Paul’s last letter brought the manly business of Christian pastoring uncomfortably close to young Timothy. Uncomfortably close, as the front line to the soldier.

The heat of “fanning his gift into flame” made his palms sweat; was he willing to pastor at Ephesus after all that has happened . . . would soon happen? Timothy didn’t need a reminder about the cost of ministry; his tears were memorial enough (2 Timothy 1:4). Paul, his father in the faith, wrote him once more before his execution: “The time of my departure has come” (2 Timothy 4:6). Finally, they were putting down the lion.

Paul welcomed the cost of leadership. He lived ready to suffer for Christ in whatever city the Spirit directed (Acts 20:22–23). “I am ready not only to be imprisoned but even to die in Jerusalem for the name of the Lord Jesus” (Acts 21:13). As Jesus made good on his promise — “I will show him how much he must suffer for the sake of my name” (Acts 9:16) — Paul received his orders manfully. Here at the end, he writes to Timothy, “I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith” (2 Timothy 4:7). Triumph.

But what of Timothy? With shackles around Paul’s wrists, a blade above his neck, would he point his dear son away from the conflict? Just as Timothy seems to flinch and takes steps back, Paul stops him: “Do not be ashamed of the testimony about our Lord, nor of me his prisoner, but share in suffering for the gospel by the power of God” (2 Timothy 1:8). Mount the horse, Timothy. Lead God’s people forward — come what may.

Pastoring, my son, is a manly business.

Fraught with Danger

The context of Timothy’s ministry — the context of ours — was (and is) a crucified Messiah. Jesus promised his first preachers, “If they persecuted me, they will also persecute you” (John 15:20). As Timothy enters his ministry, he associates the pastorate not so much with microphones as with martyrdom; not merely with preaching but with persecution for that preaching. He hesitates to exercise his gifts among a public who crucified his Lord, stoned the prophets, and hunted the apostles, as we might hesitate to minister in the heart of a Muslim country.

Fellow shepherds, have you considered the physical threat of our calling? I, for one, never had until a potential danger lingered around the flock. The gravity of what-ifs fell upon me. But what startled me most was not wondering whether I — father to four young children — should rush in if the worst came, but realizing that I had already chosen to by becoming a pastor. I enlisted to teach, preach, shepherd, and guide — but also to suffer, defend, and die, if the Lord should choose. As a son with his mother, a husband with his wife, a father with his children, so a pastor with his sheep. I am to defend them against all enemies foreign and domestic — spiritual and physical.

Brothers, receive it now: “Share in suffering as a good soldier of Christ Jesus” (2 Timothy 2:3). Yet like young Timothy, we ask Paul, How? Consider his counsel:

I remind you to fan into flame the gift of God, which is in you through the laying on of my hands, for God gave us a spirit not of fear but of power and love and self-control. (2 Timothy 1:6–7)

Yes, Nero. Yes, false teachers. Yes, a church slow to support you. Yes, youth and inexperience. Yes, persecution and possibly martyrdom (2 Timothy 3:12). But I call heaven to witness my charge to you: preach the word, Timothy (2 Timothy 4:1–2). Or have you forgotten your God-given Spirit?

Spirit of the Pastor

Pastors, consider your Spirit. Interpreters debate whether the given “spirit” is only new nobility in our own spirits or includes the Holy Spirit himself. I take it to be the latter, which forges the former (see 2 Timothy 1:8, 14). Regardless, we know this: the new spirit of a man in Christ relies utterly on the Spirit of Christ in that man. Both must be in view.

Here is the point: Shepherds, remember that the Spirit of God empowers you for your life’s work. Your Spirit is one of courage, power, love, and self-control. Brothers, consider your Spirit.

Spirit of Courage and Power

God gave us a spirit not of fear but of power . . .

Paul first reminds Timothy what Spirit he does not have: one of fear, or more exactly, cowardice. In extrabiblical literature, the Greek word (deilia) “refers to one who flees from battle, and has a strong pejorative sense referring to cowardice” (The ESV Study Bible). God’s Spirit does not send him fleeing as a coward but makes the man the very sculpture of courage. And he bestows power and makes the man more than a man — even if, like Paul, he goes forth to die like a man.

