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Category: Baptism (Page 4 of 7)

Do You Remember?

September 11, 2014 / / 0 Comments

This past Sunday it was Ken. The Sunday before that it was Lynzi. We are so blessed to be able to so often participate in Christian baptisms during our weekly assemblies. We watch and pray, cheer and sing, as these new disciples publicly confess Jesus as Lord and put him on in baptism for the forgiveness of their sins and the gift of God’s Holy Spirit. What an incredible event!

When I visit with these new followers of Jesus, I always stress that they should look back often on their baptisms. They should intentionally reflect on what God created in them that day they were buried and raised with Christ. We should all remember what God did for us and with us when we came up out of the water.

God has made something brand new out of each of us. He has chosen now to live inside us and to re-create us to experience all of life in a brand new way. It’s amazing, really. Death has nothing on us anymore. And neither does sin.

Do you remember when you were baptized? Who baptized you? Where did it happen? Do remember how you felt when you came up out of the water? Do you remember the songs that were sung? The people who were there?

It was the single greatest day of your life. You may not recognize it all the time. But that was the day you were added to God’s eternal Kingdom. That was the day you were made righteous by the salvation work of Christ and reconciled to your Creator. It was a tremendous day, a cosmic day when eternity broke through the barriers of time and space and took up residence inside your body and soul.

Praise God for the blessings of his loving and merciful salvation. And give him thanks for the great privilege of sharing those wonderful baptism days with others.

Peace,

Allan

God’s Not Done

July 18, 2014 / / 0 Comments

So, you were baptized! Great news! Praise God! Hallelujah!

What happens between now and the time you’re saved?

Your salvation is a process, right? Lots of wonderful things happen at baptism: you confess that Jesus is Lord and you put all of your faith and trust in him to remove your sins; you commit to follow in Christ’s steps as a loyal disciple; you become one with Jesus as you die and are buried and are raised up with him in baptism; you receive the gift of God’s Holy Spirit living inside you; you’re initiated into the Lord’s Body, the Church of Jesus Christ. All that happens at baptism. Justification. Reconciliation. A righteous standing before God. Peace. Joy.

But that’s not the last step. In as many ways as you can imagine, baptism has never been the last step.

We are being saved.

Being saved means being changed into the image of Jesus. It means being shaped into his character, being formed into his nature. It means we spend our lives “working out our salvation” (Philippians 2:12), we are predestined by God to be conformed to the image of his Son (Romans 8:29), we are to bear the likeness of the Christ from heaven (1 Corinthians 15:49). Paul says he agonizes and prays “until Christ is formed in you” (Galatians 4:19). We are all

“being transformed into his likeness with ever-increasing glory, which comes from the Lord.” (2 Corinthians 3:18)

God is saving us by making us like Jesus. Being saved is becoming like Christ. Acting like Christ. Talking like Christ. Thinking and behaving like Christ. Sacrificing and serving like Christ. That’s our salvation. That’s God’s good purpose and what God is doing with us today.

And that takes time. It doesn’t happen overnight. It’s not an immediate thing.

None of us is done. Our salvation is not complete. None of us. There’s nobody alive God is finished with yet. Until the day you die or the day our Lord returns in glory — whichever comes first for you — until that last day, our God is working in you to give you more humility. He’s renewing your mind to make you more sacrificial for others. He’s transforming your attitude and your actions to better reflect the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus.

If we’re not careful, we can view our baptism as God’s completed work. We can think we’ve already arrived, that we’ve changed enough, that we’ve done enough, that we have nothing else to learn or do until we’re saved. We might think, “I’ve been baptized, so God’s done with me what he wanted to do.” Or, “I’ve been baptized, so God’s got me in his holy holding area until I die.” Or, “I’ve been baptized, so God’s put me in neutral here until I get to heaven.” It might be arrogance, it might be complacency, it might be ignorance — all three are killers!

You need to know that God is not done with you yet. You need to be aware that God is still working on you. I don’t care how long ago you were baptized or how many great things you’ve done in the name of Jesus, God still has things to teach you. He still has things to show you. He is still changing you and he is still very interested in seeing you grow and in using you for his good purposes.

