Sermon: Baptism in Corinthians

Baptism and Church Unity in 1 Corinthians 1

If you will turn your Bibles with me to 1 Corinthians chapter 1. 1 Corinthians chapter 1. If you are regular here, you know that we have been doing a series on the ordinances of the church. We did, I believe, five sermons, as I recall, on the Lord's Supper.

This is the ninth on the subject of baptism. Clearly, Jeff and I are in a bit of a race right now to see if I can finish dealing with baptism before Jeff finishes Matthew. That's the big rush now. I'm not sure who's going to win that race, I'll be honest with you.

I am hoping to be able to travel again soon, so he will have the advantage at that point,.

To be sure.

But we have laid out exactly why we're doing this. We at Apologia Church live in an interesting context where we spend a great deal of time in close association with Presbyterian churches, churches of the Reformed tradition.

We would view ourselves as part of that, though we recognize fully that there are many in that tradition that do not want us to identify ourselves in that way for various and sundry reasons. Sorry, you're stuck with this, but be that as it may.

That means there's going to be a lot of discussion and talk about the subject of baptism and the differing views that exist between ourselves and others. And so we have laid out our task in the earlier sermons, looking at all the biblical data.

First.

We think that's an important thing to do. And then we'll be looking at church history. Those will be some interesting sermons. I'm not exactly sure how to do that, but we'll figure it out. And then looking at the arguments as we finish up this particular series of studies.

And so here at the end of the year, I have the opportunity of looking again at the subject of baptism, and what we're going to be doing today is looking at a number of texts in the book of Corinthians.

There aren't that many texts in the New Testament that are specifically on the subject, but Corinthians has a number of them. They're important. We have looked briefly at chapter 1 before when we were looking at the subject of household baptisms.

And so I'm not going to repeat that material. I'm going to have to be fairly brief. We have a number to look at. And one of great interest to those of you who do ministry to Mormons, we will look at 1 Corinthians 15, 29, and baptism for the dead as well.

So we have a lot to get to. And so let's get to it. First Corinthians chapter 1, beginning at verse 10. Now I exhort you, brethren, by the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that you all agree and that there be no divisions among you, but that you be made complete in the same mind and the same judgment.

For I've been informed concerning you, my brethren, by Chloe's people, that there are quarrels among you. Now I mean this, that each one of you is saying, I am of Paul and I of Apollos and I of Cephas and I of Christ.

Has Christ been divided? Paul was not crucified for you, was he? Or were you baptized in the name of Paul? I thank God that I baptized none of you except Crispus and Gaius, that no man should say you were baptized in my name.

Now I did baptize also the household of Stephanos. Beyond that, I do not know whether I baptized any other. For Christ did not send me to baptize, but to preach the gospel, not in cleverness of speech, that the cross of Christ should not be made void.

So once again, we already mentioned this in reference to the subject of household baptisms. Verse 16, I did not, but I did baptize also the household of Stephanos. Beyond that, I do not know whether I baptized any other.

Our purpose here, aside from being complete in our looking at references to baptism, it is interesting to notice that Paul's argument here, and I have utilized this text in, again, dealing with Mormons and things like that, is Paul's assertion, for Christ did not send me to baptize, but to preach the gospel, not in cleverness of speech, that the cross of Christ should not be made void.

Now it'd be easy for someone to say, oh, well, that means that baptism is not important. It's just an ancillary issue. It's a side issue. I don't think that would be an appropriate understanding of what Paul is saying, because it's a little bit like I mentioned on social media.

It's the end of the year, and so once in a while I'll mention something about my yearly goals and things like that. I actually have, thankfully, encouraged some folks in the older years as I am to be working out and trying to fight that battle with age.

And this year has been a challenging year for me between travel and other things, but Lord willing, I'm going to get to around 9 ,600 miles on bike this year. Thank you. Thank you very much, as one of you.

And I mentioned that on—I didn't even get run over once. That was actually the good part about it. And I mentioned that on social media and had some guy write back and says, but bodily exercise profiteth little, so why would you bother to do something like that?