To illustrate, consider the effect of God’s Spirit upon three men in the Old Testament — Samson, Saul, and David — and the apostles in the New.

SAMSON

Notice the Spirit’s influence on Samson. First, “the Spirit of the Lord rushed upon him, and although he had nothing in his hand, he tore the lion in pieces as one tears a young goat” (Judges 14:6). Next, “the Spirit of the Lord rushed upon him, and he went down to Ashkelon and struck down thirty men of the town and took their spoil” (Judges 14:19). And greater still,

the Spirit of the Lord rushed upon him, and the ropes that were on his arms became as flax that has caught fire, and his bonds melted off his hands. And he found a fresh jawbone of a donkey, and put out his hand and took it, and with it he struck 1,000 men. (Judges 15:14–15)

The Spirit of God rushes upon him, and he rushes upon the enemy — lions, towns, legions.

SAUL AND DAVID

Or consider the Spirit’s influence on goatish Saul. While the Spirit was with him, he was “turned into another man” (1 Samuel 10:6–7). The Spirit straightened his back and rushed upon him, and he bellowed a war cry to rally the twelve tribes together (1 Samuel 11:5–7). Saul was mighty, for a time, but that might came from the Holy Spirit, and when Saul rejected the Lord and his word for fear of the people, the Spirit flew, as it were, to David.

I have underappreciated the Spirit in the David story. Just before the legend of his giant-slaying is born, we read, “Then Samuel took the horn of oil and anointed him in the midst of his brothers. And the Spirit of the Lord rushed upon David from that day forward” (1 Samuel 16:13). David is admirable in many ways, but what is David apart from God’s Spirit? Without the Spirit, his courage is folly, his story unremembered, his songs unsung. But the Lord’s Spirit was with David: writing, worshiping, warring. And David knew what made him great. When he too sins horribly, he pleads mercy from Saul’s fate: “Take not your Holy Spirit from me” (Psalm 51:11).

APOSTLES

On to the New Testament. What are the apostles apart from God’s Spirit? Sheep, who in their own spirits flee from their Master in the garden and then bleat timidly behind locked doors. But these sheep became lions at Pentecost. They obeyed their Lord: “Stay in the city until you are clothed with power from on high” (Luke 24:49). When Christ baptizes with his Spirit, tongues of fire fill their mouths, Peter stands to preach, and thousands are saved. Here, a mighty Samson slays the enemies of God with the sword of the word — not one thousand, but three.

Spirit of Love

God gave us a spirit . . . [of] love.

When the Spirit of power leads men, they leave behind a holy legacy. One unsought expression of this is the power to suffer. It takes one kind of courage to ride forth to slay; it takes another to ride forth to be slain. The power of a lion to lie down as a lamb.

“Stephen, full of grace and power, was doing great wonders and signs among the people” (Acts 6:8). Full of grace, full of power, he preached mightily: “They could not withstand the wisdom and the Spirit with which he was speaking” (Acts 6:10). And when that speech turns on them, they grind their teeth and rush upon him. So he dies the first Christian martyr. Note his final prayer: “Falling to his knees he cried out with a loud voice, ‘Lord, do not hold this sin against them’” (Acts 7:60). The Spirit, not just of power to preach, but of love to pray for the hearers murdering you.

This Spirit must empower the mission: “The aim of our charge is love that issues from a pure heart and a good conscience and a sincere faith” (1 Timothy 1:5). A love that preaches, a love that serves, a love that is willing to be “poured out as a drink offering upon the sacrificial offering of your faith” and “rejoices” to be so slain if it means others’ good (Philippians 2:17–18). Timothy, writes Paul, “I endure everything for the sake of the elect, that they also may obtain the salvation that is in Christ Jesus with eternal glory” (2 Timothy 2:10). His wounds are not for his salvation but theirs.

