(c) Of the accomplishment of that purpose in the person baptized,—who thus professes his death to sin and resurrection to spiritual life.
Gal. 3:27—“For as many of you as were baptized into Christ did put on Christ”; 1 Pet. 3:21—“which [water] also after a true likeness doth now save you, even baptism, not the putting away of the filth of the flesh, but the interrogation of a good conscience toward God, through the resurrection of Jesus Christ”; cf. Gal. 2:19, 20—“For I through the law died unto the law, that I might live unto God. I have been crucified with Christ; and it is no longer I that live, but Christ liveth in me: and that life which I now live in the flesh I live in faith, the faith which is in the Son of God, who loved me, and gave himself up for me”; Col. 3:3—“For ye died, and your life is hid with Christ in God.”
C. H. M.: “A truly baptized person is one who has passed from the old world into the new.... The water rolls over his person, signifying that his place in nature is ignored, that his old nature is entirely set aside, in short, that he is a dead man, that the flesh with all that pertained thereto—its sins and its liabilities—is buried in the grave of Christ and can never come into God's sight again.... When the believer rises up from the water, expression is given to the truth that he comes up as the possessor of a new life, even the resurrection life of Christ, to which divine righteousness inseparably attaches.”
(d) Of the method in which that purpose is accomplished,—by union with Christ, receiving him and giving one's self to him by faith.
Rom. 6:5—“For if we have become united [σύμφυτοι] with him in the likeness of his death, we shall be also in the likeness of his resurrection”—σύμφυτοι, or συμπεφυκώς, is used of the man and the horse as grown together in the Centaur, by Lucian, Dial. Mort., 16:4, and by Xenophon, Cyrop., 4:3:18. Col. 2:12—“having been buried with him in baptism, wherein ye were also raised with him through faith in the working of God, who raised him from the dead.” Dr. N. S. Burton: “The oneness of the believer and Christ is expressed by the fact that the one act of immersion sets forth the death and resurrection of both Christ and the believer.” As the voluntary element in faith has two parts, a giving and a taking, so baptism illustrates both. Submergence = surrender to Christ; emergence = reception of Christ; see page [839], (b). “Putting on Christ” (Gal. 3:27) is the burying of the old life and the rising to a new. Cf. the active and the passive obedience of Christ (pages 749, 770), the two elements of justification (pages [854-859]), the two aspects of formal worship (page 23), the two divisions of the Lord's Prayer.
William Ashmore holds that incorporation into Christ is the root idea of baptism, union with Christ's death and resurrection being only a part of it. We are “baptized into Christ” (Rom. 6:3), as the Israelites were “baptized into Moses” (1 Cor. 10:2). As baptism symbolizes the incorporation of the believer into Christ, so the Lord's Supper symbolizes the incorporation of Christ into the believer. We go down into the water, but the bread goes down into us. We are “in Christ,” and Christ is “in us.” The candidate does not baptize himself, but puts himself wholly into the hands of the administrator. This [pg 942]seems symbolic of his committing himself entirely to Christ, of whom the administrator is the representative. Similarly in the Lord's Supper, it is Christ who through his representative distributes the emblems of his death and life.
E. G. Robinson regarded baptism as implying: 1. death to sin; 2. resurrection to new life in Christ; 3. entire surrender of ourselves to the authority of the triune God. Baptism “into the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit” (Mat 28:19) cannot imply supreme allegiance to the Father, and only subordinate allegiance to the Son. Baptism therefore is an assumption of supreme allegiance to Jesus Christ. N. E. Wood, in The Watchman, Dec. 3, 1896, 15—“Calvinism has its five points; but Baptists have also their own five points: the Trinity, the Atonement, Regeneration, Baptism, and an inspired Bible. All other doctrines gather round these.”
(e) Of the consequent union of all believers in Christ.
Eph. 4:5—“one Lord, one faith, one baptism”; 1 Cor. 12:13—“For in one Spirit were we all baptized into one body, whether Jews or Greeks, whether bond or free; and were all made to drink of one Spirit”; cf. 10:3, 4—“and did all eat the same spiritual food; and did all drink the same spiritual drink: for they drank of a spiritual rock that followed them: and the rock was Christ.”
In Eph. 4:5, it is noticeable that, not the Lord's Supper, but baptism, is referred to as the symbol of Christian unity. A. H. Strong, Cleveland Sermon, 1904—“Our fathers lived in a day when simple faith was subject to serious disabilities. The establishments frowned upon dissent and visited it with pains and penalties. It is no wonder that believers in the New Testament doctrine and polity felt that they must come out from what they regarded as an apostate church. They could have no sympathy with those who held back the truth in unrighteousness and persecuted the saints of God. But our doctrine has leavened all Christendom. Scholarship is on the side of immersion. Infant baptism is on the decline. The churches that once opposed us now compliment us on our stedfastness in the faith and on our missionary zeal. There is a growing spirituality in these churches, which prompts them to extend to us hands of fellowship. And there is a growing sense among us that the kingdom of Christ is wider than our own membership, and that loyalty to our Lord requires us to recognize his presence and blessing even in bodies which we do not regard as organized in complete accordance with the New Testament model. Faith in the larger Christ is bringing us out from our denominational isolation into an inspiring recognition of our oneness with the universal church of God throughout the world.”