Peace,

Allan

Raised with Christ

October 1, 2013 / / 2 Comments

“Since, then, you have been raised with Christ, set your hearts on things above, where Christ is seated at the right hand of God. For you died, and your life is now hidden with Christ in God. When Christ, who is your life, appears, then you also will appear with him in glory.” ~Colossians 3:1-4

Our youngest daughter, Carley, was baptized into Christ Jesus on Sunday. She publicly renounced the ways of the world and confessed the ultimate lordship of Jesus and her commitment to him. She was buried with him — symbolically, sacramentally; she was raised with Christ — symbolically, sacramentally — to walk in newness of eternal life with our King. She has been forgiven by God of every sin she’s ever committed and will ever commit against his great holiness. She is now indwelled by God himself in the form of his Spirit — symbolized by the first huge breath she took after coming up out of the watery grave. And she belongs exclusively to our heavenly Father. She is his and he is hers. Forever. Amen.

As we talked and prayed with Carley this past week, she asked me almost every night, “Who’s going to do the ‘Since then…?'”

The “Since then…” is the congregational reading of Colossians 3:1-4. It’s a baptismal tradition/liturgy at the Legacy church we initiated with the opening of the new worship center there in 2008. As soon as the newly baptized follower came up out of the water, the congregation would recite those words of blessing and challenge, of affirmation and commission. It was — and still is — a powerful way for the church to participate in the baptism and for the wet Christian to feel the strength of belonging now to a baptized community.

Well, we don’t do that here at Central.

Yes, we clap and cheer and sometimes even stand and shout when someone is baptized. Several people are usually waiting backstage to pray with the newly baptized brother or sister afterward . For teenagers, as many as thirty or forty people will crowd back there to offer congratulations and prayers. But our worship center is built and our baptistry positioned in such a way that congregational participation in a baptism event itself is all but impossible. Our baptistry is some 25-feet up in the air, far removed from the church itself. People on the very front pews are still 75-feet away from the water and are forced to watch the baptisms on the giant screens. Folks scattered around the giant room are even farther away and have no choice but to watch it on the screens. I was dismayed Sunday to walk out into the water in front of our church with my wife and our youngest daughter, and look out into our loving congregation to see 99-percent of them not looking at us, but watching on the screens. And we’re in the same room! Our building has turned baptisms into a spectator event.

But I asked our brothers and sisters to read the “Since then…” to Carley when she came up out of the water. We put the words on the screen. And they did it. It was beautiful. It was powerful. It honored us as a family. And it meant the world to Carley.

 

 

 

 

 

Thank you, Central Church of Christ, for loving our daughter and our whole family the way you do. Not a day goes by that we don’t recognize how blessed we are to be with you. Thank you to our small group and Carley’s middle school Muddle families who blessed us so wonderfully at our home Sunday night. You poured truth into our daughter. You affirmed her; you challenged her; you read God’s Holy Word to her and promised to always love her. Thank you. Thank you to the Popes and the Marshalls who drove thirteen hours round trip from Legacy to rejoice with us this weekend. Your friendship is a testament to the faithfulness of our God. And thank you to Carrie-Anne’s mom and my parents who sacrificed a lot to be here this past weekend. You received the Christian faith from your parents, you passed it on to your children, and you are blessing us as we pass it on together to your grandchildren. Thank you.

Carley, you now belong to our God. Paul told the Christians in Galatia that you are a daughter of God by faith when you clothe yourself with Christ by baptism (Galatians 3:26-27). When you were baptized Sunday, you put to death the old Carley. You killed that girl; you buried her. And when you came up out of the water, you were a brand new creature. God has created something brand new inside you Carley, so that by his Spirit you will experience all of life in a brand new way. Death has nothing on you now, precious daughter. And neither does sin.

Our prayer for you, Carley, is that our God will bless you richly with his grace and peace, his protection and provision. Our great desire is to see you become more and more like our Lord. Our eternal hope is that you walk with him faithfully, all the way to the end.

We love you. And we are so proud of you. And we know your life in Christ is going to result in praise and glory to God. May his holy will be done in you and through you, Carley, just as it is in heaven.

