Boxing, Baptisms and Wild Dogs
September 24th, 2007 by Pastor Eric
Deep Thought: If you’re in a boxing match, try not to let the other guy’s glove touch your lips, because you don’t know where that glove has been.
That’s why it is important to wash you hands. Yesterday, in the service, we looked at a scripture in Luke 11:37 – 38 where Jesus is eating at a Pharisee’s house and the Pharisee gets upset because Jesus doesn’t wash his hands before he eats.
“When Jesus had finished speaking, a Pharisee invited him to eat with him; so he went in and reclined at the table. But the Pharisee, noticing that Jesus did not first wash before the meal…”
That word, wash, comes from the Greek word, Baptizo, where we get the word baptize. The word was a common, everyday word in the Greek language meaning to wash, submerge, dunk, drown, etc. So, the Pharisee wasn’t upset that Jesus didn’t baptize himself but that he didn’t wash his hands.
We saw, yesterday that baptism was basically a washing, symbolic of washing away of your old life and dedicating your life in a new direction. We said it this way, “Baptism is a public declaration of a new association.” With Christianity, that new association was specifically with Jesus Christ. That’s why you cannot find infant baptism in the New Testament, because an infant cannot make a public declaration to follow Jesus.
So, some people have asked how did infant baptism come about? Well, with my limited knowledge of church history, I will attempt to explain it.
A Catholic historian, you can read it, named Brenner said this, “For the first 1300 years of church history, baptism was generally and regularly immersion of the person under water and in only extraordinary cases a sprinkling or pouring of water. The latter were disputed modes of baptism and often forbidden.” There you go, for the first 1300 years, that is the way people were baptized.
That’s also the way we baptize. Because of the diverse backgrounds of our church, I get this question, “Well, Eric, how did sprinkling come into vogue? How did that become hip?” Basically, it was a convenience thing. But if you really want to get a little bit deep, there was an offshoot of Christianity that distorted some things in the Bible. And I want to share these things with you because they are not Biblical.
The first is original guilt. This group said that when a child is born, not only are they sinners, but God holds them guilty and accountable for their sins. Thus, this group says, if a child dies, the child will spend eternity separate from the Lord.
So, with this original guilt thing going on, people started going, “Whoa, we better start baptizing babies.” So they began to immerse infants and many infants died because of it. There was a shortage of water around, so people started sprinkling because it was convenient. Then another distortion took place called Baptismal Regeneration. This group said, “When we baptize these babies, they are saved. That’s it. They are Christians.” These are distortions. You won’t find them in the Bible. Baptism doesn’t save us. What you find in the bible is that we are saved by grace.
Well, that is my little attempt to explain in a limited amount of time, where infant baptism comes from. It really is too bad that whole churches can be torn apart by something as simple as baptism, when they can be torn apart by a pack of wild dogs.
Submerging as we go,
Pastor Eric