A Guide to Christian Theology - Lesson 47

Okay, sacraments. Talk about a really, really controversial topic. This has been the most divisive issue over the centuries in the churches, meaning in sacraments, baptism, communion are the two biblical ordained sacraments, what you call them, sacraments or ordinance, right there is a big fight. I'm going to the term sacrament, because to me a sacrament is a visible sign of an invisible spiritual reality. And both baptism and communion are visible signs, whole person actions of spiritual realities that we can't see. And that's what I do.

So the relation of grace, if you come from a Roman Catholic perspective in particular, the sacramental system, ordained priest doing the sacraments, baptism, communion, confession, Eucharist, marriage. The only way you can get it is through the Roman Catholic Church. And this is the way grace comes to you is through penance and through Eucharist and those kinds of things. That's the only access you have to God's grace. And I just really disagree with that.

But to understand that I have to go back and review again the meaning of grace, that critical term. So grace at one level is just inheritant favor God's will. It's God's help that's given to undeserving people. So grace, the fundamental meaning of help, is help. To whom does God give his help? Anybody.

So that's the first thing, is I don't have to merit to get it. A second understanding is its help or empowerment or enablement from God's presence and power. So at this spot, I'm thinking of Romans chapter 12. Let's look at it. Romans chapter 12 down at verse five. So, "In Christ, we though many, form one body, each member belongs to all the others." In verse six, "We have different gifts according to the grace given each of us."

Now, the term grace, there does not mean acceptance. It doesn't. Grace is God's help or God's empowerment given to people. Or if I look in second Corinthians, chapter 12, second Corinthians is Paul's vision into the heavenlys. And as he unpacks that, verse seven, because it's surpassing Revelations, "I was given a thorn in the flesh." What that means, we don't know but it's bad. "Three times I pray the Lord to take it away. But he said to me," here's a phrase, "My grace is sufficient for you. My power is made perfect in weakness." That's Hebrew poetry. Hebrew poetry is parallelism. Grace is parallel with power. He doesn't mean because I'm accepted, that gives me the ability to deal with this thorn, whatever it is. I think what he's saying is God's help is present, so I can continue to minister even with this thorn, whatever it is. So that's God's help.

I think that's a second dimension. And then the third dimension is God's grace related to enlivening or cleansing from sin. So I do absolutely believe that grace is more than just acceptance. It's not less than, but it's more than. It's God's help, God's empowerment to do ministry. That's what we call the gifts. And that's actually the term graces. And the gifts that we have are things that we have abilities that we do things. The Roman Catholic understanding is [foreign language] from the work worked. Christ uses the sacrament actually to produce the change it signifies. So baptism represents the washing away of sin, and they argue the baptism actually washes away the sin. And I'm just going to profoundly disagree with that. I'm going to say something here that occasions of grace are occasions in which God can bring his help to us. A lot more we could say around that. But the base idea of sacraments is these are visible signs of an invisible spiritual reality. And the two that we talk about in the church are baptism and communion. So what about baptism?

Roman Catholic baptism washes away your sin. It's what saves you. And that comes from first Peter chapter three, talks about the baptism of the washing away of sin. And in their understanding it's baptism only that washes away your sin. If you're unbaptized, then your sin is not washed away. Though many times I'll talk about a person who would've been baptized had they had the occasion to do that. I'm not going to agree with that. A Lutheran view, baptism saves you, but you also need faith. Now the crazy thing in Lutheran baptized babies, so it saves you, but you also need faith. How many babies have saving faith? None that I know of. I had a Lutheran friend, we had a great conversation after his baby was born. I said, "Did you baptize your baby?" "Oh yeah." I said, "Do you believe baptism saves you?" "Yeah." "Do you believe you need faith in order to be saved?" "Yeah." "How do you put those two together?" "I don't worry about it."

Okay, there you go. The Presbyterian view, and I'm using it in a broader sense, Presbyterian view is baptism to not save you. In fact, baptism says nothing about saving for infants of believers. Baptism, no matter what the age, is a sign of joining the covenant community see very different meaning of baptism. Baptism is about joining the covenant community paralleled circumcision. Circumcision does not save you in the mosaic economy. Circumcision is sign that you're a child of Abraham, ethnic child of Abraham. And for a Presbyterian view, baptism has nothing to do with salvation. It has to do with being a member of the community. So you baptize children of believers, infants to mark them with the covenantal sign that they're an important part of this community. And saving is a completely different type of thing. In many Presbyterian congregations, you have the idea of confirmation becomes something that after you're saved and you go through confirmation, which is a different kind of thing that has to do with, okay, now little Billy is saved, because he's made a faith and repentance and is now converted.

So very different too. In an adult, you would hope that baptism would be related to salvation. But still, when you join the covenant community in most Presbyterian churches, you could not as an adult join the covenant community without being given a expression of personal faith. So it's a different meaning of baptism. I was at 10th Presbyterian Church back in Philadelphia back when that was one of the finest churches in the world. With some friends, we were having theological society back there, and they did an infant baptism that day.

And I was sitting up toward the front, because late coming in, and you have to sit at the front if you're late, because that's just the way it works out in Protestant churches. So I had a front row seat literally to the baptism. And when I was done, I was chatting with Wayne Gruden, he was also there, and we were both laughing together. "Weren't it great? I mean they did a wonderful sign of infant dedication. Too bad they called it baptism." Because it was a dedication and infant [inaudible] and a sign of covenant community and response to the church, raise this baby and the child, nurture and administer the Lord. I just don't want to call it baptism.