Remember, brothers, we have Christ’s Spirit to love his people with Christ’s love (Philippians 1:8). When faced with imprisonment or execution, the man of God is divinely resourced to respond as John Buyan did while he sat in prison for preaching: “I did often say before the Lord, that if to be hanged up presently before their eyes [his church’s] would be means to awake in them and confirm them in the truth, I gladly should consent to it” (The Pilgrim’s Progress, xxvii). No greater love exists than this: that someone lay down his life for his friends or his sheep. That is the love of Jesus wrought by God’s Spirit.

Spirit of Self-Control

God gave us a spirit . . . [of] self-control.

The Spirit of God and the spirit of evil is contrasted in the story of Saul. The Spirit of God rushes away at Saul’s sin, replaced by a tormenting spirit from God. It makes him rabid.

The next day a harmful spirit from God rushed upon Saul, and he raved within his house while David was playing the lyre, as he did day by day. Saul had his spear in his hand. And Saul hurled the spear, for he thought, “I will pin David to the wall.” But David evaded him twice. (1 Samuel 18:10–11)

He goes on to throw a spear at his own son.

The Spirit of God works self-mastery in those he masters. God’s power is aimed at a man’s dearest lusts. And the flesh dies hard. He bears his fruit in our lives — fruit lethal to the deeds of the body. Young Timothy ought to justify his ministry by the Spirit’s influence in his life: “Let no one despise you for your youth, but set the believers an example in speech, in conduct, in love, in faith, in purity” (1 Timothy 4:12). Samson slayed a thousand with a jawbone, David killed his ten thousand on the field, yet even both of these men fell at home to lusts of the flesh.

The minister of Christ, the conqueror in Christ, the sufferer for him, will be a self-controlled man. When he hears threats nearby, he will not panic or renounce Christ or flee from his people. He will be collected, calm, a presence that has his wits about him when the wolves come around. Our people need our self-control: “Keep a close watch on yourself and on the teaching. Persist in this, for by so doing you will save both yourself and your hearers” (1 Timothy 4:16).

Good Shepherds

Pastoring is a manly business. Maybe soft men slipped in during the twentieth century. It will not be so in the decades to come. Pastors put the target on their backs. Men, manly men, must preach because they assume the violent responses to their preaching that can come. Egalitarian fantasies and feminist fictions would return to the dark chasm whence they came if more pastors were dragged mid-sermon into the town square and flogged with 39 lashes for their testimony (2 Corinthians 11:24), or if we held in our hands final letters from now martyred pastors. Women “pastors” are a luxury of peacetime.

Pastor, it is a hard word, but if the Lord Jesus wants to make you his paper and write his sermon in your flesh, shall we not bless his holy name? If, like Paul, you bear on your body some marks of the Lord (Galatians 6:17), then “share in suffering for the gospel by the power of God” — yes, and go away “rejoicing that [you] were counted worthy to suffer dishonor for the name,” if you still can go away (Acts 5:41).

Flesh and blood cannot abide this word. We shouldn’t expect it to. Pastoring is not merely a manly business but a spiritual business.

Brothers, we need to remember our Spirit — the Holy Spirit of courage, of power, of love, and of self-control. Follow Christ into suffering, if it comes to that. Remember: a good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep. By the Spirit he has given, we will be good shepherds until the Great Shepherd returns.

Audio Transcript

Welcome back to the Ask Pastor John podcast. We’re reading the Navigators Bible Reading Plan together. And tomorrow we read Acts 22, a chapter where Paul recounts for us his dramatic conversion experience — his blindingly dramatic conversion experience. In the story, we’re introduced to a devout and godly Christian man named Ananias, who approached the recently blinded Saul (now named Paul) and restored his sight to him, or told him it would be restored soon. Then Ananias told Paul in verse 16, “And now why do you wait? Rise and be baptized and wash away your sins, calling on his name.” Water baptism and sin-washing are connected.

