A Bible History of Baptism

by Samuel J. Baird

5. While such are the effects of this baptism on the spiritual condition of the redeemed, equally important are its influences on their external relations. The first is their justification. United to the Lord Jesus, as members of his body, the consequence is that their sins are laid to the charge of their Head, and satisfaction for them credited to the blood of his cross. On the other hand, his righteousness is recognized as theirs, and in it they stand, not only pardoned, but justified; approved, and entitled to the inheritance of glory. They are “accepted in the Beloved; in whom we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins according to the riches of his grace.”—Eph. i, 6, 7.

6. Another result is their reception to the relation and privileges of children of God. Born of the Spirit,—born of God, they are thus by inheritance children. Members of Christ,—the first-born, the eternal Son,—they share in his relation, and are in him sons; and if sons then heirs;—heirs of God, and joint heirs with Christ.

7. The final result is the resurrection unto glory. “If the Spirit of him that raised up Jesus from the dead dwell in you, he that raised up Christ from the dead shall also quicken your mortal bodies, by his Spirit that dwelleth in you.”—Rom. viii, 11.

Such is the one baptism, of which all ritual baptisms are mere shadowy symbols,—the baptism which Paul proclaims,—“One Lord, one faith, one baptism” (Eph. iv, 5), a baptism, one and alone from its very nature, as dispensed by the one only Mediator, in the bestowal of that one Spirit, which belongs to and is therefore imparted by him alone. Thus have we the perfect antitype of the baptisms of the Old Testament,—the administrator, Jesus the great High Priest; the element, that living water, the Holy Spirit; the mode, his outpouring upon us from heaven; the effect, washing to the corrupt,—life to the dead. By this means, does our Baptizer bestow on his people all grace for the present time, and the resurrection and glory in the end.

Section LXXII.—Noah Saved by Water.

Beside the places before cited, one remains to be noticed. It is 1 Peter iii, 17-22. There are some various readings in the MSS., although none that materially affect the interpretation. Adopting what seem the best, the passage is as follows:—“It is better, if the will of God be so, that ye suffer for well doing, than for evil doing. For Christ, also, once suffered for sins, the just for the unjust, that he might bring us to God, being put to death as to the flesh, but quickened as to the Spirit. By which also he went and preached to the spirits in prison, formerly disobedient, when the longsuffering of God waited in the days of Noah, while the ark was preparing, in which few, that is, eight, souls were saved by water. You also now antitype baptism saves (not the putting away of the filth of the flesh, but [conformity to] the demand of a good conscience toward God); by the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead; who is at the right hand of God, having gone into heaven, angels and authorities and powers being subjected to him.”

Both Peter and those to whom his epistles were addressed, were familiar with Paul’s writings. (2 Peter iii, 15, 16.) In the passage here cited, the preacher of the day of Pentecost speaks of that Spirit baptism the beginning of which he had then witnessed, in a style which constantly reminds us of the language and manner of Paul, on the same subject. If Peter speaks of Christ as having been “quickened by the Spirit,” or rather “quickened as to the spirit,”[spirit,”] Paul tells us that thus he became, “a quickening spirit.”—1 Cor. xv, 45. If Peter states that “antitype baptism now saves us,” the baptism, that is, of the Spirit, of which water baptism is the type,—Paul says that “He saves us by the washing of regeneration and renewing of the Holy Ghost, which he shed on us abundantly through Jesus Christ.”—Tit. iii, 5. Peter represents this baptism as saving us “by the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead;” and Paul, to the same effect, testifies that “even when we were dead in sins God hath quickened us together with him and hath raised us up together” (Eph. ii, 1, 4-6); and that we are “buried with him in the baptism, wherein also ye are risen with him, through the faith of the operation of God who hath raised him from the dead.”—Col. ii, 12. To the account which, on the day of Pentecost, Peter gave of the exaltation of the Lord Jesus to God’s right hand, he here adds,—“angels and authorities and powers being subject to him,”—language in which we recognize the style of Paul’s repeated descants on the same theme. (Eph. i, 20, 21; Col. i, 16; ii, 10.) As Peter’s language is so thoroughly imbued with the style of thought and expression of Paul, we need not hesitate to interpret the passage by the doctrine of the great apostle of the Gentiles.

