Baptism And Formation

Our church organist approached me with a concern.  A man who had been attending for some time appeared to be dying.  I had visited him and prayed with him, but she was worried because, he “hadn’t made that decision.”  When she tried to talk to him about it he told her about his baptism; he had been baptized as an adult at another church before he came to ours.  But he “hadn’t made that decision,” so she wanted me to go and talk to him about it.

I started thinking about this afterward.  Why is “making that decision,” whatever this really means, more important and decisive than receiving baptism?  The stereotypical Evangelical formula of accepting Jesus as one’s personal Savior is not a biblical idea, nor is “making that decision.”  But baptism is.  And yet, for many evangelicals, baptism is seriously diminished, and the thing that really counts is making a decision, or praying the sinner’s prayer, or whatever form of conversion is in vogue with that group.

And yet, baptism is clearly taught by Jesus and has been practiced in the church since the beginning.  The Great Commission includes a command to baptize, not to persuade people to accept Jesus as their personal savior.  So why is baptism ignored in some circles?  Or, if not ignored, pushed into the background, treated as relatively unimportant.  I’m sure our organist would have subscribed to our denomination’s view that baptism is only a public witness, or statement, of one’s faith.  So “making that decision” was the place where the exercise of saving faith took place, and the only function of baptism was to make that public.

But I also remember in the past being puzzled about the value of baptism.  It goes by very quickly; what if I wasn’t properly recollected at that moment?  I didn’t think this would cancel out my baptism, but I was concerned that maybe I didn’t receive all I could have, and now my one chance was over.  I didn’t know at the time about Martin Luther’s emphasis on the spiritual benefits of looking back on our baptism.

When Paul speaks about us having died and risen with Christ in baptism, it’s difficult to believe that he saw baptism as nothing but a public statement of a private, personal faith.  Baptism is much more important than that and it has an ongoing effect on our lives in Christ as we remind ourselves of what took place when we were baptized into the death and resurrection of Jesus.  The practice, in some churches, of making the sign of the cross with holy water, is meant to be a reminder, a making-present, of one’s baptism.

So I now think it doesn’t really matter whether or not I was perfectly recollected at the moment of my baptism.  I probably was not.  What is important is to know that I was baptized into the death and resurrection of Jesus and to bring this to mind often; to know that this leads to a new life of following Jesus, and to live increasingly in the light of my baptism.