Monday, June 1, 2020

Ambrosiaster on Baptism and Romans 6:3-5; 1 Corinthians 1:17; 6:9-11

Rom 6:3-5

 

3Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death?

 

Paul says this so that we might know that once we have been baptized we should no longer sin, since when we are baptized we die with Christ. This is what it means to be baptized into his death. For there all our sins die, so that, renewed by the death we have cast off, we might be seen to rise as those who have been born again to new life, so that just as Christ died to sin and rose again, so through baptism we might also have the hope of resurrection. Therefore baptism is the death of sin, so that a new birth might follow, which, although the body remains, nevertheless renews us in our mind and buries all our old evil deeds.

 

4We were buried therefore with him by baptism into death, so that as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life.

 

In saying this, Paul means, first of all, that Christ raised his own body from the dead. For he is the power of God the Father, as he said: Destroy this temple and I will raise it again in three days. He was saying this about the temple of his own body; because Christ has risen to a new life, he is now a stranger to death. It also means that we now have a new way of life, which has been given to us by Christ. For by baptism we have been buried together with Christ, in order that from now on we may live according to the life into which Christ rose from the dead. Baptism is the sign and symbol of the resurrection, which means that we ought to abide in the commandments of Christ and not go back to what we were before, for the person who dies does not sin; death is the end of sin. This is symbolized by water, because just as water cleanses the dirt of the body, so we believe that we have been spiritually cleansed by baptism from every sin and renewed, for what is incorporeal is cleansed invisibly.

 

5For if we have been united with him in a death like his, we shall certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his.

 

Happily Paul says that we can rise again if we have been united with Christ in the likeness of his death, in other words, if we have laid aside all our wickedness in baptism and, having been transferred into a new life, no longer sin. In this way we shall be like him in his resurrection, because the likeness of his death presupposes a similar resurrection. The apostle John states this in his epistle when he says: For when he appears, we shall be like him. This is what it means to rise again immortal and glorious. The likeness does not mean that there will be no difference at all between us, of course. We will be like him in the glory of his body, not in the nature of his divinity.[1]

 

1 Cor 1:17

 

17For Christ did not send me to baptize but to preach the gospel, and not with eloquent wisdom, lest the cross of Christ be emptied of its power.

 

Because it is a greater thing to preach the gospel than to baptize, Paul says that he was sent to do the former, not the latter. The dignity of all ordinations belongs to a bishop, because he is the head of the other limbs. In this way, Paul also humbles those whom the Corinthians were honoring simply because they had been baptized by them. He tells them that it is no great thing to baptize, because not everyone who baptizes is competent to preach the gospel. After all, the words used at baptism are an established formula. When Cornelius became a believer, the apostle Peter gave orders that he should be baptized along with his household, but he did not bother to do it himself when he had his assistants standing by. He would only have done it himself if they had not been there and there was no other choice. Paul thus shows how much better he was than the people whom the Corinthians were honoring, but he does not allow this conclusion to be drawn by referring to himself, knowing full well how dangerous it is to arrogate the glory of God to the name of a mere man. In its own way, that is idolatry!

 

It was because Christian preaching does not need elaborate refinement of verbal expression that fishermen, who were uneducated, were chosen to preach the gospel. In that way the truth of the message would be its own recommendation, witnessed to by its own inner power. It would not depend on the cleverness or ingenuity of human wisdom, like those disciplines which are human inventions, where verbal dexterity has replaced the search for logic and virtue. Anyone who tries to commend the Christian faith in this way is seeking his own glory, because his splendid rhetoric obscures the truth and brings praise to the speaker, not to the faith he is supposedly proclaiming. The false apostles were doing just that, preaching according to the wisdom of this world so as not to appear foolish to the worldly-wise. They were cultivating their rhetorical brilliance and at the same time omitting things which the world does not believe, like the virgin birth of Christ and his resurrection from the dead. It was for this reason that Paul said that he was not preaching according to human wisdom, because he did not want to nullify the power of the cross of Christ. Anyone who proclaims Christ in that way denies the truth of Paul’s preaching, as I have already said.[2]

 

1 Cor 6:9-11

 

9Do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived; neither the immoral, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor sexual perverts,

 

Paul indicates that they are not sinning unknowingly, and so it is that much harder to excuse them. For if the unmerciful are guilty before God, how much more so are the wicked!

 

10nor thieves, nor the greedy, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor robbers will inherit the kingdom of God.

 

Paul did not say this because the Corinthians did not know it already—after all, he had spent a year and a half among them, teaching God’s Word—but in order to revive their reverence for the law and their means of deserving the kingdom of heaven.

 

11And such were some of you. 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.

 

Paul said some of you in order not to appear to be including everyone, nor (on the other hand) to be excusing them all, which he would have done if he had said nothing about it. The way it appeared, it seemed as though he had forbidden their crimes, rather than revealed them! He added but you were washed so that after having been convicted of their guilt, they could breath a sigh of relief. Some people habitually put up with embarrassment and amend their ways when they hear good things spoken of them.

 

The Corinthians had received all the benefits of purity in their baptism, which is the foundation of the truth of the gospel. In baptism the believer is washed clean from all sins and is made righteous in the name of the Lord, and through the Spirit of God he is adopted as God’s child. With these words, Paul is reminding them how great and how special is the grace which they have received in the true tradition. But afterward, by thinking which is contrary to this rule of faith, they had stripped themselves of these benefits. For this reason he is trying to bring them back to their original way of thinking, so that they can recover what they had once received. [3]

 

Notes for the Above

 

[1] Ambrosiaster, Commentaries on Romans and 1-2 Corinthians (ed. Thomas C. Oden and Gerald L. Bray; trans. Gerald L. Bray; Ancient Christian Texts; Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic: An Imprint of InterVarsity Press, 2009), 47–48.

 

[2] Ambrosiaster, Commentaries on Romans and 1-2 Corinthians (ed. Thomas C. Oden and Gerald L. Bray; trans. Gerald L. Bray; Ancient Christian Texts; Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic: An Imprint of InterVarsity Press, 2009), 123.

 

[3] Ambrosiaster, Commentaries on Romans and 1-2 Corinthians (ed. Thomas C. Oden and Gerald L. Bray; trans. Gerald L. Bray; Ancient Christian Texts; Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic: An Imprint of InterVarsity Press, 2009), 145–146.