Water baptisms are joyful occasions for believers of all stripes. We delight in the sound of the water, the ritual motion of the participants, the sight of the glistening smiles, the oddity of the entire scene. Sacraments make the intangible tangible, and memorable. Baptism makes the gospel splashable.

The Westminster Shorter Catechism explains that baptism is one of the “ordinary means whereby Christ communicates to us the benefits of redemption” (question 88). Unfortunately for many of us, baptism has become quite ordinary — and not in a Westminster Catechism kind of way. (I write this as a baptist, who can be some of the worst offenders!) Though the sight of a baptism may give us joy, we can fail to see the many redemptive benefits God gives through this ordinance — and to grasp them for ourselves again. The memory of our baptism may be fresh or may have faded, but this punctiliar event in the life of the believer should grow sweeter with time.

God’s past, present, and future grace awaits us at Jordan’s stormy banks, if we are willing to take the plunge (2 Kings 5:10–14).

Plunged into the Past

A teary sentimentality often accompanies a baptismal ceremony. Each one we witness reminds us of our own. Moreover, each one we witness reminds us of Christ’s. Baptism is backward-looking by nature — a proclamation of faith in God’s grace demonstrated to us in the past.

In Life Together, Dietrich Bonhoeffer reminds us of an obvious but profound fact about the cross: Jesus has not died and been raised in the modern era. To find saving grace, we must look to the past: “I find no salvation in my life history, but only in the history of Jesus Christ” (54). Baptism makes us a participant in that history. Baptism puts us into the Jordan with the repentant sinners, where we watch a sinless man come down and join us in the water (Matthew 3:6, 13–17).

“As we are united with the Son, we hear the Father’s divine favor spoken over us.”

In God’s gracious providence, baptism is the place where our lives intersect the narrative of Scripture. Plunging beneath the water, we pass through the pages and become characters in its plot. At baptism, our lives are eclipsed by the life of Christ — his death and resurrection: “We 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. . . . We have been united with him” (Romans 6:4–5).

As we are united with the Son, we hear the Father’s divine favor spoken over us: “This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased” (Matthew 3:17). His pleasure in us is a past proclamation, resting on our identity in Christ — not on our present performance. Whether we waver, doubt, sin, succeed, overcome, do good, the Father’s grace echoes over the waters of time from the moment our lives were “hidden with Christ in God” (Colossians 3:3).

Surrounded in the Present

Baptism is not always a lighthearted affair, especially in non-Western contexts. During Amy Carmichael’s ministry (1867–1951), Indians realized — rightly — that baptism was the end of supreme loyalty to caste or family. When she spoke with the brothers of a young lady who wished to be baptized, they responded, “Baptized! She shall burn in ashes first. She may go out dead if she likes. She shall go out living — never!”

While most of us may not face imminent death, following Christ does mean losing one’s former life (Mark 8:35). “But he gives more grace” (James 4:6); we are baptized into a people. This is part of God’s present grace: instant family! We receive mothers and fathers to carry us along in our discipleship and brothers and sisters to feast with along life’s pilgrim way (1 Timothy 5:1–3).

Paul reminds us that baptism also places us in the stream of orthodoxy: “one Lord, one faith, one baptism” (Ephesians 4:5). The cloud of witnesses encourages us to run today’s leg of the race with endurance (Hebrews 12:1–2). The writings of Athanasius, Augustine, and Cranmer; the hymns of Steele, Watts, and Crosby; and the orthodox creeds of Nicaea, Chalcedon, and the Apostles help us to faithfully “guard the good deposit” entrusted to us in the present (2 Timothy 1:14).

In the new covenant, we join a company of priests who have been baptized with the Spirit (Mark 1:8). And to borrow a line from Kendrick Lamar, the Spirit makes sure “the holy water don’t go dry.” In other words, baptism reminds us of the continual work of the Spirit today. James B. Torrance puts it this way in Worship, Community and the Triune God of Grace: “The water exhibits not an absent Christ, but a Christ present according to his promise. The Christ who was baptized at Calvary in our place, as our substitute, is present today to baptize us by the Holy Spirit, in faithfulness to his promise: ‘Lo I am with you . . .’” (80).

