Remember Your Baptism!

Ecclesiology and the Marks of a True Church

Thank you for subscribing to the Shepherds Church podcast. This is our Lord's Day Sermon. We pray that as we declare the Word of God that you would be encouraged, strengthened in your faith, and that you would catch a greater vision of who Christ is.

May you be blessed in the hearing of God's Word, and may the Lord be with you. Well, welcome to the, I guess, fourth official week of this little mini-series that we're doing on Ecclesiology. What is the true church?

What is the church? What is a faithful church? What does that mean? What is a church that's honoring to God? Well, as you'll remember, we'll do this quickly, the first couple weeks of this series we talked about why a true church is necessary, especially in a culture right now that's caving to all kinds of every wind of doctrine, a Christian culture that's bowing their knee to heresy and sin and championing things like Black Lives Matter or homosexuality or abortion.

We need the true church now more than ever because there's so many watered-down and unfaithful churches. We need the true church. Week two of this series, we talked about how the basis or the foundation for what a true church is is the presence of God.

When we gather together, we're not just gathering together as people. There's not just some kind of energy that's here, although the room temperature does go up when there's more people here, but it's not that.

There's the Spirit of God has chosen covenantally to dwell with His people. When we gather, when we preach, when we sing, when we take the Lord's table, when we administer baptism, all of these things God is using for His glory and sharing His grace and His presence with us.

And then in week three, we talked about the so what. Why does that matter? If God's presence is here, what is that going to require of us? And we talked about things like going to bed early. It was a very practical sermon, if you remember.

Waking up, drinking coffee, if that's a grace to you. Going to church early, praying, getting ready, because you are going into the presence of your King when you go to church on the Lord's Day. So those are the things that we've talked about thus far, but that's far from defining what a true church is.

We've talked about the presence of God. We talked a little bit about preaching and why that's important, but there's more to what a true church is, and I would like to read you probably, I think, the best definition of what a true church is.

It comes out of the Belgic Confession of Faith, Article 29. The heading is simply, what is a true church? This is what it says. We believe that we ought to discern diligently and very carefully by the Word of God what is the true church.

For all sects in the world today claim for themselves the name of the church. We are not speaking here of the company of hypocrites who are mixed among the good in the church and who nonetheless are not part of it, even though they are physically there, but we're speaking of distinguishing the body and fellowship of the true church from all other sects that call themselves the church.

Thus, the true church can be recognized if it has the following marks. Number one, the church engages in the pure preaching of the gospel. Number two, it makes use of the pure administration of the sacraments as Christ instituted them.

And number three, it practices church discipline for correcting faults. In short, the true church governs itself according to the pure Word of God, rejecting all things contrary to it, and holding Jesus Christ as the only head.

By these marks, one can be assured of recognizing the true church. And this is my favorite line, and no one ought to be separated from it. If you found a true church, be there. Go there. Rest there. Worship there.

Sing there. Pray there. Learn there. And be equipped for the life that God has called you to be. If you found that, no one ought to be separated from it. Now, according to this definition, there's three aspects of what a true church is.

A true church faithfully preaches the Word of God, the true church administers rightly the sacraments, that's baptism and Lord's Supper, and the true church employs church discipline. The most popular aspect of Christian church is church discipline, right?

That's why everybody does it. Not hardly. Now, today we've talked about preaching, and I think that this church has a reputation, at least in this community, as we want to preach the Word of God. We want everything that we do to be rooted in and based in the Word of God, but we have to move on now to the sacraments.

How do we rightly administer the sacraments, the Lord's Supper, and baptism? Now, if you've visited upstairs and seen my bookshelf, tens of thousands of pages have been written on this, so how could I possibly, in one sermon, try to talk about baptism or Lord's Supper together?

We're not. We're going to break them up into two. Today, we're going to talk about baptism. How does a true church think about baptism? How does a true church practice baptism? What does baptism mean?

What does it signify? These are the things that we are going to be trying to cover today. This sermon is going to be three parts. Part number one, how does a church understand baptism covenantly, and that will become important.

Number two, how does the church understand baptism symbolically, meaning what does it signify? That will be important. And then number three, what we're building to is how does a true church administer baptism biblically?

Those are the three things we're going to cover. By God's grace, we'll get out of here by two o 'clock. Let's pray. Lord, thank you for today. Thank you for the legacy of all the faithful men in the faith that have came before us, who have spoken on these topics, who we stand on the shoulders of to look out and see these truths.

