BAPTISM, SALVATION
AND THE USE OF BIBLICAL SYMBOLISM
This article, which primarily concerns baptism and salvation,
explains how the Bible uses symbolism as a teaching aid to
illustrate hard-to-understand concepts, such as the meaning of a
substitutionary sacrifice for sin, salvation "in Christ,"
and so on. The symbolic rituals of Jewish circumcision and
Christian baptism are examined, as are the biblical teachings on
the ark of salvation, new life in Christ, and the exchanged
Christian life.
CHRIST, OUR SUBSTITUTIONARY SACRIFICE
Under the Old Covenant, when a man had sinned he took an
unblemished animal to the priest. Then he laid his hand on the
animal's head to signify that it would be his substitute and
would die in his place to cover his sin. This was symbolic, or a
picture, of the coming New Covenant sacrificial death of our
blameless Saviour, who would die in our place, as our substitute,
to pay the penalty for our sin.
John the Baptist, who was a both a Jew and prophet, was all too
familiar with the substitutionary sacrificial system, and was
eagerly awaiting the appearance of the promised Jewish Messiah.
And this is what he had to say about Christ:
The next day John [the Baptist] seeth Jesus coming unto him, and
saith, Behold the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the
world. (John 1:29, KJV)
In Numbers 21:4-9 God gives us another picture to illustrate that
all who looked to or relied on Christ's substitutionary sacrificial
death on the cross in faith, would be saved from judgment for their
sins, the penalty for which was eternal death. Let's take a look at
the context of Numbers 21:
The story is that during their journey to the promised land, the
Israelites murmured against God. In judgment of their rebellion He
sent a plague of poisonous serpents. Many died from their bites. But
Moses interceded on behalf of the people. God instructed him to make
a bronze serpent and to set it up on a standard so that when anyone
was bitten, all they needed to do was to look at the bronze serpent
in faith, and they would live. (In the Bible bronze represented
judgment, and for this reason the altar where they burned the
sacrifices for their sins was made of bronze.)
The Lord Jesus intimated that this bronze serpent on a standard was
symbolic, or a picture, of how He was to become the remedy for our
sins by taking our judgment for our sins, in our place, on the cross.
Those who put their faith in Him would be forgiven and reconciled to
God, thereby gaining eternal life. So if we want to be saved from the
fatal poison of sin in our lives, all we need to do is to look up in
faith at Christ dying on the cross, and we will receive forgiveness,
grace and mercy in the same way as the ancient Israelites had, when
they had looked up at the bronze serpent on a pole, in faith. In
short, it means "look to Christ on the cross for salvation
from your personal sins, and live." This is how the Lord Jesus
put it:
And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must
the Son of Man be lifted up; that whosoever believeth in Him should
not perish, but have eternal life. (John 3:14-15, KJV)
Mormons need to note that salvation, as described in the above
example, is not attained by earning the right to forgiveness, but
by looking to Christ on the cross, in faith.
THE ARK OF SALVATION
The ark is another picture in the Old Testament, of New Covenant
salvation. The great flood was God's judgment on the sinful
inhabitants of the then world. And the ark was the vehicle of
salvation for Noah and his household. As we look back to that time,
the ark is a picture or a type of Christ, who is our vehicle of
salvation from the floodwaters of the coming judgment. Only those
who are "in Christ," our ark of salvation, will be saved.
The remainder will perish. The Lord Jesus said that his second
coming would herald the judgment (Matthew 16:27) and likened
this to the judgment of the flood in the days of Noah:
But as the days of Noe were, so shall also the coming of the Son of
man be. For as in the days that were before the flood they were
eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, until the day
that Noe entered into the ark, And knew not until the flood came,
and took them all away; so shall also the coming of the Son of man
be. (Matthew 24:37-39, KJV)
It will be noted from the above that salvation is not granted
because we belong to the "true church," but because we
are, by faith, "in Christ."
SYMBOLIC RITES OR RITUALS
Another of God's teaching aids is the rite or ritual. In the
biblical sense a ritual is an external symbol of something that has
happened inwardly, to the person concerned. We'll take a look at
two such biblical rituals, circumcision and baptism.
