Romans 6

Romans 6:3-5

BAPTISM—THE EASTER Romans 6:3-5. THE natural subject to deduce from this text is “The Easter Ordinance.” The language of Scripture makes baptism a symbol of death, and still more strikingly a sign of the resurrection. It is difficult for one holding my faith to speak from this morning’s text without calling attention to the fact that this Scripture suggests the proper subject of baptism; namely, one dead to sin; the form of the sacred ordinance that prefiguring a death, burial and resurrection, and also the symbolism of the rite. This initiatory rite into the church-militant speaks eloquently of the marvelous change that will come when, through resurrection, we enter the church-triumphant. Archer Butler said of Christ’s work, “He spreads the mighty miracle of His own regeneration from the dead along the whole line of history. He repeats it in every true believer. The church is an everlasting Easter.”The language of our text is a sufficient warrant for Butler’s words. It contains at least three suggestions as to this Easter ordinance; namely, it memoralizes regeneration; it typifies restoration; it prophesies resurrection.IT “Therefore we are buried with Him by baptism into death: that like as Christ was raised up from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in newness of life” (Romans 6:4).The reference is to that work of the Holy Ghost upon the heart which we call regeneration. Let it be understood that Baptism does not accomplish that change. One of the earliest and most baneful of Roman errors is at this very point. To quote verbatim from Roman authority, this church says, “By baptism, putting on Christ, we are made a new creation in Him, obtaining plenary and entire remission of all sins.” I would that Rome stood alone in this error, but other denominations so teach, and when some years ago Charles Spurgeon preached his famous sermon on “Baptismal Regeneration”, he quoted from the Book of Common Prayer of the Church of England, and out of the catechism intended for the instruction of youth, the reply the child is expected to make when asked its name and, “Who gave you this name?” is as follows: “My god-fathers and god-mothers in baptism, wherein I was made a member of Christ, the child of God, and an inheritor of the Kingdom of Heaven.”Surely that language is plain. So long as human speech is the vehicle of human thought, it will be difficult to make men believe else than that those who adopt and propagate such a faith, consider baptism a saving ordinance, and yet our text does not hint that. On the contrary, it only proposes the ordinance to those who are dead to sin, and who are not going to live any longer therein.It would seem indeed that when one moves among his fellows, baptized, confirmed, and fed upon sacraments, some of them living the most godless lives and dying the most hopeless deaths, it would teach him the folly of attributing soul-cleansing to the physical application of water, and send him to his Bible to search afresh for a way of salvation that would at once be sane and Scriptural. Pronounce all the formulas you please over an unregenerate man; immerse him if you will in the mighty ocean, no change whatever will occur, for the Word is, “He that believeth on the Son hath everlasting life: and he that believeth not the Son (whatever else he may believe) shall not see life; but the wrath of God abideth on him” (John 3:36).But baptism does distinctly declare regeneration. The Holy Spirit accomplishes the change; this Easter ordinance declares or publishes it. When Fredrick W.

Robertson, himself a Church of England man, came to deal with the statement of the catechism, “In baptism, * * I was made the child of God”, he saw so clearly the truth that the Easter ceremony did not create one a child of God, but only revealed it, that he commented upon this statement from the catechism in the following way: “Yes, coronation makes a sovereign, but paradoxical as it may seem, it can only make one a sovereign who is a sovereign already. Crown a pretender; that coronation will not create the king.

Coronation is the authoritative act of the nation declaring a fact, which was fact before.” “So”, he says, “it is with baptism, * * God’s authoritative declaration in material form of a spiritual reality.”Of course it will be seen then that where no spiritual reality exists, the declaration is false and the ceremony fails. Charles Spurgeon has put it better still. He says, “Baptism is the avowal of faith. The man was Christ’s soldier, but now in baptism he puts on his regimentals. The man believed in Christ, but his faith remained between God and his own soul. In baptism he says to the baptiser, “I believe in Jesus Christ”; he says to the church, “I unite with you as a believer in the common truths of Christianity”; and he says to the onlooker, “Whatever you may do, as for me, I will serve the Lord.” “Actions speak louder than words”, is an old saying, and this ordinance gives special emphasis to the truth of the claim.The true significance of this ordinance is in its sequence.

It ought to follow regeneration, and be followed by acts that attest the change that has come. On the day of Pentecost men first believed, then were baptized, and afterwards so deported themselves as to beget praise to God and favor with the people.When the multitudes came to John’s baptism, he first taught them about the Christ, then immersed them, then enjoined upon them fruit-bearing.