Love, like you just can’t believe,

Dad

Let’s Astonish the World

August 14, 2013 / / 0 Comments

What a tremendous response! What a terrific reaction to what our God revealed to us at Central this past Sunday! And, my, how it continues even now into the middle of the week! The emails and texts that began pouring in during lunchtime Sunday are still being received today in a fairly steady stream. There’s an enthusiasm over what we’ve discovered together as a church family. There’s an overwhelming resolve to jump wholeheartedly into what our God has put in front of us. There’s a continual hum, a buzz, a current of Holy Spirit energy that’s tangible in this place. It’s real. You can feel it. We’ve tapped in to something here. Maybe… God’s holy will?

Allow me to share with you in this space today the heart of the message we heard together Sunday from God’s Word. Tomorrow, my plan is to share some of the response to the message in an effort to further process what happened Sunday.

The lesson Sunday came from the last part of Jesus’ prayer in John 17, his plea for unity among all future believers. It served as the culmination of our sermon series on this powerful prayer. And it provided the theological base for our “4 Amarillo” partnership with First Baptist, First Presbyterian, and Polk Street Methodist.

My prayer, Jesus says, is that all of them may be one. May they be brought to complete unity. It’s this unity, this uncompromising love and acceptance we have for all baptized Christian believers that will prove to the world Jesus really is who he says he is and who we say he is. Our unflinching dedication to love and defend all Christians, to worship and serve with all Christians, will astonish the world.

Well, Allan, not all people who’ve been baptized, right? I mean, a lot of people are baptized in different ways than we are, and for different reasons. We can’t worship with and have fellowship with all Christians.

That’s why the church is not astonishing the world.

Christ’s prayer is for unity. Christ’s will is for complete unity among all his followers today. So, let’s go there.

If God accepts someone, I must also accept them, too, right? I can’t be a sterner judge than the perfect judge, can I? Nobody would say, “Well, I know that God accepts this woman as a full child of his, I know she’s probably saved, but she doesn’t meet all of my standards in the things she believes and the way she worships, so I’m not going to accept her.” Nobody would say that. We must fellowship everyone who has fellowship with God. We must fellowship everyone who is saved. All the saved.

So… who are the saved?

There was a time when we would say everyone who hears, believes, repents, confesses, and is baptized is saved. OK, for the sake of this discussion, let’s go with that. The next question is, “He who hears what?”

“The Gospel!”

“She who believes what?”

“The Gospel!”

“Whoever repents and confesses and is baptized by what or through what or into what?”

“The Gospel!”

Right. That means the next question is… what is the Gospel?

That Jesus Christ is the Son of the living God, that he alone is Lord, and that we are saved by faith in him. You might check out 1 Corinthians 15:1-8 or several other places in Scripture where Paul sums up the Gospel. It seems pretty clear that it’s about declaring Jesus as Lord and as the only way to the Father and submitting to his lordship in baptism and in a new way of life. We’ve never required anything else. The Church has never asked for another confession. We’ve never asked anybody their position on women’s roles or children’s worship before they’re baptized. We don’t put a teenager in the water and catalog all his views and opinions on instrumental worship before he’s saved. (Unfortunately, some of us do that about a month later.) That stuff is not Gospel. Paul says it’s nothing but Christ and him crucified.

Romans 15:7 says we are to accept one another as Christ accepted us. We are to receive others by the same standards we were received at our baptisms. You know, your acceptance by God is a gift. That fact that Christ Jesus has accepted you is pure grace. The imperative for us is to extend that same gift, to show that same grace, to all others who have received it from our Lord.

Well, what about the Christian who disagrees with me on divorce and remarriage, or on the age of the earth? What about the Christian who doesn’t see church names or the Lord’s Supper the way I do? What about our discord over steeples or shaped notes?

In Romans 14-15, the issues are eating mean versus vegetables and the observance of holy days. And Paul knows what’s right and wrong. He knows the correct answer. There is a right and wrong on these matters. But Paul says, in Christ Jesus, it doesn’t matter. You don’t believe me? Read Romans 14:1-15:7.

Now, here’s where it gets us. You ready?

