Featured "Christian" Baptism prior to the Resurrection

Jewish ceremonial washings existed long before John but not Christian baptism and John baptized in reference to repentance and faith in the gospel of Christ (Acts 19:4; Jn. 3;36) even though he did not know that Jesus of Nazareth was the fulfillment of that Christ gospel preached by all the prophets (Acts 10:43). It was through baptism Christ was "made manifest" to Israel.

Ceremonial cleansings are Old Covenant ordinances but the baptism of John was a new covenant ordinance that cannot be found under Old Covenant Law. With regard to ceremonial cleansing of Gentile proselytes, it was joined with circumcision as an Old Covenant type of the internal washing of regeneration but with regard to actual Jewish practice it was part of their abused means for being justified by the works of the law. This explains the debate between the disciples of John with the Pharisees with regard to the Old Covenant ceremonial cleansings.

 

A person is first united to Christ by the Spirit of God. He who is dead in sin is resurrected by the Spirit (is made spiritually alive) and is engrafted into the body of Christ. Water baptism symbolises the believer's death and resurrection in Christ. The rite itself does not accomplish anything spiritually. Rather the spiritually comes before the physical representation.
The Christian is one who has been spiritually resurrected, and yet one who looks forward to another resurrection, that concerning his mortal body.

 

You are confusing the church with salvation "in Christ." The church had no existence prior to the personal ministry of Christ, its foundation consisted of "apostles and prophets" thus it is New Testament in origin. However, salvation in Christ existed from Genesis 3:15 as Paul explicitly states that the covenant of God with Abraham was "in Christ" - Gal.3:17. Furthermore, those chosen "in him" were chosen before the foundation of the world. You are following the same confusion introduced by Augustine where he confused the church with the family and kingdom of God.

Water baptism is the prerequisite for church membership and necessary for the constitution of a New Testament church, without which no church in the Biblical sense exists.

 

Yes, I would agree that salvation in Christ has existed from the first promise for all those who believe. I would say, however, that the true church has always been in Christ. To be in Christ is to be in the kingdom of God and to be in the true church is to be counted among the congregation of God's people. It is to belong to the true Israel of God. The growth of the NT church, I would say, is based on "apostles, prophets", this, however, alludes to the growth of the church after the middle wall of partition had been abolished. The true church of Christ has from the beginning and has only consisted of those who have truly eaten the flesh and drink the blood of the Son of Man. In the OT this consisted of the remnant according to election.
If you say that one must be physically baptised to belong to the church of Christ, then there is the possibility that one can belong to Christ, be part of his body, be spiritually resurrected, and yet be outside the church. I can't see this.

 

You are turning the metaphor "foundation" upon its head! This metaphor is NEVER used for "growth" but for the beginning point in any building project. In addition, Paul says that God added "first" to the church not Abel or Abraham, but the "apostles" thus again reinforcing the metaphorical idea of origin with "foundation."

Circular reasoning. You are assuming the truth of your position in this statement to prove your position. Your premise is what is being challenged. Physical baptism is into a physical church as there is no such thing as any other kind of church in the scriptures.

 

It does not matter if they understood the prophetic purpose at this point. God designed it for God's purpose that became revealed clearly (Lk. 7:29-30).

 

Paul tells us how both John and the people that submitted to baptism understood it. It was understood in connection with the gospel preached by John - repentance and faith in Christ - Acts 19:4. So even before the cross it was the consequence of professing the gospel of the anticipated Christ.

 

From the very beginning of the administration of the baptism of John, it was for public identification with the gospel of the anticipated coming of Christ. It was designed to purposely identify with Gospel repentance and faith in the coming Christ (Acts 19:4). "How" (1 Cor. 15:3-4) the coming Savior was going to specifically accomplish the predicted defeat of Satan (Gen. 3:15) was not grasped fully by those living at the time of Christ's coming. However, Christ came at a time of great apostasy and false teaching that wholly misrepresented the prophetic scriptures by the traditions of the elders. It is in the apostate atmosphere of confusion and perversion of the way of salvation that the apostles lived. Hence, former saints prior to the first century may have understood the gospel better than those in the days of Christ (Rom. 10:16; Acts 2:30-31; Gal. 3:6-8, 17), although they certainly did not have the perspective of fulfilled prophecy and therefore their understanding could not have been as clear as post-prophetic fulfillment.

