Baptizing Them...

“’Go…and make disciples…baptizing them into the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.’ The narrative of the risen Jesus commissioning appearance presumes that the disciples know what ‘baptizing is, as indeed they did. Beyond reasonable doubt, the primal church adapted baptism from the repentance-ritual of John the Baptist, which at least some of the first disciples had themselves undergone. Those whom John’s preaching brought to repentance he washed; the meaning of the gesture is obvious...

Those washed by John, while they turned from their disobedient aspects of their previous behavior, did not turn into a new community. Whereas those from whom the preaching of the apostles brought to repentance did thereby enter a new community, the missionary church; in the Matthean passage baptism is to ‘make disciples.’ Thus we may summarize the canonical mandate of baptism so: initiate into the church those whom your preaching calls to repentance, by washing them in the Triune Name.” - Robert Jenson

We baptize because Jesus said to. We baptize because that’s what we do as Christians. The apostles knew that. At the end of the first Christian sermon in Acts 2, and the audience asked the apostles what to do, Peter said: ‘Repent and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins, and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit,’ and so 3000 people repent and are duly baptized. That’s what we do as the people who proclaim the glory of God and the Lordship of Jesus Christ – we baptize those who repent and welcome them into the church (for the rest of their lives). As churches here in Sydney send out their members to connect with the local community, it may be all too easy to forget the baptizing part. We’re very big on making disciples – we’ll sit with someone and lead them through Two Ways to Live or something, and when they become Christians we are ecstatic. And we try to keep discipling them – we’ll do the Just for Starters studies etc. welcome them into the church and set them on a path for life. But the command of Jesus is baptize them. As ambivalent as our churches may be with symbolism or anything that can look slightly ‘magical’, the washing of new Christians is what we are to do. It is a great shame for us if we lose or forget this image of union with the death and resurrection with Jesus. As we seek to connect with our community, lets not forget the canonical symbol of connection with Jesus.