Friday, October 14, 2022

Thomas J. Nettles' Functionally Rejecting the Perspicuity of Scripture to Deny Baptismal Regeneration in Romans 6

  

Does this mean that in baptism Paul was to consider his sins as being washed away? The text does not support this viewpoint. His baptism identifies him with the Jesus whom he recently persecuted and whose mission was defined in terms of his submission to the baptism of John. The washing away of sins if connected with calling on Jesus’ name. The participle should be considered instrumental: “by calling on his name.” This phrase duplicates Peter’s use of the same verse in Joel in the sermon at Pentecost. Paul uses it in Romans 10:13: “Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.” There he shows that such calling is the mouths’ expression of the heart’s conviction that salvation depends on the atoning work of Christ verified as acceptable by the resurrection. At his conversion, therefore, Paul expressed his persuasion that Jesus was Lord and Christ and that the resurrection represented the culmination of Christ’s atoning work. In his heart—in the seat of his moral judgment and affections—he knew that Christ’s death was necessary for salvation. The resurrection meant that the propitiation was accepted, and now, by the power of an incorruptible life, the Righteous One lives and intercedes for us before the Father (cf. Rom. 4:24-25). His baptism was a public witness to his cordial union with Christ in the entire redemptive transactions.

 

Because of this strong image present in baptism, Paul used it as a teaching tool in pressing the implications of salvation on the churches. When some inferred falsely that since increased sin meant superabounding grace (cf. Rom. 5:20-21) we should continue in sin, Paul reminded them of what they had confessed in their baptism: “Don’t you know that all of us who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into this death? We were therefore buried with him through baptism into death in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, we too may live a new life” (Rom. 6:3-4). Your confession in baptism, Paul insists, contradicts the false logic of continuing in sin.

 

Paul declares that when we are baptized into Christ Jesus, we undergo a vivid reenactment of our participation with Christ in his historical death on the cross. Faith implies that we have come to a verdict of condemnation concerning ourselves and a repulsion concerning our sin. We see our only hope for forgiveness and right standing in Christ’s work. Each movement in the baptismal event bears witness to the historically objectified spiritual status that a sinner receives experientially by faith. The picture of being surrounded by the water and emerging from it calls to mind the irreversible purpose assured in Christ’s being delivered up to death for our sins and being raised again for our justification, to save us not only from sin’s penalty but from its power.

 

Paul employs the same use of baptism in Galatians 3:27: “All of you who were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ.” He had emphasized that their justification and adoption came by fait: “So we, too, have put our faith in Christ Jesus that we may be justified by faith in Christ and not by observing the law, because by observing the law no one will be justified. . . . You are all sons of God through faith in Christ Jesus” (2;16; 3:26). Paul raged against a heresy that sought to add something of religious ceremony (circumcision) to the completed work of Christ in order to complete salvation (cf. 3:1-5; 5:1-6). He insisted that from the cross of Christ flow all the blessings of eternal life and life in the Spirit (cf. 2:20; 3:13-14; 5:11; 6:14-15). Hearing and believing the message of the cross unleashes all the blessings stored in it.

 

How strange would it be that Paul introduces a new ceremony by which Christ’s saving work becomes effectual? Could he really be saying, “Reject the heretical formula of hearing plus believing and plus circumcision; instead replace it with hearing plus believing plus baptism”? That interpretation of baptism would run counter to Paul’s purpose in Galatians. Their baptism gave a physical presentation of the spiritual certainties involved in faith. Faith is not empty but engages us with the resurrected Christ in his present status of living to make intercession for us. He gained that status through his being a “merciful and faithful high priest in service to God, and that he might make atonement for the sins of the people” (Heb 2:17). Thus when by faith we are clothed with Christ, baptism illustrates the transaction that actually has taken place. As a divinely ordained manner of expressing an existing confidence, baptism is spoken of as the thing itself. When Paul refers to the Galatians’ baptism as being “clothed . . . with Christ,” he encourages them to remember that Christ’s death alone, and no human ritual, bears to them spiritual life. (Thomas J. Nettles, “Baptism as a Symbol of Christ’s Saving Work,” in Understanding Four Views on Baptism, ed. John H. Armstrong [Grand Rapids, Mich.: Zondervan, 2007], 31-33)