d go to heaven. (That’ll do something for your prayer life!) A local fellowship he was already somewhat hanging out with baptized him, and when he really joined in Christian fellowship, God’s people supported him in kicking his addictions, finding a job, finding housing, getting a vehicle. Last time he came by, I hardly recognized him, he looked so good.

Meanwhile, Jimmy OD’ed on heroin in a Burger King bathroom, another guy froze to death, another guy was murdered for a sleeping bag or something similarly stupid…you get the idea. Christian fellowship saved Carlos’ life. Real sharing of life, not standing around after church and lying to other middle-class suburbanites about your week over mediocre coffee and cheap donuts.

I know that sounds harsh. The reality is harsh. Because we refuse to share life with one another, we deprive each other of the life-giving support the Body is supposed to provide. We can’t obey the “one anothers” if we don’t really spend time together, and obeying the “one anothers” is an essential part of the Christian life. Without it, we live subchristian lives. When our fake fellowship fails to yield benefits–as of course it will–we end up with an anemic view of the community, and therefore an equally anemic view of what baptism accomplishes by bringing someone into it.

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Posted by Tim Nichols

Washed

9 March 2021

I had occasion to finally summarize my research and teaching on baptism over the past decade or so. Here it is.

1 Comment | Baptism, Kingdom Parish, liturgy | Permalink
Posted by Tim Nichols

On Rebaptism

8 September 2020

Zaccheus walks into the temple. Since Jesus visited his home a few weeks ago, he’s a changed man. He has restored everything that he cheated anyone of, like he promised–and that took a while–and word has spread far and wide of the tax collector who has repented. As he passes through the temple gate, whispers spread through the crowd like a wind through dry leaves. He stops inside the gate and looks up at the inner temple. It’s been so long since he was welcome here. So long since he came here to worship.

A wizened priest approaches him, suspicion etched deep in his wrinkled face. “What brings you here, tax collector?”

Not long ago, the man’s tone alone would have been enough to drive Zaccheus out of the temple. But he’s a different man now. Zaccheus bows his head. “I need to be circumcised again.”

Does that sound odd to you?

As circumcision was the rite of entry under the Old Covenant, baptism is the rite of entry in the New. Some folks have taken that to mean that we should baptize babies born into Christian families, but that’s only because they haven’t thought it all the way through. You circumcise an Old Covenant baby after he’s born into the Old Covenant, which was simple enough. Under the New Covenant, though, people are born twice. Which birth do we baptize them after? If baptism is the new circumcision, what is the new birth?

Well…the new birth. So once the person is born again, we baptize them. If the man wanders away, becomes a gambler and a drunkard, joins the Hell’s Angels, sells automatic weapons to third-world dictators, the whole works, and then comes back, does he need to be baptized again?

No. The original baptism counted, and it still counts. His many sins are an insult to his baptism, but they don’t undo it, anymore than cheating on your spouse undoes your wedding. You can’t commit adultery enough times to make your wedding didn’t happen. (You might induce your spouse to divorce you, but that’s a different thing.)

Now, if this man comes to me, repentant of his life and seeking to return to the Lord, will I receive him? Of course! If he wants to be rebaptized as a symbol of his repentance and return, will I refuse him? Of course not!

A couple whose marriage was dead and has come alive again may renew their wedding vows. I see nothing wrong with renewing the man’s baptism. But that is what we’re doing — renewing it.

2 Comments | Baptism, liturgy | Permalink
Posted by Tim Nichols

Neighborhood Sacramentology: When to Baptize?

28 June 2019

In the church we have the tendency to take certain truths about the sacraments and make applications in directions that we shouldn’t, but God has a much different view of the sacraments than we do. We’ve made the Lord’s Table something to be protected, lest some heathen get away with a wafer. No; it is the body of Jesus, and Jesus gave His body to and for the world. Of course it’s blasphemy, but it’s God’s blasphemy. Our job is to submit to what God is doing. 

Likewise, we recognize the importance of baptism, and therefore delay it in order to get all the logistical ducks in a row to make a big to-do. We want to do it in church on a Sunday morning. We want the person to invite all his unbelieving friends and relatives to the baptism so we don’t miss a recruiting opportunity. It somehow escapes our notice that there is no biblical example of delaying baptism for these reasons. A new convert is baptized in the first available body of water by whatever Christian is on hand to do it. 

3 Comments | Baptism, Ecclesiology, Kingdom Parish, liturgy | Permalink
Posted by Tim Nichols

Neighborhood Sacramentology: Baptism

18 November 2012

In a previous post, I began discussing the gap between the western institutional structure we think of as “the church” and the activity of the Body of Christ as the Church in the world. Given that “church” as the New Testament uses the term is hardly coextensive with the 501(c)(3) corporate model that we use today in the US, what does that mean for sacramental observance?

For baptism, it’s a no-brainer. The New Testament shows us nary a single example of baptism in any other pattern than this: the new believer is baptized immediately upon profession of faith, by whoever is handy, with the nearest available water. There’s just no NT concept of getting interviewed by the elders or the priest first, waiting three weeks until the next time the baptistry will be filled up, none of that. Maybe there was an occasion with somebody, sometime, where wisdom dictated that one or more of those extrabiblical constraints was a good idea in some particular case, but there’s no call to be accepting that as the normal pattern.

So that one’s pretty obvious: if we follow the NT pattern, when someone professes faith, we baptize ’em right then. If they happen to be in a church building at the time, well, so be it. If not…the bathtub, pool, pond, or river will do just fine. If Baby Jesus could be laid in a manger, His disciples can be baptized in a horse trough.

1 Comment | Baptism, Ecclesiology, Kingdom Parish, Worship | Permalink
Posted by Tim Nichols

Seven True Things I Have Gotten In Trouble For Saying Out Loud

20 May 2012

In the ecclesiastical tribe that raised and trained me, we are accustomed to thinking of ourselves as absolute followers of Scripture.  If the Bible says the earth is about 6,000 years old (which it does), then it is, and carbon dating be hanged.  Some other explanation for the C-14 ratios must be found.  If the Bible says that the whole world was covered by water in Noah’s flood, then it won’t do to postulate that someone’s bathtub overflowed in Mesopotamia somewhere, and that’s all it was really talking about. If the biblical account of the Exodus doesn’t fit with our timeline of Egyptology?  Crying shame those poor historians put in all that work without taking account of the most important primary source we have….  Better luck on the next attempt, guys.

We take it all, straight up the middle, no matter who says “You can’t say that!”  We’re famous for it.

Except, of course, that we don’t.  I have to admit, I had believed our propaganda, and it was therefore with considerable surprise that I discovered that it just wasn’t true.  Not only that, but “I was quoting the Bible” turned out to be a highly inadequate defense for saying things that my community found uncomfortable.  With no further ado, I present to you seven such things.

  1. Baptism saves you.
  2. Belief takes place in the heart.
  3. The purpose of holiness is eternal life.
  4. In communion, we are sharing the body and blood of Christ.
  5. The things that happened to the Exodus generation are all types for our benefit.
  6. A cheerful Christian should be singing Psalms.
  7. God’s children don’t sin.

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See 1 Peter 3:21, Romans 10:9-10, Romans 6:22, 1 Corinthians 10:16, 1 Corinthians 10:11, James 5:13, 1 John 5:18.

______

Feel free to question, challenge, or discuss.  The more the merrier.

5 Comments | Baptism, Chicken Bones, Meditations, Speaking as God Speaks | Permalink
Posted by Tim Nichols