Subject: Is baptism a work? |
Bible Note: cwade, If baptism is a "work" it is certainly a work of God, working through His Church. The person being baptized does not baptize him or herself. Because of the Incarnation and Resurrection of Christ Jesus, the spiritual and physical are not mutually exclusive. Otherwise, why should we look forward to our own resurrections? Jesus in healing the blind and deaf on occassion used spit and mud and physical touch or the spoken word. The fact that physical matter such as water is used in baptism does not by any means deny the spiritual reality of the transmission of grace. Jesus came to redeem all creation, spiritual and physical. In the Old Testament what was holy and set apart was contaiminated by contact with the unclean, hence the concept of ritual impurity. But in Jesus, under the New Covenant when the Holy comes into contact with the unclean, the unclean is made clean, as when Jesus touched lepers and the when the woman with the issue of blood touched the hem of His garment or when Jesus used His physical touch to raise a dead child or His voice to Lazarus back from the dead. This is what was so shocking to the Pharisees, that the pattern of corruption was reversed. God's creation was found by Him to be "good" and Jesus came to restore that goodness and raise it to an even higher level by redeeming man and all creation. Emmaus |