It is a faithful saying: For if we be dead
with him, we shall also live with him: If we suffer, we shall also reign with
him: if we deny him, he also will deny us. (2 Tim 2:11-12)
Commenting
on this text, J.N.D. Kelly wrote:
A baptismal context is certainly suggested by
For if we have died with him, we shall
also live with him. This dying with Christ is not primarily, as has often
been proposed, death through suffering martyrdom for him, but rather the death
to sin and self which every Christian undergoes in baptism. Paul expounds his
mystical doctrine of this in Rom. vi. 2-23, where he also develops the thought
(see esp. 8, with which this line is almost identical) that being joined with
Christ in his death entails also being joined with him in his resurrection and
sharing his glorified life. C. also Col. iii.3. But the Christian’s death with
Christ in baptism is only a first instalment. It is his vocation, being mystically
united with the Crucified, to embrace a life of trials and hardships.
Nevertheless he was his reward, for if
we bear patiently, we shall also reign with him. The line crystallizes the
primitive Christian hope that, when Christ returns in glory to reign (1 Cor.
xv. 24 f.), the saints who have endured will sit on thrones like kings
alongside him (Rev. i.6; iii. 21; v. 10; xx. 4).
The implied call to endurance also fits in
with the baptismal setting. Mark’s Gospel, written only a few years later,
shows how deep was the conviction of the Church that hardship was the essence
of discipleship. But what if we
actually disown him? The stern
answer based on Christ’s own warning (Mt. x. 33), is that he will also disown us. The reference is again to the Last
Judgment, when the Lord will refuse to recognize those who have denied him. (J.N.D.
Kelly, The Pastoral Epistles: I & II
Timothy Titus [Black’s New Testament Commentaries; London: A&C Black, 1963,
1986], 179-80, emphasis in original)
Elsewhere,
commenting on Tit 3:3-5, Kelly writes that, for the author of Titus, the
instrumental means of appropriating God’s saving grace and one’s initial
remission of sins is water baptism:
This salvation God has mediated to us by means of the washing of rebirth and
renewal through the Holy Spirit. The reference is clearly to baptism, which
is also described as a washing (Gk. loutron; lit. ‘bath’) in Eph. v. 26 (cf.
also 1 Cor. vi. 11). From the grammatical point of view it would be equally
possible to take renewal as
dependent on the preposition by means of
(Gk. dia; lit. ‘through’) and
parallel to washing. On this
exegesis Paul would be distinguishing two processes,, the washing of baptism proper, and the subsequent restoration effected
by the Holy Spirit. The translation adopted, however, which takes the renewal in close conjunction with the washing, preserves the balance of the
sentence better; and the fact that Pauline, and early Christian thought
generally, connect the Spirit closely with baptism is decisive in its favour.
On this interpretation the effect of baptism
is first defined in terms of regeneration (G. paliggenesia), or rebirth.
The Stoics used this word to denote the periodic restorations of the world, and
in Mt. xix. 28 (its only other occurrence in the N.T.) it is used
eschatologically of the new birth of the whole creation in the messianic age.
In the mystery religions it denoted the mystical rebirth experienced by initiates.
Although Paul does not employs it elsewhere, the conception of baptism as a new
birth was taught explicitly by other N.T. writers (cf. Jn. iii.3-8; 1 Pet. i.
3; 23), and he himself speaks of Christians dying and rising to life again with
Christ in baptism (Rom. vi. 4) and henceforth being sons of God (ib. viii. 14).
In this way early Christianity interpreted
baptism in the light of current eschatological ideas about the restoration of
the world in the coming messianic age, now believed to have dawned. This
thought is elaborated in Paul’s further description of baptism as a renewal (Gk. anakainisis: for the word and the idea, cf. Rom. xii. 2). By this
he means the complete transformation or elevation to a new order of being, which
the Christian undergoes in baptism. He becomes, according to 2 Cor. v. 17, ‘a
new creation’ through his union with Christ, ‘freed from the law of sin and
death’ (Rom. viii. 2). The teaching here is thus thoroughly in harmony with the
baptismal theology of Paul’s earlier letters, and the objection that it
represents a further ‘step towards sacramental religion’ that he could ever have
taken is strangely misconceived. The account of the passage is wholly on God’s
mercy and grace, and if faith is not explicitly mentioned this is because (as
in 1 Cor. vi. 11, where it is not mentioned either) Paul is concerned with the
results of baptism rather than its conditions.
This re-creation is effected through the Holy Spirit (the genitive
in the original is causative), which he,
i.e. God the Father, poured out on us
richly through Jesus Christ, our Saviour. The figure of pouring out,
applied to the bestowal of the Spirit, is used in Acts ii. 17 (recalling Joel
ii. 28); ii. 33. For Paul’s belief that the Spirit was imparted in baptism, cf.
1 Cor vi. 11; xii. 13; 2 Cor. i. 22; Gal. iv. 6; Eph. i. 13). The importance of
this idea in the primitive Church is well illustrated by the story of our Lord’s
baptism, which was regarded as the prototype of the Christian sacrament, and in
which the descent of the Spirit figured prominently. It is naturally through
Christ (for our Saviour, see 2 Tim.
i. 10), as a result of their faith-union with him, that the Spirit is mediated
to Christians (cf. Acts ii. 33). Though not explicitly stated elsewhere by
Paul, this is implicit in his teaching. The triadic scheme, with its underlying
assumption of the cooperation of Father, Son, and Spirit, is also of a kind
very familiar in his own letters. (Ibid., 251-53, emphasis in original)