Lord, we thank you for the Reformation and for all of the subsequent generations that came who pressed back into what the Bible says about these topics. Lord, I pray that in our time today that even though this is a dense subject, even though there's a lot to understand when it comes to it, Lord, I pray that that you would help the content of this to be very practical, and that, Lord, at the end of the matter, that we would understand just how important it is to remember our baptism.

Lord, we ask these things in Christ's name. Amen. Well, today I've got a couple qualifications before we begin. This sermon is going to be dense. So listen well, take notes, listen to it again online if you have to, but we are going to be moving very quickly because there's a lot of information to cover.

I also admitted publicly at Presbytery that sermons are too long for me. So I'm trying. I've got some witnesses here who can hold me accountable for that. So we're gonna move through the material somewhat quickly.

Number two, we have to begin with covenant theology because we can't understand baptism if we don't understand covenant theology. See, all doctrines come from the Bible, but there's primary doctrines that are right on the surface.

You can pull them out like the doctrine of God. This is who God is. And then there's other doctrines that are built on top of other doctrines like an upstairs bathroom. You don't enter the house and go straight to the upstairs bathroom.

You have to go through your living room, then up the stairs, then you get to the bathroom. Baptism is built on top of covenant theology so that if you don't understand the covenant, you can't understand baptism.

So we're gonna begin there. How does a church understand baptism covenantally? And we'll begin with asking the question, what is a covenant? A covenant is an agreement between two parties where one person's gonna do one thing, another person's gonna do another thing, and they're gonna live in agreement together until one person breaks the term.

So like, for instance, your house is probably owned by the bank, and you agree that I'm gonna pay monthly payments, and if I do that, then you're not gonna come and repossess my house. But if I fail in that, the consequences are you're gonna come and take my house away.

That's a covenant. It's a modern-day example of it. In the Bible, there's kind of different ways to categorize this, but there's three essential kinds of covenants. There's covenants between person to person on equal terms, like marriage.

A husband covenants to his wife that he's not gonna be a girly man, he's gonna be a masculine man, and he's gonna love her to the glory of God all of his days. Amen. A woman is committing that she is gonna love her husband, submit to her husband, be a godly feminine wife, and she's gonna love him all of her days to the glory of God.

That is a biblical covenant of marriage. But that's only one kind of covenant. That's human to human on equal terms, male and female, equal in the eyes of God, coming together in covenant. There's also covenants of unequal power dynamics.

For instance, there's what's called a suzerain-vassal treaty. You do not have to remember these terms. A suzerain is the powerful one in the covenant, and a vassal is the one who's the unpowerful or the one who has no power in the covenant, and this works itself out in empires usually.

Say, for instance, we're living in Israel, Assyria comes and totally decimates us, and they make a covenant with us. They say, all right, listen, we've got a great deal for you. We're gonna let you live as long as you pay us every month all the money that you have, and then if you do that, we won't kill you.

So your responsibility in the covenant is to make sure you give us money, you send us tribute, you do all these things, and we will be so gracious to you that we won't kill you. And that's the covenant.

So Israel at times experienced that. There were times where they said we're not gonna pay, and then really bad things happened. That's a suzerain-vassal agreement when it comes to empire and nation. But there's another kind of suzerain-vassal treaty where God enters into covenant with man.

Now if you think about power dynamics, God is infinitely powerful, infinitely glorious in all his ways, and we are what? We're pathetic, weak, broken cisterns that leak and that never do what's right.

So that's the greatest power dynamic that you could ever possibly imagine. The infinite God coming down and being in covenant with us, and what would God actually benefit from that? Almost nothing. There's a really a one-sided nature to the way that God does his covenants with us where he gives us his blessings, we give him begrudging obedience at our best, and God blesses us.

And he works out these covenants with what we call federal heads. These are men that God raises up to represent people. They're like a president represents a nation, a federal head represents a group of people.

So for instance, when people sinned, when they fell short of God's glory, when they chose the fruit, when they chose to rebel, God comes down and he makes a covenant of grace, and he brings Adam into that covenant as an administrator.

And he says that I will crush the serpent's head. I will eventually defeat your greatest enemy. I will do all of these great things for you, but I want you to obey me. And what does Adam do? He doesn't.

