The topic of Repentance demands the Christians full attention. If we hope to walk with our Lord in Savior in paradise, we must know, understand, and practice repentance. As Thomas Watson said, “Repentance is a continuous act. The issue of sorrow must not be quite stopped till death.” If we get repentance wrong, we will undoubtedly get the whole Christian faith wrong.
The Puritan pastor Thomas Watson dived into the conversation about repentance in 1628 when he published his short book, The Doctrine of Repentance. In the space of a 112 small pages, Watson thoroughly wrestles with the doctrine of repentance revealing both what it is and what it is not. After showing that repentance is the conjoined twin of faith, Watson spends the next three chapters discussing the difference between counterfeit and true repentance. He then looks at the motives and reasons for repentance, encouraging his readers to endure the difficulties that often follow true repentance and to remove all hindrances to true repentance.
Both the well-seasoned reader and the new-believer will find Watson’s book helpful. He wields the knife of scriptural interpretation with the care of a skillful pastor, quickly and succinctly applying the Scriptures to the lives of his readers. He clearly reveals what the Bible has to say about repentance. And he says it well. He paints powerful word pictures that bring the truths of Scripture to life. He writes, “Never do the flowers if grace grow more than after a shower of repentant tears.” And then, he says, “A hard heart is the anvil on which the hammer of God’s justice will be striking to all eternity.” Most every page contains 1 to 3 insightful statements worthy of a quick tweet or of a Sunday morning mention. My own heart and preaching has benefited greatly from Watson’s convicting and loving words.
Sunday school teachers, pastors, men and women looking for devotionals, and those who love deepening their knowledge of God will find this little book immensely beneficial. I encourage you to grab a copy today!
Sharing the gospel with those about to wade through the river of death can seem daunting and at times inappropriate and unkind. The Clinical Pastoral Education movement ardently discourages ministers from discussing the cross, Jesus, and eternal life with those in the middle of a medical crisis. The group believes pastors should offer comfort through listening and through sharing encouraging thoughts that restate the patients’ beliefs, concerns, and desires.
While this pastoral trend towards therapeutic listening has a certain appeal because it keeps ministers from unnecessarily stepping on the toes of suffering and seems to picture God’s love, it actually hides the love of God from those who need it most.
Illnesses, car accidents, and natural disasters exist because of the fall. They are manifestations of evil. Christians should always seek to rescue, help, and comfort people who acutely feel the effects of the broken world. But sorrow and suffering are not random evils. They are often used by God to accomplish his divine will.
God afflicts the wicked with suffering because he desires their salvation. In 1 Samuel 5-6, the Philistines come to grips with this reality. They had defeated the Israelites and captured the Ark of the Lord. As the begin to celebrate this great victory, God pummels them with divine wrath. Their god, Dagon, is smashed to pieces. Their people develop tumors and begin to drop like flies. Mice overrun their fields. Because of their great anguish the Philistines realize that the God of Israel is the most powerful God.
C.S. Lewis, the author of the Chronicles of Narnia, wrote,
The human spirit will not even begin to try to surrender self-will as long as all seems to be well with it. Now error and sin both have this property, that the deeper they are the less their victims suspects their existence; they are masked evil. Pain is unmasked, unmistakable evil; every man knows that something is wrong when he is being hurt
When life goes well, people are prone to ignore God. As Jeremiah 22:21 reminds us, “I spoke to you in your prosperity but you said, ‘I will not listen.” Pain gets the attention of the modern man and woman just as it got the attention of the ancient Philistines. But pain does not save. As Thomas Watson noted,
If pain and trouble were sufficient to repentance, then the dammed in hell should be most, for they are most in anguish.
Pain only knocks people off of their demigod thorns, revealing that someone else rules the universe. But pain does not fully reveal who that ruler is and how one can enjoy a peaceful relationship with God. The Philistines returned the Ark and escaped their pain. But they did not follow their cows into Israel and become followers of the one true God. The Philistines never found salvation.
