LCMS Convention Workbook St. Louis, Missouri — 2019, Page 213

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II. THEOLOGICAL DOCUMENTS­­—COMMISSION ON THEOLOGY AND CHURCH RELATIONS
is cut down and thrown into the fire” (Matt. 3:9–10).
Then, in a move that caught even John off guard,
Jesus, the very one who had come to re-establish the
Creator’s reign, came down to the Jordan River to be
baptized. This was most unexpected. Why would Jesus,
who had no sin, want — much less need — to be baptized? But Jesus said that He and John needed to carry
out God’s will that Jesus be baptized (and thus “fulfill all
righteousness”).5 As Jesus came up out of the water after
being baptized, the heavens opened up, the Holy Spirit
came down in the form of a dove and the Father’s voice
from heaven declared, “This is my beloved Son, with
whom I am well pleased” (Matt. 3:16–17). In His baptism,
Jesus stood in the place of sinful Israel, pointing forward
to His death and resurrection for all people.

1. BAPTISM AND THE STORY OF JESUS

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hristians are people who live according
to a specific story — a true account, history,
His story — about God and His creation4 that
finds its definitive expression in Jesus Christ.
Considering Baptism within that story will help us to
appreciate the importance of Baptism and to embrace the
life into which Baptism initiates us — a life in which, by
His grace and by the power of His Spirit, we can begin to
live as our Creator intended. That life includes our daily
reception of God’s rich and undeserved gifts, our lives of
service as His dear children, our sharing in His delight
for His creation, and our reflecting His love and care for
it so that everything and everyone in it might flourish.
It is not too difficult to see — whether one is a Christian or not — that the world is far from perfect. At some
point, we all cannot help but say, “This is not the way
things are supposed to be!” What is true for the world is
true for our lives as well. Christians live according to the
scriptural story in which Jesus came to put things right
— to restore them to the way that God intended them to
be. In Jesus’ words and actions as the sinless man (who
was also true God), we see human life as God intended it
to be lived — a life that is now given and restored to us in
Christ through Baptism. As we consider the gift of Baptism within the story of Jesus, we begin with the (highly
unexpected) story of Jesus’ own baptism.

4
See Joel Okamoto, “God, the Gospel, and Modern Science: Reflections
on the Church’s Witness and Message in a Scientific Age,” Lutheran
Mission Matters 24 (2016): 337–338.

THE THEOLOGY AND PRACTICE OF HOLY BAPTISM

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The religious leaders looked for a way to have Jesus
put to death — an outcome Jesus Himself had anticipated and to which His baptism in the Jordan had pointed:
“I have a baptism to be baptized with, and how great
is my distress until it is accomplished!” (Luke 12:50).
The religious leaders charged Jesus with blasphemy for
claiming to be the Son of God and having the authority
of God to forgive sins. They ultimately conspired to have
Jesus crucified by the Roman authorities, a method of
execution reserved for outcasts, slaves and those whose
names were to be erased from the annals of history. He
had come to restore the reign of God to His people, but
“his own people did not receive him” (John 1:11).
Three days later, shocking and surprising everyone,
Jesus rose from the grave. This is not to say that His
disciples should have been surprised; just as Jesus had
foreseen and foretold His death, He had also foreseen
and foretold His resurrection. In response to a question about His authority to act on behalf of God, Jesus
prophesied: “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will
raise it up” (John 2:19). Only after Jesus’ resurrection did
the disciples realize that Jesus was speaking about “the
temple of his body”; then “they believed the Scripture
and the word that Jesus had spoken” (John 2:21–22). Over
the next 40 days, Jesus showed Himself to more than 500
people (1 Cor. 15:6).
By raising Jesus from the dead, God vindicated
Jesus’ claims to be God’s Son and Israel’s Messiah. Peter
Berger captures vividly the startling transformation that
took place:
God came into the world in the improbable figure
of a small-town carpenter turned into itinerant
preacher, who was executed as a criminal, despised and abandoned, who was dead and buried
— and who then, in a moment that transformed
the whole structure of reality, rose from the dead
to become the mightiest power in the universe
and lord over all human destinies.7
Jesus, in the words of Paul, “was declared to be the
Son of God in power according to the Spirit of holiness
by his resurrection from the dead” (Rom. 1:3–4). Jesus
Peter Berger, “Worldly Wisdom, Christian Foolishness,” First Things
(August/September 1990): 20.