When Candace’s treasurer said to Philip, “I believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God”, then it was that Philip “commanded the chariot to stand still; and they went down both into the water, both Philip and the eunuch; and he baptized him” (Acts 8:37-38). The baptism was only significant because it followed faith.There is in the Book of Joshua a good illustration of my thought. You will remember that after centuries of oppression in Egypt, the people of God departed from that land for Canaan, and for forty long years they were in the wilderness of Sin. At the end of that time they had yielded themselves to God, and were ready to be obedient to His commands, and so God parted the Jordan that they might pass over. When they reached the farther shore, Joshua commanded, “take you up every man of you a stone upon his shoulder, according unto the number of the tribes of the Children of Israel: that this may be a sign among you, that when your children ask their fathers in time to come, saying, What mean ye by these stones”? (Joshua 4:5-6), they should answer that the waters of Jordan were cut off before the Ark of the Covenant of the Lord, and these stones were set up for a memorial of God’s deliverance out of the wilderness of Sin.So baptism memoralizes every man’s regeneration. When our children ask us, “What mean ye by this act?” it is sufficient to answer, “We do it to memoralize our own regeneration, to signify the Spirit’s work in delivering us out of the wilderness of sin.”But of this ordinance we have also said,IT “Therefore we are buried with Him by baptism into death: that like as Christ was raised up from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in newness of life”. There is suggested here a threefold restoration: First, to guiltless estate!The baptized is supposed to be dead to sin. The text expressly says, “Know ye not, that so many of us as were baptized into Jesus Christ were baptized into His death?” (Romans 6:3). Now if we were baptized into Him, or putting it another way, as Peter does, if the baptism is a figure of the salvation that we have in Christ Jesus, it is a salvation from all guilt, for we are made one with Him, and “in Him is no sin”. This is not the doctrine of “holiness” as our perfectionist brethren define that term. “If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us” (1 John 1:8). But when this ordinance is properly employed, and its subject is a saved man, God no longer imputes iniquity to him.“Blessed is the man unto whom the Lord imputeth not iniquity” (Psalms 32:2). He is far from perfect, but in Christ Jesus he is justified from all his sins. John McNeil says there is a difference between faultless and blameless. He illustrates it by saying, “I have lying on the table before me a letter. It came to me in New Zealand in 1891. It is from my eldest daughter, then a child of five years, and it reads:“‘Dear father: I rote awl this miself; I send you a ciss from Elsie.’“Now this letter which I prize so dearly is certainly not a faultless production. It is as full of faults as it is full of letters, but most assuredly it is blameless.

I did not blame my child for her crooked strokes, and answer with a scold, for I judged her work by its motive. I knew it was the best that she could do, and that she had put all the love of her little heart into it.”So for one to be made anew in Christ Jesus, for one to become a child of God, is not to become perfect, free from all sin, but it is to escape the condemnation that is in the world “by the washing of regeneration, and renewing of the Holy Ghost” (Titus 3:5).It means also a restoration to heavenly favor. Paul says to these same Romans, speaking of Christ,“For in that He died, He died unto sin once; but in that He liveth, He liveth unto God. “Likewise reckon ye also yourselves to be dead indeed unto sin, but alive unto God through Jesus Christ our Lord” (Romans 6:10-11). There is a difference between the phrases, “alive from the dead”, and “alive unto God”. This latter expression strongly suggests the Divine favor into which the redeemed have come.“Alive unto God”. Don’t you remember how, in the parable of the prodigal son, when the boy who had been away from home, away from wholesome associations, in suffering, shame, and sin, coming back, was forgiven, reinstated, robed and feasted, that the father justified the merriment by saying, “For this my son was dead, and is alive again” (Luke 15:24). He was alive unto his father. He had found again the old place of favor. Oh, what a restoration it was!It also typifies a restoration to Divine fellowship.The “walk” as employed in our text looks to fellowship.

For the man who walks in newness of life walks not alone. Like Enoch of old he walks with God. What a blessed walk it is!If the bride counts herself happy to walk through the world with the husband of her love, what shall be the ecstasy of that soul, cleansed in the Blood of Jesus Christ, and so, linked forever with the life of God? To such the Father says, “They shall walk with Me in white: for they are worthy” (Revelation 3:4). If only one is confident that this is to be his future, what a fellowship is his; what confidence he has touching the future! No matter how dark it grows for him, so long as he feels his Father’s hand, and knows that he is in step with him, the darkness does not disturb.