Assured of the Future

For all baptism’s past and present grace, a not-yet element remains. Baptism is a public declaration of hope that grace awaits us on the final day.

“Baptism is a public declaration of hope that grace awaits us on the final day.”

Although God’s focus in the new covenant is more internal (compared to the external focus of the old), Christians do not abandon hope for the renewal of the outside. The author of Hebrews insists that baptism — the washing of our bodies with pure water — gives us great confidence as we see the Day approaching (Hebrews 10:19–25). Why? Our salvation is not yet complete. Our union with Christ holds one final, eternal grace: “the redemption of our bodies” (Romans 8:23).

Christ’s baptism was a Trinitarian prophecy of his death and resurrection. Our baptism in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit is too. The Christian life begins with a bold proclamation about the end; baptism is a statement of faith in the future grace of resurrection, when all of God’s people will rise to receive a body like Christ’s (Philippians 3:20–21).

Our Passive Amen

Through baptism, God brings past grace near to contemporary believers, secures us in a state of abiding present grace, and excites in us hope for future grace at the resurrection from the dead. In baptism, we do nothing to add to God’s full acceptance of us in Christ. As Torrance reminds us, “There is nothing more passive than dying, being buried, being baptized” (77). As we wash in the water, we proclaim our passive amen of faith to God’s past, present, and future grace: Let it be so — I believe!

http://rss.desiringgod.org/link/10732/14695697/what-is-biblical-meekness

Audio Transcript

We know that one day Christ will return to earth physically to rule over the nations. We long for that day when he rides his white horse, his eyes “like a flame of fire,” “clothed in a robe dipped in blood” — and all in order to finally rule over the nations “with a rod of iron.” That’s what we are told to expect in Revelation 19:11–15. But does Christ rule over the nations right now? And if so, how? It’s a very good question to us from the west coast of India. “Greetings to you, Pastor John. My name is Fernandes, and I live in Goa. My question is this: Is Jesus Christ ruling over all the nations of earth now, as Paul seems to indicate in Romans 15:8–12? It seems like he has ‘all authority in heaven and on earth,’ according to Matthew 28:18. Or is this rule to come in the future, as 1 Corinthians 15:27–28 seems to suggest? Will he rule over all the nations after his second coming? Will he rule in a different way, now spiritually and later physically? Pastor John, how do you think through the reign of Christ over the nations?”

What I see in Scripture, Fernandes, are at least three ways God rules over the nations — or we could say three stages in history in which God brings the nations into complete submission.

God’s Everlasting Dominion

First, there’s the absolute, all-embracing, all-pervasive rule of God’s providence over all nations at all times and in all places.

Psalm 103:19: “The Lord has established his throne in the heavens, and his kingdom rules over all.” That’s true now, and that’s true always.
Psalms 47:2: “The Lord . . . is . . . a great king over all the earth.”
Proverbs 8:15: “By me kings reign.” There’s no reign of any king anywhere at any time except by God’s decree.
Daniel 4:17: “The Most High rules the kingdom of men and gives it to whom he will.”
And when God puts the kings in place, he governs what they do. Proverbs 21:1: “The king’s heart is a stream of water in the hand of the Lord; he turns it wherever he will.”

The most dramatic instance of God’s ruling the wills and actions of sinful rulers is the way those rulers conspired to put the Son of God to death.

In this city there were gathered together against your holy servant Jesus, whom you anointed, both Herod and Pontius Pilate, along with the Gentiles and the peoples of Israel, to do whatever your hand and your plan had predestined to take place. (Acts 4:27–28)

“Christ’s rule at this point is not to build a political or national or earthly civic order. That comes later.”