THE THEOLOGY AND PRACTICE OF HOLY BAPTISM

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The story of Jesus begins before all things, even before
the creation of the world. St. John the Evangelist identifies Jesus as “the Word [who] was with God, and the
Word [who] was God,” and the Word through whom all
things were made (John 1:1–4). This Word is the only Son
of God, begotten of the Father from eternity, who for us
and for our salvation “became flesh and dwelt among us”
(John 1:14).
Being born of the Virgin Mary, Jesus, the very Son of
God, received testimony in a marginal county of the ancient world when a preacher named John appeared in the
Judean wilderness with a message that echoed the dire
and urgent words of the Old Testament prophets. God
was sending someone, His own Son, the Lamb of God,
to set things right within His creation. God’s Son would
reclaim God’s world and restore it to His gracious reign.
So, John announced, “After me comes he who is mightier
than I, the strap of whose sandals I am not worthy to
stoop down and untie” (Mark 1:7).
In preparation for the arrival of the one who would
re-establish God’s gracious rule, John called upon the
people of Israel to take up their calling and live as the
chosen people of God through whom He had promised
to send a Messiah. To that end, John performed a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins to re-orient
God’s chosen people to His aims and purposes. Along
the way, John warned their spiritual leaders not to stand
in God’s way or think that their bloodlines exempted
them from the need to repent and produce the fruits of
faith. “Every tree therefore that does not bear good fruit

BAPTISM AND THE STORY OF JESUS

suade the tenants that they needed to abide by the terms
of their tenancy, the owner finally sent his son: “They
will respect my son!” But the tenants instead saw an
opportunity to kill the heir of the estate and seize the
vineyard for themselves (Matt. 21:33–46).

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Jesus’ Baptism and the Reign of God

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would now complete His mission of re-establishing the
reign of God and renewing His creation.

Baptism: God’s Invitation into
the Kingdom of God
Before departing this earth to take up His reign over
the world at the right hand of God, Jesus gathered His
immediate followers (the 11 disciples) together and
spoke to them about His future plans. Jesus had come
not only to restore the kingdom to Israel, but also to
bring the entire world back under God’s reign. Jesus told
them, “You will receive power when the Holy Spirit has
come upon you, and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the end of the
earth” (Acts 1:6–8).
In Matt. 28:18–20, the risen Jesus now sends His disciples out into the world with their “marching orders”:
All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all
nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father
and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching
them to observe all that I have commanded you.
And behold, I am with you always, to the end of
the age.
He prefaces these “marching orders” with a word
of encouragement by declaring that “all authority in
heaven and on earth” has been given to Him. In other
words, there is no authority that Jesus does not have. As
the Son of God and the Lord of creation, Jesus gives His
followers a special commission that carried echoes of
God’s original commission to His human creatures when
He first created the heavens and the earth. In Gen. 1:28,
God gave His human creatures the task of sharing in His
benevolent reign over the earth — the very reason He
made them in His image (Gen. 1:26–28). They were to rule
as God did so that everything would continue to live,
prosper and flourish.
God declared His entire work of creation, including
His human creatures, to be “very good.” It was spectacular! God delighted in this masterpiece that proclaimed
His glory (Ps. 19:1). But God’s human creatures wanted to
live life on their own terms rather than on God’s terms.
In doing so, they ruined God’s creation. It was no longer
very good. And God judged human sin by cursing His
creation.
But God would not let go of His creation. He sent
His Son, Jesus, to restore His creation by bringing it back

