Mark #7: Conversion (and baptism)
- Date: Sunday, February 5, 2012
- Speaker: Dusty Thompson
- Series: Marks of a Healthy Church
- Scripture: Romans 6:1–6:11
- Tags: conversion, baptism, grace
We handled this text a little less than a year ago, but I wanted to look at it again because of its unique way of tying in our next mark of a healthy church, “A Biblical understanding of Conversion.” The unique thing about this text is that it ties conversion in with its NT sign of baptism that corresponds to it. I hope it will help you to understand with more clarity how conversion works and what baptism is all about. I hope some will realize that you aren’t converted and that you will be converted today- on the spot! I also hope some of you will desire baptism from your new (or old) conversion.
The Question that frames it all
Look at the question that follows the amazing truth of our complete acceptance by God because of Christ’s work (chapter 5). 1What shall we say then? Are we to continue in sin that grace may abound? 2By no means! How can we who died to sin still live in it?
To answer why it is that someone wouldn’t and couldn’t feel like God’s acceptance is a means to our sin, Paul takes us to the radical nature of what happens at conversion. If you go back and review our time together in the whole of Romans 6, you would see that conversion is the decisive break with sin’s domination over us and actually informs and fuels the Christian life. That’s why we won’t take grace as a sin license.
Conversion
3Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? 4We were buried therefore with him by baptism into death, in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life. 5For if we have been united with him in a death like his, we shall certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his. 6We know that our old self was crucified with him in order that the body of sin might be brought to nothing, so that we would no longer be enslaved to sin. 7For one who has died has been set free from sin. 8Now if we have died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with him. 9We know that Christ, being raised from the dead, will never die again; death no longer has dominion over him. 10For the death he died he died to sin, once for all, but the life he lives he lives to God. 11So you also must consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus.
Let’s start with conversion because it will help us understand baptism and what becoming a Christian has to do with the rest of life. In answering this question as to why grace won’t cause us sin more boldly, the answer is found in the nature of conversion. A Christian is immersed (baptized) in Jesus and, therefore, was killed with Him (3,5, 7, 8, 10, 11). The death we deserved for our own sin was carried out (as a substitution) on Jesus and, in that sense, we were there. We were united to Jesus in His death and in a sense the old person died there, too. This sounds bad, but it is very good! This doesn’t mean that your personality dies when you become a Christian and that means you must start liking lame music and start thinking Christian T-shirts are clever. But the slavery to sin that was yours and its penalty that should have been yours died with Jesus there.
More importantly, this is very good news because Jesus didn’t stay dead. He came to life. We call this the resurrection. When we become Christians, we are united not only to His death, but when He walked out of that tomb victorious over death and sin, so did we! This newness of life (v 5) is referring to our conversion that will absolutely have effects in our daily life- we see that more clearly in verse 11. The effects of this resurrection with Christ are briefly described in this passage and include:
1. New Life with Him (4-5)
2. Being set free from sin’s mastery (6-7)
3. We will never die (9) and death won’t have dominion
4 We will live with Him forever (9)
5. This break with sin and death and to the new life of Christ begins now (11).
In short, conversion is a great way to describe what happens when a person moves from a denial of God where they were fully prepared to stand before God on their own merits and defend why they are ok (this won’t turn out well)….to a person that claims the merits of Jesus by faith is unified in what Jesus did on their behalf. When you are connected to His work on the cross and His resurrection, the Spirit changes you. It changes everything. This doesn’t imply that all sin patterns are erased, but their power is weakened. Through the ongoing work of the Spirit, Christians have everything they need for a life of godliness (1 Peter 1:3). I keep mentioning the Spirit because, although He isn’t mentioned here, it is clear from the rest of the NT, that He is the person of the Trinity that gives you eyes to see the grace of God in Christ.
One quick nuance to all of this- for lots of us, we’ll lack a crisis event that we can pinpoint. I heard maybe hundreds of times growing up that if you can’t think of a time and place where you prayed a prayer (i.e. their take on conversion), you still have work to do. While some of have been genuinely saved/converted like this, it feels like a process to many others. To be sure, there is a moment when you have the Spirit and a moment you did not, many times the Spirit works in stages to draw people to the Father through the Son. This totally counts. I heard a pastor I like a lot (Tim Keller) once say that he felt like lots of the crisis commitments (during worship services, etc.) that are often claimed as salvations by churches were usually more of a commitment to look into this whole Jesus thing- it may not be actual conversion. It could be, but it might not be. I’d encourage you to instead ask if you have genuine faith in Jesus today. Do you love Him? Do you desire to obey Him? Whether that was in 5 minutes after a service or a process of months or years, you have been converted. If the answer is no, then whether you prayed a prayer or have been “in process” in services for months or years, you haven’t.
