. . . the emphasis falls on what God
does in baptism. First, note the places where baptism is closely linked to
the washing away of sin—something only God can do (Acts 22;16 “Get up, be baptized,
and have your sins washed away, calling on his name.” Cf. Also Heb. 10:22). Similarly,
1 Corinthians 6:11 links “washing,” an obvious reference to baptism, with
justification and sanctification—all pointing to God’s activity, not a human
response: “You were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name
of the Lord Jesus Christ and in the Spirit of our God.”
Baptism is also linked in
Scripture to the giving of the Spirit, another pointer to divine action. 1
Corinthians 12:13 states “For in the one Spirit we were all baptized into one
body—Jews or Greeks, slaves or free—and we were all made to drink of one Spirit.”
Note a similar linkage of water, with its baptismal associations, and the
Spirit in John 3:5 and Titus 3:5. These last two texts also link the washing of
baptism with new birth, clearly a reality only brought about by God’s action.
Several other New Testament
passages also link baptism to our union with Christ, a union not accomplished
by our action, but by God’s. For example, Colossians 2;12 speaks of how Christians
are “buried with [Christ] in baptism” (cf. also Romans 6:3-4). Here the focus in
baptism also falls on what God does in joining us to Christ’s death, rather
than on an action that we take in response to God’s grace. Indeed, all these
texts, the overwhelming focus is on God’s action in baptism, not the human
response. (James V. Brownson, The Promise of Baptism: An Introduction to
Baptism in Scripture and the Reformed Tradition [Grand Rapids, Mich.:
Eerdmans, 2007], 26)
