Baptism, Blood, and Blessings

Baptism of Christ (Perugino, Rome)

This semester, I am teaching a course on the History of Christian Worship. On this past Monday and today, we talked about how water baptism was the entry point into the community of believers for the early church. This then led to discussion about the theological significance of water baptism. You may know that there is a strand of Pentecostalism who identify themselves as “Oneness,” “Apostolic,” or “Jesus-only” Pentecostals. There are variations, of course, but in general, these Pentecostals teach that you must be baptized in the name of Jesus rather than in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit as Jesus says in Matthew 28:19. Some teach that you must be baptized in water in order to be baptized in the Holy Spirit. There are others who teach that one must be baptized in order to be saved. Of course, being a Pentecostal minister, myself, teaching students who come from Pentecostal backgrounds and will one day serve in Pentecostal churches, this conversation is of great interest.

I recently purchased a book written by my friend, Dr. Andrew Ray Williams, whose PhD dissertation became the basis for his new book, “Washed in the Spirit: Toward a Pentecostal Theology of Water Baptism.” He specifically investigates the history and practice of water baptism in the International Pentecostal Holiness Church, which is obviously of great interest to me. From his research, he uncovers some great insight on water baptism from Pentecostal Holiness pioneer, G. F. Taylor, the man who started the school in which I am teaching this class and whose name is on the building I was standing in at the time of teaching this class––(just to show you how meaningful this was and is to me).

To all of this, Dr. Williams brings the voice of Taylor from past to present, writing:

According to Taylor, Acts 2.38 “is used by some to teach that water baptism is essential to salvation; by others, to teach that it is essential to the Baptism of the Holy Spirit; by others, to teach that water baptism should be administered in the name of Jesus only. We do not believe that the text teaches any of these things.“ Instead, Taylor asserts that “Peter was preaching to people who had crucified Jesus in the open, and their sin was of such a nature as to demand that they now be baptized in the name of the very one whom they had crucified.“ Therefore, the reason baptism in the name of Jesus is mentioned is that to do so would “be to identify Him with the Son in the baptismal formula, or to make Jesus the Son of God, to give Him His place in the Trinity” (p. 202).

When Peter preached to the crowd on the Day of Pentecost, he pulled no punches in calling out the Israelites for their culpability in crucifying Jesus. It was this same crowd that had only 7 weeks earlier shouted, “Crucify Him!” And what’s worse is that they shouted, “Let His blood be on us and on our children!” (Matt. 27:25). To this crowd, Peter said, “Being therefore exalted at the right hand of God, and having received from the Father the promise of the Holy Spirit, he has poured out this that you both see and hear… Repent, and by baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ so that your sins may be forgiven; and you will received theft of the Holy Spirit” (Acts 2:33, 38, NRSV). Imagine the piercing realization that they would face when they have to come to grips with the fact that if they were to become a part of this move of God, they would first have to embrace the fact that it was only by virtue of this same Jesus whom they had crucified that they could experience the new work that God was doing in the world.

As I was teaching this morning, it dawned on me that the same Jerusalem-Israelite crowd who cried out, “Let His blood be on us and on our children,” now receives the invitation from Peter: “For the promise is for you, for your children, and for all who are far away, everyone whom the Lord our God calls to him” (Acts 2:39). They were once willing to take on the curse of killing an innocent man in the name of misplaced political and religious fervor and laying that curse upon future generations, but now they get a second chance to get it right when Peter says the promise is not only for you but also for your children, and it doesn’t stop there but it will go on to your children’s children, too! They shouted for Jesus’ innocent blood to be upon them and their children, but now Jesus’ blessing––the Holy Spirit, the promise of the Father––could be upon them and their children and their grandchildren if they would but only embrace that this Jesus as the one whom they had crucified was Lord and the Messiah!

What does it mean? Well, I think it means that if you’ve rejected Jesus, He has not rejected you. I think it means that you get a do-over to get it right! I think it means that all of us have at some point said “no” to Jesus when we had the chance to say “yes.” All of us are complicit in His crucifixion because all of us have sinned, and it was our sin that nailed Him to the cross. But it was His love that held Him there. And it is by His love that He prayed that the Father might send the promised Holy Spirit into the world to give us a down-payment of the eternal glory that we will share with Him forever. That’s a promise we can stand on! We were guilty of putting Jesus on the cross and His blood is on our own hands, but rather than the curse being laid on us and on our children, Jesus wants us and our children and our children’s children to experience life in the Spirit. There’s nothing like it!