Bible Text: St Matthew 3:13–17 | Preacher: Rev. Dr. Christian Preus
God’s work never fails. Baptism is God’s work. So your Baptism can’t fail you. Ever. If Baptism is our work, it can fail. Obviously. Everything I do, or you do, can fail. Unless the Lord builds the house, those who labor build in vain. This is why you have this trend in the American evangelical world of people getting baptized again and again. The first one didn’t take. Why? Because they think of Baptism as a pledge I’m making, instead of the pledge of God to us. And if it’s a pledge I’m making, it can fail. This is one reason why Jesus’ Baptism in the Jordan is so important. The Holy Spirit descended on Him as a dove. The Father spoke from heaven and said, “You are my beloved Son.” Whenever Jesus looked back at that Baptism, He remembered what His Father did, and what His Father said, and that can’t fail. And that’s what you get to do every single day of your life, remember not simply a pledge you made to God once upon a time, but the pledge God made to you, and God doesn’t lie, doesn’t make mistakes, doesn’t give His Spirit in measure.
When Baptism becomes our work, it’s not just that people will get rebaptized, over and over again, because our work, our commitment can fail. It’s also that people won’t get baptized at all. This is a growing trend in the American evangelical world. People, adults, going to church regularly, and never getting baptized. But it makes sense. It’s what happens when people are getting baptized over and over again – it shows everyone else that baptism is cheap, it’s breakable, it’s something that doesn’t last. Why would I want that? There’s a very close parallel with marriage today. So many young people don’t want to get married. They’ll live together, act like they’re married. But they won’t get married (so much so that now over 40% of births in the United States are to unmarried mothers), and they won’t get married because they’ve seen marriages fail, and then remarriages, and then they fail again, and so they think of marriage as cheap and breakable. And this is theologically, biblically, a close parallel, with Baptism, because whose work is marriage? It’s not ours. It’s God’s. That’s what Jesus says. What God has joined together, let not man put asunder. God makes them male and female and the two become one flesh. If that is how we treat marriage, as God’s work, that it’s not just that I chose this woman and she chose me, but God joined us together, and God doesn’t make mistakes, then the marriage holds, it stands, it’s strong, even if I mess up or she messes up, because it doesn’t depend in the first place on me or her, it depends in the first place on God, and what He did.
This is what we need to rediscover in our churches and homes today – what is God’s work? Identify it, and then know it won’t fail. Ever. And then, what is your work, your duty. Identify it. Do it. And when you fail, run back to what cannot fail, and that’s God’s work.
Baptism is God’s work. It can’t fail. Ever. Its power stands in Jesus Christ, the Son of God who became your brother. I believe in one Baptism for the forgiveness of sins. That is the Christian confession. One Lord, one faith, one Baptism. It is ONE BAPTISM, never to be repeated, because when God put His name on you, He didn’t make a mistake – He can’t, He doesn’t know how to make mistakes. He remains forever faithful to His word to you in your Baptism, where He pledged to be your God and joined you to His dear Son and made you His child and forgave you your sins.
What can fail? Everything on our part can fail. We’re sinners. The detractors of Baptism blame Baptism when people who are baptized fall from faith. How can Baptism save, when so many people who are baptized don’t believe? And it’s true, we see it all the time, people who are baptized leave the faith, stop coming to church, choose whatever it is in their life above Jesus.
But their Baptism stands. Their Baptism is God the Father standing there like the father of the prodigal waiting for his son to come back. The prodigal runs away, lives life in defiance of his father, makes a total mess of things, plunges himself into misery, and the father is waiting at home, constantly watching the horizon, ready to run out and embrace his son as soon as he sees him. Baptism doesn’t fail, because the Father doesn’t fail.
We do fail. Jesus will say things like, “O ye of little faith” to His disciples. Or, “Why did you doubt?” He rebukes their unbelief. He criticizes people’s faith. Why? Because faith is in you, and since it’s in you, even though the Holy Spirit works it, it is subject to all the doubts and weaknesses that come from your sinful heart. This is every Christian’s experience and struggle. We go from confidence to doubt all the time, day to day, hour to hour, sometimes, like Peter who is so confident in Jesus, trusts him so singularly, that he believes His word and walks on the water to Him. But as soon as Peter turns his eyes from Jesus and sees the waves and the wind, he sinks into the water. His faith failed him. And what did he do when his faith failed him? He looked at Jesus and cried for help. He turned to what could not fail.
And that’s what you do when you find your faith failing. Your faith saves you. Jesus says that all the time, “Be of good courage, your faith has saved you.” But your faith saves you because of what it believes, what it clings to. Faith in Allah, the Muslim’s God, will never save anyone, because he doesn’t exist, and he can’t save. Faith in the Packers winning the SuperBowl will always disappoint, because they can’t, they lost to the Bears. Faith saves, but faith is only as good as its object. So when your faith is weak and failing, because of your sin, because of this world and its riches and pleasures and temptations, because of the devil’s attacks, run to the Rock that is higher than you, look with Peter at the Lord who cannot fail, and whose word and promise to you in your Baptism remains true and sure and firm forever.
Jesus’ Baptism in the Jordan shows you just how precious and powerful your Baptism is. First, John tries to stop Jesus from being baptized, because Jesus isn’t a sinner. Baptism is for sinners. Jesus insists. And He says it’s to fulfill all righteousness. Here’s the only non-sinner to ever get baptized. Because Jesus becomes the sinner by being baptized. Not that He actually sins, but that He bears ours. That’s what He came to do. That’s how righteousness is fulfilled, how it overflows from Him to you. In your Baptism, you go from child of the devil to child of God, from sinner to saint. In Jesus’ Baptism, he goes from the Righteous One to the One who bears all our sin. Baptism is for sinners. And that’s what Jesus becomes for us, the sin-bearer. John the Baptist says it, as soon as Jesus is baptized, “Behold the Lamb of God, who bears away the sin of the world.”
Second, Jesus consistently calls His death His Baptism. “I have a baptism to be baptized with and how distressed I am until it is accomplished!” Baptism is a death and resurrection. Because Jesus’ death for you on the cross and His resurrection to everlasting life, that is what Baptism gives and works for you. You died in your Baptism. Your former life was crucified with Christ. Your former identity as sinner, as subject to death and devil, as selfish, as despairing, it died. And you rose again with Christ, with a new identity, a new life, as God’s own child, whom He regards as perfect and holy, with all sins forgiven.
Third, what the Father said to His Son at His Baptism, He says to you at yours. You are joined to the Son and the Father loves the Son with a love that cannot be quantified or measured. That love He directs to you, because He’s adopted you, given you the name of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, of Christian.
That never fails. It’s what we return to every single day of our lives. Martin Luther would never say, “I was baptized.” He would always say, “I am baptized.” And that’s how we sing, “God’s own child I gladly say it: I am baptized into Christ.”
You remember your Baptism every day not simply because you fail every day, and so you need to know that God doesn’t fail you. You remember it to remember who you are. You are God’s child. Live like it. With heaven as your home, with good works prepared beforehand for you to walk in, battling against sin, confident that Christ has already won the battle, and that the devil who is crushed under His feet cannot harm you, and death cannot claim you, and sins cannot disturb your conscience. I am baptized into Christ. I’m a child of paradise.