Systematic Theology (Volume 3 of 3)

by Augustus Hopkins Strong

(f) Of the death and resurrection of the body,—which will complete the work of Christ in us, and which Christ's death and resurrection assure to all his members.

1 Cor. 15:12, 22—“Now if Christ is preached that he hath been raised from the dead, how say some among you that there is no resurrection of the dead?... For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive.” In the Scripture passages quoted above, we add to the argument from the meaning of the word βαπτίζω the argument from the meaning of the ordinance. Luther wrote, in his Babylonish Captivity of the Church, section 103 (English translation in Wace and Buchheim, First Principles of the Reformation, 192): “Baptism is a sign both of death and resurrection. Being moved by this reason, I would have those that are baptized to be altogether dipped into the water, as the word means and the mystery signifies.” See Calvin on Acts 8:38; Conybeare and Howson on Rom. 6:4; Boardman, in Madison Avenue Lectures, 115-135.

B. Inferences from the passages referred to.

(a) The central truth set forth by baptism is the death and resurrection of Christ,—and our own death and resurrection only as connected with that.

The baptism of Jesus in Jordan, equally with the subsequent baptism of his followers, was a symbol of his death. It was his death which he had in mind, when he said: “Are ye able to drink the cup that I drink? or to be baptized with the baptism that I am baptized with?” (Mark 10:38); “But I have a baptism to be baptized with; and how am I straitened till it be accomplished!” (Luke 12:50). The being immersed and overwhelmed in waters is a frequent metaphor in all languages to express the rush of successive troubles; compare Ps. 69:2—“I am come into deep waters, where the floods overflow me”; 42:7—“All thy waves and thy billows are gone over me”; 124:4, 5—“Then the waters had overwhelmed us, The stream had gone over our soul; Then the proud waters had gone over our soul.”

So the suffering, death, and burial, which were before our Lord, presented themselves to his mind as a baptism, because the very idea of baptism was that of a complete submersion under the floods of waters. Death was not to be poured upon Christ,—it was no mere sprinkling of suffering which he was to endure, but a sinking into the mighty waters, and a being overwhelmed by them. It was the giving of himself to this, which he symbolized by his baptism in Jordan. That act was not arbitrary, or formal, or ritual. It was a public consecration, a consecration to death, to death for the sins of the world. It expressed the essential nature and meaning of his earthly work: the baptism of water at the beginning of his ministry consciously and designedly prefigured the baptism of death with which that ministry was to close.

Jesus' submission to John's baptism of repentance, the rite that belonged only to sinners, can be explained only upon the ground that he was “made to be sin on our behalf”(2 Cor. 5:21). He had taken our nature upon him, without its hereditary corruption indeed, but with all its hereditary guilt, that he might redeem that nature and reunite it to God. As one with humanity, he had in his unconscious childhood submitted to the rites of circumcision, purification, and legal redemption (Luke 2:21-24; cf. Ex. 13:2, 13; see Lange, Alford, Webster and Wilkinson on Luke 2:24)—all of them rites appointed for sinners. “Made in the likeness of men” (Phil. 2:7), “the likeness of sinful flesh” (Rom. 8:3), he was “to put away sin by the sacrifice of himself” (Heb. 9:26).

In his baptism, therefore, he could say, “Thus it becometh us to fulfil all righteousness” (Mat. 3:15) because only through the final baptism of suffering and death, which this baptism in water foreshadowed, could he “make an end of sins” and “bring in everlasting righteousness” (Dan. 9:24) to the condemned and ruined world. He could not be “the Lord our Righteousness”(Jer. 23:6) except by first suffering the death due to the nature he had assumed, thereby delivering it from its guilt and perfecting it forever. All this was indicated in that act by which he was first “made manifest to Israel” (John 1:31). In his baptism in Jordan, he was buried in the likeness of his coming death, and raised in the likeness of his coming resurrection. 1 John 5:6—“This is he that came by water and blood, even Jesus Christ; not in the water only, but in the water and in the blood” = in the baptism of water at the beginning of his ministry, and in the baptism of blood with which that ministry was to close.

As that baptism pointed forward to Jesus' death, so our baptism points backward to the same, as the centre and substance of his redeeming work, the one death by which we live. We who are “baptized into Christ” are “baptized into his death” (Rom. 6:3), that is, into spiritual communion and participation in that death which he died for our salvation; in short, in baptism we declare in symbol that his death has become ours. On the Baptism of Jesus, see A. H. Strong, Philosophy and Religion, 226-237.