The listing said they were “a fun-loving British family with two little boys, living in a three-story home in the Italian countryside. Au pair will get room and board, use of a vehicle, and two days off per week.” It sounded perfect. I emailed them, “20-year-old American college graduate, can be there in three weeks!”

The husband picked me up at the airport in Rome and drove like a kamikaze pilot toward his tiny village, delivering Wallace and Grommit-style commentary as we went. We pulled up to the house after dark. He grinned broadly, showing a few missing teeth along the sides. “Ready to meet the wife?”

The wife, Gillian, was in the kitchen — a tall woman with red hair, tanned freckles, and strong, capable hands. A short “hello,” and then she busied herself making me a cup of tea in silence. After a few tense minutes, he received a greeting as well: “Took you a bit.”

“Traffic was that bad,” he said meekly, the foolish grin pasted like a shield over his face. It was the first and last polite evening we had in that house.

Everyday Misery

Waking in my cold bedroom, the first thing I heard every morning was the muffled sound of Gillian’s raised voice. “What kind of . . . JOHN!! JOHN!! . . . Going to help me? . . . STOP IT, JAMES. . . . Guess I will just be getting the breakfast myself. . . . Arthur, THAT’S ENOUGH . . .”

I would trudge down to get the teakettle on the fire. The basement kitchen, built in stone like a dungeon, was the scene where our meals took place. John would sit down with that helpless grin, and both he and Gillian would speak very kindly to each other and the kids for the first few minutes. The boys would smile at me and say something cute. Then, without warning, they would scream, smack, or shout a naughty word at their parents. Gillian would ignore this, cutting up their bland vegetarian fare for them and giving short commands to John about his day.

Then suddenly she’d be screaming in their faces. John would look sheepish while she shouted at him, and then he would walk to the woodshop out back and stay busy for the day.

It was, indeed, a lovely home — built on the side of a breathtaking mountain on the outskirts of a cobblestoned village. We lived next door to a shepherd, ate eggs from the chickens outside, and bought bread at the panetteria and wine from a vineyard just over the mountain pass. Life in the village was as romantic and wholesome as I had imagined. But life in the house was chaos and emotional exhaustion.

And Gillian stood in the middle of it all, unhappily carrying the weight of the world on her shoulders.

Contentious Wife

That image — of John trudging out to his work shed with a miserable Gillian inside — always reminds me of the Proverbs about the contentious woman.

It is better to live in a desert land     than with a quarrelsome and fretful woman. (21:19)

It is better to live in a corner of the housetop     than in a house shared with a quarrelsome wife. (21:9)

A continual dripping on a rainy day     and a quarrelsome wife are alike. (27:15)

When the writers of Proverbs thought of a contentious woman, they often thought of bad weather. A dry place where your parched throat aches for water, but all you get is sand. A maddening drip, drip, drip on your head, coming through the ceiling in the one place on earth you hoped to be dry and warm — your home. Rather than being a haven in the storm, the contentious woman is the storm. She is, herself, the poor weather conditions; her presence is an inhospitable place.

How does a woman end up here? Does any woman really decide to become the bad weather in her husband’s life? Or are the habits of contention like other, better habits — like joy, gratitude, and laughter — which develop with time and regular feeding?

We Contend for What We Desire

A woman doesn’t become contentious overnight. Her life, like everyone’s life, is made up of many individual moments and responses. But these small moments of decision build on each other to create the mountain of material that defines a character.

No wife sets out to be the sort of person you would move onto the roof to avoid. When a woman gets caught in this cycle of unbearable behavior, she does it because she wants what she wants but can’t get it. These habits of nagging, complaining, and contention start with unmet desires, according to James 4:1–2: “What causes quarrels and what causes fights among you? Is it not this, that your passions are at war within you? You desire and do not have, so you murder. You covet and cannot obtain, so you fight and quarrel. You do not have, because you do not ask.”

Listen to two women having coffee, and you will hear them describing their desires to each other. “We really need more space in the dining room . . .” “If he would just take me on a trip . . .” “I just want my mother-in-law to leave us alone . . .” “He just needs to be more of a spiritual leader . . .” “It’ll be so much better when the kids graduate . . .”

