“Baptized With the Holy Spirit and Fire!”
Colossians 2:9-12, Romans 6:1-4, Ephesians 5:1-14
Rev. Christopher English

I. Introduction

Martin Luther, the man that God used to birth the Protestant Reformation, was also a man who struggled with depression and demonic attacks.  During those battles, Luther used to cry out, "I am baptized, I am baptized, I am baptized!"

You see, for Martin Luther, being baptized wasn’t just some symbolic, sentimental event that happened to him when he was a child.  His baptism was the guarantee that nothing could separate him from the love of God, and that God had called him to battle the forces of darkness.  Likewise, we too need to reclaim the power of our baptism that marks us as forgiven, adopted, and empowered children of God set apart to overcome evil by advancing the kingdom of God.  So this morning we are going to explore the purpose and power of baptism.


II. The Purpose of Baptism

Just before Jesus Christ began his public ministry while he walked planet Earth, a man named John the Baptist was preparing the people for the revealing of Christ by inviting people to be baptized.  He was warning people not to undergo his baptism unless they were serious about living out the symbolic meaning of this baptism by repenting from all known sin, and living a life of obedience to God’s Law.  

But John also recognized the impotence of his baptism because it really did not have the power in itself to either forgive sin or to empower a person to stop sinning.  

However, John also knew that a new day was dawning.  John proclaimed to the people, “I baptize you with water to call you to repentance, but there is one coming after me who will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and with fire!”

This “One” John was referring to was of course Jesus Christ.  One day, Christ came to John to be baptized, and John was confused as he realized the roles should be reversed.  But Christ replied, “Let it be so now to fulfill all righteousness.”  And when Christ was baptized by John, he came up out of the water, and the Holy Spirit came upon Christ and empowered Him for ministry.

Now Christ had to undergo baptism for the same reason Christ had to perfectly obey every requirement of God’s Law.  He did so so that His perfect obedience could then be applied to us, and this makes our imperfect obedience acceptable to God.  You see, when we are baptized (in the Spirit not just in water), we are baptized into Christ’s perfect baptism, and thus it is made acceptable to God, and effectual to forgive all sin and empower us with the Holy Spirit for ministry.

So then, here is what we as Protestant Christians believe about baptism.  Baptism enacts and seals what the Word of God proclaims.  That is why baptism must always follow the proclamation of the Word.  
Baptism is an outward sign of an inward reality.  The inward reality it symbolizes includes all these blessings:

 - Baptism is a sacrament of the New Testament, ordained by Jesus Christ.
 - By the act of baptism, a person becomes a member of Christ’s visible Church.
 - As a sign it proclaims God’s forgiveness and our redemption in Jesus Christ.
 - As a seal, God marks us as adopted children of our heavenly Father.
 - It indicates our being made one with Christ.
 - It symbolizes our dying to our old sinful nature, and rising  to a new life in Christ filled and
      empowered by the Holy Spirit to walk in newness of life right now.
 - It symbolizes the promise of resurrection to eternal life.

As Presbyterians, we also believe that Holy Communion and Baptism are sacramental, and so are not just symbolic, but they have been chosen by God to be unique and powerful means of encountering God’s grace.  Not in a manner that saves, but as a powerful source of nourishing our faith.

As Presbyterians, we also embrace a covenantal theology.  And so we believe that baptism is also a sign and a seal of the Covenant of Grace for believers and their children.  So what does this mean?  As Presbyterians, we are part of a long, rich heritage of Biblical interpretation that comes under this big umbrella called Reformed Theology meaning it has its roots in the Reformation.  Our Reformed heritage believes that after the fall in the Garden of Eden, God made one overarching covenant, or contract, with humanity called the Covenant of Grace.  

This covenant at its core declares that humans are given forgiveness of sins, bought back into right relationship with God, and granted eternal life by one way and one way only: by grace through faith found in a relationship with Jesus Christ.  

Now this one overarching Covenant of Grace has been divided into two ways it has been administered to us.  Under the Old Covenant, faith and grace to be saved was administered through the Jewish sacrificial system that pointed ahead to the cross of Christ.  And under the New Covenant, faith and grace is administered through the Holy Spirit who applies the life and cross of Jesus Christ to our life.

