9 Basic Christianity
Basic Christianity
Being a Christian is a blend of doctrine, experience, and practice. Head, heart, and legs are all involved. Doctrine and experience without practice would turn me into a knowledgeable spiritual paralytic; experience and practice without doctrine would leave me a restless spiritual sleepwalker. If Christ is to be formed in me, doctrine, experience, and practice must all be there together.
Now Christianity holds that the Creator is known through material realities—the natural order, Jesus’ flesh, and prescribed symbols, of which baptism is one. Often, and easily, Christianity is distorted and misunderstood: ask six people to define it, and you will probably get six divergent answers. But baptism, as instituted by Jesus, is a standing witness to what essential doctrine, experience, and practice really are.
Trinity
The doctrine baptism displays is the Triune God in covenant with man. Jesus prescribed baptism “in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit” (Matthew 28:19). “Name” means, as often in Scripture, “personal being,” and is singular, pointing to the fact that the three persons are, by mysterious essential unity, not three Gods but one. “In” (literally, “towards”) points to a relationship established between each of the three and ourselves.
As the Trinity is the most startling, difficult, and distinctive doctrine of Christianity, setting it wholly apart from all other forms of faith in God, so it is the most basic truth of Christianity, for the whole gospel rests upon it. According to Scripture, it is the cooperation of the three that brings salvation. Let us spell this out.
The Father planned to save, choosing his Son to be our sacrifice (1 Peter 1:20) and us sinners to be his people (Ephesians 1:4); now he is carrying his plan through. The Son at his Father’s will took flesh and redeemed us, paying on the cross the price of our sins (1 John 4:9ff.) and overcoming death forever by his resurrection; now he lives to intercede for his own (Romans 8:27; Hebrews 7:25)—that is, to act on their behalf so that they gain all he won for them. The Spirit, sent by the Father and the Son (John 14:26; 15:26), recreates us by new birth (John 3:5ff.; 2 Corinthians 5:17), leads us to know Christ by faith (Ephesians 1:17ff.; 3:16ff.), and changes us into Christ’s likeness (2 Corinthians 3:18).
Deny the personal deity of the Son or Spirit, and you call in question that person’s ministry; and then salvation falls to the ground. So Christ’s baptismal formula, affirming the tri-unity of the God to whom we are dedicated, safeguards the gospel in a fundamental way.
Justification
The experience baptism depicts is leaving defilement behind: having one’s guilty failures washed out, so that one can start again. The double symbolism of washing and resurrection proclaims this. Thus baptism expresses the gospel message of God’s sustained forgiveness and acceptance of us as we trust in Jesus’ shed blood—the message, that is, of justification by faith (Paul’s phrase: see Romans 3:21-5:21; Galatians 2:15-3:29).
Moral failure is a universal fact, and guilt, shame, and a defiled and accusing conscience are the commonest human experiences. So the cleansing of conscience, not just once but daily, is a universal need, and the experience which baptism symbolizes is one without which anyone who knows himself at all well can hardly live. “Foul, I to the fountain fly; Wash me, Savior, or I die.”
Repentance
The path of practice to which baptism directs is consenting to bechanged, which is the essence of repentance. I do not baptize myself; the minister is in charge, putting me under the water and bringing me out at his own will. This pictures true penitence and self-denial, that is, surrendering to Christ the reins of one’s life, so as to be driven his way. Self-assertion and stubbornness come naturally to everyone, and W. H. Auden’s line, “We would rather be ruined than changed,” is too true to be good. But willingness to be changed by Christ (which is not a natural state of mind, but a gift of grace) remains the fundamental element in all genuine Christian practice.
Baptism requires us to face, and keep facing, these basic norms of doctrine, experience, and practice in Christ’s Christianity. This in itself is a major part of the blessing baptism brings.
Further Bible Study
Doctrine, experience, practice:
Romans 6:15-7:6
Questions for Thought and Discussion
What does baptism have to do with the doctrine of the Trinity?
What double symbolism do we see in baptism, and what does it say about us?
How does baptism challenge the statement “We would rather be ruined than changed”?