Category: Musings on Baptism
What shall we say then? Are we to continue in sin that grace might increase? May it never be! How shall we who died to sin still live in it? Or do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus have been baptized into His death? Therefore we have been buried with Him through baptism into death, in order that as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, so we too might walk in newness of life. For if we have become united with Him in the likeness of His death, certainly we shall be also in the likeness of His resurrection, knowing this, that our old self was crucified with Him, that our body of sin might be done away with, that we should no longer be slaves to sin; for he who has died is freed from sin. Now if we have died with Christ, we believe that we shall also live with Him, knowing that Christ, having been raised from the dead, is never to die again; death no longer is master over Him. For the death that He died, He died to sin, once for all; but the life that He lives, He lives to God. Even so consider yourselves to be dead to sin, but alive to God in Christ Jesus (Romans 1:1-11).
Baptism is here pictured as unification of the believer with the death and resurrection of Christ. When we are plunged into the water, we are buried with Christ; when we rise out of the water, we are resurrected with Him. His new life is to be a model for ours.
For I have been informed concerning you, my brethren, by Chloe's people, that there are quarrels among you. Now I mean this, that each one of you is saying, "I am of Paul," and "I of Apollos," and "I of Cephas," and "I of Christ." Has Christ been divided? Paul was not crucified for you, was he? Or were you baptized in the name of Paul? I thank God that I baptized none of you except Crispus and Gaius, that no man should say you were baptized in my name. Now I did baptize also the household of Stephanas; beyond that, I do not know whether I baptized any other. For Christ did not send me to baptize, but to preach the gospel, not in cleverness of speech, that the cross of Christ should not be made void. For the word of the cross is to those who are perishing foolishness, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God. (1 Corinthians 1:11-18).
Lest we give baptism efficacy, as though the water itself can do something apart from faith, Paul distinguishes between baptism and the gospel. This does not undo everything the New Testament says about the importance and urgency of baptism, but it does keep us from going beyond the Scriptural boundaries. Baptism by itself has no power.
Paul declares that Christ did not send him to baptize, but to preach the gospel. We should be careful not to take him out of the context of this passage, nor neglect the rest of the New Testament's teaching. Paul did baptize. As we have seen, he made sure that those who believed his gospel were immediately baptized. In general, Christ did send him to baptize because responding in baptism was part of the gospel he preached.
What Paul is doing here is trying to rid the Corinthian church of disunity caused by people devoting themselves to one or other of the Apostles and other leaders. Paul was happy that he didn't baptize many of them, not because baptism was unimportant to him, but because he did not want them to take pride in having been baptized by him. We should not miss the fact that Paul's assumption was that everyone in the church had been baptized. Their problem was not that they placed too much empasis on baptism, but on who had done their baptism. They forgot that they were baptized into Christ. He is their Lord and Savior, not Paul or Apollos or Peter.