Monday, November 28, 2022

Joachim Jeremias on Paul's Affirmation of Baptismal Regeneration

  

How is justification bestowed? How does God accept the ungodly? In this matter we see things more clearly today because have learned in the last decades that it is in baptism that this bestowal takes place. This follows, for example, from 1 Cor. 6.11, where the verb ‘to be justified’ is surrounded by baptismal terms and formulae: ‘But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and in the Spirit of our God’ (cp. Further Gal. 3.24-27; Rom. 6.7; Tit. 3.5-7). Paul does not stress explicitly the connection between justification and baptism for the very simple reason that in the justification formula the term ‘by faith’ includes baptism by way of abbreviation, as R. Schnackenburg has convincingly shown (Das Heilsgeschehen bei der Taufe nach dem Apostel Paulus [1950], 120). The connection of justification with baptism is so obvious to Paul that he feels no necessity to state in so many words that it is in baptism that God saves him who believes in Jesus Christ.

 

Here we must remind ourselves that Paul speaks and writes as a missionary. In the missionary situation, for the Gentile or the Jew who believed in the good news and decided to join the Christian congregation, baptism was the decisive act by which he was included among those belonging to Jesus as their Lord. Therefore, Paul incessantly stresses the importance of baptism, and he uses a multitude of illustrations to show to the newly converted what this rite means ot them. He tells them: ‘When you are baptized you are washed; you are cleansed; you are sanctified; you are buried in the water and by this burial you get a share in Christ’s death and resurrection; you are putting on Christ like a garment; you are incorporated into his body; you are adopted and you become sons of God; you are circumcised with the circumcision made without hands, that is, you are made members of God’s people; in short, you are included in the kingdom.’

 

The formula ‘justification by faith’ is but one of these manifold illustrations. It is the description of God’s grace in baptism using a figure taken originally from the judicial sphere: God’s grace in baptism consists in his undeserved pardon. It is that formulation of the grace of baptism which Paul created in conflict with Judaism. Therefore it is not a ‘subsidiary crater’, but it occupies a place of equal importance with all other descriptions of the grace of baptism, cp, again 1 Cor. 6.11: ‘But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and in the Spirit of our God.’

 

This statement has a far-reaching consequence, namely that the doctrine of justification should not be isolated. On the contrary, it can only be understood in connection with all the other pronouncements about baptism. God’s grace through baptism is so comprehensive that each of the many illustrations, images and comparisons which Paul uses expresses only one aspect of it. If he speaks of ablution, the stress is upon deliverance from the uncleanness of the old existence. If he uses the image of the putting on of Christ, borrowed from the language of the mysticism, the emphasis is upon communion, even unity, with the risen Lord. (Joachim Jeremias, The Central Message of the New Testament [London: SCM Press Ltd., 1965], 59-61)