Instead of multiplying God's glory, which is the original commission, right? Be fruitful, multiply, spread out to the ends of the earth, rule over, subdue, have dominion. Instead of doing all of that, Adam's race multiplies sin and death and devastation all across the face of the earth so that God wipes it out through the flood.

But God's not finished. Adam's administration proved that it was a failure. Adam could not administrate the covenant of grace for his people. So what does God do? God chooses another administrator named Noah.

At the end of the flood, when Noah comes out of the boat, the command is given a second time. Be fruitful, multiply, spread out to the ends of the earth, rule over, subdue it. You will be a blessed people.

Noah, you're gonna be my covenant head. You're gonna be the administrator of this covenant. And Noah got it exactly right, right? No. He did the exact same thing as Adam. Adam ate from the fruit and became naked and ashamed.

Noah drank from the fruit of the vine, became naked and ashamed, and his son Canaan was cursed as well. Same old story. So time goes on. The people find themselves in a sorry condition of sin once more.

And God, by grace and grace alone, calls Abraham out of the nations. And he draws him back into the good, fruitful land. And then he gives him these promises. Genesis 12, 1 through 3, some of the most beautiful verses in all the Bible.

I will bless you. I will make your name great. I will make you into a great nation. And I will spread you out so that all the families of the earth will be blessed through you, even though you were five minutes earlier, an idolater living in the land of Ur.

And I'll do it for my glory, so that no one can think that, Abraham, it was about you. It was about me. And then Abraham's family gets stuck in Egypt, lost in slavery. And they're not doing what God said that they were going to do.

So God raises up the people again. He brings them to Mount Sinai. And he speaks to them through their federal head, their representative, Moses. And Moses is sort of mediating this covenant. He's another administrator.

And the people after that don't do what God told them to do. They get stuck in Canaanite battles where they lose. They get stuck in idolatry. And then eventually they say, we don't want God to be our king.

We want our own king. And God allows that. And then raises up the final covenant head, David, who also unsuccessfully leads his people. And administrates his covenant so that Israel is completely destroyed.

And Judah is in exile. And by the time we get to the end of the New Testament, they're not a sovereign nation anymore. They're subjugated under various empires like Greece and Persia and eventually Rome.

So by all accounts, every human administration that God raises up fantastically fails. Nosedives. And that's intentional. I don't want you to think that God was surprised by this where he was just like, man, I really thought David finally was going to get it right.

God raises up these men for a couple different reasons. Number one, they point forward to the better covenant administrator and the better covenant that's coming in Jesus Christ. Number two, they showcase because we're hard-hearted people that no matter if I bring the very best of you, the one who says that he's a man after God's own heart, the one who everybody looks at and it's like, that guy gets it.

Even if I bring him, he will fail because the heart of man is desperately sick and wicked above all things. And you need a better man. You need a better administrator. You need a better covenant keeper.

You need a better covenant, which is what all of the Old Testament is about, pointing us forward to the moment where Jesus Christ comes. And then he takes the covenant of grace and administrates it perfectly to his people.

The final covenant keeper so that now we're brought into covenant through him. That's the point that Christ is the faithful vassal in the covenant treaty with God. Christ fulfills the covenants in order.

I've talked about this before. You notice that it's Adam, then Noah, then Abraham, then Moses, then David. Well, Christ refills these covenants in reverse order. The first thing that he does is he becomes the true king, the son of David, who's going to lead his people and sit on the throne.

He fulfilled the covenant of David when he ascended to heaven, sat on the throne, and he's reigning there forever. So he fulfilled the covenant of David. We're not waiting on that fulfillment. It's happened.

The next covenant he goes to is the covenant of Moses, where he perfectly fulfills the ceremonial law so that you and I are not justified anymore through our obedience and through our sacrifices because the final sacrifices come, the final temples come, the true and better priest is here.

Christ has fulfilled the covenant of Moses so that you and I can be in relationship with God. What's the next one? Abraham. Instead of choosing a family, he chose a church. He elected us and brought us into covenant with him and the same promises that apply to Abraham apply to us.

If you're a Christian who thinks that the Old Testament doesn't have any relevance for your life, Genesis 1 or Genesis 12, 1 through 3 is your promises. That God's going to make you into a great nation.