In all serenity he can say, even in the moment when he sees not a foot ahead,“So I go on not knowing; I would not if I might; I would rather walk in the dark with God, Than go alone in the light; I would rather walk with Him by faith, Than walk alone by sight.” Of this Easter ordinance also we have said,IT The study of this text brings a threefold conception of the resurrection.First of all, baptism prophesies a resurrection in which one is made alive from the death of sin. Paul, speaking to the Colossians of baptism makes it a figure not only of death to sin, but also of that regeneration in which “hath He quickened together with Him, having forgiven you all trespasses” (Colossians 2:13). Wherefore he says, “If ye then be risen with Christ, seek those things which are above” (Colossians 3:1).There are those who seem to feel that the whole resurrection idea belongs to that last day, when “the Lord Himself shall descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trump of God: and the dead in Christ shall rise first” (1 Thessalonians 4:16). But these that are baptized have already experienced the first resurrection. Hence Paul says, “If ye then be risen with Christ”! He is not speaking to a people who have been in the grave, but rather to a people whose Saviour has suffered the penalty of sin and death, and who, themselves, therefore have been raised therefrom.

Consequently, Dr. Gordon, in his little volume entitled “In Christ”, says, “The resurrection of our Lord, then, is not merely a pledge of our own; it is our own, if we are his.”George Herbert also touched this very thought, when, evidently musing upon what Christ’s resurrection meant for him, he said,“Arise sad heart; if thou dost not withstand Christ’s resurrection thine may be; Do not by hanging down break from the hand, Which, as it riseth, raiseth thee.” But this ordinance prophesies also a victory over physical death. Jesus said, “Whosoever liveth and believeth in Me shall never die”. Turn over to the eighth chapter of this Epistle to the Romans, and the Apostle says to these Christians, “Ye are not in the flesh, but in the Spirit, if so be that the Spirit of God dwell in you. * * And if Christ be in you, the body is dead because of sin; but the Spirit is life because of righteousness” (Romans 8:9-10). And that spirit has already, in the resurrection of Jesus Christ, a victory which shall leave it untouched by the first death. It is that of which the Apostle speaks when he says, “Though our outward man perish, yet the inward man is renewed day by day” (2 Corinthians 4:16).Michael Angelo once wrote of his sculptor’s work,“The more the marble wastes, the more the statue grows.” Those who believe in soul-sleep have a poor comfort indeed as compared with the better consolations of the Scripture. As Paul thought of death, he said, “I am in a strait betwixt two, having a desire to depart, and to be with Christ; which is far better”. (Philippians 1:23). As he anticipated the day of his physical decease, the assurance that his soul should participate no whit in that slumber, was such that he seems to forget death altogether, and talks of his departure as a removal to a new place, heavenly in its appointments, and to companionship divinely sweet and sweetly divine. It would be difficult to believe anything else if one once stood at the bedside of such a man as Moody, and soul-sleepers would be disillusioned and taught a better faith if they had heard him, with face beaming say,“If this is death, there is no valley. This is glorious! I have been within the gates, and I saw the children.

Earth is receding; Heaven is approaching; God is calling!”But after all, the resurrection will never be complete until the body is brought from the grave. And thank God, that pledge is also signified in this Easter ordinance, “For if we have been planted together in the likeness of His death, we shall be also in the likeness of His resurrection” (Romans 6:5).We know what the likeness of His resurrection was. He had said to the Jews, “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up” (John 2:19), and the plain word is, “He spake of the temple of His body” (John 2:21). And as His body was raised from the grave, so shall be the bodies of all believers at His Coming.“For the trumpet shall sound, and the dead shall be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed. “For this corruptible must put on incorruption, and this mortal must put on immortality. “So when this corruptible shall have put on incorruption, and this mortal shall have put on immortality, then shall be brought to pass the saying that is written, Death is swallowed up in victory” (1 Corinthians 15:52-54). As one of our modern writers says, “Let it be noted that of all the types that have been employed to bring this hope vividly to the Christian mind, not one, excepting baptism, is adequate to the reality. Of a general resurrection which the Scriptures foretell, we see tokens and similitudes all about us in nature; in the flower, springing up from the seed which has fallen into the earth and died; in the morning, opening the vast grave of night, and summoning a sleeping world to rise and meet the sun ‘as he cometh forth as a bridegroom from his chamber’; in the springtide, calling the earth from the tomb of winter, loosing her shroud of snow, and clothing her with renewed life and beauty; in all these there are joyful parables and pledges of a resurrection. But the flower fades and dies; the morning sinks again into the embrace of night; and the earth lies down once more in the sepulchre of winter; and so, alas! these symbols only mock the hope they have kindled in the soul. But while we are asking sorrowfully, ‘Is there no resurrection that is exempt from death?’ we turn to this ordinance of Christianity. ‘Risen with Christ’, it says, and then adding, ‘Knowing that Christ being raised from the dead dieth no more; death hath no more dominion over Him’ (Romans 6:9), bids us likewise reckon ourselves to be alive with Him in the same resurrection. Thus this symbol of the Gospel carries a promise and a benediction which are committed to no symbol of nature. “Blessed and holy is he that hath part in the first resurrection: on such the second death hath no power” (Revelation 20:6).”