LCMS Convention Workbook St. Louis, Missouri — 2019, Page 214

Transcription machine transcription, uncorrected

⤓ Download .txt · copy text

214

II. THEOLOGICAL DOCUMENTS­­—COMMISSION ON THEOLOGY AND CHURCH RELATIONS

family members, but also all who were dependent for
their work upon the head of the household.
The apostles not only brought people to Jesus by Baptism and teaching, but they also stayed in contact with
them and continued to teach them by visiting them and
writing personal letters to them. Jesus’ followers gathered
around to read these letters and to relive the story of
Christ, especially through the meal of remembrance He
had left them in His body and blood, the Lord’s Supper.
Jesus’ followers collected these writings into what we call
today the New Testament. These texts continue to shape
and guide the sharing of the Gospel by Christians down
to the present day.

2. BAPTISM: A NEW BEGINNING

We are part of that ongoing story. Over the course
of the past 2,000 years, Jesus’ followers have carried out
His commission to bring all people into the company
of those who will follow Him into the kingdom of God.
Most of us who are baptized today are the descendants of
those who belonged to “the nations,” those who were not
part of God’s chosen people of Israel. But now we have
been made members of God’s chosen people by Baptism.

I

n light of the previous section, “Baptism and the
Story of Jesus,” we can see that Baptism is an action or
event that marks a new beginning. Jesus’ own baptism
marked a new beginning for the world as it launched
Jesus on His ministry to rescue and renew God’s creation. His baptism in the Jordan led to His “baptism” of
death on the cross (Luke 12:50). His resurrection marked
a new beginning for Him with His installation as the
Lord of God’s creation — and with that a new beginning
for the entire creation.

We have not yet reached the end of the story. We will
not arrive at its ending until the risen Jesus returns and
cleanses His creation once and for all of sin and evil:
“Behold, I am making all things new” (Rev. 21:5). At that
time, we will be raised from the dead to live as co-heirs
with Jesus in the new creation and, indeed, as co-rulers
in the new creation for God’s glory and for the blessing
and benefit of God’s new creation. The great Lutheran
theologian and hymn writer Martin Franzmann expressed it well: “We shall rise from our graves and break
through the gates of death when He shall come and cry
once more, ‘Follow Me!’”9

Jesus’ commission to baptize all nations is a commission to incorporate all nations into Christ and Christ’s
story — the story of how the Creator of heaven and earth
sent His Son into the world to rescue and restore His
masterpiece. Baptism effects a new beginning in which
a person confesses that Jesus has become “my Lord” that
I might “be his own” and “live under him” and “serve
him in everlasting righteousness, innocence and blessedness”!10
This new beginning that Christ brought to His creation and that He now makes available to us is described
dramatically in the Scriptures in terms of a new birth, a
new identity and a new life within a new community: the
very Body of Christ.

New Birth and Life
Many in Jesus’ day took pride in being the direct descendants of Abraham by virtue of their bloodlines; they were
Martin H. Franzmann, Follow Me: Discipleship According to Saint
Matthew (St. Louis: Concordia Publishing House, 1961), 226.
9

THE THEOLOGY AND PRACTICE OF HOLY BAPTISM

|

Jesus was not alone in using the language of new
birth or rebirth to describe the new beginning initiated
by Baptism. In his letter to Titus, Paul writes:
But when the goodness and loving kindness
of God our Savior appeared, he saved us, not
because of works done by us in righteousness,
but according to his own mercy, by the washing of
regeneration and renewal of the Holy Spirit, whom
he poured out on us richly through Jesus Christ
our Savior, so that being justified by his grace
we might become heirs according to the hope of
eternal life (Titus 3:4–7, emphasis added).
Martin Luther speaks of this regeneration as a “washing of the new birth in the Holy Spirit” (SC, Baptism).
This new birth makes new creatures, members of a new
creation.
The apostle Paul makes this same connection in his
second letter to the Christians at Corinth: “Therefore,
if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation” (2 Cor. 5:17).
Paul’s language, “in Christ,” points us to Jesus who has
become the second or new Adam, the head of a new
human community. By His conception and birth, Jesus
entered the world as the second Adam who had come to
undo the damage caused by the first Adam’s rebellion.12
As the new Adam, Jesus reveals what it means to be a
human creature who lives in total dependence upon the
Creator and in complete accordance with the will of the
Creator. Baptism now “births” us into this new life as
God’s children.
Baptism as new birth and new life is one of the most
vivid pictures painted in the New Testament about what
takes place in Baptism. Just as our birthdays are times
of celebration marking the entrance of our life into this
world, so Baptism marks our entrance into a new life, an
eternal life in God’s promised new creation. To comGerman theologian Edmund Schlink expressed it this way: The “incarnation is the hidden beginning of the new man.” Edmund Schlink,
The Doctrine of Baptism, tr. Herbert J. A. Bouman (St. Louis: Concordia
Publishing House, 1972), 83.
12

|

8

memorate this event, Christian parents are often encouraged to celebrate the baptismal birthday of their children
in addition to their natural birthday.