“A woman in love with Christ and the promise of a future with him is a woman filled with gratitude.”

When a woman pulls her house down around her own ears — with a stream of inhospitable complaints, wheedling orders, or picked fights — she is seeking something. She fights and quarrels because there is something she “cannot obtain.” Maybe it’s her husband’s attention. Maybe it’s the admiration of her friends. Maybe it’s joy or more comfort. Whatever it is, rest assured — her behavior is the outraged response of a disappointed woman.

Desire Disappointed

Sometimes, to be sure, those disappointments are deep and sincere; a married woman is the witness to her husband’s lifetime of sins and foibles. But haven’t we all seen the sad result when a woman gives up one of the most helpful tools in her arsenal — the art of feminine encouragement? What results is the perfect cycle: a nagging, bitter woman who becomes more bitter with every passing year, obsessing over the failings of her passive, grumpy man.

She can’t understand why her constant reminders don’t work. It doesn’t occur to her anymore to try a new language, the language of thanks and invitation — that sort of thing is for other women, women whose husbands do nice things for them. She desires and doesn’t have. She covets and cannot obtain. Discontent and ingratitude trace a direct path for her into quarrelsomeness.

All her railings against the husband, the children, and the broken dishwasher are a stand-in for her rage against God himself. God is the one who has really failed her. He is the one who withholds good things. He is the one who decided not to give her the afternoon she wanted, the husband she wanted, the job she wanted — the life she wanted.

Desire Fulfilled

Have you ever met a woman who is simply amazed at her own good fortune, who loves her life?

You watch her, confused. Why is she so happy in that house? Why is she so happy with that husband? Why is she so glad and grateful to have that job? Why on earth does she seem to smile and laugh her way from one trying moment to the next? How does she meet with the same circumstances you chafe under with a profound sense of her own blessedness to be a child of God?

If you watch these women travel through sorrow and suffering with their joy intact, you must eventually face the truth: perhaps contentment is not a product of circumstances. Perhaps your quarrelsome spirit arises not from the cards you were dealt, but from your heart of ingratitude. And perhaps the joy and gratitude available to you would also arise not from better circumstances, but from a renewed heart. Perhaps this is a heart you can ask your Father to give you, even now.

A woman in love with Christ and the promise of a future with him is a woman filled with gratitude. She is a woman to behold. She was dead, and now she lives. She was lost, and now she is found. She was blind, and now she sees. Her inheritance in Christ is sure and has begun to be realized even now in the gift of the Holy Spirit.

She has other desires, certainly. But she brings these desires to her Lord with an open hand. He teaches her many lessons in the giving and taking. Rather than finding that she covets and quarrels, she finds that she desires Christ and has him every moment, and thus everything else is gravy. Rather than hounding her husband to fulfill an ever-growing list of demands, she finds herself willing to search out and encourage what is already praiseworthy in his life.

Cure for Marital Quarrels

If you have suddenly heard the sound of your own voice in this article and have seen yourself in the contentious woman, know that you can become the sort of woman who builds her house instead of being bad weather indoors (Proverbs 14:1). Out of your heart can “flow rivers of living water” instead of a drip, drip, drip from the roof (John 7:38). Instead of a wasteland of criticism and contention, you can become an oasis of delight, nourishment, and rest for those closest to you.

Every day is an opportunity to turn in gratitude to your Father in heaven, who in Christ has already created a hospitable and safe place for you under the shelter of his wings (Psalm 91:1). In his name, you can become the sort of woman people come to in order to get out of the rain.

In the New Testament and across Christian tradition, baptism signals at least three realities:

Identification with Christ in his life, death, and resurrection (Romans 6:3–4; Colossians 2:12)
Purification from sin and its effects, which have separated us from our Maker (Acts 22:16)
Incorporation into the body of Christ, the church (Acts 2:41; 1 Corinthians 12:13)

Given these connotations, and given the assumption that Christian baptism is new with John the Baptist’s initiation — a baptism received by Christ at the beginning of his earthly ministry to signal its inauguration and association with the dawn of the new covenant — how does Christian baptism relate to Old Testament practices? Where did the idea of baptism come from? After overviewing the meaning of Christian baptism, this article seeks to briefly explore the connections between baptism and Old Testament ritual washings.

