Monday, December 8, 2008

Baptism to Relationship

1For I want you to know, brothers, that our fathers were all under the cloud, and all passed through the sea, 2and all were baptized into Moses in the cloud and in the sea, 3and all ate the same spiritual food, 4and all drank the same spiritual drink. For they drank from the spiritual Rock that followed them, and the Rock was Christ. 5Nevertheless, with most of them God was not pleased, for they were overthrown in the wilderness. I Corinthians 10.

While I appreciate and even enjoy the debate on the “efficacy” of baptism, commonly referred to as Federal Vision, I have said before that I don’t think that this is the best way to cast the issue. It casts the issue in the same terms as we would discuss the efficacy of an aspirin to relieve a headache. Baptism is a sign of a relationship, much as a wedding ring would be. Shouldn’t we talk in terms of relationship?

Baptism establishes a new relationship, which begs the question a relationship unto what? This passage clearly ties the sacrament of the Lord’s Supper to the sacrament of baptism. We have a relationship unto communion with Jesus Christ. The two cannot be separated. They should be considered together. Participation in the former flows out of the event of the latter. Meredith Kline points out in his short book By Oath Consigned that the Red Sea crossing had the characteristics of an ancient trial by water, much as what we would think of as a “trial by fire.” In such an event, the innocent are rescued and the guilty are destroyed. And this is exactly what happened in the Red Sea crossing. We, like they, show our relationship established in baptism in our communion with Christ. We show the lack of our relationship established in baptism in our lack of communion with Christ.

Yahweh takes his signs of covenantal relationship very seriously. In Exodus 3, Yahweh threatened to kill Moses for Moses’ failure to circumcise his son. I Corinthians 10 refers to Israel’s failure to observe the sacrament of the Sabbath in the Exodus. Ezekiel 20 refers to Yahweh’s use of the Sabbath as a covenant curse against the nation of Israel for their rebellion against Him. We should take those signs of covenantal relationship seriously too. God has given us a pattern of life of six days work and one day rest. He has called us to “remember” one day in seven as a memorial to him. He has also called us to commemorate his Supper in “remembrance” of him. If we look at the efficacy of our baptism through our communion with Christ, we see the efficacy in a living relationship not a mere sign. Our understanding of our baptism depends on a promise made by our covenant God that he will bless us through baptism. This is not an automatic thing; its better because it is based on relationship.

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