You know how some sermons are just easy to listen to? Maybe they hit on a subject you were just wondering about, or they address a need you felt but hadn’t put a name to, or they re-affirm something you believed but didn’t have the words for. Some sermons just seem to hit us right where we are at just the right time with just the right words. I love it when that happens. That probably isn’t going to happen today.
I guess what I’m saying is that you’ll have to work a little harder than you usually would to connect with the message. But you know how sometimes when you really dread getting into something, like a project at work or a homework assignment or a chore at home, how right in the middle of it you think to yourself, "You know, this isn’t so bad." I love it when that happens, too. And I
think that will probably happen today.
So am I killing you with anticipation here or what? We’re going to continue the three week series on faith we began last week. We’re calling it 3-on-3. Three weeks on faith, three on hope, three on love. Three internal issues that can make a powerful impact on how we live out our lives. We began trying to define faith. Then we talked about how faith helps us when everything around us is falling apart. Today, we’re going to dive into a controversy that has been a part of the conversation of faith for centuries. From the beginning, in fact. We’re going to talk about faith and works. Is my faith in Jesus death on the cross enough to save me, or do I have to do something else to earn salvation?
Let’s look at a passage right up front so that we know what we’re getting into. Ephesians 2:8,9. "For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith-and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God -- not by works, so that no one can boast." If you are saved, you are saved by God’s grace through faith -- not by your own good behavior or your performance of some religious ritual or your ability to submit to any set of rules and regulations.
That’s only one passage, but all through scripture the point is the same; human beings cannot make themselves right in the eyes of God by what they do. Our works, no matter how good, are insufficient. Both in quality and quantity they are inadequate.
Look at it this way; drop two men into the middle of the Pacific Ocean. One is a world-class distance swimmer, the kind of swimmer who eats tri-athletes for breakfast. The other is a guy who learned to swim at Boy Scout camp in 1969, hates getting water up his nose, and just had tripp1e by-pass surgery. Question: Which one is going to make it to the coast of California? Answer? Neither.
Think about Mother Teresa. Can you think of anyone who did more good in her life than that dear woman? She tended the dying in the streets of Calcutta. She loved the unlovely. She didn’t lie. She didn’t lust. She didn’t smoke. Or drink. Or cuss. She wasn’t guilty of insider trading. She didn’t buy lottery tickets. She never yelled at people in traffic. If anyone in this century ever did it right, it was Mother Teresa. But Mother Teresa didn’t do it right enough. Unless she was saved by the grace of God through faith, Mother Teresa wasn’t saved.
Now and then I’ll hear a person say of someone who has just died, “Well, I know where they are now -- they’re in heaven because I’ve never known anyone who was that good." Or we’ll say, "I sure hope they’re in heaven because if they don’t make the cut nobody can make the cut." That’s just the point. No one -- not one single human being -- makes the cut because of their own goodness. Paul put it this way in Romans 3:23; "For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God." How many? All. Not some. All. Not most. All.
But then Paul adds this in vs. 24: "and are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus." Being justified means being made right. It’s the same thing as being saved by grace. We are freely justified by God’s grace. As Paul says in vs. 22, being made right with God comes from God and by faith in Jesus Christ. If you trust Christ rather than your own goodness or performance, God justifies you. God makes you right with him. God saves you from your sin. Like the old song, Rock of Ages says, nothing I do, nothing I bring to the table saves me from my sin. Only God’s grace does that.
Right about now most of this audience can be divided into two groups; one group is wondering, "But you haven’t said anything about baptism. Peter said baptism saves us. Are you saying we don’t have to be baptized to be saved?"
The other group is wondering, "Okay, I believe everything you just said. So why does your church teach that you have to be baptized to be saved? Aren’t you trusting your own performance of a religious ritual rather than the saving work of Christ?"
Another way to ask these two questions would be, which saves us; baptism or faith? My answer is, neither. We are saved by God’s grace and God’s grace alone. In the Bible, faith and baptism are never pitted against one another the way they often are today. In fact, in Mark 16:16 Jesus put them together. "Whoever believes (the verb form of the noun faith) and is baptized will be saved." The only way we can pit faith and baptism against each other is if we misunderstand one or both of them.
I grew up in the church of Christ, so when I talk about some of our ways of doing things, I’m talking from the perspective of a family member who loves and appreciates his heritage. But as much as I love it, we’ve said some off-the-wall things about baptism. For example, I’ve heard people say that they were baptized into the church. What they meant, I hope, was that by virtue of being baptized into Christ, they were added to his church. Leguard Smith rightly points out that "what one is baptized into becomes that to which he ( or she) will attribute salvation." (Baptism: The Believers Wedding Ceremony, p. 12). The church never saved anybody. Only Christ does that. When we say we’re baptized into the church we’re suggesting that something other than the work of Christ on the cross is responsible for our being right with God. And that’s false teaching.
But the most dangerous idea we’ve entertained is that, by virtue of our baptism, we have in some way earned our salvation. I don’t think I’ve ever heard anyone say that in so many words, but we’ve all but said it. We harbor a subtle form of self-righteousness, an attitude of arrogance that we, among all our cousins in Christendom, have this one figured right, and that being right on this score makes us at least closer to God than anyone else and possibly the only ones close to God. Rather than glorying in nothing but the cross of Christ, we have gloried in baptism by immersion for the remission of sins.
On the other side, there are those who think that baptism, far from being an essential response to God’s grace, is nothing more than a human attempt to earn what God freely gives. They believe that submitting to baptism is tantamount to claiming that Christ’s work on the cross was insufficient to save us. That we have to add something. For them, baptism is a work; an attempt to add something to the gift of God’s free grace. To be blunt about it, folks who end up here are usually inconsistent. They won’t insist on baptism but they don’t have any problem with insisting on repentance or right living after Christ has been accepted by faith. If you’re worried about work I think I’d much rather get rid of repentance than baptism. Repentance is the hardest work I’ve ever done.