And I responded back and said, well, in comparison to godliness, yes, obviously bodily exercise profiteth little, but that's because of the value of godliness, not the fact that you should just sit around and eat Cheetos and be godly in the process.

And it's the same kind of thinking here. Someone could look at this and say, oh, in comparison to preaching the gospel, baptism is nothing. Baptism is something commanded by Christ. So, the point is that the commissioning of the apostle was to preach the gospel.

And baptism is part of that gospel. It is an act of obedience, to be sure. But in comparison to the gospel, it is a much lesser thing. And so, you do have a distinction between the preaching of the gospel and the actual act of baptism.

But you'll notice he also says that we are to preach the gospel not in cleverness of speech that the cross of Christ should not be made void. My, that is a text that would be worthy of our examination and our unpacking in our day, because there is such a tremendous drive to find new ways to present the gospel.

As if it is our responsibility to somehow make the gospel attractive to people who have been taught that everything should be wrapped around them. The central aspect of the gospel is deny yourself. You're never going to make that attractive to people who have been taught that the most important thing in their life is to fulfill their own needs.

And as long as you think that you have to do that, you're going to end up twisting it and turning it and making a pretzel out of it. And all of that's a demonstration that you really don't trust the Holy Spirit of God to make the spirit, to make the gospel come alive in someone's heart and someone's life.

But that, like I said, a little bit outside of our range today. The point is this. The important thing to see in Corinthians, and we're going to see this in each of the places we look at it, the New Testament writers can write to a church assuming that if you are a functioning part of that church, you have obeyed the commandment of the gospel to repent, to believe, and that you've been baptized.

You will notice that over and over again, what the apostle will do in these particular texts that we're going to look at in 1 Corinthians, is make passing reference to baptism. He doesn't have to stop and say, now for those who have been baptized, this, and those who have not, this.

It's not some optional thing where you're going to have people who are a regular part of the congregation who aren't, have any idea what in the world baptism is and who haven't actually experienced it.

This is important to recognize. And so he's speaking here about the divisions amongst the Corinthians and he's saying, look, were you baptized in the name of Paul? Paul was not crucified for you, was he?

You have these people saying, well, I'm of Apollos and I'm of Cephas and I'm of Christ and I'm of Paul. And he's saying you're completely missing the grounds of Christian unity when you're dividing yourself in this fashion.

Because the grounds of Christian unity is found in what Christ has done and what Christ alone has done. And so when he mentions, were you baptized in the name of Paul, that's when he just in passing says, I thank God that I baptized none of you but Crispus and Gaius.

Now I suppose I should take at least a minute here to make mention of the fact that this is a text that people will point to as shedding at least some kind of light upon what Peter was saying when he said men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit.

Because you have places where Paul will say, you know, bring my, bring my cloak, he's cold. Bring the parchments, I want something to write on. Things like that. And here he says, I thank God that I baptized none of you but Crispus and Gaius.

Now I, we don't have any way of, you know, it would be wonderful to have an MP4 recording of Paul's dictation of this letter or whatever else it might have been to see exactly how this happened. But after he got done with verse 15, that no man should say you are baptized in my name, was there one of his associates who had been with him that went, Paul, remember, remember Stephanos?

Yeah, that's right. Now I did baptize also the household of Stephanos, but beyond that, I do not know whether I baptized any other. Or did he remember? It's like, oh, yeah, Stephanos too, okay, and his, his, his, his household.

And so people look at it and go, see, this isn't really inspired because if it was really inspired, then you wouldn't have him saying I only baptized Crispus and Gaius and then going, oh, yeah, then Stephanos.

Well how do we understand something like this? Well again, this is pretty clear demonstration that the dictation theory, the automatic writing theory doesn't work. And I know a lot of conservative Christians that sort of fall into the dictation theory that, that all of a sudden, you know, Paul was sitting around and, and having a nice conversation with, with some other believers when, when all of a sudden, all of a sudden, get paper, get papyri, get me a, okay, someone start writing, here it comes, and then out it comes.