Buried and Raised with Christ

When considering the meaning of baptism, it is important to distinguish the word’s definitional meaning from its symbolic or metaphorical meaning. Literally, or definitionally, the word baptize means “to dip” or “to immerse.”1 But this definition does not exhaust the meaning of Christian baptism in the New Testament.

Paul gets to the heart of the meaning of Christian baptism in Romans 6:3–4:

Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? 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.

In this passage, Paul connects Christian baptism to union with Christ, especially in Christ’s death, burial, and resurrection in the place of, and on behalf of, his people (see also Colossians 2:12). This connection explains why immersion was the normal baptismal practice of the early church, a practice that has continued in some traditions to the present day.2 Immersion in water, and the believer’s subsequent emersion from the water, symbolizes union with Christ and his work: Christ’s death and burial in our place, Christ’s resurrection on our behalf.

“Immersion in water, and the believer’s subsequent emersion from the water, symbolizes union with Christ and his work.”

In this way, baptism pictures the new birth, without which no one can “see the kingdom of God” (John 3:3). By faith, the old man is “crucified with him” (Romans 6:6) and buried — represented by being submerged under the waters of judgment with Christ (Romans 6:3) — so that emerging, the newborn person might live in new life and resurrection hope in union with Christ. In this way, the act of baptism heralds the good news that Christ saves sinners from sin and death through identification with his life and holiness.

Circumcision and Baptism

Although identification with God in Christ is central to understanding baptism — hence why the Christian baptismal formula is “in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit,” and why the New Testament speaks of being “baptized into Christ” (see Galatians 3:27) — other biblical-theological symbols can help us understand and appreciate the full meaning of Christian baptism. One, which we cannot explore at length in this short article, is baptism’s connection with the old covenant rite of circumcision.

Paedobaptist traditions often justify their practice of infant baptism by positing a strong continuity between the old and new covenants: as the (male) children of God’s old covenant people received the old covenant sign of circumcision on the eighth day, so today, children born to new covenant believers should receive the new covenant sign, baptism.

We should note that the connection between baptism and circumcision is biblically justified (see Colossians 2:11–12). But paedobaptists misidentify the point of connection. Yes, people are born into the new covenant community, but this is the new birth of which Jesus spoke, and the new covenant children are those who have the faith of their father Abraham (Romans 4:11). In other words, those who are newborn by faith into the new covenant community receive the new-covenant sign of baptism, thus being incorporated into Christ’s body, the church.

‘Wash Away Your Sins’

But what of Old Testament washings? Are these practices part of the symbolic furniture that can help fill out a New Testament understanding of Christian baptism? Acts 22:16 seems to indicate so.

In this passage, Paul recounts for the Jews gathered at the temple in Jerusalem his miraculous conversion and subsequent baptism. As Paul relays his testimony, he includes Ananias’s instructions after he supernaturally received back his sight (an event that is probably meant to symbolize the moment of Paul’s conversion). Ananias said to Paul, “Rise and be baptized and wash away your sins, calling on his name” (Acts 22:16). In this verse, baptism is related to the washing away of sins. But how? Seeing baptism as the efficient cause of washing would be to overread the connection and to ignore the qualifying participle, “calling on his name.” But failing to see the symbolic connection between baptism and washing would be to underread this verse.

The apostle Peter makes a similar connection between baptism and washing, or purification, in 1 Peter 3:21. After he references Noah and his family’s safe passage through the flood on the ark, he writes, “Baptism, which corresponds to this, now saves you, not as a removal of dirt from the body but as an appeal to God for a good conscience, through the resurrection of Jesus Christ.”

This notoriously difficult verse has been used to justify a doctrine of baptismal regeneration, which teaches that the waters of baptism are an efficient cause of salvation. But as in Acts 22:16, the call to God in faith qualifies such an overreading. It is not the water-washing of baptism that saves, but what the water-washing symbolizes: “an appeal to God for a good conscience, through the resurrection of Jesus Christ.” And such an appeal can only be made by faith.

