The Lutheran Hour
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"Baptism: A Matter of Life and Death"
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Text: Romans 6:1-7
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Have you ever had a near-death experience? I have had a few in my lifetime. One that particularly sticks out in my mind is from my early days as a pastor in western Oklahoma. When I graduated from the seminary in St. Louis, I received a call to be parish pastor at Buffalo. Buffalo is at the eastern end of the panhandle of Oklahoma. This meant I was part of the panhandle circuit of the Lutheran churches in the western part of the state. Each month the pastors of the eight churches there would get together to worship, to study, and to enjoy some fellowship. Since our Circuit was about 180 miles across, we would take turns hosting the group – one month on the east side and one on the west side. One morning I got up early, made a thermos of coffee, and set off down Highway 64 for the far western end of the panhandle.
I proceeded to try to pour myself a cup of coffee, while at the same time trying to steer my car with my knees. As I focused my attention on pouring the coffee, not wanting to spill any of it, I took my attention off of the road. My vehicle began to slowly drift to the right until the right wheel slid off the edge of the road. Since the highway had no shoulder, the steering wheel was jerked to the right and I let the coffee go flying as I grabbed the steering wheel and gave a big jerk to the left. This got me back on the road but, unfortunately, I had overcorrected and swerved all the way into the oncoming traffic lane. Again I gave the wheel a jerk – to the right this time – to get back in the proper lane. I had just gotten the car back in the right lane as I was cresting a small hill, and in that second a semi-truck came over the hill. Just one second later, and my near-death experience would have been very near indeed.
Now, normally we think of a near-death experience as a bad thing. But today I would like to talk with you about another near-death experience that is not only a good thing, but is a thing that we can all celebrate, and for which we can all be thankful. This near-death experience comes through faith – faith in Jesus Christ. For many believers, this gift of faith is a gift given to them by the Holy Spirit in their baptism. Baptism is the wonderful gift of God whereby He has promised to connect us through faith to Jesus Christ as our Lord and Savior. In this way baptism is our spiritual “near-death experience.”
Listen to how the Apostle Paul describes this in Romans 6:1-7: What shall we say, then? Shall we go on sinning so that the grace may increase? By no means! We died to sin; how can we live in it any longer? Or don’t you know that all of us who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into His death? We were therefore buried with Him through baptism into death in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, we too may live a new life. If we have been united with Him like this in His death, we will certainly also be united with Him in His resurrection. For we know that our old self was crucified with Him so that the body of sin might be done away with, that we should no longer be slaves to sin- because anyone who has died has been freed from sin.
I would like to look at some other phrases we sometimes use with the word “death” or “dead” in them to help us appreciate the new life God gives to us through baptism and the gift of faith given in it.
One of those phrases is “Dead and Buried.” The picture is of a gravestone that has the words “Here lies…” and the name of the person chiseled there in the stone, maybe the date of their birth, and the date of their death. We could say the same thing about the place where we were baptized. “Here lies our old sinful nature.” But we could also say of that same place, “Here rises our new spirit.” In our baptism, Paul said that we died – died to sin – so that we are no longer slaves to sin. In this way death is a very freeing thing, when we see death from a faith perspective.
Which brings me to another familiar phrase, usually seen in the old western movies: “Wanted – Dead or Alive!” The great thing about what Paul teaches us about baptism and the life-giving gift of faith in Jesus that has been given to us in baptism, is that God wants us: “Dead and Alive.” God knows that as long as we live in this world, in these bodies, we are both sinners and saints at the same time. We are indeed sinners – those who disobey God; but also saints – those who are forgiven, washed, and cleansed by the blood of Jesus poured out for us on the cross. God knows there is this inner struggle between our old sinful nature that wants what it wants and our new spirit which wants to follow and do what God wants.
