Monday, April 25, 2022

James V. Brownson on God Affecting "Washing of Sins" and the "New Birth" (Regeneration) Through the Instrumentality of Water Baptism

  

. . . 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)