What's The Use?

My friend recently found this article about baptism in America. He has since posted three times because of some of the responses to his blogs. Here was my response to his second blog:

I think the problem is probably all semantics. Don't you love the English language! I think there are a lot of people who would say baptism is essential for salvation. But I think if you changed just one word in that sentance, almost everyone who professes Christ would agree with that statement. Because you're right about several things, one of which is that baptism is commanded. Both by Christ and by Paul, I think there would be few who would argue with that. So the question is this, when God commanded Abram to circumcise himself to join in the covenant with him, was it the literal removal of the foreskin that made that covenant a covenant? No, of course not, it was the Word of God. The same is true here. Is it the actual dipping in the water that produces eternal life (both now and forever)? No, it was the sacrifice of Jesus on the Cross. The shedding of blood by the perfect Lamb of God. By His wounds we are made whole. So what word should we change? We could change 'baptism' with 'obedience". Would you say obedience is essential for salvation? Hmmm...no, this debate is about baptism, so let's leave that in there. What about th word essential? No, that's the whole debate...And salvation is at the core of what we're talking about. So, how about this: Baptism is essential TO salvation. See what I did there? Kept salvation and baptism and essential in there, but didn't hinge salvation ON baptism, but made it seem incomplete without it. Man am I clever. But seriously, what if we think of it this way. What if for a momment we put Baptism in the same catagory as Repentence. I don't think this is so far a stretch since that one time when the church was just getting going and no body knew anything about nothing so everybody was confused and they figured that that guy who's yelling at them just spent three years with the Son of God, so he just maybe might know something about the subject of eternal life, so they decided to ask him what it took for salvation. They had already believed (since they had been cut to the heart as the good book says) so now what? Well the Rock pulls this one out saying, "REPENT and be BAPTIZED for the forgiveness of your sins." So there's several ways to look at this. On one hand, someone would say, "SEE to be saved you have to do these two things!" Bill Wolf the heretic would say, "no no no, since their sins have been forgiven, they need to repent and be baptized." Well Paul asks this question, "Should we just keep on sinning, knowing that there is nothing in the whole world that we could ever do to seperate us from Christ?" How would you feel when they catch the guys that raped that stripper at Duke if their excuse was, "Well, Jesus will forgive me, so I figured it wasn't that big of a deal." Probably feel a lot like we do when we think of the terrorists who flew planes into the world trade center for the Glory of God. Something's a bit off. Something doesn't match up. So what gives? Well, I think you'd say a follower of Christ would have to be repentant of their sins. That repentance was a basic lesson taught by Christ himself (just ask the woman caught in adultry). I certainly wouldn't want to be the guy standing in front of God on judgement day who accepted him, but then raped and molested little children because he knew Jesus would forgive them. Whether or not God puts him on the right or left, well, frankley that's up to God. But I sure wouldn't want to be in those shoes. Can't like those odds. So then, I think it would be safe to say that anyone who is serious about their relationship with Christ would be serious about their repentance. They would claim it was essential to their faith. That it would be impossible for them to follow Jesus without repentace. That without repentance, their conversion wasn't really serious. That without repentance, the words they said didn't really have any meaning. So take everything I just wrote and insert Baptism into it. On the issue of essential FOR salvation, won't touch it with a seven hundred and seventy seven foot pole. But if you want to ask if it is essential TO salvation...well, I think he's already spoken.

tah