In fact, the Bible paints a very vivid before-and-after picture of what we are like without Christ and what it means for us to have Christ in our lives. Before Christ, we were separated from the Father by sin. The Bible describes us with these three characteristics; apart from Christ we were: dead – Spiritually blind – and enemies of God. But when we are united to Christ by baptism we become alive – able to see – children of God. What a transformation: transformed from death to life – to go from being blinded to the truth of God’s Word to be able to see its freeing truth – to go from being enemies of God to now being called children of God who can joyfully pray to God and call Him, “Our Father…”
The next phrase I would like us to consider is one that many couples spoke at their weddings: “Until death us do part.” The idea of that pledge is that nothing should separate the couple until the day that death itself separates them. Death is indeed a thing that separates. Again, through our eyes of faith we can see this separation is a blessing. Faith means the death of our old sinful nature. This Spiritual death means the rebirth of a new glorifying spirit, a spirit that responds to God’s love with love and obedience. When we die, our spirits go immediately to be with God in heaven and we are separated from our physical bodies. But even this physical death means the rebirth of a new glorified body. The Bible teaches us that yes, our bodies will die and yes, we will place them in the ground. But Jesus has promised that He will return on the Last Day and raise up our bodies and transform them to be like His glorified body. No more pain, no more death.
This is God’s amazing truth: If we were only born once, we die twice. If we are only born once – our physical birth into this world, then we will die both the physical death of our bodies and the spiritual death of hell – being separated from God forever. But if we are born twice, we only die once. Martin Luther even talked about the death of a believer as only a “sleep” until Christ returns and gives us new resurrected bodies. To be born twice means our first birth, our physical birth; and also our second birth, being born again spiritually through faith in Jesus. That life-giving faith trusts in Jesus as the perfect sinless Son of God who came to be born and came to die in our place. His perfect life and sacrificial death on the cross are what makes our rebirth possible. I pray that you know that life-giving truth. I pray that you have heard the Holy Spirit’s call through the Word of God and that promise of God given in and through baptism.
As you give thanks for the life that Jesus gave so that you could live, as you give thanks for the gift of faith that takes hold of Him as your Savior, I want to share with you one final phrase: “The Living Dead.” Now, in horror movies, the living dead are the zombies – those who are dead and yet continue to walk around, not even knowing they are dead. And I would like you to ask yourself this question: “Who do I know who is physically alive, yet spiritually dead?” At my home congregation we are asking ourselves that very question as we try to be very intentional about our calling to share the gift of new life in Christ Jesus. We have been using this phrase to help remind ourselves of that calling: W.W.W. in 2008. Not the World Wide Web, but the three Ws stand for this: to be in the Word, to be in Worship, and to Witness for Christ. The first two: being in the Word and being in worship, help equip us to do the last one, to witness for Christ Being in the Bible daily and gathering each week to worship with fellow Christians helps feed and strengthen us for our primary calling of witnessing. It truly is a matter of life and death. And I would encourage you to actually write down the name of someone you know who does not know Jesus and to begin praying for them and for yourself and your witness to them.
One of my other experiences I had at my first church in Buffalo, Okla., was serving as a volunteer ambulance driver. As a part of the training they gave us for this volunteer work, we learned C.P.R. (Cardio-Pulmonary Resuscitation). Perhaps some of you know it as well. Can you imagine knowing how to perform C.P.R. and coming upon someone who is dying because his heart has stopped? Can you imagine standing idly by and simply watching this person die even though you have the means to help save his life? I can’t. Why would we stand idly by as we see people we know who are dying spiritually when we have the means of life – life eternal – to share with them. Let us share with them this life-giving C.P.R. – but in this case, C.P.R. stands for Christ Powered Resuscitation. It is a matter of life and death!
May the Spirit bless you and your walk in that new life in Christ as you share the life-giving message of Him with others. In the name of Jesus, and to His glory. Amen.
LUTHERAN HOUR MAILBOX (Questions & Answers) for April 27, 2008
The Historical JesusANNOUNCER: Now, Pastor Ken Klaus responds to questions from listeners. I’m Mark Eischer.
KLAUS: Hello, Mark. Just so our listeners know: these are real questions from real people. When I’m out on the road that is one of the things people ask most often.
ANNOUNCER: Lately it seems there has been a great deal of focus on the so-called “historical” Jesus. We’ve seen television documentaries that try to explain what Jesus did during His early years before His public ministry.
KLAUS: In response to that I’d say God’s Word is complete. It’s enough. We can search the Scriptures, those have the words of eternal life. God gave us what we need to know. Yes, we have questions. We’d love to fill in the blanks of Jesus’ life. But if we needed to know those answers, God in His wisdom would let us know.