Old Testament Washings

Given the relationship Paul and Peter draw between Christian baptism and washing, what specific relation might baptism have to Old Testament washings?

“Baptism is an appeal to God and a symbol of the decisive act of the Holy Spirit, who washes, regenerates, and renews.”

While some rites of washing and purification were immediately related to physical hygiene and the spread of disease (see, for instance, laws regarding leprosy and bodily discharges in Leviticus 13–15), other ritual washings addressed the spiritual uncleanness that comes from living as sinners in a sinful world. For instance, in Exodus 19:10–11, Israel is told to wash before they meet God at Sinai. In Exodus 29:4, Aaron and his sons are to be washed with water to be consecrated as priests. Exodus 30:17–21 includes instructions for priests to wash their hands and feet before they enter the tabernacle.

As my colleague Randal Breland puts it, death, disease, and disorder, which the Bible teaches are all downstream from sin, make one unclean, or impure. And in order to relate to a holy God, we must be made clean. Old Testament ceremonial washings addressed this fallen reality in two ways: first by confronting sinners with their perpetual uncleanness — if they wash, they are tacitly acknowledging their uncleanness — and second by giving them a divinely ordained way to be made clean and so relate to God on his terms.

Cleansing the Heart

Even so, Scripture makes clear that ritual washings are not sufficient to deal with sin and its effects once and for all. In Luke 11:39–40, Jesus addresses the spiritual implications of ceremonial washing: “Now you Pharisees cleanse the outside of the cup and of the dish, but inside you are full of greed and wickedness. You fools! Did not he who made the outside make the inside also?”

Mark records Jesus in a similar context expanding this observation into a spiritual principle with implications for ritual washing: “Hear me, all of you, and understand: There is nothing outside a person that by going into him can defile him, but the things that come out of a person are what defile him” (Mark 7:14–15; see also Matthew 15:1–20). In other words, the deeper spiritual reality and meaning behind the act — not the washing itself — is most significant.

This spiritual significance of washing, and its relationship to baptism, seems to lie behind Jesus’s response to Peter in John 13:9, where Peter tells Jesus to wash not just his feet, but his head and his hands. Jesus responds to Peter that he has already been made clean: “The one who has bathed does not need to wash, except for his feet, but is completely clean. And you are clean, but not every one of you” (John 13:10).

Significantly, Jesus tells Peter that he does not need to perpetually wash his head and his hands, as the priests of old did, in order to come to God. He has been made clean, once for all, by his faith-union with Christ, which is symbolized by the “bathing” of baptism in which Peter had been submerged — head, hands, and all. But notice: the twelve all had received baptism when they followed Christ, they all had “bathed” (see John 4:1–2), but only eleven were clean. Judas was baptized, but he was not clean.

True and Greater Washing

What then is the symbolic connection between Christian baptism and Old Testament washings? Just as Old Testament washings occurred in obedience to the command of God and symbolized purification from sin, so also baptism. But as in the Old Testament, the act itself does not effect the cleansing; God does. Baptism is an appeal to God and a symbol of the decisive act of the Holy Spirit, who washes, regenerates, and renews in his application of Christ’s work to our lives. As Paul writes in Titus 3:5, “[God] saved us, not because of works done by us in righteousness, but according to his own mercy, by the washing of regeneration and renewal of the Holy Spirit.”

In this way, we leave behind the “various washings, regulations for the body imposed until the time of reformation” (Hebrews 9:10), while also recognizing how they teach us of and point us to the true and greater washing by the blood of Christ (Hebrews 9:13–14) and the regeneration of the Holy Spirit, all of which is symbolized by baptism into the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Therefore, let those of us who by faith have been baptized “draw near with a true heart in full assurance of faith, with our hearts sprinkled clean from an evil conscience and our bodies washed with pure water” (Hebrews 10:22).

What is Look at the Book?

You look at a Bible text on the screen. You listen to John Piper. You watch his pen “draw out” meaning. You see for yourself whether the meaning is really there. And (we pray!) all that God is for you in Christ explodes with faith, and joy, and love.