Do you believe that you are perfect? Do you believe you have God’s will completely and perfectly figured out? That you are living exactly right, that you believe everything exactly right, that your worship is exactly right according to God’s plans? Do you think you know everything and do everything perfectly? No? That’s what I thought. Then what in the world saves you? What covers you in your innocent mistakes? What saves you in your accidental misunderstandings and your sincere misinterpretations? Why, it’s God’s grace, of course. His matchless grace.

Do you believe that the Churches of Christ are perfect? Do you think that the CofCs  have everything totally figured out? That we are worshiping exactly right, that our leadership structures are completely lined up with God’s intent, that we have all of God’s will entirely mapped out and expressed perfectly? No? That’s what I thought. Then what in the world saves us? What covers us in our innocent mistakes? What saves us in our accidental misunderstandings and our sincere misinterpretations? Why, God’s grace. Yes, his wonderful grace.

You think there’s any chance at all the Methodists might be doing something right according to the will of God that we’re not? You think the Presbyterians might possibly have something figured out that we don’t? What if the Baptists’ understandings of something in the Bible are richer and fuller than ours? What if another group’s practice is more in line with God’s will than ours? Is it even possible? Yes, of course. Then, what covers us in our innocent mistakes and accidental misunderstandings and sincere misinterpretations? Grace. Yeah, I know.

Now, let’s assume that we have it right on the Lord’s Supper and the Methodists have it wrong. Let’s pretend that we’re right about baptism and a plurality of elders and the Presbyterians and Baptists are wrong. Does the grace of God not cover them completely in their innocent mistakes and accidental misunderstandings and sincere misinterpretations? Are they any less saved?

But they’re wrong and we’re right!

So you get God’s grace where you lack understanding but they don’t? You get the grace of God in your misinterpretations of God’s will but they don’t? Why? Because you try harder? Because we’re more sincere? Because, somehow, we deserve it?

Whoa.

The unbelieving world looks at that and says, “No, thanks.” And I don’t blame them. A religion as visibly divided as ours does not reflect the truth. It reflects our fallen world, not the glory of our God.

Our Christian unity will have an eternal impact on our world. But the world has to see it. Our unity, which already exists as a gift from God, must be visible. It must be practiced and experienced. When it is, the world will believe.

A Methodist preacher, a Church of Christ preacher, a Baptist preacher and a Presbyterian preacher all walk in to a bar is the first line of a bad joke. The Methodist church, the Church of Christ, the Baptist and Presbyterian churches all putting aside their differences to worship and serve together for the sake of the city is a serious and everlasting testimony to the love and power of God! Our “4 Amarillo” efforts are a witness to the world that this is for real! That Christ Jesus is our King! That the world really is changing! That hearts are being melted and people are being transformed! That barriers are being destroyed and walls are coming down! That the devil has been defeated and the Kingdom of God is here!

Peace,

Allan

Five Steps to Salvation

April 24, 2013 / / 14 Comments

It’s just a Church of Christ thing, right? The “Plan of Salvation,” also called the “Five Steps of Salvation,” is unique to us, I think. And those of us who were raised in and by the Churches of Christ know them well: Hear, Believe, Repent, Confess, Baptism. In that order. As a kid in the ’70s, this was drilled into me by my Sunday school teachers in Bible class, by the preachers from the pulpits, by the youth ministers at the devotionals and rallies, and by the Open Bible Study my dad walked me through when I reached the “age of accountability.” The five steps were plastered on bulletin boards in the church hallways, illustrated by charts and diagrams on mimeographed handouts, and splashed across banners promoting the next Gospel meeting. These were the five steps, always accompanied by supporting verses of Scripture, that necessarily had to be followed — again, in order! — for one to be saved.

Hear. Believe. Repent. Confess. Be Baptized.

You ever wonder how that started? You ever question the validity of such a list? If you or your church were to make a list of supposed steps to salvation, what would you include? What parts of our CofC list would you leave out?

Historians point back to our movement’s focus on rational thought and enlightenment thinking that characterized the mainstream culture of America at the turn of the 19th century when Stone and Campbell and others were attempting to “restore” God’s Church. It was all about scientific reasoning and empirical evidence and deductive problem-solving. Society at this time was convinced that there were undeniable patterns, unalterable designs in nature and in the world that, if learned and applied, held the keys to everlasting peace and joy.