Pastors have the amazing opportunity to supply the prophetic voice that the Philistines lacked. When a minister learns that a sinner is dying or hears that a less than faithful church member is approaching death, he should come to their bedside equipped with the gospel. The pastor should share the truth that Jesus has died to save sinners. As the Puritan Pastor Richard Baxter noted,
Even the stoutest of sinners will hear us on their death-bed, though they scorned us before.
The pastor should seize the bedside moment and share Christ with the dying, risking social scorn and a few bruised toes.
Is not the salvation of the wicked worth a little angst in the pastor’s souls? Did not Christ offer paradise to the thief on the cross? Can the faithful minister do any less?
Admittedly, pastors can abuse the suffering. The pastor can wrongfully offer salvation in exchange for physical blessing and peace. The sick and weak can be prone to do anything to get relief. The Philistines made golden tumors and mice. Pastors must offer Christ crucified and not some twisted gospel of self-interest where people come to God in order to get favors from him. God does not want to be treated as a genie bound to do the will of human flesh. God wants the sinner to repent and follow Him with his or her whole heart. Anything less is not real salvation and will not last. Watson rightfully notes,
A passionate resolution…raised in a storm will die in the calm.
Salvation ultimately has to be a work of God. And God often uses suffering to draw men and women to faith. Pastors should not hide the gospel when at the bedside of the dying. Rather as Baxter said, “it is time for us, while there is hope, to help him if we can.”
Should we baptize the energetic five-year-old who just bounded down the aisle to tell us they love Jesus? Should we require Sarah to get “re-baptized” even though her Christian parents had her sprinkled as a child? Should we ask Jerry to get re-baptized since he just told us about how he is finally following Jesus. He was dunked as a kid, but now his life is changing. He has stopped getting drunk; he faithfully attends church; and he has begun to final treat his wife with dignity and love. And what about Sally? She was dunked by a Roman Catholic priest. She went was fully submerged and everything. Does she need to be baptized before become a member of our church?
The answer all of these questions and the many others that play on the sands of baptism’s shore, we must turn to the Scriptures. We must look at how the Scriptures speak of baptism and then baptize accordingly.
What does the Bible have to say about baptism?
Baptism is For The Redeemed
The New Testament church only baptized those who had repented and believed in response to the Word of God. The three thousand souls added at Pentecost, the Ethiopian Eunuch, the apostle Paul, the Gentiles at Cornelius’s house, and the Philippian Jailer all heard the gospel, repented, and then entered the waters of baptized (Acts 2:37-41; Acts 8:34-36; 9:17-18; 10:47; 16:29-34).
Luke documents Peter’s words in Acts 10:47-48:
“Can anyone withhold water for baptizing these people, who have received the Holy Spirit just as we have?” And he commanded them to be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ. Then they asked him to remain for some days.
Baptism never precedes faith and repentance. It is often closely tied to faith and repentance. After all, the believer who has been redeemed will undoubtedly want to publicly obey Christ and unify with the people of Christ through the waters of baptism. Paul writes in Ephesians 4:4-6:
There is one body and one Spirit—just as you were called to the one hope that belongs to your call— one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all
All who believe in Christ become part of God’s people and share a common hope that is defined by the Lordship of Christ, faith in the his resurrection, and baptism. Baptism cannot be detached from faith. All who believe and have the opportunity to get baptized will eagerly embrace the waters of baptism.
The 1 Peter Objection
But then we encounter 1 Peter 3:21-22 which states:
Baptism, which corresponds to this, now saves you, not as a removal of dirt from the body but as an appeal to God for a good conscience, through the resurrection of Jesus Christ, who has gone into heaven and is at the right hand of God, with angels, authorities, and powers having been subjected to him.
Peter just said that baptism saves, but the Scriptures mentioned above teach the opposite. What is going on?
