Christ Lutheran Parish

A Pastors’ Page on the Darker Side of Baptism

When I instruct parents of children who are going to be baptized or candidates for baptism it is easy to talk about the positive aspects. I usually talk about how baptism does spiritually, what water does physically. It renews and cleanses. We are carried in water and the word in the same way we were carried in water before we were born. We are reborn out of this water into eternal life as children of God (See Titus 3:5-8). All of this, though it some if it sounds weird, is relatively positive and easy to understand.

The water and word of baptism refreshes and renews like the water we drink. The water and the word cleanse and purify like the water in which we bathe. The water and the word carry us into life like the amniotic fluid that carries us into the world and by it we are reborn children of God. That’s the lighter side of baptism. But there is a darker side, and being that this is Lent, it is appropriate that we should explore this darker side.

When asked what baptism signifies Martin Luther Answers: “It signifies that the old person in us with all sins and evil desires is to be drown through daily sorrow for sin and repentance.” Spooky right? Baptism involves a sort of death of our sinful selves. Through daily sorrow for sin and repentance our old person with all its sins and evil desires is put to death. Baptism is a kind of death. It gets even spookier.

Paul writes in Romans: “Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? Therefore we have been buried with him by baptism into death….” Like water here on earth, baptismal water, that is water with the word of God, can be dangerous. It drowns sinners. It suffocates the old Adam and Eve who is in the heart of each of us. This is powerful stuff. This is shocking language. You who have been baptized have been submerged in death, the death Jesus died on the cross. But there is a reason for this.

Remember how Martin Luther said that baptism signifies the drowning of the old sinful person? He goes on to say “that daily a new person is to come forth and rise up to live before God in righteousness and purity forever.” In other words baptism is something we live out daily. Lutherans like to say that because of baptism into Jesus we daily die and rise with Him; each and every day we die and rise with Christ.

After Paul says that we have been baptized into Jesus’ death he goes on to say, “...so that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, so we too might walk in newness of life.” We die with Him so we can be raised with Him. That is what baptism and faith in God’s word accomplishes.

As Lent begins we remember that we are dust and to dust we shall return. This is an affirmation of our mortality. God created us out of the dust of the earth, but with Christ things do not stop there. By baptism into Christ we are reformed, remade, and reborn children of God. The darker side of baptism acknowledges death, but the lighter side, the resurrection side, promises abundant life. The painful death we die to sin gives way to the resurrection promise of new life.

God bless you as you begin your Lenten walk to the cross. May this be a time of new disciplines and deepening of faith so that when we come to the end of it we can cling even closer to the baptismal promise and hope of the resurrection of our Lord.

In Christ,

Pastor Christian