You know, just, just automatic writing and, and it's just word for word for word, that's just the way it's supposed to be. I, I know there are some people who think that's exactly how it took place. But the reality is that even as Peter describes it, when he says men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit, as we've pointed out so many times before, if you read the New Testament in its original language, you can tell when you're reading Paul, you can tell when you're reading Luke, you can tell you when you're reading John, you can tell when you're reading Mark.

They have styles, they have ways of speaking. Paul loves a certain kind of, of infinitival phrase, he uses it all the time. Other people don't. And so it's not an, if it was an automatic writing thing, it would all sound the same.

But it doesn't sound the same, because men spoke. What they spoke came from God, as they're carried along by the Holy Spirit, so it's exactly what he wants us to have. But it's not this automatic writing type thing, where the style and the actual experience of the individual is removed.

And we should have expected that, because if you read almost any of the Psalms, you know that there is a whole lot of the personal experience of the psalmist that comes through in each one of the Psalms.

And yet we know that so many of the messianic prophecies are there, et cetera, et cetera. So we should have expected that. But I just wanted to mention that in passing. The point is that there is no explanation in 1 Corinthians chapter 1 of this new thing called baptism.

No, they all knew that this is what marks Christian discipleship. This is what marks Christian obedience. And there's nothing here that tells us anything about mode or anything along those lines. And as I said, we already discussed the issue of households and what that would mean in 1 Corinthians, but we wanted to make sure that we are consistent and thorough in our examination of these particular texts.

Baptized into Moses and Warning Against Spiritual Presumption

And so now, turn with me to 1 Corinthians chapter 10. 1 Corinthians chapter 10. This will be our next section from 1 Corinthians. And here we are entering into what might be described as a warning passage.

As is necessary so often in the church, there is a need to constantly stir people up to remind them to not become apathetic, to not take for granted that which God commands us not to take for granted.

1 Corinthians chapter 10. For I do not want you to be unaware, brethren, that our fathers were all under the cloud and all passed through the sea, and all were baptized into Moses. There's our term, baptized into Moses in the cloud and in the sea, and all ate the same spiritual food and all drank the same spiritual drink, for they were drinking from a spiritual rock which followed them, and the rock was Christ.

Nevertheless, with most of them God was not well pleased, for they were laid low in the.

Wilderness.

Now these things happened as examples for us, so that we would not crave evil things as they also craved. Now immediately we simply have to step back and go, what is the main point that is being communicated by the apostle here?

Is this meant to be an explication of baptism or the Lord's Supper or any of these things? Well, baptism is mentioned, and you have spiritual drink, you have spiritual food, and so there are clearly references that would have direct connection to what we experience as believers in both baptism as well as the supper.

But the whole point is to connect us back to a story from the people of Israel, and to remind us of a really beneficial reality that we need to keep track of as well. And that is, he points us back and he says, think about what it was like, and he even describes those people who came out of Egypt in the Exodus and who went through the Red Sea as our forefathers.

So people who were in, God was dealing with these people in the ancient context, he's dealing with us now. So learn a lesson from what, how God has dealt with people in the past. Specifically, these people saw tremendous actions from God.

They saw supernatural events. They were fed with spiritual food. Special food was provided in the manna for them in the wilderness. They were given sustenance. They were given water from the rock. And there's a whole discussion that we don't have time to get into today, but it is fascinating that the rabbis had considered what this rock was that gave water to the people of Israel.

And it's interesting, in the intertestamental period, they had connected that idea to the Word of God, or even to the angel of the Lord. And so Paul is making a connection. Maybe this was something that was already being spoken of amongst the rabbis as having some type of connection to maybe a messianic thing.

But the point is, Christ has always been the one through whom relationship with the Father has taken place all through the Old Covenant period. When you look at, even when Yahweh meets with Abram by the Oaks of Mamre, and Yahweh rains fire and brimstone from Yahweh in heaven.

Who was this? This was a picture of Jesus, not yet incarnate, but who would become incarnate. And Isaiah chapter 6, who is it that is seen upon the throne? John chapter 12 says that was the Son. And so He is the one through whom this mediation has been taking place all along.

And so you have the identification of Him as the rock, the source of the spiritual drink and the spiritual food. And so the whole point is, these are all pictures of what is going to be fulfilled in Christ.