The word “corresponds,” ἀντίτυπον, refers to an impression made from stamp used to seal envelopes. It could also be translated as “representation.” Peter is saying that baptism, dunking, is a representation of how God saves us. The salvation is not based on works. Rather it is based on faith in God which grants us good conscience through the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. Peter is explicitly revealing that the physical act of baptism does not save. Salvation comes through Christ alone by faith. We cannot initiate salvation for ourselves or for anyone else through the waters of baptism.
Baptism By Immersion
How do we do it? How should be baptize people? Do we immerse them? Do we sprinkle them? Do we need running water? Do any of these things matter?
Correct and biblical baptism always consists of immersion. The baptism described in the New Testament indicate that the baptismal candidates where dunked. Both Mathew 3:16 and Mark 1:10 record that Jesus “when up from the water” following his baptism. And in Acts 8:38-39 we read the following description of the Ethiopian Eunuch’s baptism:
And he commanded the chariot to stop, and they both went down into the water, Philip and the eunuch, and he baptized him. And when they came up out of the water, the Spirit of the Lord carried Philip away, and the eunuch saw him no more, and went on his way rejoicing.
Moreover baptism points to the salvific work of Christ in the believer’s heart. The sacrament does not signal future salvation or hope for salvation. Baptism shows what Christ has done in our hearts. Notice Romans 6:3-4:
“Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? We were buried therefore with him by baptism into death, in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life.”
Colossians 2:12-13, Titus 3:5, and 1 Corinthians 6:11 all confirm the Biblical maxim that baptism should be by immersion. The believer goes under the water to express death to sin and comes back out of the water to express their new life in Christ. Such powerful imagery, such gospel explanation is lost when we dip our hands in small bowl of water and sprinkle someone’s head. Such little amounts of water couldn’t wash dirt off a child’s face. The picture fails to accurately represent the powerful, awesome, and beautiful act of salvation which is tied to Christ’s death, burial, and resurrection.
Baptism In the Church
Baptism is a proclamation, a demonstration, and an identification with the gospel. Those who go into the waters of baptism declare that they have been redeemed and our now part of the people of God. The church is charged by God in Matthew 16:19-20 to both bind and loose. The church is supposed to recognize those who have been redeemed and excommunicate those who evidence no fruit of continued repentance. Since Baptism is, “The boundary of visible Christianity” the church should guard and administer the sacrament. The local church should determine who has demonstrated faith and baptize them. The local church (and not camps, college ministries, or para-church feeding programs) has been given the keys to the kingdom and should oversee the sacrament of Baptism. More specifically, the pastors and elders of the local church should do the baptism. They have been appointed by the church to teach, guide, and when needed represent the church. God honoring Baptism takes place when a believer who has heard the gospel and repented is baptized by immersion by an elder in the presence of the local church.
We could summarize all that has been said above in the below definition:
Baptism is the first sacrament of the new covenant which initiates believers into the local church through immersion which symbolizes that the believer has died to sin and been raised with Christ.
The Answers
Who should be baptized? Those who believed in response to the preached gospel. Who has truly been baptized? Those who were immersed after faith. All other baptismal acts including sprinkling and being baptized in a non-gospel affirming church are not biblical baptism. Who needs to be baptized? All who have believed and who have not been immersed in the presence of a gospel believing church by a recognized leader of the church.
The topic of Repentance demands the Christians full attention. If we hope to walk with our Lord in Savior in paradise, we must know, understand, and practice repentance. As Thomas Watson said, “Repentance is a continuous act. The issue of sorrow must not be quite stopped till death.” If we get repentance wrong, we will undoubtedly get the whole Christian faith wrong.
Sharing the gospel with those about to wade through the river of death can seem daunting and at times inappropriate and unkind. The Clinical Pastoral Education movement ardently discourages ministers from discussing the cross, Jesus, and eternal life with those in the middle of a medical crisis. The group believes pastors should offer comfort through listening and through sharing encouraging thoughts that restate the patients’ beliefs, concerns, and desires.
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