JEWISH CIRCUMCISION
The Hebrew nation had originally come out of a pagan culture and
was surrounded by idolaters whose religious practices were perverted,
immoral and evil. Holiness was a concept that was completely foreign
to them. So God made it easier for them to understand the meaning of
holiness through the picture language of a ritual. He commanded
every Hebrew male to be circumcised. Their circumcision was an
outward portrayal of an inward change. It symbolized the cutting off
of fleshly sin from their hearts. It was also a sign that they
had covenanted with God to live a life of holiness.
There was no power or merit in circumcision, it was purely symbolic.
But after a while the Israelites forgot that the real meaning behind
their circumcision was a consecration to holiness. They mistakenly
assumed that circumcision of itself earned them God's special favour.
So God sent His prophet, Jeremiah, to put them right.
Circumcise yourselves to the Lord, and take away the foreskins of
your heart, ye men of Judah and inhabitants of Jerusalem (Jeremiah
4:4, KJV)
"Behold, the days are coming," declares the Lord, "
that I will punish all who are circumcised and yet uncircumcised
........ and all the house of Israel are uncircumcised of heart.
" (Jeremiah 9:25-26, NASB)
Emphasizing that it isn't a ritual itself that matters, but the
spiritual concept it pictures, the Apostle Paul said:
Therefore if the uncircumcision keep the righteousness of the law,
shall not his uncircumcision be counted for circumcision? .....
For he is not a Jew which is one outwardly; neither is that
circumcision, which is outward in the flesh. But he is a Jew,
which is one inwardly, and circumcision is that of the heart, in
the Spirit, and not in the letter; whose praise is not from men,
but of God. (Romans 2:26, 28-29, KJV)
CHRISTIAN BAPTISM
The ritual of Christian baptism is another of God's teaching aids,
this time illustrating the hard-to-understand concept of salvation
through Christ's substitutionary sacrifice.
Know ye not, that so many of us as were baptized into Jesus Christ
were baptized into his death? Therefore we are buried with him by
baptism into death: that like as Christ was raised up from the dead
by the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in newness
of life. For if we have been planted together in the likeness of
his death, we shall be also in the likeness of his resurrection.
(Romans 6:3-5, KJV)
Buried with him in baptism, wherein also ye are risen with
him through the faith of the operation of God, who hath raised him
from the dead. And you, being dead in your sins and the
uncircumcision of your flesh, hath he quickened together with him,
having forgiven you all trespasses. (Colossians 2:12-13, KJV).
Baptism by immersion is the way Christians publicly acknowledge that
Christ is their Saviour. But it goes deeper than that. In order to
free us from the condemnation of our sins, Christ became our
substitute. He represented us. So when He was nailed to the
cross, it was the same as if we were nailed to the cross: We were
"in Him" on the cross when he atoned for our sins and we
were also "in Him" when He died.
When I undergo Christian baptism I am symbolically re-enacting
Christ's death and resurrection. As I go down under the waters of
baptism it symbolizes my death "in Him" to the penalty of
the Law, as well as my burial "in Him." When He arose
from the grave He did so as my substitute; it was the same as if I
had risen. So when I rise up out of the baptismal waters it
symbolizes my resurrection to a new life "in Christ."
Paul explains the 'exchanged' Christian life:
I am crucified with Christ: nevertheless I live; yet not I, but
Christ liveth in me: and the life which I now live in the flesh I
live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave himself
for me. (Galations 2:20, KJV)
(See the article featured on the home page, entitled "Biblical
Salvation and the Way of Christ."
RITUALS HAVE NO POWER OR ETERNAL SIGNIFICANCE
God's way of salvation is not through baptism. Nor does He cleanse
us from sin or make us holy through baptism. There is no merit or
power in rituals. They're merely external symbols or pictures of
what has already happened to us inwardly. The value lies not in
the ritual itself, but in what it represents.
We are saved from the consequence of our sins purely because of
the blood shed by the Lord Jesus Christ on the cross at Calvary,
and are made holy through the work of His indwelling Spirit.
However, we are baptized in obedience to His command. As already
mentioned, it is our way of publicly identifying ourselves as being
"in Christ," and of acknowledging that His death and
resurrection is God's means of reconciliation.
One of the men who was being crucified at the same time as Christ,
acknowledged Him as the Messiah. He confessed to being a guilty
sinner and asked the Lord to remember him when He came into His
kingdom. Jesus promised the dying man that he would be with Him in
paradise that very day. Yet he was a justly condemned criminal. He
hadn't been baptized and had no time to do any good works to merit
his salvation. Nor could he comply with any laws or ordinances or
adhere to any religious codes concerning abstaining from certain
foods and drinks. The opportunity of becoming a member of any
religious organization had also passed him by. He put his faith in
Christ alone. And the Lord Jesus honoured that faith.