And so here you have people. And can you imagine what it would have been like to see the cloud and the pillar of fire? And how did that cloud and that pillar of fire function? It separated the people of Israel from the Egyptians.

It was making a distinction. It was protecting them. It was a supernatural thing. But you could not have not seen it. Everyone saw it. Everyone's eyes saw the deliverance of Yahweh for His people. And then the destruction of Pharaoh and his armies.

They saw that. You would think for most of us, if spiritual life was based upon what we see and experience, that should have been enough. But think about it. How many of the people who walked through on dry land and saw the delivery of Yahweh, how many of them entered into the promised land?

Joshua and Caleb. I'm not going to even say. I didn't see you, brother. I didn't see you. My eyes are really bad. You put up two fingers.

I remember.

Anyway, two, I didn't write down the numbers, but if you looked at the number of people that were a part of the Exodus and the years they wandered in the wilderness, you know about one mathematical working out of the numbers, said that for that generation to die that quickly as a result of their rebellion, you know what happens at the Mount of God when the Ten Commandments are given and the many times that they test God and they rebel against God and they complain and all of those things.

That generation, there would have had to have been 95 deaths per day. Now there were some plagues and stuff along the lines, but on average about 95 deaths per day for that generation to pass away before they could then enter into the promised land.

Can you imagine what that would be like? Think of us today. Think of our land today. And what we've been going through, and I'm still seeing, you know, people afraid of the Omicron variant, which is basically the common cold, and people are scared out of their minds.

I mean, we see the videos. Did you see the video of the woman on the plane just the past couple days, about two days ago, where she is just going off after this guy? Now she's got her mask down. This guy's sitting there and she's screaming, pull it over your nose, pull it, then she she hits him and the video ends with the guy catching the cops, dragging her away when they landed.

OK, so Karen is everywhere and she has gone insane. Sorry if your name is Karen. But anyway, the fear.

My goodness.

Well, these people would have been seeing death every single day for this entire generation. That's an amazing thing to think about. It says God was not, nevertheless, with most of them, verse five, God was not well-pleased.

Think of that language, well-pleased. In whom is the father well-pleased?

In Jesus.

So the only place that you can ever be that's safe is in him. Not behind him, not next to him, not knowing something about him. You've got to be in him. That's something to tell people who grow up in churches.

You can know everything there is to know about him. You need to be in him because that's the only safe place there is. With most of them, God was not well-pleased and they were laid low in the wilderness.

Judgment came. All the supernatural fireworks in the world will not change a heart of stone into a heart.

Of flesh.

That heart of stone may go, wow. That heart of stone may go, you know, I should probably be obedient because I'm seeing people dying all around me. But it's still a heart of stone. Unless there is a change, all the external visible stuff does nothing.

So whenever an atheist says to you, well, if I could just see a miracle, he's lying. He's absolutely lying. The point was that there was massive outpouring of miraculous power. And our term is they were all baptized into Moses in the cloud and in the sea.

Now exactly what does that mean? Now obviously, this is not a typical use of the term baptism in the sense of being immersed. I mean, okay, we can sort of see how you would be baptized into Moses in the sea.

Can you sort of see that? Because you're having to walk down, the water's piled up, it's higher than you are. So you're having to believe, you're having to exercise faith, in essence, that this Moses guy is really speaking from God.

And so you could see somewhat of a identification with Moses by the act of faith of walking down into the sea, at least in obedience to what he was saying. But in the cloud and in the sea, how were you baptized in the cloud?

It's not like it settled over the people of Israel and engulfed them, it was between them. It made a separation between them and the Egyptian people, pillar of fire, cloud, so on and so forth. So obviously, they were baptized into Moses is talking about an association with.

I mean, certainly those people, when they reach the other side and then they see that water coming down, they see the chariots and the horses and the destruction of their enemies, and they see deliverance of God.

You could never, ever forget that. But like I said, it didn't change their hearts. And it didn't take long before they were complaining against the guy who they just saw used by God to deliver them from the Egyptians.