We Are Made Children of Abraham
through Baptism
In order to better appreciate how Baptism makes us children of God and members of His kingdom, we need to
locate this sacred act within the wider story of God and
Israel. There we learn that we become members of God’s
kingdom by becoming members of God’s chosen people
of Israel. For it is through His chosen people, Israel, that
God has chosen to rescue and renew His creation. This is
why the ancestry of Jesus as set forth in His genealogies
is so important.
The very first verse of the New Testament — in the
Gospel of Matthew — opens with the words, “The book
of the genealogy of Jesus Christ, the son of David, the
son of Abraham” (Matt. 1:1). This verse makes the point
that Jesus is not only Israel’s promised Messiah from the
line of Israel’s greatest king, David, but He is also the offspring of a promise made to Abraham long before. The
Gospel of Luke traces Jesus’ genealogy back even further,
namely, to the creation of Adam and Eve (Luke 3:23–38).
Interestingly, Luke’s account of Jesus’ lineage is given
immediately after His baptism, when God declared “You
are my beloved Son” at the start of Jesus’ public ministry
as Israel’s Messiah.
Jesus’ genealogies tell the story of how the Creator
remained faithful to His beloved (and unfaithful!) people
from the moment that Adam and Eve rejected God’s
motivations and intentions for them. God was determined to make His creation “very good” again and to do
so through the very human creatures who had ruined it.
To that end, God chose Abraham, a relative nobody, and
promised, “In you all the families of the earth shall be
blessed” (Gen. 12:3). He told him, “Look toward heaven,
and number the stars, if you are able to number them.”
And then he said, “So shall your offspring be” (Gen.
15:5–6). After this, God provided for the incorporation of
such offspring, even as infants, into the identity of God’s
covenant people through the sign of circumcision on the
eighth day (Gen 17:9–11).
God ultimately carried out that promise to Abraham
through one particular descendant who came from the
line of King David as heir to that throne (Gal. 3:16). That
person was Jesus Christ. Paul connects Abraham’s story

BAPTISM: A NEW BEGINNING

2019 Convention Workbook

Jesus’ dramatic encounter with Nicodemus (John 3)
is one of the most well-known New Testament accounts
of how God’s promise in Baptism makes us members of
God’s kingdom, akin to a “birth certificate” that attests to
our citizenship within God’s kingdom. In the course of
their conversation, Jesus declares: “Truly, truly, I say to
you, unless one is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot
enter the kingdom of God” (John 3:5). Noteworthy here is
the connection of water and the Spirit with the imagery
of birth. It might recall to our minds the example of
when a mother’s water breaks and the child enters into
the world; the first thing the child must do is take in a
breath of air. The Holy Spirit (referred to as the “Lord
and giver of life” in the Nicene Creed) is often identified
with the “breath of God,” which in Baptism gives us the
breath of eternal life.11
As another example, consider the very first verses of
the Bible, which set the table for the subsequent narra-

10

BAPTISM AND THE STORY OF JESUS

tive account of God’s creation of the world. There we
read, “the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of
the waters” (Gen. 1:2). The image here is of the Spirit of
God soaring and moving over the waters in preparation
for the creation of life that takes place over the course of
the next six days. The Spirit who once hovered over the
waters of creation now hovers over the waters of the new
creation in the baptismal font — waters out of which will
arise a new creature of God, a baptized child of God.

THE THEOLOGY AND PRACTICE OF HOLY BAPTISM

The Small Catechism, Creed, Second Article (LSCwE, 17). Unless
otherwise noted, all translated quotations from the Small Catechism
are from LSCwE.

citizens of Israel by birth. At times, they viewed their
relationship with God as a right rather than a gift. In
doing so, they also took their responsibilities and calling
as God’s chosen people for granted. That is why John
the Baptist warned the religious leaders of his day that
they dare not think their bloodlines absolved them from
accountability to their Creator. They, too, must repent
and receive God’s merciful forgiveness through the
promise of God. For it is not through bloodlines (“not of
blood nor … of the flesh,” John 1:13) but through God’s
promises that one is born into the family of Abraham
and thus into the family of God.