So where does baptism fit in with all this?   God has always given to humanity physical signs of His covenantal promises to give us something tangible, visible to remind us of these promises.  Under the Old Covenant, the two main signs and symbols of the covenant were circumcision and the Passover Meal.  Circumcision marked a child as being a child of the covenant, a member of God’s covenantal community and a participant in God’s covenantal promises.

Under the New Covenant, these two signs and symbols become Baptism and Holy Communion.  Just as circumcision marked a child as a child of the covenant, now baptism does the same for us.  This is why we embrace infant baptism.  Not because it saves a child, but because it marks that child as a participant in God’s covenantal community.   

We also believe it takes this whole covenantal community in the form of a local congregation to raise a child in the faith.  This is why we believe that infant baptism should always be done in the presence of the same group of people who are promising to help nurture that child’s faith, as opposed to just having godparents takes these vows of nurturing.  

We do so in the strong hope that this child will someday make a personal profession of faith, and surrender his or her life to Christ, and so become a born again, Spirit-filled, adopted child of God.  Not every baptized infant will do so!  Infant baptism does not guarantee salvation!  

You see, we do not believe that grace is a substance that is administered by the Church through the sacraments.  This is why we do not believe that baptism saves you.  Baptism is a sign and symbol of God’s salvation, but it is not the means of salvation.

Now, remember all those blessings that baptism represents: being a member of Christ’s Church, being an adopted child of God, etc?  If one is baptized after he or she has surrendered his or her life to Christ, than the sacrament of baptism symbolizes what has already occurred.  When we baptize an infant, we do so in faith claiming God’s power and promise that God will indeed bring that child to a place of personal surrender to Christ.  The beauty and power of infant baptism is that it strongly declares the truth that salvation is God’s act of grace toward us, not something we decide to accept or reject!  

We also do not believe that grace is something we earn by being good people or doing good deeds.  Rather, grace is the very person of Jesus Christ, and becoming an adopted child of God happens when one personally surrenders his or her life to Jesus asking Christ to be his or her Lord and Savior.  It is at that moment of conversion to Christ that the Holy Spirit comes into a person, births a new spirit within him or her, and makes that person God’s child, not the act of baptism.  Thus, the baptism that saves is when we are baptized by Christ with the Holy Spirit of which water baptism is meant to be a sign and symbol.


III. The Power of Baptism

Ok, so now I hope you have either been reminded or exposed to some of the key purposes of baptism.  Now let’s explore the power of being a baptized child of God.  The sermon last week by Rev Crandall, and our Bible passages today, all declare the amazing truth that when we become a baptized, Spirit-filled, adopted child of God a miraculous exchange takes place.  We are transformed from being:
 - A captive of the domain of darkness to being a citizen of God’s kingdom
 - Sons and daughters of disobedience to being children of God
 - Controlled by our sinful nature to being empowered by the Holy Spirit
 - Darkness to Light
 
It is this last transformation that is the central metaphor of our Bible passage from Ephesians this morning.  God through the apostle Paul tells us that we “were once darkness, but now we are light in the Lord!”  He doesn’t say we were once like darkens or filled with darkness, but so permeating was our state of sin before salvation we were darkness itself!  
Likewise, when Christ baptizes us with the Holy Spirit we are so filled with God’s love, life, and light we become Light itself!

Now our passage goes on to say that because of this reality we are commanded and called to now “Be imitators of God, therefore, as dearly loved children and live a life of love.”  Eph 5:1-2, and to “Live as children of light… Have nothing to do with the fruitless deeds of darkness, but rather expose them."  Eph 5: 8-14.

Now this is the central truth in our Bible passages last week and today, and the power and purpose of our baptism:  that we are empowered to live a new life in Christ of obedience to God’s holy standards and active service in God’s kingdom!  

God does not save and change us just because He wants to make us happy, successful, good people!  God’s goal for you is not happiness or success but that He will be glorified through your life.  Now the wonderful truth is that when we are living in the Holy Spirit what brings God the highest glory and us the deepest joys are the same things!

We are saved to serve.  We are baptized to obey.  We are empowered to be equipped!  We are not saved by good works but we are saved for good works!  The same grace that saves us is the same grace that sanctifies us.  

Since this is true, the question arises, “What exactly are we called to do to obey Christ and live a life of love and light?”  Well, our Bible passage in Ephesians that we just read reveals that we are called and empowered to bring God’s love and light everywhere there is sin and darkness in order to expose that darkness and bring it into God’s saving, redeeming, transforming light!