Isn't that amazing? And if you're sitting there going, yeah, I would never have done that. Well, I'll tell you, if I had seen that, I would have, Moses would have found me to be the most obedient person for the rest of my life.

Some of you are laughing because you know how many times in your own life you've known that God was bringing you through a situation. You've seen the deliverance of God. You've seen how your own sin gets you into trouble with God.

And how long did you remember it? How many times have you gone ahead and gotten into the exact same mess that God delivered you from, and it was only a short period before that? I'm not asking for hands.

But if I did, the whole room should be raising their hands if you're a believer, because we've all been there. We've all been there. We know. So, baptized into Moses in 1 Corinthians 10 isn't telling us something about the mode.

I would hope no one would argue that, well, because they were down in the water, that means immersion. We don't need that one, okay? Or somebody else saying, well, I'm sure it was sprinkling from the water.

No, no, no, you don't go that way either. There were some babies they were carrying. No, no, no, no, no, no, you're missing the whole point. It is the idea of association with the seeing of the miraculous and the supernatural did not change the hearts.

Did not change the hearts. Now these things happened as examples for us so that we would not crave evil things as they also craved. This is a way of examining our own hearts. This is a way of recognizing if we see the work of God within ourselves, and we are wisely looking at those who've come before us to see what has happened there.

One Spirit, One Body, and One Baptism in 1 Corinthians 12

1 Corinthians chapter 12. As you can tell, I am having to keep up a good pace here, because we have a few things to cover. 1 Corinthians chapter 12. Let's go all the way back to verse 4. You've got, they're short verses and we've got to have the context.

Now there are varieties of gifts but the same Spirit, and there are varieties of ministries and the same Lord. And there are varieties of effects but the same God who works all things and all persons.

But to each one is given the manifestation of the Spirit for the common good. For to one is given the word of wisdom through the Spirit, and to another word of knowledge according to the same Spirit, to another faith by the same Spirit, to another gifts of healing by the one Spirit, and to another the effecting of miracles, and to another prophecy, and to another distinguishing of spirits, and to another various kinds of tongues, and to another the interpretation of tongues.

But one and the same Spirit works all these things, distributing each one individually as He wills. So we have the sovereignty of the Spirit. He is giving these gifts to the church as He wills, not as the Corinthians willed.

For even as the body is one, verse 12, and yet has many members, and all the members of the body, though they are many, are one body, so also is Christ. For by one Spirit we were all baptized, there's our term, into one body, whether Jews or Greeks or the slaves or free, and we were all made to drink of one Spirit.

For the body is not one member, but many. So here is our terminology again, and in a sense we can see the initiatory aspect of baptism here, because it's being said, this is what we have all experienced.

For by one Spirit we were all baptized into one body. But, of course, the controversy comes up, is this, does this have anything to do with water baptism, or is this a Spirit baptism that is separate from baptism in obedience to the commands of Christ?

For by one Spirit we were all baptized into one body, whether Jews or Greeks, slaves or free, and we were all made to drink of one Spirit. Well, obviously, this is something done by the Spirit of God.

Certainly, I hope no one would think that the Spirit of God is not involved in water baptism, since that is obedience to the command of Christ. And what would cause someone to have desire to be united with Christ in this way, to say to the world, I've died to self and now I live to Christ?

Don't, whatever you do, never ever allow yourself to think that there is the spiritual thing called baptism and then just the fleshly thing called baptism. No, that couldn't possibly be the case, but obviously there is also the aspect that by one Spirit we were baptized into one body, and so this is the mechanism by which God forms the one body of Christ, and it's one body.

There is no Jewish body of Jesus and a Greek body of Jesus. There is not a Jewish church or a Greek church. There is not a slave church or a free church. Instead, there is an absolute unanimity of how anyone becomes a part of the body of Christ, and it is accomplished by one Spirit.

We were all made to drink of one Spirit. Now again, I am tempted if we did not have one purpose to be pursuing. To point out how important this text is in our day, when there are those literally tearing the body apart and identifying spaces based upon color of skin.

No one in the New Testament could have understood this. Because of the expansion of the Greek empire that then became, in essence, the Roman empire, you had such massive mixture of every kind of ethnicity.

