Monday, April 25, 2022

James V. Brownson on Baptism being the Instrumental Means of Appropriating the Salvific Effects of the "Blood" (Atonement) of Jesus

  

Recounting his conversion in Acts 22:16, Paul recalls the words of Ananias to him, just after he had recovered his sight: “And now why do you delay? Get up, be baptized, and have your sins washed away, calling on his name.” Here baptism is interpreted essentially as a cleansing rite. We see a similar perspective in Ephesians 5:25-26, where the text speaks of how Christ “Loved the church and gave himself up for her, in order to make her holy by cleansing her with the washing of water by the word.” Here preaching (the word) and baptism are closely connected to each other, but baptism is again viewed as a “washing.” Hebrews 10:22 reflects the same understanding of baptism as cleansing, exhorting its listeners to “approach with a true heart in full assurance of faith, with our hearts sprinkled clean from an evil conscience and our bodies washed with pure water.” Here an explicit connection is made between the outward washing of the body (i.e., baptism) and the inner cleansing of the heart from an “evil conscience.”

 

At first glance, it might appear as if the notion of baptism as cleansing is completely unrelated to baptism as union with Christ’s death and resurrection. What does dying and rising have to do with taking a bath and getting clean? Yet as we shall see, these two images are, in fact, closely related to each other, and must be interpreted in light of their relationship to each other.

 

The linkage in Scripture between death and cleansing is found in the way blood is used in the Bible. In numerous passages, the sprinkling of blood has a cleansing function. In the cleansing ritual for lepers in Leviticus 14:14, blood is sprinkled on the leprous person in order to achieve ritual purity. In the ritual associated with the Day of Atonement, blood is sprinkled on the altar in order to cleanse it (Lev. 16:19). The same linkage between blood and cleansing is found in 1 John 1:7: “But if we walk in the light as he himself is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus his Son cleanses us from all sin.” Similarly, 1 Peter 1:2 speaks of how Christians “have been chosen and destined by God the Father and sanctified by the Spirit to be obedient to Jesus Christ and to be sprinkled with his blood.”

 

In the logic of the Bible, to be baptized into Christ’s death is also to be sprinkled with Christ’s blood. This is both why and how baptism signifies cleansing. Baptism does not cleanse us because the water, in itself, has some spiritual power. Neither does baptism cleanse because the church’s rites, in themselves, can cleanse. Rather, baptism cleanses because it points to our union with Christ, whose life-giving death cleanses us from sin.

 

Baptism thus presupposes that human beings are in need of cleansing, that sin has left us in a defiled condition that must be remedied if we are to live in God’s presence as members of Christ’s body. (James V. Brownson, The Promise of Baptism: An Introduction to Baptism in Scripture and the Reformed Tradition [Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 2007], 54-55)