Lutheran pastor Richard Buchar offers a useful way of looking at it; "Either baptism is our work for God or it is God’s work for us." Baptism is a work. The question is, whose work is it? Let’s look at a passage to answer that question.
Colossians 2:9 - 13. Paul has just warned his readers not to be taken with hollow and deceptive philosophies which depend on human traditions. So he’s worried about adding something to the pure gospel of Christ. That’s vs. 8. Now listen to what he says beginning in vs. 9.
"For in Christ all the fullness of the Deity lives in bodily form, and you have been given fullness in Christ, who is the head over every power and authority. In him you were also circumcised, in the putting off of the sinful nature, not with a circumcision done by the hands of men but with the circumcision done by Christ ... " Stop right there.
Something has happened to the Colossians. They have put off their sinful natures. Paul uses the Old Testament rite of circumcision as a metaphor for this incredible change that has taken place. They have not been literally circumcised. Let all the brothers who agree say, Amen. In fact, he says that what has happened to them was not done by the hands of men. It was done by Christ himself. In what way was this done?
Vs. 11, "In him you were also circumcised, in the putting off of the sinful nature, not with a circumcision done by the hands of men but with the circumcision done by Christ, having been buried with him in baptism and raised with him through your faith in the power of God, who raised him from the dead. When you were dead in your sins and in the uncircumcision of your sinful nature, God made you alive with Christ. He forgave us all our sins."
In this passage, God, in the person of Jesus Christ is the one doing the work. The readers are the ones who benefited from the work. Paul points to their baptism as the event in which the work of putting off the sinful nature and forgiveness of sins took place. But it wasn’t their work that accomplished that dramatic transformation. It was God’s work. Their faith wasn’t in the water. It wasn’t in their performance of the ritual. As Paul says in vs. 13, their faith was in the power of God.
To the New Testament writers there is no contradiction between trusting Christ for salvation and submitting to baptism. When Peter was asked on the day of Pentecost, "Brothers, what shall we do," he did not reply, "Repent and believe." he replied, "Repent and be baptized." They already believed. When Paul wrote to the Corinthians, he did not write, "By one Spirit we were all received by an affirmation of our faith into one body," but he did write, "By one Spirit we were all baptized into one body." When Peter wrote to a group of Christians he did not say, "faith saves you." He wrote, "Baptism saves you."
In fact, go ahead and look at that passage in 1 Peter 3 :21. Peter has just mentioned Noah and the ark. Then he says, "In it (the ark) only a few people, eight in all, were saved through water, and this water symbolizes baptism that now saves you also -- not the removal of dirt from the body, but the pledge of a good conscience toward God. It saves you by the resurrection of Jesus Christ."
Peter is very careful here to avoid teaching that there is power in a ritual act like baptism. It isn’t the performance of the ritual that saves. It’s not the outward act, he says, not the removal of dirt from the body. It’s what happens inside, the pledge of a good conscience. And the location of the power that saves is not in the person who submits to the rite, it’s in the resurrection of Jesus.
In Matthew 28: 19, 20 , Jesus commanded his apostles to make disciples of all nations by teaching and baptizing them. Jesus himself submitted to the rite of baptism.
In Acts 8, Philip told the Ethiopian the good news about Jesus. In response to that good news, the Ethiopian asked if he could be baptized.
In Acts 16, Paul and Silas spoke the word of the Lord to the Philippian jailer. That same hour of the night, he and all his family was baptized.
If baptism and faith are in conflict with one another, then we are the ones who started the fight. Christ and his apostles saw no contradiction between salvation by grace through faith and the command to be baptized.
Rightly understood, baptism is not a work I perform in order to earn my salvation. Rather, it is the white flag of faith. In my baptism I raise the banner of surrender to all who witness it and thereby confess that I am dead in my sins, hopelessly lost without the mercy of Christ, and totally dependent on the grace of my God.
Remember the two guys we dropped off in the Pacific Ocean back at the beginning of the message? They’re still there, still struggling. Neither one of them is going to make it. They’re too far from the shore, too vulnerable to the predators of the sea, too much in need of food and fresh water. So let’s help them out. A boat pulls up along side of them and someone in the boat throws each man a life preserver. "Grab on," they shout from the boat, "and we’ll pull you in."
If you were treading water in the middle of the ocean with vivid memories of the movie Jaws swirling in your head, would you trust that boat to take you to safety? If you were barely holding Your head above the water with images of a sinking Leonardo DeCaprio floating through your mind, would you have faith that that boat was your salvation? It could be Kate Winslet or Phyllis Diller in that boat. I don’t care. I’d take that life ring and so would you.
Would you then brag about how well you held onto the ring or how hydrodynamically you were pulled through the water or how athletically you hurtled the railing of the boat? Me neither. I’d just be thankful that something infinitely more seaworthy than me could carry me to safety. Bragging about your baptism makes about as much sense. Okay. So you were baptized by immersion for the remission of your sins in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. If your trust is in the act of baptism, you need to repent of that and put it where it belongs. In the saving love of your Father.
And refusing to be baptized is like saying you trust the boat, but never getting into it. Totally trusting Christ for your salvation means that you recognize there is nothing you can ever do to be right with God. But it doesn’t mean there’s nothing for you to do. The great reformer Martin Luther put it this way; "Yes, it is true that our works are of no use for salvation. Baptism, however, is not our work but God’s." I invite you this morning to trust him with all your heart and let him perform his mighty work for you.
