The Gospel of the Forty Days: Baptism, Part 4
In this fourth article on Christ’s command
to baptize given to the Apostles during the forty days between His Resurrection
and Ascension, we discuss the second effect and purpose of Christian Baptism:
sonship, adoption, becoming a child of God. (The first being incorporation into
Christ, discussed in the prior article.) How might Jesus have taught about this during
those forty days?
Probably as St. John speaks of it: “To all
who received Him, who believed in His Name, He gave power to become children of
God; who were born ... of God” (Jn 1:11-12).
But how is one born of God? That was the
question Nicodemus raised, and Jesus replied: “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless
one is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God” (Jn
3:5). “Water and the Spirit” is an obvious reference to the baptism that Jesus
would institute. To the woman at the well Jesus also refers to the Spirit as
“the gift of God” and the water He would give as a spring “welling up to
eternal life” (Jn. 4:10, 14; cf. 7:38-39).
St. Paul speaks similarly of water,
Spirit, rebirth, and being saved. He says God “saved us ... by the washing
[baptism] of regeneration [rebirth] and renewal in the Holy Spirit” (Titus
3:5). “For in one Spirit we were all baptized into one body and all were made
to drink [water image] of one Spirit” (1 Cor 12:13).
Before His death, Jesus referred to the
promised gift of the Spirit this way: “What father among you, if his son asks
for a fish, will instead of a fish give him a serpent...? If you then, who are
evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will the
heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask Him!” (Lk 11:13.) The
parallel of a father and his children, and the heavenly Father and those who
ask indicate the askers are the Father’s children, i.e., those to whom He will
give the Holy Spirit making them His children.
At the Last Supper Jesus said the Spirit
“will be in you. I will not leave you orphans; I will come to you” (Jn
14:17-18). The gift of the Spirit to be “in” them would make the disciples
children of God – not abandoned orphans. Our baptismal incorporation into
Christ and the baptismal gift of the indwelling Holy Spirit is our rebirth, our
regeneration – and God cannot give us any greater gift than Himself to abide
within us.
Like St. John, St. Peter also heard Jesus’
teaching on baptism during the forty days before the Ascension. Peter speaks of
being “born again ... to an inheritance [i.e., sonship] that is imperishable”
(1 Pet 1:3-4). He refers to us as “obedient children” (1 Pet 1:14) “born again”
through imperishable seed (1 Pet 1:23), and says, “Baptism, which corresponds
to [Noah’s saving ark], now saves you” (1 Pet 3:21). He is a “partaker in the
glory that is to be revealed” (1 Pet 5:1) and the baptized (cf. 2 Pet 1:2) are
“partakers of the divine nature” (2 Pet 1:4).
“Partaker” is a translation of the Greek
term “koinonia” meaning sharing, participation, communion, or partnership – in
this context, referring to our life in God. Scripture uses “koinonia” as
sharing in God’s own holiness (Heb 12:10), in the Holy Spirit (Heb 6:4; Phil
2:1), in the Eucharist (1 Cor 10:16) – so basically being transformed “into the
image of the Son [Jesus Christ], the firstborn among many brothers” and sisters
[i.e., the baptized, the Church] (Ro 8:29).
So being incorporated into Christ by
baptism, baptism then also gives us a re-birth as a child of God by the gift of
the Holy Spirit abiding within as a real, experienced, living spiritual
reality.
And we see from Jesus’ own words, and those of St. John and St. Peter, that Jesus would have taught these things during the forty days. We also see why Jesus’ last words before His Ascension were to “wait for promise of the Father” when they would be “baptized with the Holy Spirit,” not mere symbolic water as was John's baptism (Ac 1:4-5).