 

I agree. The emphasis of baptism is true repentance which means a CHANGE wrought by God within man. A change of mind from unbelief to belief. A change of heart from love of sin to love of righteousness. A change of will from resistance to submission. Baptism declares that change has occurred and provides in picture the cause for that change - Christ's redemptive work. Paul emphasizes this in Romans 6:1-8:26. Formerly he concluded that where sin abounded grace did much more abound. That gave rise the anticipated argument, well, if that is the case then why not sin more so grace can more abound? Therefore, justification by grace alone through faith alone in Christ alone without works promotes sin.

Paul responds immediately, "God forbid" but then takes the members of the churches in Rome to their common public water baptism. From a post-cross perspective baptism not only openly idenifies the believer with the gospel of Christ but more specfically with the inseparability of justification by faith and regeneration. His death and burial satisfied the law's penalty - thus justified - dead to sin legally. However, it also identified the believer with the resurrection of Christ and his resurrrected life - dead to the power of sin personally. Sin had no dominion over the resurrected life of Christ and sin has no dominion over the believer who is walking in the power of the indwelling Spirit and not after the flesh (Rom. 6:7-8:26). Water baptism identifies us with Christ both positionally and personally with regard to sin and its dominion as a penalty and its power. When a person is water baptized they are saying I have not only been justified by grace alone through faith alone in Christ alone without works - the redemptive work of Christ that has made me legally free, thus dead to sin, but I have been also regenerated by the Spirit that raised up Christ from the dead which provides victory over the power of indwelling sin, so I can experientially die daily to sin.

 

Surely you agree that there are those who belong to the true church and those who are false, making a profession, but yet remaining outside the body of Christ. When the apostle penned Romans 6, whilst he did not know the hearts of all who made a profession, he knew that those who truly believed were indeed, dead to sin and alive the Christ. My point is simply that one can belong to the body of Christ, be spiritually resurrected, without undergoing the rite of physical baptism.
The true church consists of all those who are in Christ from Genesis 3:15. It is this church that is being conformed to the image of Christ. Christ is the Head of the church and he is the Saviour of the body. I cannot make a distinction between the true church that consists of those that are truly regenerate and the body of Christ. They are one and the same. I would have no difficult in believing that Abraham was in the church and a member of Christ's body. That he was seated in heavenly places in Christ and a member of the new covenant. It is the the entire church from both before and after Christ's earthly work that is going to be presented without spot or wrinkle.
Again, I say that if one is insistent on the rite of water baptism before one can become a recipient of the true church of christ, one is attributing an unscriptural efficacy to the rite. I don't for a second believe that in Romans 6 Paul is speaking of the rite of baptism, but, rather, the Spirit's engrafting into Christ's body. I don't follow the circular reasoning argument because I believe all believers to be in the church, irrespective of the rite. I don't recognise that demarcation point between OT and NT saints. Believing this it must then follow that to insist on the rite of baptism as a precondition to belonging to the true church, the body of Christ, is to put the cart before the horse.
Having said this, I do see that in the NT, the rite and membership of the visible church appear to go together.

 

John's baptism was in the name of the promised one. It don't think it mattered much that the disciples did not quite grasp the rite's significance. For example, Jesus own disciples did not fully understand the nature of Christ's ministry, but I would have no hesitation in saying that they were believers. OT saints saw from a distance, yet they were as much in Christ as believers today. One's understanding does not affect one's objective position in Christ. The luxury of subjectively entering into one's inheritance was, I believe, associated with that blessing we read about at Pentecost.

