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)