The design of Peter is, to encourage the people of God in the endurance of injustice and persecution for righteousness sake. His first argument is the example of Christ, who suffered patiently the just for the unjust, “being put to death as to the flesh,” that is, “as to his natural life,” “but quickened as to the Spirit,” inasmuch as his death was to him the exhausting of the curse under which he died, and was, therefore, the release of the Spirit of life which was in him, from all restraint upon his quickening energies, by which, therefore, he rose from the dead. Thus, the very sufferings of his death were his door of entrance into life. Unexpressed, but latent in the apostles’ argument is the fact which, on the same subject, he states, in his second epistle, that “the longsuffering of the Lord is salvation” (2 Peter iii, 15), that having so pitied the ungodly as to die for them, praying for his enemies on the very cross, he now spares the persecutors of his people, if possibly they may repent (2 Peter iii, 9), and that, in the end, “the Lord knoweth how to deliver the godly out of temptations” (or persecutions), “and to reserve the unjust unto the day of judgment to be punished.”—Ib. ii, 9. This, he illustrates by the case of Noah and the old world. The question as to “the spirits in prison” (Vs. 19), does not belong to the present inquiry. The point of interest is the eight souls “saved by water.”—Vs. 20. To understand this, it is necessary to keep it distinctly in mind that the point to which the apostle’s argument is directed is,—the righteous suffering persecution, and the persecutors spared. He assumes what can not but have been the fact, that during the one hundred and twenty years of the building of the ark, Noah, “a preacher of righteousness” (2 Peter ii, 5), was exposed to bitter persecution. If we consider that “the earth was filled with violence” (Gen. vi, 11-13), that Noah’s preaching could not but be exceedingly offensive to those whose wickedness he reproved, and that his holy life, as “he walked with God,” and his building of the ark, by which he “condemned the world” (Heb. xi, 7), combined to intensify the hostility, it must be evident that nothing but the almighty protection under which he was sheltered could have saved him and all his from speedy destruction. It also seems to be implied by the language here, and by the connection in which Peter elsewhere introduces the same matter (2 Peter ii, 5-9), that when the flood came, the enmity and hatred had reached a crisis; so that the call to enter the ark was like the bringing of Lot out of Sodom, a rescue from present destruction by the wicked. Thus, the very waters which purged the world by sweeping away the ungodly, were the salvation of the eight persons, who shut up in the ark, were upborne upon their bosom. They were “saved by water,” while, as it rose, the world ready to perish would, in mad and impotent despair, have wreaked a blind vengeance upon the prophet and his family, for the terrible judgment of God; like Ahab with Elijah, in the days of the famine. But “the Lord shut him in” (Gen. vii, 16), and the waters bore them up, safe amid their perishing enemies.

Peter next points out that analogous to this is the salvation of Christ’s people,—that as the waters of the deluge were the destruction of the old world, but life to the new, to Noah, and his house,—so the baptism of the Spirit is death to the old man, but life to the new, through union with the Lord Jesus and participation in his life. “You also, now, antitype baptism saves, by the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead. Forasmuch then as Christ hath suffered for us in the flesh, arm yourselves with the same mind; for he that hath suffered in the flesh” (that is, as stated immediately after, he that hath become “partaker of Christ’s sufferings”), “hath ceased from sin.”—Ch. iv, 1, 13. Here we recognize perfect identity of thought and argument with what has already appeared in Paul’s writings. “So many of us as were baptized into Jesus Christ, were baptized into his death. Therefore, we are buried with him by the baptism into his death, that like as Christ was raised up from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in newness of life.”—Rom. vi, 3, 4.

The conclusion of Peter’s argument is found, a little farther on,—“Beloved, think it not strange concerning the fiery trial which is to try you, as though some strange thing happened unto you. But rejoice, inasmuch as ye are partakers of Christ’s sufferings, that when his glory shall be revealed, ye may be glad also with exceeding joy.”—1 Peter iv, 12, 13. So Paul says, “If so be that we suffer with him, that we may be also glorified together.”—Rom. viii, 17. It is evident that the two great apostles are perfectly united in their testimony concerning this baptism and its relations to the plan of salvation.