The second thing to those kinds of challenges, I’d say: where do these scholars get their information? What’s their source? It’s true in the centuries after Jesus’ resurrection; all kinds of people came along, made up all kinds of stories about the Savior. The Church knew those stories; looked at them, rejected them. Now, what’s happening today is these liberal scholars are going back to these discredited stories and books and pretending – ah -ha! – they’ve uncovered some great secret. Those stories, for the most part, weren’t being kept in secret. They’ve been there all along. And for many hundreds of years they were settled issues.
Scholars can guess, they can conjecture, they can assume, they can do whatever they want. But when all is said and done, they’re just taking a shot in the dark. If the Bible is silent on certain issues, that silence ought to be respected.
ANNOUNCER: Our listener continues: I have seen and heard many “experts” who question the New Testament because they point out that the Scriptures were written many years after Jesus’ crucifixion. They question whether we can believe what’s been written because the authors either supposedly were not there when Jesus was saying and doing these things; or if they were there, they were writing so long after the fact they couldn’t possibly remember what Jesus said.
KLAUS: Isn’t it interesting, “experts” living 2,000 years after the event are saying who was present with Jesus and who wasn’t? How can they do that? We don’t have the original manuscripts of the New Testament; we do have some texts that are extremely old. There is little or no indication these books were written “many years” after Jesus. Indeed, vocabulary, usage, sentence structure, would say these books were written very close to the time of Christ, and before the end of that century which saw Him born.
These books were inspired by God – verbally. That means the Holy Spirit, using each author’s gifts, interests, abilities, and looking the audiences to which they were writing, gave these men the very words they were supposed to write. The fact that all Scripture is given by inspiration of God gives me confidence that these books are accurate.
ANNOUNCER: Finally today, our listener brings up a topic we’ve actually discussed here once before. He says: “Scholars debate as to where and when Jesus was actually born. The date of December 25th was originally a pagan holiday the early Church borrowed in order to lure more believers to the new faith.”
KLAUS: Yes, the Bible doesn’t give a date when Jesus was born. No church I know of says December 25th is the date. In fact, many churches celebrate Christmas on a different date. In the Western Church, December 25th was picked not as a way to “lure” people. They picked that pagan festival – the return of the earthly sun that the Romans were celebrating – to celebrate the arrival of God’s Son. Look, Christians were being persecuted. It was a way for them to celebrate the Savior’s birth without drawing attention to themselves and literally losing their heads. It’s hard to lure people to a faith that’s being persecuted and condemned. The “experts” need to get it right.
ANNOUNCER: How are we as Christians, then, to respond to these and other questions? Do we simply close our eyes to science and history and just trust what the Bible says?
KLAUS: Absolutely not. Christians welcome honest history and true science. But these claims that are being portrayed on TV as history and science are often more like a modern day Ripley’s Believe It Or Not. In fairness to Ripley, at least he usually had some solid base for his claims. Most of these skeptical scholars are just searching for their 15 minutes of fame. Well, they get their fame, and cause people to question their faith, but what they do is a poor excuse for science and it certainly isn’t history.
ANNOUNCER: Thank you, Pastor Klaus. This has been a presentation of Lutheran Hour Ministries.
Music selections for this program:
“A Mighty Fortress” arranged by John Leavitt. Concordia Publishing House/SESAC
“All Who Believe and Are Baptized” arr. Henry Gerike. Used by permission.
“Dear Christians, One and All, Rejoice” From Martin Luther: Hymns, Ballads, Chants, Truth (© 2004 Concordia Publishing House)
“Come, You Faithful, Raise the Strain” arr. S. Drummond Wolff. From Hymns for All Saints: Lent, Easter, Pentecost (© 2006 Concordia Publishing House)
“Go, My Children, with My Blessing” arr. Arthur Preuss, Sr. From Sacred Organ Originals by Arthur L. Preuss (© 2006 Arthur L. Preuss, Sr.) Used by permission.
“Oh, That I Had a Thousand Voices” by Michael Burkhardt. From Hymn Improvisations, vol. 1 by Michael Burkhardt (© 1993 MorningStar Music Publishers)