10

THE THEOLOGY AND PRACTICE OF HOLY BAPTISM

|

with Christ’s story and shows how we as Christians have
become children of Abraham, the chosen people of God:
For in Christ Jesus you are all sons of God,
through faith. For as many of you as were baptized
into Christ have put on Christ. There is neither
Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free,
there is no male and female, for you are all one
in Christ Jesus. And if you are Christ’s, then you
are Abraham’s offspring, heirs according to promise
(Gal. 3:26–29, emphasis added).
God’s promise to Abraham now extends from Jesus
(by virtue of His authority as the Son of God) to all those
who were not blood descendants of Abraham. In other
words, through Baptism we “outsiders” (the nations)
have become the children of Abraham — and thus children of God.

We Are Adopted as Children of God
through Baptism
God referred to the people of Israel, the children of
Abraham, as His son. When the descendants of Abraham
found themselves enslaved in Egypt, God sent Moses
with these words for Pharaoh: “Thus says the Lord,
Israel is my firstborn son, and I say to you, ‘Let my son
go that he may serve me’” (Ex. 4:22–23). Centuries later,
God would call His true and greater Son, Jesus, out
of Egypt in fulfillment of an ancient prophecy (Matt.
2:13–15, 19–23; Hos. 11:1–2). Baptism now makes us children of God by giving us a share in Jesus’ own sonship
as the only begotten Son of the Father. By our Baptism
into Christ, we, too, become children of God. Just as God
announced at Jesus’ baptism that this was His beloved
Son, so now in our Baptism He announces that we, too,
are His beloved children.
Paul makes this point emphatically to the Christians
in Galatia regarding their adoption as children of God:
When the fullness of time had come, God sent
forth his Son, born of woman, born under the law,
to redeem those who were under the law, so that
we might receive adoption as sons. And because
you are sons, God has sent the Spirit of his Son
into our hearts, crying, “Abba! Father!” So you are
no longer a slave, but a son, and if a son, then an
heir through God (Gal. 4:4–7, emphasis added).
Through Baptism then, we are given the blessings and
inheritance of the children of God. Two points are especially worth making here regarding this adoption.

THE THEOLOGY AND PRACTICE OF HOLY BAPTISM

|

11
The Bible often speaks of the Holy Spirit as giving and renewing life
(Ps. 104:29–30; Is. 44:1–5; Rom. 8:11).

BAPTISM: A NEW BEGINNING

9

First, as Baptism brings us into God’s family, it also
comes with an invitation to join Him for the family meal
(“great banquet”). Luke records that immediately after
many were baptized upon taking Peter’s sermon to heart,
“they devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and
the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers”
(Acts 2:42). We, the baptized, come together around the
teaching of the apostles and gather at the table of the
Lord’s Supper (“the feast of victory for our God,” LSB
155, 171). The Lord’s Supper is for the baptized, for they
share in the Lord’s victory over death.
Second, Baptism entitles us to approach and address
our Creator as “Father.” When the disciples asked Jesus
to teach them how to pray, He did not give them a template for prayer that was addressed to Himself. Instead,
Jesus taught them to build on His relationship with the
Father by praying: “Our Father who art in heaven.” Martin Luther notes that with these words, “God tenderly
invites us to believe that He is our true Father and that
we are His true children, so that with all boldness and
confidence we may ask Him as dear children ask their
dear father” (SC, Lord’s Prayer).
The story of Christ as the Son of God provides the
pattern for our new life with God. This pattern finds
expression in the three articles of the baptismal creed
known as the Apostles’ Creed:
For in all three articles God [the Father] himself
has opened to us the most profound depths of
his fatherly heart and his pure, unutterable love.
For this very purpose he created us, so that he
might redeem us and make us holy, and moreover,
having granted and bestowed upon us everything
in heaven and on earth, he has given us his Son
and his Holy Spirit, through whom he brings us to
himself. (LC II 64; KW 439)
We, in turn, now approach God in confident prayer
through His Son, Jesus, and under the guidance of the
Holy Spirit who teaches us to pray “in Jesus’ name.”
For as we explained above, we could never come
to recognize the Father’s favor and grace were it
not for the Lord Christ, who is a mirror of the
Father’s heart. Apart from him we see nothing but
an angry and terrible judge. But neither could we
know anything of Christ, had it not been revealed
by the Holy Spirit. (LC II 65; KW 439–440)
As God’s agent for the new creation, Jesus reconciles
us to God so that we can see the love in the Father’s heart

BAPTISM: A NEW BEGINNING

11