In other words, God governs the actions of sinful rulers, like Herod and Pilate, to accomplish his purposes, without himself ever sinning. So, the first way to think about God’s rule over the nations is that it is total, constant, and infinitely wise and just — now and always. “He does according to his will among . . . the inhabitants of the earth; and none can stay his hand or say to him, ‘What have you done?’” (Daniel 4:35).

Christ at God’s Right Hand

Second, God puts his incarnate Son, Jesus Christ, on the throne of the universe at his right hand and with all authority in heaven and on earth.

And what’s new about this stage in God’s reign over the nations is, first, that before the incarnation, there never was a God-man to sit at God’s right hand to rule the nations, whereas now, the eternal Son of God is clothed with humanity, and according to Acts 2:36, “Let all the house of Israel therefore know for certain that God has made him both Lord and Christ, this Jesus whom you crucified.”

So, as Jesus sends out his disciples and says, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me” (Matthew 28:18), he has rule as the God-man at the right hand of God now and forever. That wasn’t always the case; that’s new. All of that providential rule of stage one is vested now in the incarnate Son of God. Jesus says in Luke 10:22, “All things have been handed over to me by my Father.” Or John 5:22, “The Father . . . has given all judgment to the Son.”

Now, the second thing that’s new about this rule under the crucified, risen, incarnate Son of God is that the purpose of the rule is to establish God’s saving reign in the hearts of millions of people from all the nations of the world. His rule at this point is not to build a political or national or earthly civic order. That comes later. His purpose now is to establish his saving dominion in the hearts and lives of all the elect from every tribe and tongue and people and nation in the world.

He is sovereign in every way, but he uses his sovereignty now to rescue captives by destroying the authority of Satan in the hearts of his people, and by gathering his elect from all the nations. The penetrating thrust of the kingdom in this age is salvation and sanctification — that is, the beautification of the bride of Christ for presentation to him at the last day. That’s the dominion of God over the nations through Christ now.

When God Is All in All

Third and finally, the stage of God’s rule over the nations that is yet to be from where we stand now is going to begin at the second coming of Christ.

So, during the second stage, Christ is mainly invisible as the one who wields the power of providence and salvation. But that will change at the second coming of Christ. He will no longer be invisible — he will no longer reign invisibly from heaven — but will himself stand forth and be visibly, bodily present on the earth as the King of all kings.

Listen to the difference between the present reign over all things and the future reign over all things. We hear the difference. We hear the description of the present reign in Ephesians 1:20, and we hear the contrast of what it would be like at the future reign in 1 Corinthians 15:22. Let me read those two, and you’ll hear the contrast.

[God] raised [Christ] from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly places, far above all rule and authority and power and dominion. . . . And he put all things under his feet and gave him as head over all things to the church. (Ephesians 1:20–22)

In the present, Christ is seated above all rule, authority, power, and dominion, who still are very active in this world, these evil powers. But he rules over them, seated at the right hand of God, invisibly performing his influence while they have some sway on the earth. Then comes the contrast in 1 Corinthians 15:22–24,

As in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive. But each in his own order: Christ the firstfruits [his resurrection], then at his coming those who belong to Christ. Then comes the end, when he delivers the kingdom to God the Father after destroying every rule and every authority and power.

“One day, every rule and authority and power will be destroyed; opposition will be over.”

So, there’s a difference: In this age, before the second coming of Christ, Christ sits at the right hand of God far above all rule and authority and power, and does his saving work. But in that day, every rule and authority and power will be destroyed; opposition will be over. Christ reigns until that work is completely finished. And then Paul adds, “The last enemy to be destroyed is death” (1 Corinthians 15:26). And Revelation 20:14 describes that: “Then Death and Hades were thrown into the lake of fire.”

Then Christ will hand over the kingdom to God the Father, and God will be all in all, and through Christ, and through his body — his people — God will reign forever and ever in the new heavens and the new earth, and his people will be “from every tribe and [tongue] and people and nation,” whom Christ has made “a kingdom and priests to our God, and they shall reign on the earth” forever and ever (Revelation 5:9–10).