The Church of Christ in some of them is the baptism is the biblical ordained expression of repentance and faith. And you must be baptized in order to repentance and faith to be complete. And what that says is if you're not actually baptized, then you're not saved, because you haven't completed repentance in faith. Now, many churches of Christ don't go that far. And in some of the Church of Christ, they actually say, "You must be baptized in a church of Christ or similar church that has that belief, because only they have the true gospel." That becomes cultic in my judgment. But I know churches that hold that view. So in that view, repentance and faith are signified by baptism. And if you don't have the baptism, you've not completed repentance and faith. And therefore if you are died before your baptized, you would go to hell.

What I call baptistic, which is much larger than baptism is baptism is a sign of spirit baptism in the sense I'm using that term, that spirit baptism, biblically is the indwelling in incorporation. So indwelling is from the Holy Spirit, indwells me as a believer and unifies me to the body of Christ, one Corinthians 12:13, and water baptism is that sign that spirit baptism has happened. It's an identification with Christ. And where I personally would do that is I think both faith and repentance, her whole person actions. And then if you do things properly, you'd have a heart attitude of repentance, a heart attitude of faith, but that also be conjoined with the rest of my person. And I would act that out in baptism. So in my understanding, I say that baptism is to the Christian life as a wedding is to married life.

Baptism is to Christian life as wedding is to married life. Now, as I record this, just a week ago, I had a very, very fun part in Eric and Cynthia's wedding. I did a prayer blessing in their wedding and just a great couple, I did their premarital. And what I see happening is that Eric and Cynthia started making eyes at each other and someone started nurturing them and I did premarital with them to help them set up and they did their wedding, oh, three months later, four months, but three months later with a lot of help to be ready. And when did their wedding, at that point when the pastor said, "I pronounce you husband and wife," he spoke into existence, something that never happened before, a marriage. And they set off on their wedding, their life together. I think that you need to have a wedding before you say we're married.

If somebody decide to work together and haven't had a wedding, something's wrong. That is a very meaningful ritual. I think the same thing is true for baptism. In my view, baptism is the whole person expression. And I think that should come, but I think a lot of times you need some premarital before you join Jesus, you need to know what you're signing up for. Instead of emotional response that I don't want to go to hell or my brother-in-law's doing it and I like my brother-in-law or whatever, I think there need to be some listening through what you're committing to. So it's like premarital, sometimes that's a membership class, but I don't think that's necessarily church membership, but it is joining a community. So baptism to me is an expression, the biblical ordained expression to express, confirm and live out this connection I have with Jesus.

Now what happens if somebody has heart faith, but doesn't get baptized? Maybe they don't get baptized until much later, because of bad teaching. Okay, God will understand you have bad theology. He will respect your heart attitude. But I think if we did it right, we'd bring those two together. So that's where I would come out on this. And then you've got other views like the Quaker view, where it's optional or less. The traditional Quaker view is physical stuff is bad spirit stuff is good. So you don't do water baptism at all in many traditional Quaker churches, because spirit baptism is what counts, and they don't do any physical things at all, because that actually detracts from the spiritual realities. So somewhere on that list you got to say, okay, this is where I think the biblical dots connect best. And that's quite a list. So again, my view is repentance and faith are whole person actions and baptism is a biblical ordained way of doing that.

And I think we should do baptism rather than the sinner's prayer as a way of being that whole person acting out. And there are about five people in the world that agree with me.

Can you explain your expression whole person again? I know you used it quite a few lectures back, but...

Yeah, in my anthropology, everything is done in interacting duality. And what we tend to do is separate the two. If you're in the typical American view, we're materialists. The only thing that counts is your what's biological, what can be measured with an EKG or something like that. So I do a lot of stuff with the counseling community and what I've seen happen in the 40 years or so, I've been working around there. I've seen it go more from psychology to psychiatry and stuff is not biologically determined and much, much less.

And now in the idea that you actually change the soul of a person, it's actually material. So it's more medication done and more brain physiology type things, discounting of the material part of the person. I see at the same time in the trans community, a very strong emphasis. It's my desires, that's the heart of things, and my body is separate and I need to change my body to match with my desires. So now it's gender-affirming. Surgery is the current terminology. That's the other side. That's pure spirit. What I'm looking at is body and spirit together, always interacting duality. And I say faith is only the heart. What about my body? I think they have to come together. So I think that's why it's repent and be baptized. Those who accept his word, were baptized. And I think that's true in every part. It's a whole person thing. It may start in a part of the person, but it should spread to the entire person before it becomes complete.

So I assume that you would encourage baptism to follow conversion as quickly as possible and not use baptism as a sign of entering the church?

That's correct. Yeah. To me, conversion is always coming into a community of believers. I disagree with the idea of just me and Jesus. It is me and Jesus, but also me entering community of believers, which may not be an organized church necessarily, but I think it's a good thing for it to be a part of. I really believe we're coming into a community and that baptism then is something is done in that community where I'm expressing to God family and friends, I'm a Jesus guy. But I also believe in some premarital before you do that. You need to know what you're signing up for. I think we have a lot less nominal Christians if we really made our commitment more than just a verbal profession.