He's going to make your name great through Christ and he's going to bless the entire world through the seed of Abraham, which Paul tells us in Galatians is Jesus. The covenant promises of Abraham are what Jesus has been fulfilling for the last 2 ,000 years and you and I are a part of that.

In both covenants, the Abrahamic covenant and the covenant we have with Christ, God chooses a family. One is Israel, one is the church. In both covenants, he chooses to bless a people, bless the Israelites, and what are we?

We're a kingdom filled with priests, a holy nation, a blessed people unto our God. In both covenants, there's a sacrifice that's been provided. Isaac was the one who was on the altar. The knife was raised and God said, do not do this and he allowed Abraham to have the ram that was caught in the thicket.

And yet in the new covenant, Christ was that true and greater ram. Christ was the true and greater Isaac. And instead of God sparing the son, God allowed the knife of his wrath to come down on Christ because he's the true and greatest sacrifice.

Do you see the continuity between these covenants? They both have a sacrifice. One's better, one's greater. In both covenants, God takes the curses upon himself. Did you realize that? And in covenants where you have a very powerful king who's making a covenant with a very languid and weak people, they never take the consequences.

It's always your fault. Remember things roll downhill, right? In human covenants, I'm not going to say that it's my fault if you're beneath me. I'm going to say you messed up. You get the consequences, but not with the covenant that God makes with Abraham.

God puts Abraham in this deep sleep and he does this covenantal ceremony where the animals are split in half and God himself through this theophanic vision walks through these split animal pieces saying that if I do not fulfill this covenant, then may I be ripped apart just as these animals have been ripped apart.

And Abraham sits watching with his mouth dropped saying God is going to do this without me. He's going to be faithful to the covenant so that I can be brought in without my help. That would have been a shocking thing.

You mean if I sin right now, God's still going to bring the covenant? He's not going to bring the wrath down on me? Well, no. Because he didn't invite you into the consequences. The consequences he said he will take on himself.

Look at the new covenant in Christ. God does not say to us clean yourself up and then I might think about saving you. He doesn't say make sure you go to church every week. And if you miss, better be careful.

He doesn't say at the end of your life like in Islam that your good deeds and your bad deeds are going to be on this cosmological scale. And if your good deeds outweigh your bad, then you're going to get into heaven.

That's not what he says. He says by the work of Christ and Christ alone. Who on the cross was ripped apart for you. The promise that God made all the way back to Abraham. So that you could be brought in.

Do you see the continuity between these covenants? It's astounding. Abraham's covenant, if you're a Christian, is your covenant. Paul says that if you have faith, you're children of Abraham. You've been made the Israel of God.

These promises are what he came to fulfill. There's continuity in this covenant, even in how it chronologically develops. If you think about it, the covenant develops over Genesis 12, Genesis 15, Genesis 17.

Genesis 12, Abraham's called out of the world. He's adopted by God into a family of grace. He's made to be a blessed nation. He's given a commission to go to the nations. Then in Genesis 15, God takes the consequences for himself.

Genesis 17, Abraham finally is told what to do. After God has made all these promises and has taken all the consequences upon himself, Abraham's finally said now you will be cut into the covenant as well through circumcision.

You and your children after you. That's what I want you to do. I want you to be holy as I'm holy and I want you to take the sign of this covenant. Do you think that the new covenant that we have in Christ is any different than this?

The first thing that God does to us is what? In eternity, he elects us. He draws us out of the world. He adopts us into a family of grace. He makes us into a blessed people in a blessed nation. He gives us a commission in Matthew 28 to go tell the world about Jesus.

Then he dies on the cross, takes the consequences for our sin, and the first act of obedience that we do is that we're cut into the covenant through the sign of the covenant, not circumcision. In the New Testament, it's baptism.

It's the exact same chronology that's playing out from Genesis even into the New Testament. Again, this is a very strange covenant in the ancient world because the suzerain would have never put the consequences before the stipulations.

He would have never said, I'll take the consequences if you don't obey. He says, he would say, you have to obey me or I'm going to punish you. Not with God. And then we see the same thing in the New Testament.

So, what we need to know is that there's great continuity between these covenants. What we need to know is the covenant is agreement between two parties and God to man. It's a covenant where God is going to share his relationship with us.

We see that God has made several covenants in the Old Testament and we see that the Abrahamic covenant specifically applies to this moment that we're at in human history where God is working out these promises through his church.

