I Am Baptised

For as many of you as have been baptized into Christ have put on Christ. GALATIANS 3:27

There is a story, told of Luther in his seasons of dark temptation, that when the devil pressed hardest on him with accusations he did not argue about his feelings or his works. He simply answered, I am baptised. Some say he chalked the words on his table. Whether or not the details are exact, the story is true to the man. For Luther, baptism was not a quaint ceremony performed on babies and then forgotten. It was the solid ground under his feet, the one fact about himself that no temptation could shake, because it was not his work but God’s.

Water with the Word

In his Small Catechism of 1529, Luther asked the simplest questions about baptism and gave the simplest answers. What is baptism? It is not plain water only, but water used according to God’s command and joined with God’s Word. What does it give? It works forgiveness of sins, delivers from death and the devil, and gives eternal salvation to all who believe, as the words and promises of God declare. How can water do such great things? It is not the water, Luther answers, but the Word of God with the water, and faith that trusts that Word.

He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved; but he that believeth not shall be damned. MARK 16:16

This was typical of Luther’s whole approach to the sacraments. Everything depends on the promise. In On the Babylonian Captivity of the Church, written in 1520, he complained that the medieval church had surrounded baptism with ceremonies and then taught people that, after it, they must be saved by penance, as though baptism were a ship that had been wrecked by sin and they must now swim to shore on a plank. No, said Luther. The ship does not sink. The promise God made in baptism stands for life. When we fall, we return not to a plank but to the ship: to our baptism, and to the God who made His promise there.

Go ye therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. MATTHEW 28:19

A daily drowning

Baptism is not only a past event. Luther taught that it signifies a daily dying and rising. In the catechism he explains that the old Adam in us should be drowned by daily sorrow and repentance and die with all sins and evil desires, and that a new person should daily come forth and rise to live before God in righteousness and purity for ever. The Christian life is a return to baptism every morning.

Know ye not, that so many of us as were baptized into Jesus Christ were baptized into his death? Therefore we are buried with him by baptism into death: that like as Christ was raised up from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in newness of life. ROMANS 6:3–4

His sermon on how to contemplate Christ’s sufferings touches the same truth from another angle. He says that true meditation on the cross, even for a quarter of an hour, does more than a year of fasting, because it kills the old self and gives new life:

“For such a meditation changes a man’s character and almost as in baptism he is born again, anew.”

The old Adam, Luther liked to say, is a strong swimmer. He must be drowned again and again. But the promise of baptism means that the new life is already ours, and the drowning is not a hopeless struggle but a following of what God has already done.

Not by works of righteousness which we have done, but according to his mercy he saved us, by the washing of regeneration, and renewing of the Holy Ghost. TITUS 3:5

The baptism of infants

Luther defended the baptism of infants firmly, both against Rome’s later additions and against the Anabaptists, who taught that only believers able to confess their faith should be baptised. His argument rested again on the Word. Baptism is God’s work, not ours; it rests on His command and promise, not on the strength of our faith. We do not baptise because we are sure the child believes, he said, but because God commands it and promises to work through it. And he pointed to Christ’s welcome of the little ones.

But when Jesus saw it, he was much displeased, and said unto them, Suffer the little children to come unto me, and forbid them not: for of such is the kingdom of God. MARK 10:14

For the promise is unto you, and to your children, and to all that are afar off, even as many as the Lord our God shall call. ACTS 2:39

Where Christians differ

It must be said fairly that faithful Christians disagree with Luther here. Baptists and many others believe that baptism should follow a personal confession of faith, and that the New Testament pattern is of believers being baptised. Reformed Christians share Luther’s practice of infant baptism but speak more cautiously of what baptism does, calling it a sign and seal rather than the means that gives salvation. Luther himself insisted that baptism without faith profits nothing; he did not teach that the water works like magic. But he spoke of baptism’s power more strongly than many of his fellow Protestants could, and readers must weigh his words against Scripture.

A darker matter also belongs here. Luther’s disagreement with the Anabaptists was not only theological. In the 1530s he joined his colleagues in approving the death penalty for Anabaptists judged to be seditious or blasphemous, and many were executed in Protestant as well as Catholic lands. Many Lutherans today have formally sought forgiveness from the Mennonite churches for this history. It is a sober reminder that right teaching about the sacrament of grace did not always produce grace towards those who disagreed.

The like figure whereunto even baptism doth also now save us (not the putting away of the filth of the flesh, but the answer of a good conscience toward God,) by the resurrection of Jesus Christ. 1 PETER 3:21

Standing on the promise

Whatever view the reader takes of the time and mode of baptism, Luther’s central insight belongs to every Christian. Our assurance does not rest on our feelings, our progress or the strength of our faith. It rests on the promise God has spoken and sealed to us. When the accuser comes, we do not point to ourselves. We point to what God has done. In the moment of temptation, the most powerful words are not I feel or I have done but God has said. For Luther, baptism was God’s saying it, with water, over him by name.

FOR REFLECTION AND ACTION

1. Find out, if you can, the date of your baptism. Give thanks for it this year as you would for a birthday.

2. The next time you are accused by your conscience, answer as Luther did, pointing not to your feelings but to God’s promise in Christ.

3. Begin each day this week with a short prayer of dying and rising: “Lord, let the old self die today, and let me live to You.”

4. If you hold a different view of baptism from Luther’s, read Romans 6 and ask what you can learn from him about the promise even where you differ.

5. Pray for Christians of other traditions whom your own tradition has wronged, and for reconciliation.

A PRAYER

Father, Son and Holy Spirit, into whose name I have been baptised, thank You for the promise You have made to me.

When my sins accuse me and my feelings fail, let me rest on what You have said and done.

Drown in me today the old self with all its evil desires, and raise me to walk in newness of life.

Keep me in the grace of my baptism until the day I rise with Christ, and make me gentle towards all who bear His name. Amen.