For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves:
it is the gift of God: Not of works, lest any man should boast.
(Ephesians 2:8-9, KJV)
BAPTISM IS NOT NECESSARY FOR SALVATION
As we have seen above, we are not saved by baptism but by grace
alone, through faith alone, in Christ and His vicarious sacrifice
on the cross alone. However, we undergo baptism once we are saved,
in obedience to Christ's command and as a public declaration
of our faith in Him.
GOD JUDGES US BY OUR HEARTS
We need to bear in mind that all the way through the Bible God
teaches us that it's not just our external deeds that He judges
us by, but our hearts. Christ taught the very same thing in the
gospels. Remember the case of the proud Pharisee and the tax
gatherer? The Pharisees were a group of pious Jews who had
banded together in attempt to bring holiness back into the
lives of the spiritually backslidden nation. They had worked out
a system of laws and ordinances, and stuck to them to the
minutest detail, even to the extent of tithing on the herbs in
their little kitchen gardens. On the other hand the tax
gatherers had become outcasts in Israel, the lowest of the low.
Besides collecting taxes for their Roman overlords, whom the
Jews hated, they were permitted to keep whatever they could get
from their hapless victims, over and above the actual tax
required by Rome. So their fellow countrymen saw them as
collaborators, traitors, extortioners and robbers.
Luke tells us that one day a tax gatherer and a Pharisee went
to the temple to pray. The Pharisee saw himself as being
righteous and favoured by God because he fulfilled all the
external requirements of the Law. But he had a proud,
judgmental heart, amongst other sins. And he actually had the
audacity to thank God that he was such a good person, not at
all like the sinful tax gatherer praying at his side.
On the other hand, the tax gatherer had no pretensions about
himself. He knew full well that he was a sinner, and that it
would only be by God's grace alone that he could ever find
favour with Him. So he humbly confessed his unworthiness and
threw himself on God's mercy. The Lord Jesus said that it was
the tax gatherer who went home justified, not the religious
Pharisee. (Luke 18:9-14.)
What the Pharisee didn't understand was the purity of God or
the high standards He requires, compared to the cesspool of
his own heart and mind. In spite of his strict, external
adherence to the law, deep down inside he was basically no
different to the tax gatherer.
Although Christ could not fault the Pharisees on their external
obedience to the strict letter of the Law, this is how he
described their hearts:
Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye are like
unto whited sepulchres, which indeed appear beautiful outward, but
are within full of dead men's bones, and of all uncleanness. Even
so ye also outwardly appear righteous unto men, but within ye are
full of hypocrisy and iniquity. (Matthew 23:27-28, KJV)
Living in obedience to laws and ordinances can never justify us in
God's sight, because we're fallen creatures with foul, rotten
hearts. Even our good deeds don't count in the sight of a holy God,
because they're done with the wrong motives. The problem with us is
that, just like the Pharisees, our fallen minds are so warped by
self-prejudice, self-justification, self-protection, self-love and
the like, that they prevent us from seeing ourselves for what we
really are. But God knows the depth of our depravity. His prophet,
Isaiah, proclaimed:
But we are all as an unclean thing, and all our righteousnesses are
as filthy rags; and we all do fade as a leaf; and our iniquities,
like the wind, have taken us away. (Isaiah 64:6, KJV)
And it's the same with us today. The Bible teaches us that because
of the fall we are all in the same boat, regardless of whether we
are externally religious or openly sinful. Deep down inside of us,
we're all exactly the same. We are all helpless sinners, blinding
ourselves to this fact by self-bias and self-justification. Until we
reach the place of desperation that comes from a recognition of our
own depravity, and are willing to lay aside our pride and the
resultant false notion that we have the
ability to find favour with God or to qualify for personal salvation
through our own efforts, we will
never come to know the saving grace of the Lord Jesus Christ.
Who can say, I have made my heart clean, I am pure from my sin?
(Proverbs 20:9, KJV)
If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth
is not in us. (1 John 1:8, KJV)
The following leads will take you to articles that explain
biblical salvation in a very clear and easy to understand way:
Biblical Salvation and the Way of Christ
What is Biblical Salvation?
Sin and the Fall, Mormon and Biblical Teachings Contrasted
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