Likewise, we have forty questions in the inbox about Acts 2:38. There in the text, a bunch of seekers have gathered to hear Peter say to them, “Repent and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins, and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit.” And three thousand people repent and are baptized. An amazing sight — and yet another text that appears to put water baptism in the moment of forgiveness or conversion. So, dozens of listeners have written in to basically ask, based on Acts 2:38 and Acts 22:12–16, this same essential question: Pastor John, are we saved after water baptism, before water baptism, or in water baptism?

I would first answer by making the question more precise. Are we justified before, in, or after baptism? Are we united to Christ, do we become one with Christ and God becomes 100 percent for us, before, in, or after baptism? Because in the New Testament, the word saved is used for what happens before, in, and after baptism:

Ephesians 2:8: “[We] have been saved.”
1 Corinthians 1:18: “[We] are being saved.”
Romans 13:11: “Salvation is nearer to us now than when we first believed.”

So, being saved happened before, is happening now, and will happen finally in the future.

The word salvation in the New Testament is broad and includes pieces of salvation. And what’s really being asked is, “When did it all start — the first moment of union with Christ, the moment of justification (which is not a process like sanctification is but decisive)?” “If God is for us, who can be against us?” (Romans 8:31). When did that start? At what point does God count us a child — not a child of wrath, which we all are by nature (Ephesians 2:3), but a child of God, so that from that point on, he is 100 percent for us with no wrath? When did that happen? What was the decisive means that brought it about, that united us to Christ, that justified us?

By Faith Apart from Water

Let me give my answer from texts and then show how that point relates to baptism.

Romans 3:28: “We hold that one is justified by faith apart from works of the law.”
Romans 5:1: “Therefore, since we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God.”
Romans 4:5: “To the one who does not work but believes in him who justifies the ungodly, his faith is counted as righteousness.”
John 3:16: “God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.”
Acts 13:38–39: “Through this man forgiveness of sins is proclaimed to you, and by him everyone who believes is freed [or justified] from everything from which you could not be [justified] by the law of Moses.”

And on and on and on I could go. I had a bunch of others, and I thought for time’s sake I’d just leave them out.

“Baptism is the outward expression of calling on the name of the Lord in faith.”

So, here’s my inference from those texts (and many others like them): justification — being put right with God by union with Christ in the divine miracle of conversion and new birth — that point is by faith, and faith alone, on our part. God uses faith as the sole instrument of union with Christ and thus counts us righteous and becomes 100 percent for us in the instant that we have faith in Jesus.

That’s my answer. And now the question is, “Okay, how do you talk about baptism? And how do you understand those texts that were quoted that seemed to connect baptism to that act, that beginning?” So, let me give some answers to that.

Sign of Righteousness

The first thing I would say is that the thief on the cross was told by Jesus that that very day he would be with him in paradise. He was not baptized. I know he’s a special case — I don’t think you build a theology of baptism on the thief on the cross. But one thing it says is that baptism is not an absolute necessity, because it wasn’t in his case.

Here’s the second thing I would say. Paul treats baptism as an expression of faith so that the decisive act that unites us to Christ is the faith, and it is expressed outwardly in baptism. Here’s a very key text for me. When I went to Germany, I was a lone Baptist in a den of Lutheran lions. They were loving lions — they just licked me; they didn’t eat me. But they did not approve of what I believed. And I remember taking a retreat with twelve little cubs and one big doctor father named Leonhard Goppelt. And we were talking about baptism the whole weekend. And this was my text; this was my text that I put up. This is Colossians 2:11–12:

In him [in Christ] also you were circumcised with a circumcision made without hands, by putting off the body of the flesh, by the circumcision of Christ, having been buried with him in baptism, in which you were also raised with him through faith in the powerful working of God, who raised him from the dead.

So, the burial with Christ in the water and the rising with Christ out of the water, it seems to me (from that text), are not what unites you to Christ. That is, the going under the water, the coming up out of the water — that’s not what unites you to Christ. It is “through faith” that you are decisively united to Christ.

