WE COME TO a passage which is intriguing: “For as many of you as were baptized into Christ have put on Christ” (Gal. 3:27). Just what is this baptism which brings you into Christ and makes you “put on Christ”? The answer usually given is baptism with water. Many are baptized with water, however, some in infancy and some in adult years, and they have not put on Christ. Simon Magus had been baptized with water, and yet Peter had to say to him: “For I see that you are in the gall of bitterness and in the bond of iniquity” (Acts 8:23).
The baptism which brings us into Christ and helps us to put on Christ is the baptism of the Spirit. This verse makes it clear: “For by one Spirit we were all baptized into one body—Jews or Greeks, slaves or free—and were all made to drink of one Spirit” (1 Cor. 12:13). “Baptized into” by “one Spirit”—so it is the Spirit’s baptism. The passage “one Lord, one faith, one baptism” (Eph. 4:5) is usually used as depicting baptism with water as the one baptism. The Lord is the Lord Jesus (Jesus is Lord!); the faith is faith in the one Lord; and the baptism is the baptism which the one Lord gave. What baptism was that?
John said: “I came baptizing with water . . . this is he who baptizes with the Holy Spirit” (John 1:31, 33). Jesus did not baptize with water—“(although Jesus himself did not baptize, but only his disciples)” (John 4:2). Jesus did not baptize with water, for He saved Himself to give the one baptism—the baptism of the Spirit. “Being therefore exalted at the right hand of God, and having received from the Father the promise of the Holy Spirit, he has poured out this which you see and hear” (Acts 2:33). The baptism of the Spirit brings us into Christ and then we put on Christ. The baptism of water brings us into the church fellowship.
O Spirit of God, only Thy cleansing and enabling can bring me into Christ. I open every pore of my being to Thy coming. For Thou dost bring Him. Everything within me cries out for Him. Come, Holy Spirit, come. Amen.
AFFIRMATION FOR THE DAY: To receive the spirit—that is deliverance, direction, and dynamic.