We see that the sign of circumcision, which was the promise that everything God said was going to happen to Abraham was the old covenant sign and now because we needed a better sign, we have the sign of baptism so that we can believe all the promises that God has made apply to us.

That's the way signs work and that's where we're going to transition now to the next part. Is why does God give signs? God gives us signs to show us that he is serious about his promises. You think about the covenant with Noah and he said, I'll put a rainbow in the sky so that you will know all the days of your life that I will never flood the world again.

God already told them. He already said, I'm not going to do this. You think that us as humans would just take his word for it. But God shows grace upon grace and that he gives a sign that still hangs in the sky today that I will not do this thing.

The sign is for us. It's for our benefit. And the old covenant, the sign was to show his people that they really are set apart. Circumcision show that they really are God's people. They really have been brought into covenant with him that they really are his people.

But that sign was limited, was it not? Because in that covenant, it only applied to males. And it only applied to those who became Jewish by proselytism, or those who were born into the Jewish community as children.

Think about it. Jesus, everything that he does is better. He's a better temple. He's a better sacrifice. He gives a better sign. Now the sign of baptism applies to both men and women. Now the sign of baptism applies to both Jew and Greek.

Now the sign of baptism applies to not just adults who profess their faith. Jesus is not regressive. It applies also to our children as well. And I'm going to prove that to you here just by even looking forward to what Peter says in Acts chapter 2.

He's talking to a group of 3 ,000 men. He's talking to a group of people who've been Jews all their life, who've been in line with Jews, who've been Jews all their life, who always take the sign not just for themselves but for their children.

This is what Peter says to a group of 3 ,000 Jewish men who are under the Abrahamic covenant. Pay really close attention. I want to read between the lines just for a second here and just point out to you what Peter is actually saying.

Peter is saying that the Abrahamic covenant was not good enough, was not great enough in order to save you. So God has appointed Jesus Christ as a new covenant head. God has appointed Jesus Christ to be the head over this covenant so that He now is both Lord and Christ.

So the Jews are thinking to themselves, new covenant administrator. Let's keep going. It's a really good follow-up question. They're asking, how can we come to this Christ? How can we be in covenant with this Christ?

Peter continues, He's saying you don't need to be re-circumcised, Jewish men. He's saying repent and believe and be baptized, which is the sign of Jesus's covenant. Baptism is now the sign of the new covenant promise that if you repent and you're baptized, that sign signifies everything God has promised to you.

And who does it apply to? The Jews who've been circumcising their children for thousands of years probably said this, you know, I think this only applies to people who profess their faith. No, for thousands of years they've been circumcising their children.

When Peter says in verse 39, for this promise is for you and your children and for all who are far off, as many as the Lord will call to himself, they're saying that Christ is a new covenant head, has given us the covenant sign of baptism, and it applies to us and our children forever.

They wouldn't have said, but wait, they can't make a credible profession of faith. They wouldn't have said that. That would have been so foreign to their experience. They would have said, praise God, and they would have baptized their children right then and there.

Baptism is the sign that you belong to God. It is the sign that you've been brought into covenant with God. It is the sign that you've been brought into his kingdom. And it is the sign not just for Jewish, but for Gentile and for all who are far off.

All those whom God has called to himself. When Peter says for this promise is for you and your children, we take that seriously. We do not treat our children in this church as if they're heathens. We don't treat our children in this church as if they're outsiders.

We don't let them come to church and listen to the sermon and listen to everything that we do and the way that we pray. And then when it comes to baptism, they're not Christians. We treat them like Christians for like an hour and a half of service, but then when we get to baptism, we're like, no, no, we don't do that.

We treat them as though they're believers and that as believers, they deserve to receive the sign of the covenant, just like all covenant members have for all time. That's why we had to talk about covenants, because you needed to understand all the substructure that's underneath it.

And you need to understand that all covenants have a sign and the new covenant has the sign of baptism. And Peter says it applies to us and our children. That's why we had to go there. Now, second part is I want to now talk about what baptism symbolizes.

Because now that you know what it is, now you know who it applies to, you need to know what it means. Because I think baptism is one of the most significant acts that we will ever experience on planet Earth.

Even if you got it as a child, as an infant, you don't remember yours. But I'm going to appeal to you in this part of the message that I want you to remember your baptism. And you're going to say, well, I was too young.