And here’s an interesting analogy, since circumcision was brought into the picture there, and there’s kind of an image of circumcision in Colossians 2. If you go to Romans 4:11, Paul says,

[Abraham] received the sign of circumcision as a seal of the righteousness that he had by faith while he was still uncircumcised. The purpose was to make him the father of all who believe without being circumcised, so that righteousness would be counted to them as well.

So, if you just take the analogy — and that’s all it is; it’s just an analogy between baptism and circumcision — then this text would say that baptism is a sign of a righteousness that we have before we are baptized, because we have it through faith and through union with Christ.

Calling and Washing

Then we go to the relevant texts in Acts that the questioner raised, like Acts 22:16: “Rise and be baptized and wash away your sins.” Now, if you stopped right there, you’d say, “Well, there it is: the water is the forgiving agent.” But that’s not where you stop. It says, “Rise and be baptized and wash away your sins, calling on his name.” So, the sense (I think) is the same: baptism is the outward expression of calling on the name of the Lord in faith. It’s not the water that effects our justification or union with Christ. The water is a picture of the cleansing, but the faith in the heart, the call on the Lord from faith, is what unites us and forgives us.

And now, that’s the meaning that 1 Peter 3:21 actually picks up on when it says, in relationship to the flood and Noah’s rescue through the ark, through the water, “Baptism, which corresponds to this” — that is, the salvation of Noah’s family in the ark and the flood — “now saves you.” That’s probably the clearest text for those who want to say that baptism is salvific, that it actually does the saving. It says, “Baptism . . . saves you.”

And then immediately, as though he knows he said something almost heretical, because it would so compromise justification by faith, he says, “. . . not as a removal of dirt from the body but as an appeal” — so now we’re back to this call issue: “Wash away your sins, calling on his name” — “as an appeal to God for a good conscience, through the resurrection of Jesus Christ.” In other words, it’s the call of faith from the heart, not the water. And he explicitly says, “not [the] removal of dirt from the body.” In other words, “It’s not the actual functioning of the water that does the saving, even though I just said, ‘Baptism saves you.’ What I mean is that this outward act signifies an appeal to God that’s coming from the heart, and it’s that faith that saves.”

“God uses faith as the sole instrument of union with Christ.”

So, when John the Baptist (or Mark) calls his baptism “a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins” (Mark 1:4), it probably means “a baptism signifying repentance, which brings forgiveness.” Because repentance is simply the way of describing the change of mind that gives rise to faith.

‘Repent and Be Baptized’

Now, here’s one last important text they’re raising. In fact, this is where you begin. Acts 2:38: “Repent and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins, and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit.” So, it looks like this: repent (condition number one), be baptized (condition number two), and forgiveness will be given to you. And I’ve been arguing (because I think so many texts teach it) that, no, repentance and faith as one piece are what obtains forgiveness, not the baptism.

So, what, you disagree with this text, Piper? Who do you think you are? And I think that text should be read something like this (and I remember seeing this years ago and then finding it other places). Suppose, Tony, you want to go from Phoenix to LA on the train, and it’s about to leave, and I say, “Grab your hat and run or you’ll miss the train.” Now, I just gave you two commands like Peter gave two commands: “Repent and be baptized.” But only one of them is a cause of getting to the train on time — namely, running. But I said, “Grab your hat.” Grabbing your hat is an accompanying act, not a causative one. It may be very important. There may be all kinds of reasons why you should have a hat. Why did you tell him to grab a hat? Well, I’ve got my reasons. But grabbing the hat does not help you in the least to get on the train on time.

Now, that’s the way I think we should hear Peter when he says, “Repent and be baptized every one of you, and make the train of forgiveness.” You get on the train of forgiveness if you repent and are baptized. And the repentance, the change of mind that includes faith, gets you to the train. And baptism is important — important for all kinds of reasons — but it’s not causative in the same way that repentance is.

So, here’s my bottom-line answer to the question: Faith precedes baptism (that’s why I’m a Baptist) and is operative in baptism. So, we are justified at the very first act of genuine saving faith in Christ, and then baptism follows (and preferably would follow soon) as an outward expression of that inward reality.