 

I think you are making a lot of assumptions here. John the Baptist preached a lot about the Holy Spirit and yet these ignorant about some aspect of the Spirit. The grammar here can easily be understood to mean that they had been baptized in reference to John or in the name of John by the administrator of their baptism. However, Paul tells them that John baptized in reference to Christ not in reference to himself. This occurs some 19-22 years after the ministry of John the Baptist. Their administrator was most likely Apollos who was ignorant that the Holy Spirit had publicly accredited the church as the administrator of water baptism (Mt. 28:19 with Acts 2:40) and was ignorant that Jesus of Nazareth was the Christ. Apollos was not rebaptized, but from that point forward worked in and through New Testament churches and preached Jesus was the Christ. Apollos had no authority to administer baptism and these 12 have all the markings of his ministry before he was instructed more perfectly in the way of the Lord

 

You are making a fundemental exegetical error. The Greek term ekklesia was used in Classical Greek and throughout its pre-New Testament history to mean only a local visible assembly of people gathered to conduct some sort of business. It never was used to mean "the called out ones." It was commonly used in the institutional sense in Classical Greek. In the New Testament, one cannot simply tack on a brand new meaning opposite to its whole history of usage until it is proven that its common ordinary concrete and institutional uses do not make sense and there is no passage where either the concrete or the institutional sense does not make sense. The Bible never uses metaphors that convey invisibility or universality in reference to ekkesia. They are metaphors that convey visibleness and locality.

To answer your question, the churches of Christ contain no members who do not profess Christ but do contain lost professors as in the case of Judas. The church and salvation are not synonyms in any context in the New Testament. You believe in church salvation as you have no salvation outside your church and only in your church is salvation - that is fundamentally the Roman Catholic doctrine of church salvation simply revised to "invisible" by Reformed Roman Catholics but both are false doctrines.

Romans 6:4-6 is speaking about water baptism not spirit baptism as Spirit baptism portrays or conveys no "likeness" of anything but water baptism does. Moreover, it is water baptism that provides a public "likeness" that repudiates the idea that grace promotes sin because water baptism identifies the believer publicly and openly with both justification or positional deadness to sin by immersion in water as one dead and being buried; and by identification with the resurrected life of Christ, thus identification with regenerative life over which sin has no power. Paul's point is that justification by faith does not occur without or apart from regeneration and it is water baptism that publicly proclaims, affirms and demonstrates this by joining one with the other. Hence, we are dead to sin legally and positionally by the cross, his death and we are dead to sin regeneratively by the resurrection life of Christ, both of which are provided in "likeness" in public water baptism.

No, it does not! You are teaching the doctrine of Roman Catholocism or church salvation as to be "in Christ" by our doctrine is to be in the church and to be lost by your doctrine is to be outside the church that is Roman Catholicism, the error continued by Reformed Roman Catholics. The church and salvation are not one and the same. For example, your doctrine teaches that entrance into that kind of church is through the baptism in the Spirit, however, there is no baptism in the Spirit prior to Pentecost is there, and therefore no possible entrance into your kind of church for OT saints. Second, Ephesians 2:20 and 1 Cor. 12:28 explicitly repudiate your Old Testament body of Christ church as Paul plainly states that "apostles" are the FIRST God set in His church not Abel, or Abraham.

No it is the individual believer that is being conformed to Christ (Rom. 8:28-32). The church is the metaphorical body of Christ that is the visible representative of the kingdom of God on earth and administers the ordinances.

That is true as one cannot be a member of a New Testament church apart from such a salvation profession and Paul treats the profession as authentic as he was instrumental in constituting the churches he addresses in this manner. The metaphor "head" is NEVER used of anything other than "authority" in Scripture. Christ is the final "authority" over the church and all New Testament churches confess that.

The only "true" church are New Testament churches or using the generic or institutional sense "the church" what you have is a false church that has no reality. In reality your concept is a confusion between the church and the kingdom of God and Augustine was responsible in church history for introducing that confusion with the idea of the church simply to escape the doctrine of church discipline.

You are confusing the "family" of God with the "church" of God and they are not one and the same. You have to ignore scriptures, redefine terms, invent a new kind of salvation to produce your concept of the church. For example, your concept requires entrance by the baptism in the Spirit as that is your doctrine modus operandi for placing members into you kind of church but the baptism in the Spirit had no existence previous to Pentecost.[/QUOTE]

 

Your welcome