BAPTISM AND THE STORY OF JESUS

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This baptism also marked the beginning of Jesus’
public ministry. Upon being declared God’s Son and His
agent for establishing the reign of God over the earth,
Jesus was led by the Spirit into the wilderness where
Satan tried to divert Jesus from carrying out His mission
(Matthew 4). Three times Satan tried, and three times he
failed. After those ordeals, Jesus was ministered to by the
angels and found peaceful company with the wild beasts
(a sign of the messianic age in Isaiah 11). Refreshed, Jesus
embarked upon His mission by calling disciples to follow
Him as He took up His teaching and healing ministry.
As John did before Him, Jesus also proclaimed, “The
time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand; repent and believe in the gospel” (Mark 1:15). The restored
reign of God was not only on its way, but had in fact
arrived with Jesus’ ministry. Jesus Himself acknowledged
this when He spoke at the local synagogue in His hometown. He read aloud this prophecy from Isaiah:
The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has
anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor.
He has sent me to proclaim liberty to the captives
and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty those who are oppressed, to proclaim the year
of the Lord’s favor (Luke 4:18–19).6
Jesus then declared that this prophecy was now
fulfilled in Him. From His hometown, Jesus embarked
upon His ministry of reclaiming and restoring God’s
world, person by person and village by village.
5
By being baptized, Jesus aligned Himself with His sinful people
(Is. 53:12; John 1:29).

Jesus’ appropriation of this text, which calls to mind the Jubilee Year
(Leviticus 25), announces that the ultimate restoration of all land, indeed all creation, to its original relationship with the Creator has been
inaugurated in His person and presence.
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THE THEOLOGY AND PRACTICE OF HOLY BAPTISM

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Risen from the dead, Jesus gives His disciples the task
of participating in the re-establishment of God’s reign
over creation by making people followers of Jesus. This
had been Israel’s role as the chosen people of God. Now
Jesus, a descendant of Israel’s King David, sends His
disciples out as the new representatives of the 12 tribes of
Israel to bring all nations back to their Creator.
The word “nations” in Matt. 28:19 refers to outsiders,
indeed to all people — all those who live outside of God’s
gracious reign and who are ruled and controlled by destructive desires and forces.8 This commission thus looks
forward to that long-promised day when God would
be worshiped as Creator and Lord by all the nations (Is.
2:1–5; Mal. 1:11–14).
In Matthew 28, Jesus invites “all nations” — including
us — to follow Him into the kingdom of God by undergoing a Baptism. In doing so, Jesus establishes Baptism as
the Church’s missionary or naturalization sacrament. It
is the door through which one is admitted into membership within God’s kingdom so as to enjoy all the benefits
and privileges of those who live under God’s gracious
reign. It also becomes the basis for taking up our responsibilities as children of God and followers of Christ.
Ten days after Jesus ascended into heaven, His disciples received the Holy Spirit as Jesus had promised (Acts

1:1–8). Empowered by the Spirit, Peter preached to a large

crowd that had gathered in Jerusalem for the festival of
Pentecost: “Let all the house of Israel therefore know for
certain that God has made him both Lord and Christ,
this Jesus whom you crucified” (Acts 2:36). This alarmed
many of Peter’s hearers. Would Jesus now seek vengeance
upon them? “When they heard this they were cut to
the heart, and said to Peter and the rest of the apostles,
‘Brothers, what shall we do?’”
Peter replied with good news. “Repent and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the
forgiveness of your sins, and you will receive the gift of
the Holy Spirit. For the promise is for you and for your
children and for all who are far off, everyone whom the
Luther’s translation of Matt. 28:19 uses the term Heiden or, in English,
“heathen,” where the ESV reads “nations.”

