The baptism of Cornelius and his
household is the moment in history when the kingdom
of God crossed the boundary of just
being a matter of the Jewish people to being for all people. The event challenges us, the church today,
with respect to how we build boundaries within Christ's body with theological
differences, racial and ethnic prejudices, social issues, personality grinds,
etc. to the end that our unity in Christ is marred and the Church no longer
reflects the image of the loving communion of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit falling upon Cornelius' and
his household as the direct result of Peter preaching the Gospel of Jesus
Christ to them and apart from any response of their own is a brutal reminder to
us that salvation is God's business and we have no right trying to set
boundaries around his kingdom. Our work
is to proclaim the Gospel and through that God will be gracious to whom he will
be gracious and merciful to whom he will be merciful.
Having said all this, in the course
of my ministry this passage has rarely come up in matters having to do with how
we exclude people from Christian fellowship and even salvation because we've
decreed that they do not meet the criteria we in our limited understanding
think the Bible spells out clearly.
Oddly, the place this passage has most often come up for me is in
conversations about infant baptism.
Apparently, the welcoming of the babies of God’s people into the into
the Kingdom of God, into salvation is one of those places where some Christians
have built a boundary around God's grace and mercy and set a criteria or
condition upon it which we misname as faith.
Their point is that babies should not be baptized because they are
unable to understand and profess faith in Jesus Christ as Lord and Saviour for
themselves. Oddly, with infant Baptism
being such a widespread practice this passage is probably the only Scripture
where one could argue that infants were baptized in the early church. It portrays that the practice of the early
church was to baptize whole households on account of the faith of the head of
the household. Peter baptized Cornelius
and his entire household which would have consisted of Cornelius’ immediate
family, some extended family, his staff, and his slaves. Among that many people there is high likelihood
there were infants and small children among them baptized that day notably not on
the basis of Cornelius' faith but on what the Holy Spirit had done.
In the Bible Baptism first appears
with John the Baptist as a ritual of preparatory cleansing from sin in
readiness of the coming of the Messiah and his Kingdom. At some point baptism into the Name of Jesus
Christ came to replace circumcision as the mark of belonging to God's people as
well as became the sign of citizenship in the Kingdom
of God. In Romans 6 Paul emphatically declares that
baptism is our real participation in the death and resurrection of Jesus and is
thus our entry point into New Creation or new life in the Spirit. In essence Baptism was/is the earthly
expression of salvation that is coming from heaven and if I might sound
controversial here, in the Bible faith is the aftermath of Baptism/salvation
more than its prerequisite. It is living
life lead by the Spirit.
Saying more on the relationship
between faith salvation and Baptism let’s have a look at Paul’s Letter to the
Ephesians where he wrote what undoubtedly must be the most misunderstood passage of Scripture in the Bible. He writes, “For by grace you have been saved
through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a
result of works, so that no one may boast” (Eph. 2:8-9). This passage from Ephesians contains North
American Evangelicalism’s trifecta of misunderstood words – grace, faith, and
salvation. If these three words are
misunderstood, one no longer has biblical Christianity but rather a heretical
form of the faith in which the possibilities for spiritual abuse abound. So let’s take a moment to define these words
properly.
In North American Evangelicalism
grace is usually presumed to be God’s loving disposition to us expressed in his
willingness to forgive our sins and to wave sin’s penalty of death on account
of Jesus’ death in our stead. But if you
do a broad survey of grace in the Bible we find that it isn’t so much a courtroom
acquittal thing but rather a royal court thing.
It is primarily being in God’s presence enjoying his favour and his
acting for us to deliver us from sin, death, and evil. Unhindered and unconditional access to God’s
grace is what Jesus the Incarnate Son of God gained for us by his faithful
life, his death, his being raised from the dead, and his ascension. The presence of the Holy Spirit is proof of
this. God’s free gift to us of access to
his very self in, through, and as the Holy Spirit is God’s grace. My you know him now.
Faith in North American Evangelical
circles tends to be defined as the opposite of scepticism. Having faith begins with making a rational
decision to believe something to be true in the face of the lack of
experiential and/or empirical evidence.
Thus, the faith through which a person is saved begins with a decision
to believe there is a God and this God can be trusted in the face of the lack
of experiential or empirical evidence.
Next, comes the rational decision to believe that Jesus died for our
sins and that the decision to believe this and to publicly confess it will get
a person saved. Biblically, faith is
faithful participation in a personal and communal covenantal relationship with
God; or rather, participating in God’s grace.
Covenantal means the basis of this relationship with God is not a
contractual. Contracts are
conditional. Our relationship with God
is not conditional where we say “God I will accept you as my God, if you do
this for me.” Nor does God say, “I will
only be God to you, if you do this for me.”
Our covenantal relationship with
God begins with God’s acting to save us.
God said to the people of Israel
after acting of his own initiative to save them from slavery in Egypt,
“I will walk among you and will be your God and you shall be my people” (Lev.
26:12). Basically, God is present with
his people actively being their God by extending his favour to them and acting
for them in their best interest. God’s
covenant with Israel
and with us is established by his initiative to save by extending grace. Even when Israel
did their best to not be God’s people, he still was faithful to his covenant. Faith came to the Israelites in the wake of
the Exodus from Egypt, crossing the Red Sea on dry land and the drowning of
Pharaoh’s army, be fed and watered in the wilderness, being given the land of
Canaan, and his presence with them as a cloud and pillar of fire. It was God’s saving by grace that created the
relationship of faith between God and Israel.
So it is with our covenantal bond
with God through Jesus Christ in the Holy Spirit. God has acted in, through, and as Jesus
Christ in the power of the Holy Spirit to save not only humanity but his whole
Creation from sin, death, and evil.
There are those who say because I believe that Jesus died for me, I am
saved: my sins are forgiven and I will go to heaven when I die. I covered this in a sermon two weeks
ago. That’s not what we find salvation
being when we actually read our Bibles.
Salvation is a present reality where the future New Creation Life filled
with the unhindered knowing of God breaks in upon us through the Holy Spirit
who unites us the Christ Jesus so that his resurrected and glorified Life is at
work in us now transforming us, healing us, changing us to be as he is in his
relationship to the Father. Paul also
writes in Ephesians: “But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great
love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us
alive together with Christ - by grace you have been saved - and raised us up
with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus…” (Eph.
2:4-6). Salvation is God by his grace
making us alive together with Christ and seating us with Christ Jesus in his
presence.
That’s what Baptism is all about:
being made alive with Christ Jesus and dwelling in God’s presence with Christ
Jesus through the grace of God’s presence with us in, through, and as the Holy
Spirit. That’s what happened to
Cornelius and his entire household when Peter proclaimed Jesus to them and the
Holy Spirit fell upon them. When we
baptize infants we in the very least proclaim that God in faithfulness to his
covenantal promise to be our God which he initiated answers our prayers for our
children to know him. Our God, the God
who loves us loves our children too and will indeed act accordingly to save them
by grace and awaken faith in them. Who
can withhold the water for baptizing these?
If God is not faithful to our children, then he is not faithful to
us. Amen.