Alexander Campbell searched the Scriptures in this way and came up with what he called “the ancient gospel,” a pattern he believed was the divinely-ordained natural way to heaven. According to Campbell, it all boiled down to, in this order: gospel facts (death, burial, resurrection, and ascension of Christ), faith, repentance, reformation (of life), baptism, remission of sins, reception of the Holy Spirit, sanctification, resurrection of the saints, and eternal life. In that order. Campbell claimed that all Christian denominations believed in all these steps, but put them in different orders according to their own interpretations or theories of conversion.

At about the same time, Walter Scott came up with a biblical pattern and called it “the gospel restored.” He had six points originally. The first three were what humans had to do to be saved: believe, repent, and be baptized. The last three were what God promises to people who do the first three: forgiveness of sins, the gift of the Holy Spirit, and eternal life. Not too much later, Scott shortened his list to five points — one for each finger on a person’s hand, for easy remembering: faith, repentance, baptism, forgiveness of sin, and the gift of the Holy Spirit.

This method proved to be very successful on the early American frontier where most everybody had been trained in Calvinism which claimed that men and women were saved only by God’s predestination, that one couldn’t do anything to save himself, it was all up to God’s pre-ordained choosing. By telling these fiercely independent early frontier people that there really was something they could do to be saved, the Stone and Campbell churches fueled a massive rush to repentance and baptism.

As with most good things, we swung the pendulum a bit too far. Pretty soon, we were taking God’s initiative and the Holy Spirit’s active participation clear out of the conversion process. Preaching became all about proving “facts” with arguments and evidence. The Holy Spirit’s work in the past had been entered into the Biblical record and was there to be studied in a rational manner, but it wasn’t necessary for a person’s salvation. The emphasis was on logical fact-finding and step-following and persuading people to “obey the gospel.” The “gospel,” of course, being the steps.

So, at some point in the middle of the 1800s, it gets boiled down to what we have today in the five steps of salvation or the plan of salvation: hear, believe, repent, confess, be baptized. Notice how God’s divine activity is completely absent from any of the steps. Notice how this chart here to the right — all of these charts were downloaded from Church of Christ websites this morning — actually gives much more responsibility or credit to man than to God for salvation. Where is God in our “plan of salvation?”

Why is baptism the last step? Who took out “sanctification,” the guiding of the Holy Spirit, and the grace of God to continually wash our sins?

It is God who works to will and to act according to his good purpose. It is God who initiates salvation, who begins the good work and sees it through to completion. Belief and repentance and confession are salvation steps to be taken every day, not once on a ladder list of human accomplishments. Baptism is never the end of what the apostle Paul calls “being saved,” it’s the beginning. Our five steps minimize our God. Our five steps neglect a lifetime of day-by-day, hour-by-hour difficult discipleship to Jesus. And they ignore the unmerited and continuous grace of our merciful Father.

OK, maybe that’s a little harsh. Too judgmental, probably, Yes, we come by the “five-steps” thing naturally. It’s been handed down to us by faithful men and women who were doing their very best with what they had to work with during the times they lived. And I’m grateful for it. Seriously. But I’m also so glad that we’ve recognized the many shortcomings in this kind of incomplete view of salvation. I’m so glad that we’re acknowledging together the active role of God’s Spirit in the calling and saving and sanctifying of the saints. And I’m glad we can change. I’m so glad, by God’s grace, we’re allowed and even compelled to change.

Peace,

Allan

Pray More and Dispute Less

March 27, 2013 / / 0 Comments

Last week’s Tulsa Workshop (excellent, as always!) has put me a little behind on tracking in this space with our adult Bible classes here at Central as we study together “Renewing God’s People.” I’ll try to get caught up here before the weekend hits.