Our passage also reveals that there are three battle fronts of where we are called to fight against the darkness with God’s love and light.  

We are to expose the darkness and bring God’s transforming light:
 - into our world, with each local congregation doing do so at their neighborhood and city level
 - into the lives of unbelievers
 - into our own life and into the lives of our brothers and sisters in Christ

Let me now give one example for each of these areas of what it looks like to obey this calling of overcoming the darkness with God’s love and light.

In 1975, Wayne Gordon, a Caucasian high school coach and teacher moved into a predominantly African-American neighborhood of North Lawndale located on Chicago's Westside.  At that time, North Lawndale was the 15th poorest neighborhood in the U.S.

Wayne and his wife Anne felt called to begin ministering to the spiritual needs in this neighborhood, and so Wayne became an ordained pastor.  They started small Bible study with a group of high school students.  This meeting of fifteen people in March of 1978, eventual became Lawndale Community Church that today has over 800 worshipping families!

This congregation took its calling to minister to the needs of their community seriously while also believing that no dream was too big for mighty God!  They believed that the light of the gospel had the power to overcome all darkness.

They saw a need for affordable health care, and so they birthed Lawndale Christian Health Center, a healthcare ministry that now sees over 80,000 patients per year.  

They saw a need for affordable, quality housing, and so birthed Lawndale Christian Development Corporation that facilitates economic development, education and housing, and so far over 200 units of abandoned housing have been rehabbed, and made affordable for local residents.

They saw a need for quality education so they birthed a tutoring program and have helped over 150 young people to graduate from college, and more than half of them have returned to live and work in North Lawndale.

They saw a need to minister to men who were getting trapped in the inner city cycle of crime and prison and drug abuse, and so birthed Hope House which is now a 24 bed facility designed to help equip and encourage men, striving to reenter society after prison and/or recovery from substance abuse, to be productive Kingdom men.

The community was so dangerous, all the local business were leaving.  They saw a need for a local family restaurant and so birthed Lou Malnati’s Pizzeria offering affordable meals, is locally owed, and employs many of the men who graduate from Hope House. In describing the place, the owners say, we might not be making any profit but we’re saving lives!”

This is what it looks like for a local congregation to overcome the darkness in their neighborhood with God’s love and light.  How many want Third Pres to become this kind of missional congregation that transforms this whole neighborhood and city with God’s love and light?  

Let’s see what it looks like when God’s love and light overcomes the darkness in an unbeliever’s life.

Video clip: "Jose’s Story"

That’s what it looks like to be a radically saved, baptized. Spirit-filled, overcoming, testifying, missional, child of God!  And this is the kind of radical conversion we can see happening all the time once we start to reach out to the “Jose’s” who live in this neighborhood!

Now our Bible passage isn’t just addressing the darkness in the world or in the lives of unbelievers.  It is also directly addressed to Christians, who have hidden sin and shame in their life that keeping them from living as children of the light empowered to overcome the darkness in the world.  Our merciful Lord in this passage is calling us to allow our secret sin and hidden shame to be “exposed” to God’s light.  

How does this happen?  It happens in worship when the light and holiness of God’s presence exposes our hidden sin and shame and we fall on our face in repentance.  It happens when we read, study, and meditate on God’s Word.  God’s Word is a double-edge sword, or a light saber, that exposes the hidden intentions of our heart.  

But most powerfully, it happens in the context of relationship when we open up with another, and in the safe place of being with a trusted spiritual friend, pastor, or counselor we bring our hidden sin and sorrow and shame into the light of God’s healing, freeing, transforming truth and love, and grace!  

So what about you?   Perhaps you’re here today and you’ve been depending upon just the event of being baptized in water long ago to be your source of salvation.   There is no better day than today, to turn your life completely over to Christ, and let Him baptize you in the Holy Spirit so that your salvation rests in Christ alone.   

Perhaps you’re here today, and you have secret sin or hidden shame or unhealed sorrow in your life.  There is no better day than today to decide that you are no longer going to be controlled by this darkness.  That you are going to make an appointment with a trusted friend or pastor or counselor and bring that hidden darkness into God’s healing light.   

And for all of us, as we celebrate the Sacrament of Baptism this morning, let this be a time when we renew our baptismal vows with all our heart, mind, soul, and strength.