What is Baptism?
It is a mark, a seal, an exit, an entry, a statement of faith, an individual appropriation, a communal experience, a new nature, a life in Christ, a new creation, a metaphysical transformation and a deep mystery.
In the biblical worldview, God created the universe through water and word. Water was the chaos of the unformed material existence. Word is His creative power, and expression of self, which orders the world and calls truth, beauty, and form out of chaos. This is accomplished by the moving of the Holy Spirit upon the waters. It is how God made the first creation and how he remakes his creation.
Many of my Evangelical friends would say that baptism is not necessary for salvation, pointing to the thief on the cross. This is true, and we cannot limit who God can save. However, what tends to be forgotten is that Jesus commands baptism of his followers. In Mark’s Great Commission, Jesus Says - “He that believes and is baptized shall be saved.” Mark 16:16
And famously, in John 3:4-6 “Nicodemus saith unto him, How can a man be born when he is old? can he enter the second time into his mother's womb, and be born? Jesus answered, Verily, verily, I say unto thee, Except a man be born of water and of the Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God. That which is born of the flesh is flesh; and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit.”
St. Peter agrees with this view of baptism in the two places where he says to be baptized for redemption and salvation from sin. This can be seen clearly in Acts 2:38 and 1 Peter 3:21.
The Apostle Paul had a very well developed theology of baptism - in Galatians 3:26-29 He says, “For you are all sons of God through faith in Christ Jesus. For as many of you as were baptized into Christ have put on Christ. There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is neither male nor female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus. And if you are Christ’s, then you are Abraham’s seed, and heirs according to the promise.”
Baptism replaces circumcision in Colossians 2:11-12, and the New Covenant is founded upon the sign of regeneration found in the waters, rather than of cutting made by human hands. In Acts 8:17, we see that believers and their households were first baptized, and then they received the Holy Spirit by the laying on of hands. In Apostolic Churches, this practice has been kept by the practice of Confirmation/Chrismation, which directly followed after baptism in most situations until the two were separated by the Roman Catholic Counter Reformation and the Council of Trent. Anglicans followed this usage, even though the historic process was to confirm even infants immediately after baptism. This follows the idea that the new creation is not only the word upon the waters, but filling afterwards of the newly created, who is a new, clean, washed and worthy temple for the presence of God.
What is Chrismation?
We call ourselves “Christian”, which, literally means “Anointed Ones” in Greek, coming from the Messianic expectation in Judaism that identifies the Lord’s Anointed, the Priest King of God’s Promise, as the one who is anointed prophetically by God. Since the earliest times in the Church, the apostolic laying on of hands and the oil of Chrismation have been linked. Calling to mind the consecration of the temple in the Old Testament, where the altar was consecrated by the perfumed oil of holiness to the Lord, to mark it as most holy and consecrated, set apart, for the service of God. All of us, as “Little Christs”, have been likewise set apart and made holy.
The significance of the seal of oil on the forehead is deep and meaningful. Revelation 7:1-8 “The Seal of God, His Name, upon the forehead.” Revelation says that the redeemed bear a seal on their foreheads. The seal consists of the names of God and the Lamb and shows that the redeemed belong to God (Revelation 14:1). The seal is presumably not a visible one but a way of indicating that people find their identity in relationship to God and Christ. This seal or relationship does not mean that people are exempt from all earthly suffering, but it does show that God has claimed them and gives them the promise of life everlasting. John hears that those who are sealed number 144,000 from the twelve tribes of Israel (7:4), but when he turns to look at them he discovers that they are actually a countless multitude from every tribe and nation (7:9). The 144,000 are not a special ethnic group. The imagery describes the whole people of God. The seal that they bear is the opposite of the mark of the beast, which is introduced in Revelation 13:11-18.
Since the earliest days, washing for cleansing and anointing for reception of the Holy Spirit has been connected in the mystery of the Church. Following Christ’s own example in which, after baptism, the Holy Spirit was sent down and God proclaimed His relationship with Christ. This is the icon that Christ gave to us in His own baptism.
Brought together in Christ:
Mark, Matthew, and Luke depict the baptism in parallel passages. In all three gospels, the Holy Spirit is depicted as descending upon Jesus immediately after his baptism accompanied by a voice from Heaven, but the accounts of Luke and Mark record the voice as addressing Jesus by saying "You are my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased", while in Matthew the voice addresses the crowd "This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased" Matt 3:13-17, Mark 1:9-11 and Luke 3:21-23
In Summary:
"Then Peter said unto them, 'Repent, and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the remission of sins, and ye shall receive the gift of the Holy Ghost. For the promise is unto you, and to your children, and to all that are afar off, even as many as the Lord our God shall call..'" (Acts 2:38–39) Here we see that baptism is a promise for the believer and their children. Baptism is a mystery, a sacrament of the Church, realized in repentance and kept in faith. It is not effectual because of the decision of the believer, nor is it powerful because of the individual's personal choice or memory of the act of baptism. It is not a private experience or a public statement of faith. We are told that it is the circumcision of the New Covenant (Colossians 2:11–12), and that it was administered to the whole house of a believing "pater familias," the head of the "Oikos," the households that are described in the New Testament. (Acts 16:14-15, 18:8, 1 Corinthians 1:16) It is clear from the Church Fathers that these families included children and that baptism of the whole family was the common apostolic practice in the Early Church (Tertullian, Origen, Hippolytus, etc.), even though there is not explicit reference to the act of baptizing a child in the biblical text. All of this shows us that baptism is the "Crossing of the Jordan" into the "Promised Land" of salvation, as a member of God's Chosen People, His New Israel. It is both a covenant with God and also an admittance into the Church, the community of faith, in which salvation is administered through the communion that we have with Christ through His sacrifice, kept by God's grace through the presence of the Holy Spirit.
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