Chapter three of Doug Foster’s concise history of the Churches of Christ, Renewing God’s People, introduces us to Barton W. Stone, a co-founder of what has been called by historians the Stone-Campbell Movement or the American Restoration Movement. Stone was a college-educated Presbyterian minister who, in August 1801, participated with other Presbyterian, Baptist, and Methodist preachers in the largest and most famous camp meeting revival in American history. The success of the Cane Ridge Revival added fuel to the restoration fires of the time and influenced Stone to withdraw from the Transylvania Presbytery to begin the non-denominational Springfield Presbytery. It was an effort to promote Christian unity, to tear down the denominational walls that divide disciples of Jesus, to faithfully express the Gospel as it’s described in Ephesians 4: “There is one body and one Spirit — just as you were called to one hope when you were called — one Lord, one faith, one baptism…”

But after just a few months, it became apparent to Stone and his colleagues that their Springfield Presbytery was just another sectarian division among many. It was working against the Christian unity they so strongly desired. So they broke it up. And the document that proclaimed the dissolution of their organization became one of the two most important founding documents for Churches of Christ. The opening lines of The Last Will and Testament of the Springfield Presbytery quoted from Ephesians four and declared that they would “sink into union with the Body of Christ at large.” They renounced all denominational names of distinction; no more Baptists or Reverends, no more Presbyterians or Fathers. They called for a return to the Bible as the only authority for Christians and God’s Church, “the only sure guide to heaven.” The document affirms the autonomy of each congregation of Christian believers, liberating all churches to “adopt the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus.” They claim that no governing body has the authority to decide anything for a group of churches, that “our power of making laws for the government of the church, and executing them by delegated authority, forever cease.”

Above all, Stone used the document to call for the unity of all Christian believers. “We will,” he writes, “that preachers and people cultivate a spirit of mutual forebearance; pray more and dispute less.”

Pray more and dispute less.

Sigh.

I’m convinced that one reason we in Churches of Christ got so far off track with the initial and Holy Spirit-inspired vision of Christian unity is that we so horribly distorted that Ephesians 4 passage that’s quoted in Stone’s Last Will and Testament. Consider…

I belong to a 750-member congregation in Amarillo; my parents belong to a 400-member congregation in East Texas; my friends David and Olivia belong to a twelve-member congregation that meets in their apartment in Kharkov, Ukraine; my friends Rick & Jaime Atchley belong to a 4,000-member congregation in Fort Worth; my friends Alaor and Miriam belong to a 90-member congregation in Sao Paulo, Brazil. Many, many different expressions of the one church. Those different expressions don’t diminish the truth of “one church” or “one body.”

I was baptized at eleven years old in a heated baptistry in a church building in Dallas; others are baptized as teenagers in a freezing creek at Camp Blue Haven; others are baptized at the age of 80 in crowded apartment bathtubs in Beijing; others are baptized in swimming pools. Many, many different expressions of one baptism. Those different expressions don’t diminish the truth of “one baptism.”

Most Sundays I eat a cracker crumb and sip some grape juice while sitting in a pew and call it communion. Most Sunday nights, I break off a huge chunk of bread and chug a big swig of juice around my kitchen table with our small group and call it communion. During a flu outbreak or a bird virus scare, we’ll eat little pre-broken chicklet-size pieces of cracker. Tortillas at a camp out in Colorado. Peta or flat bread in Peru. Many, many expressions of our Lord’s one meal. Those different expressions don’t diminish the truth of the one Lord’s Supper.

So, when did we start reading Ephesians 4:3-6 like this: “There is one expression of the body and one expression of the Spirit… one expression of faith, one expression of baptism?” And when did we start ripping this foundational passage completely away from its powerful context of unity? When did we start ignoring the opening lines: “Be completely humble and gentle; be patient, bearing with one another in love?”

Is our mighty God, who is One, not the God and Father of all this? Is he not over all this? And through all this? And in all this?

Yes, there is only one baptism; and God is over it, not you. Yes, there is only one Church; and God is in charge of it, not you. Yes, there really is only one faith; and our God is delighted that there are so many different expressions of that faith out there. Barton Stone called on all Christians to see the big picture of God’s eternal Kingdom, to see the beauty of divinely-ordained diversity, to experience the power of his love that destroys all the barriers that separate his children. The only way Stone believed we would ever get close to realizing it this side of glory would be to pray more and dispute less.

Peace,

Allan

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