In Corinth especially, Rome, Ephesus, all of these places would have had every kind of shade and shape of human being in them, and the idea that there is to be some type of division and quote-unquote spaces based upon ethnicity would have been the death knell of the early church, and yet we have that coming into the church today.

Whatever this verse is talking about, what it is clearly saying is that the unity of the body of Christ is seen by the fact that it's one Spirit who baptizes us into one body no matter what the divisions between us, the Jews and the Greeks could not have thought of a greater division than between Jews and Greeks.

Whether Jews or Greeks, slave or free, and we are all made to drink of one Spirit. There is not one Spirit for one color and one Spirit for another. This is the fundamental foundation of Christian unity.

And anyone who tries to create division by saying that that one Spirit needs to be experienced differently dependent upon the color of your skin does not understand the gospel of Jesus Christ. And yet that is all around us.

It is all around us and it is unfortunately being promoted even by some men that I'll be perfectly honest with you. I've spoken in conferences with them over the past 20 years and now they're promoting this kind of thing.

I never saw it coming. It is astonishing to me that it is with us even in this day. But the point is, do we really have to decide what is the emphasis here upon the physical baptism? The point is this, Paul can say to the entire body at Corinth, you were baptized into one body because they had all experienced baptism.

Now they are all now indwelt by the Holy Spirit of God as well. But this was not a situation where there were some people who had some aspect accomplished in them, they had been obedient to baptism, and some had not.

There's no idea here at all that you have people who have not obeyed Christ's command to be baptized who have received the Spirit of God and who have now been Spirit baptized but not baptized in obedience to Christ.

There's no idea of that at all. So here's what's important. So, as we look at these texts, once again, we see the universal nature of the experience of obedience to Christ's command of baptism. And therefore you can use it literally as an example, like Paul did at the beginning, I don't remember if I baptized this person, that person, you can use the spiritual aspect of it, see we have been baptized into one body.

But the point is you can say we, not, well, those of us who've experienced it. It is obedience to the command of Christ. Now, does that answer any questions in the controversies between ourselves and others?

Not really, though I would argue that plainly, as we will demonstrate historically, baptism of infants developed long after this period. And if you want to try to say that it was already happening here and that the reason that you can have this universal application is because infant baptism had already been established, you simply have to admit that you do not have not only any example of it in the New Testament, but you are not going to find any of it in the early church either for quite some time.

And when it does appear, it's not going to be for the purposes that you say baptism's.

For.

That's going to be one of the plain issues. But leaving the controversial issue off to the side for just a moment, here is another important element that we need to cover this week. Baptism is initiatory.

Believe and be baptized. Believe and be baptized. It is the first commandment given by Christ to be obeyed by a believer. Repent, believe, all right, now I'm following Jesus. Be baptized. Make a public profession of your faith.

It is a sign of submission to his lordship, certainly for some people. Think about how baptism, think about how baptism functioned in the early church. You had people with great power and authority in the Roman hierarchy, in the Roman system, in the Roman culture.

And they had to go down into the exact same water with slaves and the lowest classes. And you know what? When you come up out of the water, you all look like drowned rats.

Right?

You didn't get to have the rich person's baptistry over here and the poor person's baptistry over there. That would be such a massive violation of the command of Scripture. It was a great equalizer, just as the supper is.

Everyone partakes of the same food, because there's only one gospel. But baptism is initiatory and it's singular. As Paul is going to say in Ephesians, there is what, 12 baptisms, 14 baptisms? No, one baptism.

One baptism. As such, it is assumed on the part of the biblical writers to be the universal experience of those in the church. There is one baptism because it is only done once. It does not have to be repeated, for its function points to something that is already a reality in the experience of those baptized.

And that is, as we see here, union with Christ in his death, burial, and resurrection, your inclusion into the body of Christ. When one leaves the waters of baptism, one is claiming to be walking in newness of life.

The supper is never initiatory. Have you thought about that? The supper is never initiatory. The command to observe it is given to whom? The gathered body. It's given to the gathered body. That's why you don't do the Lord's Supper out in the woods by yourself with Skittles and a Fresca.