I don't remember it. No, I want you to understand what God is promising you in your baptism. And I want you to remember it because when you're depressed and when you're broken and when you're stuck in sin, one of the most applicable things that you can do in your life is repent and remember your baptism.

And I want to show you what I mean by that by talking about what baptism means. First thing it means is it means that you were washed and that you were cleansed. Look at Acts 22, verse 16. A certain man named Ananias, a man who was devout by the standard of the law and well-spoken of by all the Jews who live there, came to me, that's Paul, and standing near said to me, brother Saul, receive your sight.

And at that very time, I looked up at him and he said, the God of our fathers, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, he's appealing to the old covenant, has appointed you to know his will and to see the righteous one, that's Christ, and to hear an utterance from his mouth, for you will be a witness for him to all men of what you have seen and heard.

Now, why do you delay? Get up and be baptized and wash away your sins calling on his name. The first thing that Paul is told to do after his conversion, after the gospel is preached to him and he understand what it means is to get up and be baptized, not to delay baptism until he can have a credible profession of faith.

Paul gets that later. Paul is not able right now to even properly articulate what it is that he believes, but he's told to go get baptized. And he's told that it's a symbol of the washing away of his sins.

Now, I wanna tell you what Ananias is not saying. We are not baptismal regeneration people here. What I mean by that is baptism doesn't save you. The water is not magical. We didn't add anything to it before we baptized you and it literally doesn't wash away your sin.

That's not what Ananias is saying. Ananias is saying that it's a sign of your sin being washed away. He's saying that Christ on the cross has washed and cleansed your sin with his perfect blood. And this act, this baptism symbolizes that.

It symbolizes that your sin now has been defeated by Jesus. So that when you're tempted to doubt Paul, when you've been shipwrecked way too many times, when you reach down and a snake bites you and you're like, oh, what is this?

You can look to your baptism and you can say, all of this is worth it. Because Christ for the joy set before him endured the cross and scorned his shame and by his blood, I've been washed. These present troubles are not even worth comparing to the glory that'll be revealed when Christ comes back.

And all these things are working for me in eternal weight of glory. He's not gonna doubt that he's been washed because he's been given the sign of baptism. The sign of baptism is there to remind him of all that Christ has done.

So that if you, even today, if you're tempted to doubt that God has washed you clean, if you're still struggling with that same sin that makes you feel dirty or broken or makes you feel guilty and you're carrying that weight even in here today, the first thing I would tell you to do is repent and sin no more.

And the second thing I would tell you to do is remember your baptism. Because in your repentance, you don't have to work your way into forgiveness and you don't have to clean yourself. That's already been accomplished by Christ and your baptism signifies it.

Remember your baptism. The second thing baptism symbolizes is the forgiveness of sins. Acts 2 .38, Peter said to them, repent and each of you be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of sins and you will receive the Holy Spirit.

He's saying that baptism is a sign that you have been forgiven of all your sins. Baptism is not the work. Baptism itself, the water, does not wash away your sins in the same way that the rainbow is not up in heaven fighting raindrops so that the world doesn't flood.

The rainbow is a sign of God's promise. Baptism is a sign that you have been forgiven. If you're in Christ, all your sins have been forgiven. So that when you're baptized, it's a symbol of what Christ has done for you so that you can have the most incredible assurance and confidence.

One of the great sins, I think, in evangelicalism is this sin of this sort of humble doubt. I just don't know how God could save me. I'm so broken. Well, take your eyes off of you and focus on a very infinitely powerful God who can save anybody, even Paul and Peter and all of them.

And if you struggle with this, remember your baptism. Your baptism is the sign that God gave you because he loves you, that your sin has been forgiven. Remember it. Think about it like this. There's an example, a property deed.

If I were to sell you my home, we would draw up a purchase and sale agreement. We would agree on a price that was way too high for you, but really nice for me. And then you would move into the house and you would put that agreement and all that mountain of paperwork, you'd put it in a drawer somewhere and you would remember it because it tells you that that house is yours.

You would not be hanging out in my driveway snuggling with paperwork because the paperwork doesn't do anything but tell you that it's yours. Hold onto the paperwork for that reason. Hold onto your baptism for that reason because it tells you that forgiveness is yours.

It's not Jesus's work of forgiveness, but it is telling you that his work is yours. And that sign is given for your joy. Baptism symbolizes purification in Matthew 3, 11. Notice what John the Baptist says.