Baptism
This is conversion and it based on what Jesus has done and it has a huge impact on Christians. Understanding this huge break of conversion is a key mark of the church.
Probably, Paul mentions baptism to represent the entire conversion experience. Paul did place a lot of importance on baptism. In fact, lots of us in here need to square this away. Paul links our conversion to our baptism and it would have been unthinkable for an adult Christian to delay indefinitely their baptism. At the least, we can say that baptism is the sign that is tied to our conversion. It doesn’t convert us or even play a role in conversion, but it points towards the clear break we have with the domain of sin and death.
Think about it. What does baptism communicate? It states gospel realities that occurred at conversion for a Christian. Buried with Jesus. You go under the water to demonstrate your union with Christ as He was crucified and buried in the earth. When you go under, you are simulating drowning. You died with Jesus and the penalty of your sin died with Him there! When you come out of the water, you are communicating with a sign the spiritual reality of your resurrection with Christ when He walked out of the tomb. Dead and buried and then raised and alive! That is your story as a Christian in a nutshell. If you are trying to figure out this Jesus deal, that WOULD be your story if you believed. I’d add that this is the best case for why we believe that Christians should be baptized (as opposed to children of Christians). Seems tied to conversion, no? That is why we dedicate babies and baptize Christians.
A quick note. Some will say that this means we are baptized through conversion or that conversion is necessary for salvation. While I will agree that baptism is a much bigger deal than lots of you have made it and that Paul couldn’t conceptualize someone NOT being baptized that had faith in Christ, this doesn’t imply that we our salvation is mediated through the waters. Baptism is associated with conversion, not the means of it. Furthermore, Jesus grants salvation to a thief that wasn’t immersed- so faith is the thing. See Romans 4 on this for why faith has always been the thing, not the OT sign of circumcision or the NT sign of baptism.
3 Groups Here
Let me appeal to 3 different types of people present today. You all need to act on what you’ve heard in the Bible.
1. Unconverted, unbelieving. If this is you, I am really glad you are here. Maybe you came in knowing you weren’t one of Jesus’. Maybe you just figured that out. Your first task is to believe. I’d beg you to believe Him and know the mercy of God. Once you do, talk with one of us and let’s get baptized. While all of that is happening, let this death to sin and new life in Christ start to actually kill sin patterns in your life right now. There is so much life to be known and lived in front of you. Do it!
2. Converted, unbaptized. I’ve watched an interesting phenomenon take shape at Redeemer. We take communion every week here and there are lots of us that eat and drink from those elements- which are signs of ongoing Christian growth and faith in Christ- like popcorn and coke at a movie. Some would acknowledge that they or their children are likely not ready for baptism. Think about it: If you aren’t ready for the sign of ongoing faith in Jesus, you probably aren’t ready for the sign of initial faith in Jesus. We’ll talk more about this next week, so I’ll leave it alone. But whatever you are doing with communion, why haven’t you been baptized as a Christian? Is it is because you have a strong conviction about infant baptism? I get it- let me recommend an awesome Presbyterian church about half a mile from us. But if you aren’t there, why would you carry on as a Christian without taking this sign of initial faith? It could be a help to your own faith as well as an awesome gospel presentation to others. If you are waiting for the stars to align to get family here or whatever, make it happen. There’s no reason to delay.
One more quick thing here: let your friends in your GC and your leaders at Redeemer shepherd you through thinking of your past and if you need to be baptized as a Christian. We’ve had many that talk out their story and realize their baptism as a child was legit. Others look back and realize they have only recently been converted and chose to be baptized as a Christian. Because we live in the Bible belt and lots of us did something or another as a kid (baptism, confirmation, prayed prayers, etc.), it takes some other voices and help to unpack it all. Let’s be the church in making sense of your story.
3. Converted, baptized. You have been made new and have taken the NT sign to show it. That’s great. Let me encourage you to tap into the converting power of Jesus and fight sin with renewed intensity. We’ll talk more about this next week, but to quote Martin Luther: “Sin is not destroyed, but weakened and mortified.” Its reign over us and its penalty was crucified on the cross, but it is still a part of this broken world and is hard wired into us since the fall. But it does mean that there can be real growth in our struggle against all kinds of sins as we walk with Jesus and we see that we can trust Him and that we believe that He is better than whatever the sin issue is. So don’t get discouraged if you want change and continue to struggle. But also you don’t get to chalk terrible, rebellious behavior as “that’s just the way I am”, either. You aren’t sinless, this isn’t heaven. But, Jesus is real and you’ve been changed.
Ok, what does a Biblical understanding of conversion do? It keeps us from playing silly games with grace and from deceiving ourselves about the state of our soul because of the radical nature of what God does in our soul because of Jesus’ work on the cross and the Spirit’s awakening grace. 1What shall we say then? Are we to continue in sin that grace may abound? 2By no means! How can we who died to sin still live in it?