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As Jesus carried out His teaching ministry, He often
spoke in parables, in which He painted a picture of what
it means to enter the kingdom of God. He likened it to
being invited to a feast on the occasion of some great
festival. He spoke of a wedding feast given by a king
in honor of his son (Matt. 22:1–14). When, on another
occasion, Jesus told of a man who issued invitations to
a great banquet, someone with whom Jesus was dining
exclaimed, “Blessed is everyone who will eat bread in
the kingdom of God!” (Luke 14:15). These images presage
the words of the angel who, according to John, will one
day declare, “Blessed are those who are invited to the
marriage supper of the Lamb” (Rev. 19:9).
Who is invited to these festivities in the kingdom
of heaven? In Matthew 22, the invitations to the king’s
sumptuous feast initially go out to the expected invitees
— the people of Israel. But many pay no attention to the
invitation, thereby dishonoring the king and his son. The
king then sends his servants out to invite others (including the Gentiles). In Luke’s account of the wedding feast,
the host honors the lowly by inviting them to sit at the
head of the table (Luke 14:10).
In Luke 14, Jesus also speaks of how those invited to
a great banquet (the people of Israel) made all kinds of
excuses not to attend. The host then urges his servants,
“Go out quickly to the streets and lanes of the city, and
bring in the poor and crippled and blind and lame”
(Luke 14:21). These parables ultimately speak about how
many in Israel would reject the Creator’s Son, but how
God would continue to invite all — even outsiders like
the Gentiles — to sit at the table with Abraham, Isaac
and Jacob.
Jesus also went about re-establishing God’s gracious
reign by doing things that marked Him as God’s Son and
Anointed One (Luke 4:18–19): freeing people from demon
possession, healing people from their illnesses, restoring
sight to the blind and hearing to the deaf, feeding the
hungry, raising the dead and even forgiving sins. Jesus
ate with tax collectors and sinners. He associated with
those who were regarded as the outcasts of society. All
these things provided a glimpse of what the reign of God
looks like and what it will again look like on the day
when He sets everything right once and for all.
It wasn’t long before organized opposition arose
among the religious leaders who liked things the way
they were before Jesus arrived. Jesus anticipated this in
His parable about the vineyard tenants who refused to
give the owner his due. After several attempts to per-

BAPTISM AND THE STORY OF JESUS

under God’s gracious rule and care. To do that, Jesus
started where the problem began — namely, with His
fallen and rebellious human creatures. Not only would
His human creatures be freed from their self-tyranny, but
the entire earth would be renewed, refreshed and freed
from humankind’s destructive rule — just as Isaiah had
prophesied (Isaiah 11; 65; cf. Romans 8).

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Lord our God calls to himself ” (Acts 2:37–39). Jesus had
not come back from the grave in order to seek vengeance
— on the contrary! He had come back to finish the task
of restoring the creation to God. On that day, 3,000 people were baptized as followers of Jesus.
The disciples carried this news about Jesus’ resurrection and His installation as the Lord of creation
into the entire known world. Wherever they went, they
spoke about how Jesus had come to reclaim, redeem and
restore God’s creation. The apostle Peter emphasized this
very point:
And he commanded us to preach to the people
and to testify that he is the one appointed by God
to be judge of the living and the dead. To him all
the prophets bear witness that everyone who believes in him receives forgiveness of sins through
his name (Acts 10:42–43).
Similarly, when Paul spoke to the Greeks in Athens,
he declared that the Creator who had made all things
and had given life to all people has now made Himself
known in Jesus Christ:
The times of ignorance God overlooked, but now
he commands all people everywhere to repent,
because he has fixed a day on which he will judge
the world in righteousness by a man whom he has
appointed; and of this he has given assurance to
all by raising him from the dead (Acts 17:30–31).
The Book of Acts and the rest of the New Testament
tell the story of how Christians carried out the commission to enlist others as followers of Jesus. They went
out from Jerusalem into the Greco-Roman world, to
the cities of Corinth, Ephesus, Philippi and even to the
imperial capital of Rome. From there, they took the Gospel to Britain and Spain and to the farthest ends of the
known world. Everywhere they went, people were made
followers of Jesus and citizens of God’s kingdom by the
baptizing and teaching that Jesus’ followers offered.
The New Testament tells us about some of those who
were brought to Jesus by Baptism. These include the
Ethiopian eunuch whom Philip met on the road (Acts
8:36–39); the entire household of Cornelius, a Roman
centurion (Acts 10–11); Lydia, “a seller of purple goods”
in the city of Thyatira, and her household (Acts 16:15);
a jailor in Philippi and his household (Acts 16:31–34);
Crispus, a ruler in the Jewish synagogue at Corinth (Acts
18:8); and the household of Stephanas at Corinth (1 Cor.
1:16). These households included not only immediate

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2019 Convention Workbook