Baptism on Miscellanea

Biblical Modes of Baptism

Sun, 14 Jan 2024 20:35:58 +0000

For any mode of relating the water to a person that is attested in the various biblical water ordeals would have biblical warrant. Of course, not all such modes would prove expedient. In Israel’s passage through the Red Sea the baptismal waters stood in a threatening (if actually protective) position over against the Israelites without, however, touching them, while in the Jordan crossing, the waters were so far removed as to be quite out of sight. At the other extreme, Jonah, like the accused in the Babylonian water ordeal, was plunged into the depths (not to mention now his novel conveyance), and the baptized family in the Noahic deluge ordeal sailed over the rising flood while torrents descended from above.

Children Praying Our Father?

Mon, 08 Aug 2016 00:00:00 +0000

For, despite protests to the contrary, it is difficult to see how evangelicals can, with theological consistency, teach their children to say ‘Our Father’ and to sing psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs with any theological consistency apart from the undergirding relationship established by God’s covenant promise and the principle that they belong by covenant to the community of God’s people.

The Second Birth

Thu, 16 Apr 2015 00:00:00 +0000

Even in anthropological perspective, the basis for being a Christian is not a decision or the appropriation of the commandment, but the second birth established in God’s mercy, the manifestation of the new being.

Baptism-Curcifixion

Sun, 29 Mar 2015 00:00:00 +0000

At the exodus these judgment waters performed both functions, destroying the Egyptian army but delivering the chosen, priestly nation of Israel. Paul identified these judicial waters of the exodus as a baptism (1 Cor 10:2) reflecting the fact that baptism symbolizes the undergoing of a judgment ordeal.

The waters of baptism are a death passage with forensic significance. Thus, for those who by faith undergo baptismal death in Christ’s baptism-crucifixion, baptism is unto the remission of sins."

Baptism into Death

Wed, 14 Jan 2015 00:00:00 +0000

Would sentimentalism and saccharine emotions dominate congregations if they realized that a person is baptized into the death of Christ? Would characterizations of baptism solely as man’s pledge to God dominate if churches realized that baptism is God’s visible covenant promise when accompanied by the Word?

Would as many languish in their struggles with a lack of assurance were their baptisms to echo throughout their lives—the echo of the sign and seal of the covenant promises of God in Christ? Would so many flippantly approach baptism or disregard it if they recognized that it is the objective, double-edged, blessing-and-sanction revelation of God? A biblical doctrine of baptism is crucial for the edification of the church and the glory of the triune Lord.

Beale on Baptism

Mon, 20 Oct 2014 00:00:00 +0000

In this light, to think that a major people group—infants—is excluded from entry into the new-covenant community seems to go against the grain of the otherwise wider span of the NT’s inclusiveness of blessing. It is important to recall that even the baptism on condition of profession is a covenantal sign proleptically connoting both blessing and judgment, and that it is a person’s perseverance that becomes decisive for whether the blessing or the curse is applied. Thus, infants are considered not definitively ‘saved’ by baptism, but rather to be entering into the sphere where blessings or curses can come upon them depending on their response to the revelation of the covenant church community in which they grow up.

Kline on Covenant and Election

Tue, 08 Jul 2014 00:00:00 +0000

When covenant is no longer identified with election and guaranteed blessing, especially when the baptismal sign of incorporation into the covenant is understood as pointing without prejudice to a judgment ordeal with the potential of both cursing and blessing, certain questions that of long and snarled the polemics of baptism are eliminated from consideration as no longer relevant.

Kline on Baptism

Wed, 28 May 2014 00:00:00 +0000

For the passing of Jesus through the divine judgment in the water rite in the Jordan meant to John’s baptism what the passing of Yahweh to the curse of the knife rite of Genesis 15 meant to Abraham’s circumcision. In each case the divine action constituted an invitation to all recipients of these covenant signs of consecration to identify themselves by faith with the Lord himself in their passage through the ordeal. So they might be assured of emerging from the overwhelming curse with a blessing.

Fesko on Baptism and the Red Sea

Tue, 28 Dec 2010 00:00:00 +0000

According to Paul, baptism foreshadowed in Israel’s Red Sea crossing) is not a miscellaneous cleansing rite or a general sign of initiation, but is that which brings God’s people into the historical narrative of the eschatological exodus.